What are some boundaries that people with BPD commonly violate unintentionally? - Just BPD stuff <3 - Quora
Unless a BPD knows what they are, they do most of what they do 'unintentionally'. We borrow life events from other people we have mirrored and emulated and make them part of our story. We will butt our heads up against most trust barriers. We usually don't have 'red flag' warning signs until it's too late, so, we seem flirtatious, coqetteish, promiscuous, and easy. But, in regard to the sexual behavior, listen up. When a neurotypical grows up in a home with a modicum of nurturing behavior they receive praise for doing good things. Right? Chore done. Good job. Aced a test. Way to go. Swam the length of the pool. Let's go get an ice cream.
What if the only time someone was nice to you, as your personality is forming, was for someone else's sexual gratification. Being quiet. Not telling the truth. Not letting on. Never giving a protest. The rest of the time, you couldn't make a decision that met with approval to get out of a wet paper bag. So, you think I act easy. I'm just acting and receiving attention and affection in the only way that is warm and familiar to me. Pretty fucked up, right?
Now, I don't KNOW that my home life isn't like your home life, and I certainly never got to go on sleepovers, or have them. I wholly believed my experience is just like yours. I don't understand your judgements. Your anger. Or your derision. Didn't I do exactly what I was supposed to do to get a man to be nice to me?
What do you mean, that's wrong, or bad? What? Now I don't do that right either? Do I do anything right? I must just be wholly bad, cause that's what I was told, and my perpetuated behavior, that I don't know I'm doing, or how to fix, enforces the wholly bad belief.
So, I don't intentionally make men turn heads. I don't intentionally mirror you and use your personality quirks to fill my own devoid of personality. I don't intentionally lie. I either panic, which brings up the flight response. I will fucking say anything, ANYTHING, to get out of what I perceive to be danger. Or, my feelings lead my narratives. I am telling you my truth of HOW it felt. But, neurotypicals think factually. My description of feelings, which are extreme anyway, don't match up to the event you witnessed, and you are sure she's confabulating. She's just as adamant that she's telling the truth, and she is. That's really how it felt.
We don't intentionally play ‘whack a mole' with your emotions. We are trying to hit the right emotion or response by guessing at it, which we do horribly, and while we are just trying to hit on a feeling of comfort, we get exhausted, then, kicks in that low frustration tolerance, and suddenly, we are rabid wolverines. I didn't know my emotional temper was stunted at age 3. I do now. I do better with it, but it is still a 3 year old temper when I lose it.
For a neurotypical to begin to understand you would have to be able to turn off your brain, and think and act from only an emotional state. Whatever the feeling, the action follows. And the system is very faulty. You would have to remove your life learned inside voice of right and wrong, and GUESS each and every time, are you making a good decision with no feeling inside that tells you that's a good decision. You have to remove your moral compass, and believe your body is not your own, and that when people are using it, it makes them happy so you don't care how you feel. You have to remove your ability to process things in consequential order by their priority, but, whatever the most dominant feeling is towards each thing that needs to be done. You have to turn off your judgement filters, so you can only tell if you are safe by perpetually observing all the people around you. Good people can turn bad. And people who are bad can act nice. So, you are hypervigilant. To protect yourself, you put people in categories of good and bad. Nothing in between. It helps to abate the inability to judge and make good decisions for ourself, but it's faulty, too. Because we are feeling led we will find comfort in people who treat us in a way that is familiarly comforting but not safe or helpful. Then, we feel bad for making a bad choice. When we couldn't have made a good choice when our feelings are fucking up sound logical judgement.
My intentions are not anywhere near what yours are. But, neurotypicals want us to pay a neurotypical consequence for our behavior. Of course, we look like adults, but, we are adults in frame only. You are dealing with an emotionally disabled 3 year old. How do you give an adult consequence that can be understood to a person who has the capacity to understand things at a time when you'd get ticked over Lincoln logs and throw them.
DBT is supposed to help us mature emotionally, while still trying to function all adultly. And DBT is great. BUT they teach us all these rules, that we are now supposed to follow, strictly, to be accepted functional members of society. Great. Well, guess what I have learned. Nobody else is playing by the fucking rules. So, I know how an interaction should go, but, they don't go like that, cause Jo blow date gets all defensive when I am trying to discuss productive ways to interact with me. Well, dammit, the rules said, if I speak such and such, and say it with compassion, no judgement, and leave the question open, not just yes or no. It should lead to a productive conversation. Great in theory. But, it's only if the other person knows that, too.
So, I'm out there, a little repaired, maybe ready to date, or seek love. I try to tell him what I am, and what I need to be consistent. He's looking at me like a deer in the headlights. What's BPD, what's DBT, and what's wrong with how I deal with conflict and relationships? Well, don't ask if you don't want an honest answer. DBT taught me I must be honest, no gray. With me and everyone else because it's the only way I can be genuine.
I don't intentionally put people through the emotional wood chipper. Or, throw fits. Or, flee in fear. What I am responsible for NOW is learning to keep them under control. I don't always succeed, but, I am doing much better