"Since I was a child, my family was broken. All this time, I did not have a complete, happy home. I only have one expectation in my heart, one day, there will be a Prince Charming who likes me in my life. I searched all my life just to wait for this person who loved me to appear. He would give me a home, and he would love me endlessly, tolerate me, take care of me, provide everything I wanted. Our love will last until the sky is wasted..."
This is a portrayal of a typical marginal personality family, and it is also the biggest cry in their hearts. But they did not expect that such wholehearted hopes and desires would be a mistake from the beginning.
Borderline personality disorder – I'm sure some people have heard this term. In the case of studies in the United States, the number of people with borderline personality disorders may be more than 10 million, and the adult incidence is one to three percent, while the ratio of men to women is about one to three, and more women than men. Up to 20% of patients hospitalized for mental illness are those with this disease (very few hospitalizations are in Taiwan for this diagnosis). Fifteen to twenty-five percent of patients who seek help from U.S. psychiatric care are diagnosed with borderline personality disorders.
Although patients with this disorder are common, little is known, in part because its diagnostic criteria were only officially included in the third edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III) by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980. In addition, it may also be because it has become part of our culture (it is even more common in Taiwan, China, more on that later).
It is also because some people encounter some of their behavior, they are puzzled and try to understand. Including in the field of helpers, we often find that this type of person we are most afraid of encountering in the conversation situation when we talk about so-called "borderline personalities" (not yet to the extent of illness). Of course, if done well, it will also be our greatest source of accomplishment.
Why does borderline personality (BP) cause us so many challenges, worries, and frustrations? What is the root cause of our fears? Let's take a closer look.
In the beginning, she may just be on the phone to make sure and check when you go out, and there is a lot of temptation and speculation in her words. Gradually, your words and deeds begin to be magnified and examined. There will always be places where you can be suspected of infidelity, and it is useless to explain it. If you are afraid that she will be unhappy and hide and say less, it will be an endless conflict, and even say bad words and hurt each other with their hands, until someone compromises and apologizes in a drastic way such as hitting the wall, kneeling, self-harm, etc. Before you know it, relationships are getting more and more stressful...
However, no matter how sad a story is, it often has a beautiful beginning.
Maybe you're the person, or maybe it's your friend's story.
A friend met a guy or girl, they didn't know each other for a long time, maybe less than a month, but suddenly they were together. You don't quite know what makes their relationship progress so quickly. Or maybe you're a person, this charming man or woman doesn't talk much (or very much), but soon, he/she is attracted to your strengths and is willing to be with you (as a friend or partner), or says a lot about how great, good, and attractive you are, he or she says that he or she can't live without you, and the two of you say almost everything.
It is really touching and beautiful to meet people who know each other so well and feel that they know each other. He needs you much more than you need him, and you are touched and go with him without hesitation. If he is your partner, maybe you will have sex very quickly, and the relationship will progress so fast that you have a deep, deep desire for each other that you can't slow down.
It just so happens that you have just ended a relationship (or been single for a while) and are also looking forward to the company of another person, and the two naturally fall in love (or a beautiful relationship). After experiencing rapid and profound mutual understanding and communication, you become more and more engaged, and the two people are inseparable and warm. It feels really good to be with him, and there has never been a person like him who has made you so addicted. You gave him almost all your time, and the two of them were passionate and sweet.
But such a story direction has long been destined not to be happy ending.
In addition to the time spent in love, there are many other things in your life that need to be invested, whether it is friends or work or career, which you need to manage and maintain. You still have family to take care of and accompany and you have to spend some time with someone or something other than him. You expect his understanding and think that these things won't affect your deep relationship much. But strangely, the other party began to quarrel with you over some small things, there were many demands and dissatisfaction with various daily trivial matters, and the two people also had more and more conflicts and mutual accusations.
You want to make some changes, after more than one relationship, you start to reflect on whether you have done something wrong, and you want to try to adjust yourself to satisfy the other person. But the other party's demands are increasing, the contrast between the needs of the two people is getting bigger and bigger, and conflicts are constantly occurring. Gradually, when you are doubted and asked, you can only choose to endure, feel the layers of bondage, and breathless, unless you are completely satisfied with the other person.
