Because of their overall pessimistic demeanor, they can easily feel slighted and may express this aggressively or hold it in and build resentment. Those with this type of BPD tend to view people in “black and white” terms (known as BPD splitting), so they are likely to hold onto a grudge after feeling insulted.
What others perceive as a simple mistake to be brushed off, people with BPD might perceive as a serious wrongdoing. You might hold onto a grudge for days, or until the person has apologized sufficiently.
Punishment and revenge are central to the manifestation of what Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is and means when it comes to relationships.
If you have been diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder, you may be suspicious of others without good reason. This can make you feel that other people are being unpleasant to you, even though this isn't true. You might feel easily rejected or hold grudges.
These results suggest that patients with BPD report becoming more accepting and forgiving over time.
People with BPD may experience rage when they perceive rejection, neglect, or abandonment in a relationship. During rage, a person may say or do things that they later regret. This could lead to ending the relationship in the heat of the moment. BPD rage is often followed by significant regret and shame.
Once they have regained their equilibrium, they do often feel guilt or remorse about their behavior. They do not want to be combative and impulsive, which often results in pushing loved ones away.
Relationships & Borderline Personality Disorder
“We also have intense and sudden mood changes, and we have severe difficulty regulating our emotions. Unintentionally, we tend to blame others when we make a mistake, which causes us to be manipulative and cruel to those we care about.”
However, those positive attributes are not without the proverbial strings attached; when the BPD explodes with vindictive rage, all they said or gave to their loved one may be taken away in one fell swoop of aggression. BPDs experience the world in extremes: black-and-white or all-or-nothing.
Your family member or loved one with BPD may be extremely sensitive, so small things can often trigger intense reactions. Once upset, borderline people are often unable to think straight or calm themselves in a healthy way. They may say hurtful things or act out in dangerous or inappropriate ways.
“People with BPD lie often, but it is not because they are pathological liars,” says Nikki Instone, Ph. D. “Lying is not a symptom of the disorder so much as a consequence of their internal battle.” Lying is really rooted in emotional dysregulation, which is one of the main symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder.
They have anger outbursts and become particularly volatile. More often than not, they're not intentionally manipulating others — hence the quotation marks. Although their actions appear malicious, they're just trying to get their needs met.
A person with BPD is highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone, which brings about intense feelings of anger, fear, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and very impulsive decisions. When something happens in a relationship that makes them feel abandoned, criticized, or rejected, their symptoms are expressed.
One of the key features of BPD is the push-pull dynamics, which occur when individuals have a strong urge for intimacy and deep connection with someone, but their fear of rejection and abandonment leads them to push the person away.
Suppressing Emotions
Many with quiet BPD, especially those who experienced childhood trauma, hide their feelings because that is what they learned to do to survive when they were younger. You might believe your emotions are only acceptable if you appear in good spirits.
Idealization can quickly turn into devaluation because there is often no middle ground for a person with BPD. Feeling challenged, threatened, or disappointed can quickly cause them to devalue the people they formerly idealized.
What are the conditions that may drive a person in their manipulative behavior? In BPD, these conditions are a lack of affective self-understanding, difficulties with regulating one's own emotions, and an impeded interaffectivity that makes it incredibly difficult for the person to feel connected with other people.
People with BPD fear abandonment and have trouble maintaining relationships. Nevertheless, they tend to lie, which ruins trust and intimacy, fosters resentment, and harms the very relationships they fear losing. Many family members and friends of those with BPD cite lying as a major problem in their relationships.
But for many folks with borderline personality disorder (BPD), self-sabotage can often be at the forefront of their lives. As Mighty contributor Sheridan Ashby who lives with BPD put it, Self-sabotaging (relationships, jobs, etc.) is a fairly common habit of people with borderline personality disorder.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is one of the most damaging mental illnesses. By itself, this severe mental illness accounts for up to 10 percent of patients in psychiatric care and 20 percent of those who have to be hospitalized.
Yes, those living with BPD often experience heightened emotions and fears of abandonment, but that certainly doesn't make them unlovable, let alone monstrous. A relationship with someone who lives with BPD is just like any other; it depends on many of the same factors such as trust, understanding and communication.
Borderline personality disorder is one of the most painful mental illnesses since individuals struggling with this disorder are constantly trying to cope with volatile and overwhelming emotions.
They are also not uncaring people. They do care about family and friends but find it difficult not to act selfishly when experiencing their own heightened emotions.
While we tend to focus on the symptoms themselves, we don't always talk about the one thing that often follows a BPD episode — guilt. “Borderline guilt” is the feeling of shame following a BPD episode. Sometimes people feel guilt because the way they acted hurt their loved ones.
People with BPD score low on cognitive empathy but high on emotional empathy. This suggests that they do not easily understand other peoples' perspectives, but their own emotions are very sensitive. This is important because it could align BPD with other neurodiverse conditions.