March 11, 2011 · 4:28 pm
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Deception and the Borderline Personality What Could have Been?

Scared child

Fear and the Borderline Personality

I know that you believe what you have been told is true and that you would not believe it if someone told you.  But consider, for a moment, that you have been deceived and because you do not understand that the ambiguous behaviors so well hidden by a family system that enables Borderline behaviors to go on undetected and that you have become the unwitting accomplice of something that holds the potential to destroy the family system that protects it.

It is common for the borderline personality to be relatively unnoticed by most people in the family, friends, and acquaintances circle– while at the same time a inflicting personal damage to family members. A common trait of the borderline is to utilize  attention seeking behaviors that are used to gather a supportive network of understanding, enablers to rescue the Borderline from her worst fear from every crisis.  Some would call her a “Drama Queen” who “acts out” to gain the sympathy and support and  to keep the worst fear from being realized.  As a result, she is constantly burdened with a lifestyle that demonstrates a constant sense of “faking it,” and with the continual threat that sooner or later she will be “found out.”  So, what you are seeing is the great effort going into continually managing people, information, and perception–  to hide who she really is from the public eye.

The danger in a family system is being found out and rejected or abandoned . The very idea of someone exposing the borderline behavior is the trigger that it evokes (for her) the fear  of being exposed. This stress triggers the core issue– fear of abandonment. What you will witness is her intense feeling of rejection, pain, and the anger that triggers defensive mechanisms bringing rage, acting out, and acting in behaviors. Unfortunately, if you are the person who identifies the deception of the borderline, you should be prepared to be subjected to becoming the object of  rage motivated by an irrational belief  of abandonment, social isolation, and rejection. For the borderline, the loss of control, coupled with the fear of abandonment triggers a heightened level of stress that is unmanageable for her resulting in dysregulated emotions .  Consequently,  splitting occurs in her mind and what or was one good has suddenly become all bad.

A pattern among Borderlines, threatened with a feeling of lack of control or being found out, is to turn their anger to the person who knows their secret and threatens the myth that they have created.  This person is endangering their ability to exert control which  triggers dysregulation, anger, rage focused on the internalized threat.  The pattern of the the borderline which demonstrates the intense fear of being found out is rooted in an irrational belief that she/he will be abandoned if found out.  Her behavior presents in striking– outbursts of anger– out using innuendo, accusation that vilifies the person who threatens her total control , while painting a picture of her own victimization. As the borderline expresses rage, they build a circle of supporters around them, who  feed the ego-need– people, who are largely undiscerning, unaware, co-dependent, and capable of being duped through the coercive manipulation and deception that she demonstrates.

If you are not willing to join the company of enablers and participate in their plan,  then expect your life to become very difficult.  Borderline behavior toward the person who recognizes the deception will be skewed by rage, distorted reason, and perception and fueled by the belief that her behavior is justified, correct, and characterized by intense and cruel actions hidden beneath the innocent image being projected- the victim, so innocent. For the borderline, her control takes on the form of isolating support mechanisms that she believe that you depend upon– family relationships, children, grandchildren,  friends, relationships, and financial resources.  It is common for Borderlines to destroy your personal property, assault your credibility privately,  passive-aggressive anger,  projecting behaviors that demonstrate the intense rage and fear felt, an internalized feeling of a  loss of control  The goal of theses behaviors is to deflect any belief that they are indeed suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder and to paint the picture that you are the crazy one with a problem.  Borderlines are constantly putting others in “no win” situations in order to reinforce the myth they have created.

People with BPD play the role of victim quite well and make everything about their mistreatment.  The behavior that is designed to endear sympathetic attention to feed a deflated ego and absence of individual identity reinforcing skewed perception about self, while  painting the picture of victimization by others. In the deception, the goal is to achieve is personal empowerment– by isolating those who are threats, dividing relationships, and ultimately feeling the “power of control.”  In the act of  anger focused on the threat , the borderline is empowered in passive aggressive control.  Passive–aggressive anger  is passive– seems to be innocent, innocuous, and well hidden in reality,  the toxic anger felt from rejection, abandonment, and directing rage toward perceived threats is an attempt to dis-empower secretly anyone who might validate their greatest fear, being found out.

For a borderline their is no middle ground.  The life perspective  is characterized by “splitting”: everything and everyone is  either “all good or all bad.”  Having the inability to regulate emotions under stress causes dysregulation of emotional response into extremes.  For instance, ” I hate you, please don’t leave me” is a statement that expresses the bi-polar extremes of a borderline.  For the unwitting partner, victim, it is a psychological double-bind that traps others in a no win situation draining  the essence of life away. Adults who enter into relationships with borderlines feel brainwashed by the BP’s accusations and criticisms. Says Benham: “The techniques of brainwashing are simple: isolate the victim, expose them to consistent messages, mix with sleep deprivation, add some form of abuse, get the person to doubt what they know and feel, keep them on their toes, wear them down, and stir well.”

