This is part 3 of my second series about the similarities and differences between those with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. Here is part 1. Here is part 2. To see a list of the 10 parts of the first series, click here and view the top of the post.
Human beings have remarkably inventive ways to rid themselves from painful feelings. The more agonizing the emotion, the more resourceful one has to be. People with borderline and narcissistic disorders experience may experience a great deal of pain, so they get pretty savvy.
Borderline Personality Disorder
Three borderline personality traits in the DSM-IV definition have to do with what I will call "pain management techniques."
- Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself. Adolescents are especially creative when it comes to self-harm. Please note that not all people with BPD self-injure or are suicidal. In fact, real suicidal urges are uncommon among high functioning "invisible" BPs.
- Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, or reckless driving. Low-functioning "conventional" people with BPD are more like to have an eating disorder.
- Inappropriate anger, recurrent physical fights. Physical abuse is not uncommon.
Following is one recovered borderline woman's experience with several of these:
I was so promiscuous in my 20's that I basically sterilized myself because of all the sexually transmitted diseases I got doing while sleeping with men from bars after drinking. I think I was searching for love and thought that having sex in the beginning would allow the men to not stress and get to know me and stay with me. Never worked that way. Guess I watched too many Hollywood romances.
I struggled in my 30's with eating disorders, especially anorexic thinking and athletic anorexia (over-exercising). I binge drank until the suicide of a close relative when I was 24. I did it again, though, when I turned 40 and freaked out about not having a mate, a good job, or even friends I could count on.
As for suicidal behavior, in my 20's I was very careless about safety and did things regardless of their consequences. I would go out by myself late at night, go through "bad areas" with no concern (luckily nothing happened), and go out with strange men. I didn't think that I'd live to see 30--that either I would kill myself directly or get myself into a situation where I'd be killed one way or another.
I first wanted to kill myself at age 14. I don't remember know why; just remember telling a friend I had felt that way. In my early 20's one time I had a suicide plan and began shopping around for a gun. But luckily my mood changed, so I didn't want to die. I got to a point in recovery where I made a promise not to kill myself, even if I still thought about it. I've promised not to do it while my parents are still alive. I couldn't do that to them.
However, I still struggle with reckless driving. I am in rage-road incidents fairly frequently (I live in a tourist town, so there are lots of opportunities). Driving recklessly feels good--it's a rush and the danger adds to that. For example, once a semi truck was tailgating me on the interstate even though I was speeding I was trying to get around the person on my right.
However, when I saw the truck was so close that I couldn't even see his headlights in my rearview, I got pissed and slowed way down, so he was stuck. Eventually I got over, but by that time, he had radioed some of his fellow truckers so that when the lanes merged, I got boxed in by one of them and ran off the road. Luckily I was able to maintain control and get back on the road.
Here is another borderline woman's experience with self-harm. This shows how addictive it can be:
I don't even know for sure why the thoughts began; maybe it was tension with the impending return to work. At first it would just be a fleeting, passing notion. A brief voice in my head that said things like 'relief, blade, sharp, cut, blood.' The words would be followed by a desire for relief, punishment, release, escape...
Ideas started to form. What to use? When to do it? How to hide it? Just opening the knife drawer in the kitchen would make me smile. Yet at the same time, anger at myself was building for these thoughts... unfortunately though this anger inflames the urges, the idea of cutting became a form of punishment for thinking of cutting--how twisted is this?
I know I can't cut in obvious, visible places without being caught. I'm not an attention seeking cutter; I hide what I do. Then a 'real' trigger happens; something provokes my BPD. Frustrated and badly needing release, I spill out my thoughts in words not to be published--too private, too intense, too personal to share, even though sharing will ease the burden.
I cry, wishing I could die, wishing the pain would stop, needing to hurt myself to be able to 'feel' because even though I am clearly 'feeling' a hell of a lot, I don't actually believe I am 'feeling.' Emotions are a haze; what is 'feeling' anyway?
I cry myself to sleep while my fiancee holds me still. For today at least we've beaten the desire. But tomorrow is another day. I don't know if the thoughts will be there or if we have done enough to keep them at bay for a while. So long as I can be strong enough to share, hopefully it will be enough to stop the urges from winning... time will tell.
These behaviors greatly impact family members. Of course they are very concerned and worried; parents especially feel some kind of responsibility for what is happening whether or not they had anything to do with it. Luckily, personality disorder organization have developed programs to help parents and guide them through these terrifying times.
Partners say:
- His Impulsivity in is not spending money. When he is frightened, he refuses to pay for things that he had committed to buy, he will leave family members in a lurch by going back suddenly on expectations that he was planning to pay for some certain thing. He will suddenly set up accounts, for example, for family cell phones, then abruptly decide he doesn't like the cell phone company and changes to a different cell phone company, disrupting the whole family's cell phone arrangements.
- When we split up, I paid off her credit card bill, which was over $8,000. I just got a letter this week saying that she owes her attorney over $17,000 and will be switching representation.
- We had sex on our first date, and later in a public park in the daytime.In addition to the tryst she had while we were engaged, she had a two-year long affair with a married man.
My wife has threatened suicide many, many times in our 22-year marriage. In 2010, I told her if she threatened suicide I would call the deputies, which would have been a first. She threatened again; I called the deputies. They counseled her, and she agreed if she got too worked up she would go to a room and calm down. A couple of hours later her verbal/emotional abuse was too much for me, and I isolated myself behind a locked door. She tried to get me to come out. Finally she seemed calm; I came out. She hinted she'd taken something. Admitted fairly quickly it was some drugs she'd squirreled away from a non-completed medication trial. I drove her to the hospital 30 miles away at midnight on a cold January night, back country icy roads, 80 plus mph, as she kept a constant monologue that it was my fault she did what she'd done.