You think about why two people are so easy to quarrel, you try to understand each other, think that he is easily insecure, will think of things very negative, very bad, you try to ensure your loyalty and goodwill, and repeatedly explain that things are different from what he thinks, hoping to appease each other. However, the effect seems to last only a few days, and when a small incident occurs, it goes back to its original place.
Unconsciously, two people often hurt each other when arguing, turning over old accounts has become commonplace, hurtful words are always blurted out, mentioning breakups has become a mantra, and the words are more and more ruthless, and even hands-on. All this is just to force the other party to compromise, obey and take care of himself. After every argument, the two people will still dramatically reconcile, as if nothing had happened, and continue to be sweet. But things always happen repeatedly, like cursed, and so on.
After all, breaking up has become a helpless option. You think that the two people often mentioned breaking up before, which may be something that both parties are aware of, but you didn't expect to seriously talk about the end of the relationship, like detonating a bomb, and the other party's reaction was extremely violent. The other party is emotionally angry, speaking bad words, self-harm, kneeling with grievances, pleading bitterly, and even violent and suicidal and other strong behaviors, you are frightened, in fear, you have to compromise, endure, let the relationship continue to maintain.
Until he was hysterical and threatened with suicide, the matter intensified and everyone knew that you could only call the police or force him to be sent to the hospital and ask the public authorities to intervene. Or, you can only find a way to avoid it, cut off all contact and interaction, and hope to let it end. However, the other person will not give up, and you can only torture each other unstoppably until you may also start hurting each other or completely rotten yourself. In the end, you break up completely, don't get along with each other, and soon (or after a while) you may hear that he has a new relationship...
Stories in the Mist
I don't know why, everything is like "Rashomon". Obviously the story has a good beginning, obviously the two people are so in love and attachment, but in the end it becomes as if the two people have a deep hatred, many complaints, and even verbal or physical attacks. Such a contrast and such an ending are confusing.
These stories are like walking in a misty forest, making it impossible to see the full picture and reason of the relationship.
In my consulting practice, I often encounter such clients. They have a lot of confusing tragic stories, a person who loves each other with all his heart, but in the end hates each other with all his strength, but at the same time wants to keep each other. Or a person who is very good to his friends in the relationship, but has been repeatedly betrayed and hurt by his friends, and abandoned and abandoned for no reason.
Every time I start to listen to tragic stories, I always have a lot of empathy and discomfort for the clients who encounter wrong people and things, and I feel compassion for their hard work and pain. However, as the consultation continued, I found that similar situations had happened more than once, and almost every time I saw the client in the same situation before different people and things. At this point, alarm bells would ring in my heart, and I had a strong question about why everyone would leave him if he was really as good as he said.
In the process of confusion, I gradually learned about the other side of these clients—idealized high expectations, self-centered thinking, and black-and-white values. These are not just negative emotions, emotional blackmail or self-repression, but also represent a life form and self-appearance, depicting a victim who is scarred in an emotional relationship.
They want to save themselves who are controlled, ignored, and hurt by their parents, and it becomes difficult to pay attention to, appreciate themselves, and understand their true needs. Just as in the process of growing up, parents also carry the deep pain of their original family, hoping to make up for the huge loss and pain they have endured in the past by establishing their own family, and the client has unknowingly undertaken the loss and pain passed down for generations, repeating the problems and entanglements of the previous generation. They have always had good expectations, eager to escape the vicious circle of their families, but they will try too hard to escape the pain and fall into the pain again.
These stories are very distressing, and they have made me have a lot of my own sadness to deal with when taking on borderline personality cases. Each case took me a lot of effort, not because I was bored with their behavior of hurting myself and others, but because I felt hard at not being understood. This is a group of people who are trying to rewrite the tragic script of their own lives. The problem is that they drag their bloodstained bodies and are unusually sensitive and sharp to any danger. Too accustomed to tragedy, they can't write on a good story.