The problem experienced in the deception is a fundamental inability to achieve genuine intimacy in relationship as a result of the perpetual manipulation of the borderline.  Deception convincingly persuades the audience with dramatic, impassioned presentation of need through charm utilizing the seductive power of emotional manipulation. Unfortunately, having BPD in a family member and not understanding the peculiar behavior, results in deception, empowers in borderline personality to go undetected leaving  family members enabling behavior contributing to the patterns of destructive behavior. Because the borderline is so adept at hiding reality in drama, family members believe the distorted perception of the borderline and have a perception that they are being supportive, helpful,  but in reality family members become the unwitting accessory after the fact in the drama.

The fact many are unaware of is that the borderline will crash and burn at some point. When the day comes and you begin to suspect that something is wrong, you may go back and begin to collect the childhood memories– the inconsistencies,–behavior cues that tell you that something was off and then you will feel the pain of being so thoroughly deceived and being the unwitting participant in the destructive behavior patterns. Unfortunately, because you have been so thoroughly deceived, you believe that this could never be and you have been placing blame for what has happened upon another person, who in reality has been the object of the borderlines rage and distorted reality.

If you are reading this, you more than likely understand just exactly what I am saying. If there is a borderline in your life, time will write a story that will have themes of deception, manipulation, dividing, and splitting. Awareness is the first step at having the building blocks for a healthy way to approach a very challenging personalty. Only  you can make the decision to listen and  consider the impact of what is occurring. The unfortunate thing is that many borderlines do not find the help that is needed to enable an effective life until relationships are damaged and what could been is lost in the deception that empowers the borderline to continue on a path of self-defeating behaviors.

 John Greenleaf Whittier said, ” The saddest words of tongue or pen is what could have been” Something to think about is that there is help available for those who suffer from this tragic disease that could change how life can be experienced for the borderline.   There is no shame in having a mental illness, the shame is that people who believe they are helping are hurting the borderline by allowing the behavior to flourish and destroy relationships in families.

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14 Comments

Filed under Abuse, Borderline Personality Disorder, Mental Health Issues, Perception, Relationships, Self Defeating Behavior

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14 Responses to Deception and the Borderline Personality What Could have Been?

  1. Pingback: Is a Borderline Personality Destroying Your Happiness? | Leadership, Behaviors, and Success

  2. Pingback: The Emptiness of a Life Without Meaning | Leadership, Behaviors, and Success

  3. Risa
    July 6, 2011 at 8:44 pm

    Excellent perspective. I hope you don’t mind- I copied the article as is and gave you credit at the beginning with a link to the article. http://risablairlovitz.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/deception-and-the-borderline-personality-what-could-have-been/

    Reply
    • rlm4136
      July 6, 2011 at 8:56 pm

      Thanks Risa:

      I appreciate your comments and I don’t m ind if you use anything that is here. I write theses articles to be of help to those trying to understand. I hope to hear from you again.

      Ronnie

      Reply
  4. gratiaetnatura
    August 17, 2011 at 7:10 pm

    Your article is right on the money. If only…. is right. Breaking all contact is often the most rational, yet most painful, thing a family member or friend of the borderline can do. If the borderline gets help, improves, and keeps working on avoiding destructive behaviors, I would happy to be in contact with that person again despite the risk of a relapse–but only if my presence in the person’s life would not cause a relapse. Are there other causes of BPD other than childhood sexual abuse? Why do some borderlines consider themselves to be “strong people” while they do not have the courage and strength to risk facing themselves and get help to improve?

    Reply
  5. rlm4136
    August 17, 2011 at 11:17 pm

    Thanks so much for your comments and questions. I get the sense that you have some personal experience that has been painful. All mental illness takes an unfortunate toll on the lived experience of life. There times when detaching and sometimes putting physical, emotional, and psychological distance between a person and the borderline. The issue ios that many people who live with or experience the impact of the condition may develop a pathology of their own which needs assistance, boundaries, and management. I response to causes, there is a lot of research that suggest multiple reasons attributed to developing BPD. One issue that is central is trauma in childhood, but also there factors connected to genetics, attachment patterns, and abandonment..

