One of the blogs I follow is by clinical psychologist Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, of About.com. It's a well-researched and well written blog about self-harming, suicidal people with BPD. If you're not a subscriber, I recommend it.
In this blog post, she says that some of the reader comments and emails she receives are "incredibly hateful" toward people with BPD. She says she knows these comments are written from a place of pain and anger, but she is "shocked by the level of vitriol."
She writes:
People with BPD deserve your compassion. I am not saying that they do not behave in ways that are hurtful, nor that they should not have to accept responsibility for these actions...But before you judge someone with this disorder, please take a step back and think about what it would be like to have this disorder...
Think about whether you would make the same judgments about someone who had, say, schizophrenia, or social anxiety, or posttraumatic stress disorder...In short, have compassion. Be grateful that you don't have to live with BPD. And do something to help, rather than spewing out hate. It's not helping you or anyone else.
The post has attracted a lot of attention: as I write this it has 60-some comments, including a few of mine. Mostly it is a thoughtful discussion, and worth a read.
I'd like to take this opportunity in my own blog to address this topic in more detail.
Yes, Family Members Are Compassionate!
In fact, family members (FM) of people with BPD are some of the most compassionate people out there. Those who know about BPD are aware their BPD FM didn't ask for the disorder.
Despite their BPD FM's unexpected and unexplained anger; their impulsive, possibly reckless behavior; despite their inconsistent abandonment engulfment pattern; despite the fact the FM's often don't get their own needs met; they hang in there. Partners try for years. Parents try for a lifetime, no matter what it takes.
Those who are educated about BPD do their best to validate and use tools they've learned to help their BPD FM. They take classes and go to support groups and, in some cases, act superhuman in their efforts to make their loved ones better.
Some, in fact, go the other way: they lose touch with what most of us would call healthy anger that indicates something needs to change (more about that later). In one comment from the About.com blog: a gentleman says he wishes his BPD girlfriend wouldn't call him names and accuse him of things. But he knows that if he wants to marry her, he better keep quiet and let her be in control, even if he disagrees with her perceptions.
I have seen this attitude in hundreds of non-BP partners. It nearly always ends in the same way: after marriage, abusive behaviors get worse. Empathetic partners lose their sense of self and are unable to set healthy limits. This often happens when children are taught that getting angry isn't nice and will lead to abandonment.
I worry about this man. I worry about the children he may have and how they will react if their mother calls them names and falsely accuses them. Children don't have the same defenses adults do. They--if not him--will take it personally. Very personally. This might not happen, for all we know. But it is a risk, if not for him, than many others.
Now, back to those who get angry--what I would call healthy anger. The book The Ultimate Guide to Transforming Anger by Jane Middelton-Moz and two others characterize healthy anger as that which "drives us forward, rather than stuck in powerlessness...used to transform an unacceptable situation into a better one." (p.193)
The authors also tie anger and grief together. Anger, they say, is a necessary step in the process of grieving. Family members of those with BPD are in a great deal of grief about loss: loss of what was and what might have been.
The authors say:
Grief is the rainbow of intense feelings associated with a loss or misfortune...of the many stages of healthy grieving, anger is one of the least understood and least tolerated in ourselves and others. Many of us learned throughout their lives that "good" people are not angry, or that anger is a destructive emotion that must be avoided at all cost...it is normal to be angry at the unfairness of it all: the person who has left us, institutions, God, mistakes, and those we hold responsible or sometimes all of humanity at a time. (p. 199)
While family members are asked to tolerate anger in their borderline friends and family, they are expected not to get angry in return. It doesn't improve the situation: as Salters-Pedneault rightly says, "It's not helping you or anyone else." My own books counsel an empathetic, compassionate approach, especially during conversations. It disturbs me terribly when people with BPD come across vengeful verbiage and take it personally and feel even worse.
These angry comments aren't even directed toward those people with BPD who are treatment-seeking. They're directed toward higher-functioning, acting out borderline (and possibly narcissistic) individuals who deny they have any problems and project and blame-shift it to others.
Unhealthy Anger
Middelton-Moz and her coauthors characterize unhealthy anger as that which prevents people from dealing with the source of their fears and dealing with messages that continue their shame. It keeps people from examining their hurts and feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability. Unhealthy anger, they write, may continue isolation and prevent problemsolving (p. 56).
We all know people who become bitter after relationships end--particularly those that started out so hopefully. Partners, who are some of the most angry non-BPs (after stepparents) were split "all good" in the beginning of the relationship. By the end of it, they've been split black. Some of them have become the victims of distortion campaigns (smears), high conflict divorce, and custody struggles.Their rage and grief does not cease. They've taken what happened personally and can't get over it. They may have issues of their own.
So how do we respond when they post angrily in a public forum, like the About.com blog or the New York Times website? Should we judge them or help them? Tell them to get over it and accuse them of not being compassion enough?
Is it OK to give a pass to people with BPD for their rage, but expect non-BP FM's who have been in an invalidating environment for years to stop it, engage the brain over their emotions, take responsibly for their own stuff, and just get over it? Should we ignore them when they post and think to ourselves they just don't get it?
Or should we validate their emotions--find the nugget of gold--and suggest they get professional help? Counseling, we know, from some of the very clinicians who secretly are quite uncomfortable with their own BPD clients and vent to their coworkers?
Let's take a look at what invalidation is, according to top expert Alan E. Fruzzetti, Ph.D., in his book The High Conflict Couple.
Responding in an invalidating way means that we communicate that what the other person is feeling, thinking, wanting, or doing is wrong or faulty or just not worthy of our respect or attention. We convey this by not paying attention, minimizing feelings, criticizing in a judgmental way, telling another how he "should" feel or what he "should" want, showing disrespect toward the person in general (using a patronizing tone or response, acting superior, thinking or showing you are "better" than another) showing mean-spirited or contempt for the person, or treating him or her as an incompetent human being (p. 139-140).
