Is mainstream BPD Info really accurate?

October 29, 2011

Today I've been browsing the web looking for the latest, running media

descriptions about bpd. I see that the NY Times has endoresed Dr. Linehan as

the running expert, and here is a Q & A she did from a few years ago:

ality-disorder/

I also saw the pamphlets and the descriptions at

borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com, with the football player who's spoken out to

try to help get awareness of bpd.

I don't want to be unduly unsympathetic to those with bpd--I really don't. I

just worry that the destructive nature of *parents with bpd is not being

acknowledged, and that children of bpd parents could be in danger because of

this. I worry for example about Marsha Linehan's first answer in the blog I

post above--oh no, your sister is not manipulative, she's just *honestly hurting

that much. I am *honestly not sure that's so. I am sure, in my bones, that my

own nada harmed me intentionally, and derived pleasure from it. I saw the gleam

in her eyes when she did so--how well I know that gleam! It will endure in my

nightmares until I die, and maybe even after that.

Maybe being abusive is a separate pathology/disorder, and in my nada's case, it

was combined with BPD. I can't speak for anyone else but myself. But what I

can say, for sure, is that my *own nada harmed me on purpose. My own nada

projected her feelings and her fears onto ME, so that she would not HAVE to feel

them. She might have claimed to be in severe discomfort--but what she actually

did was anticipate her own discomfort with terror, and then quicky project it

onto a weaker party, or severely abused a weaker party, so that she would not

have to feel it herself. My nada has never self-mutilated--she wears diamonds

and furs, and looks pracitally 12 years old even though she is well into her

60s.

I just think we need to be really careful in claiming that bpds don't mean to

hurt anyone, and we musn't be afraid of that. (Also in the blog of Linehan's I

linked, she says there is no evidence that bods are violent.) I think that

there may very well be a separate category of bpds that are the truly tortured,

self-mutilating, often low-functioning type, that honestly don't seek to project

their pain onto others--if so, my nada was not one of them. Maybe the type of

bpd that my nada is needs a separate category, like, abusing bpd or projecting

bpd...But whatever it is, I think that children need to be warned. The two

websites I've just read are misleading.

--Charlie

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