    Reply
  6. Sad in Colorado
    October 13, 2011 at 8:28 pm

    I have a younger sister who I suspect has BPD. I have a 2-year AA in psychology, so not enough training to know what I am searching for, but I have been researching on the internet about BPD for a few months now and have even talked to a psychologist to get myself help. I am brought to tears every single time I read someone else’s words and experience because it feels like they read my mind and wrote it for me. I am 45, and for the first time in my life, because she started attacking the credibility of my husband and children, I was forced to deal with the reality that something with her wasn’t right. I could never put my finger on it, but a friend suggested BPD and gave me a book to read (Stop Walking on Eggshells). It rings so true for me.

    The sad thing for me is that now that I have this information, and want to help my sister, because I am not a doctor and cannot diagnose her with it or make her get help, trying to rally my family around it so we can help her, my sister has lashed out at me with claws of a grizzly bear, and my mother continues to enable her, cannot see it, and while she says she cannot sacrifice one daughter for another (as if I was asking her to throw my sister to the wolves), she makes me feel like she has sacrificed me. And my dad is so afraid of standing up to my mom or my sister (because he has walked on eggshells his entire life with both of them), that I am left feeling very alone and sad and detached and wishing I didn’t know anything about BPD or suggesting it to my family because it has caused so much emotional pain, especially for me because I am the brunt of my sister’s anger.

    I have great support from my other sister and a couple of great friends who listen, but to stand alone and not second-guess myself because I want my sister to get some help is very difficult. I have finally realized that as important as family is to me, it is way too toxic to allow her in my life because she refuses to acknowledge that she may have a problem. My parents keep insisting that we all get together because they want this to get resolved, but I have told them that until the read the books and learn about BPD, it is a useless cause. Of course, they don’t believe that … they think it’s as simple as me going in and telling her what she wants to hear … and it is … until the next problem arises.

    So what do you suggest? Am I correct in standing my ground that I must stay away from her until my parents read up and get some knowledge under their belt about BPD? I have also said I will not get together unless there is a professional psychiatrist/counselor/psychologist in the room who can listen, but I don’t know that that will even help. I am just at a loss. Maybe I just have to go this cold road until she is further entangled in this disorder and causes pain to another family member.

    A little background information: She was never sexually abused. We have some psychiatric illnesses in the outer family (mom’s sister, and a 1st cousin) and 4 of my mom’s sister’s have been treated for depression as have some other cousins. Furthermore, I believe my sister has some abandonment issues due to my parents separating when she was young, my parents moving her away from my sister and I when she was in high school to another state, another move when she was 18 when I took her from my parents and moved out of state with her because she was afraid something would happen to me, her being jealous of a boyfriend I had and her moving out, but telling me I abandoned her, and the list goes on and on.

    Thanks for listening and thanks for any thoughts or suggestions you may have for me!

    Reply
    • rlm4136
      November 22, 2011 at 10:52 pm

      Sorry it has taken a while for me to get back to you. I never cease to amazed at the lack of understanding about BPD from families who experiencing the behaviors and deception that comes. In response to your question, sometimes the only response in a family system where a BPD goes untreated and the family system supports the person by enabling the dysfunction, the only response may be to withdraw. One of the important issues is self-care in a family system with borderlines and staying healthy. Many times that is the only response that can be given. As I have stated two great fears of BPD’s are being abandoned and being found out. I would encourage you to take a time out and think through any actions, and if possible, talk to a mental health professional yourself to assist you in the decisions that you feel necessary. Take care and best wishes.

      Ronnie

      Reply
      • Sad, but hopeful in Colorado
        November 23, 2011 at 12:02 am

        Hey Ronnie,

        Thank you. I actually have withdrawn for the past six months, have never felt better, I have been meeting with a counselor, and my family is just now FINALLY realizing that there just may be some truth to what I have suggested about my sister and BPD, so I have a tiny bit of hope that at least my immediate family can gain those boundaries that are so needed. My mother, however, continues to enable my sister, but my parents sought the advice of a personality disorder counselor this last week as well, and have set up for all of us to see him. We had a “family meeting” last Saturday with my BP sister and of course, as I already knew would happen, it was a disaster. She said at first she would go to counseling, but within 12 hours, decided that there was no hope of any counselor helping my other sister and I, so therefore, no reason for her to go to counseling. I know this is classic BP behavior, and I see right through them, but my question has now become …

        is there anything you can say to a BP when they are high functioning and adamantly opposed to the suggestion that they have BPD to at least get them thinking? I have read some other blogs where people just blast their ex-spouses, ex girlfriends/boyfriends, etc., in what seems to be hopes that the BP will be shamed into finally getting help or realizing that they have a problem, but watching my sister, she is so engrained in her disorder that the realities she has made up about me and ex-boyfriends she belives to be the truth. She does not understand why I think she has BPD, and maybe deep down, she really does know she has a disorder, but I can’t help wanting to find a way to help without enabling. She has hurt me to the core with the brutal lies she has made up about me to the point I don’t want to be around her, but I love her, and it is killing me that she is so deceived. While walking away has been good for me emotionally, I can’t help but feel I am leaving her drowning. I can’t find any site that gives ideas on what to say, and maybe that’s because there isn’t anything to say other than walking away and letting her experience the pain, but since she is not a low functioning BP meaning she has never tried to commit suicide, she is not promiscuous, she doesn’t drink or do drugs, doesn’t cut, doesn’t put herself in situations where she sees the need to get help, how does it help for me to just walk away (other than emotionally it has helped me heal).

      • rlm4136
        November 23, 2011 at 1:50 am

        Hi Kimberly:

        Thanks for your response. I appreciate your perspective and the important things that you are sharing because what you are facing is such a difficult and heart-wrenching issue to face. What you may be feeling is the need to rescue or to try to help fix what is wrong. The unwitting victims of the BPD many times is faced with what you have experienced, the lies, accusations, dividing, manipulation, and the distorted beliefs about reality. My advise would be to continue working with your mental health professional and make the focus of your energy self-care until you are secure enough to engage in the BPD issue with your sister. One of the important things is to have clear boundaries about your relationship and communicate in what you say and do. Another issue is to extend love in healthy ways that does not contribute, enable, or rescue. Detach from the emotional impact of her behaviors with an understanding that she has a skewed sense of reality and no matter what she believe that you are not responsible for her condition. You are right that high functioning BPD’s are very difficult to live with and/or manage simply because most people will not understand and the pattern goes undetected. She will have to come to the place of wanting help before she can engage in recovery. Sorry to say, but that is not anything that you can do anything about. The best thing is to build a system of boundaries to guide your relationship, get in touch with a support group, and accept that your sister has a disease that you cannot fix. Free yourself to be who you need to be and relater in the ways you can.

        Best Regards,

        Ronnie

    • Judy Murrill
      November 23, 2011 at 12:49 am

      Hello,

      I would love to speak to you about your situation and share mine as well. Seems we have a lot in common and could learn from one another. If you would like to I would love to have your email address so we could privately speak. Woman with similar situation.

      Reply

  7. Pingback: The Fear of Being Revealed « Savory Dish

  8. Renee
    November 22, 2011 at 8:03 pm

    Your article touches on issues I’ve had first hand experience with. My husband’s ex. His teen daughter (who has lived with him 15 years & me 12) just moved in with the ex. The ex has vilified us, made herself the “poor me” victim & brainwashed this child. The courts allowed this move. Why, because the daughter & mother manipulated the GAL. There was never any stability with the mother, moving 15 times in as many years.
    Not attending school functions, including conferences. Always telling my husband he is wrong, even when he was right. Fabricating stories in court. Even going as far as getting a school counselor to be a witness, even though the counselor didn’t know us. So daughter is living with mother for one week and gets in a car accident. Does anyone call us?
    No, mother said since the injuries were superficial she didn’t have to.
    UGGHHHHHH….
    My husband is beside himself with grief over the loss of his relationship with his daughter (only child). She sings her mother praises & ignores the man who read stories at bed every night for 13 years. Who comforted her when her & mother fought. A man who stayed home for work on all her sick days because mother “has a job to go to”. A man who went to EVERY school function & stayed to the end of it. Who made sure she went to her friends birthday parties, while mother wouldn’t live in her school district, let alone take her to her friends.
    I’m sorry, I’m rambling. All the years of pent up frustration have taken their toll. Daughter is in counseling, went with Dad for a couple sessions. Nothing has changed. Her current counselor & their counselor suggest he just give her space. She is now on her third counselor this year. Don’t know what the suggestion will be from them. But the more space Dad gives her, the more time mother manipulates her and vilifies him.
    Will it ever end? Will this child ever see what her mother is doing to her?
    Will she ever realize what her mother has done to her relationship with Dad, let alone me? I guess only time will tell.
    Thanks for hearing me out.

    Reply
    • rlm4136
      November 22, 2011 at 10:41 pm

      Wow, what a powerful story that is an example of how situations like this are beyond human understanding placing families and individuals, such as yourself in no win situations. I do hear what you are saying and, unfortunately, you are in a situation where there are no easy answers. What is most important is self-care, you must take care of yourself and find people and ways that can connect you with healthy balance. BPD is such a complex problem within a family system and requires understanding of the problems and ways to create boundaries to regulate behaviors and interaction. Thanks for your post and for sharing your story.

      Ronnie

      Reply

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