G'day, A.J. Mahari here are you somebody who is in a relationship with somebody with untreated
borderline personality or you have been in a relationship and you're an ex and wherever you are
you know since the relationship breakup whether you're still in contact or you've gone full no
contact are you still trying to figure them out are you still trying to figure out
what makes the untreated borderline tick because you know there's just
so much about how they see you as a parent as i've talked about before
and what happens is that people with bpd men and women with bpd untreated they are so desperate
they might not even know this consciously but so desperate for love so desperate to
be able to know self because they don't and so they often look back to the wounding parent
because in a codependent way within bpd they're they're still trying to find the love satiation
soothing anything you know of all the things that they didn't have their needs met in childhood
so people with bpd when you first meet them and you can't know about the idealization and the
mirroring and their codependent people-pleasing and so people with codependency largely when you
meet the person with bpd there's no way to know that they're kind of like reaching out to you
in a way that's going to amount to and be tantamount to after the honeymoon phase you
know as if you are never mind the object other parent but as if you're just a life preserver
because a lot of people with bpd talk a lot about feeling like emotionally that they're drowning
right so what is that really about well they feel like they're drowning emotionally because
there's so much incredibly much emotion there triggered dysregulated emotion and like i've
said before they have no conscious reference for why that is and that's why it's going to
get externalized out onto you but so when you get to know this person with bpd and
in any relationship type with somebody with bpd by the way not just significant other
what's ostensibly happening there that you can't know in the beginning or the first time around
they're like throwing a life preserver around your neck so as they feel when they feel like
they're drowning they've got the rope to hang on to and you are that um the essence of that
you know that boy b-u-o-y-o-y or however you spell it in the water that's gonna help them stay afloat
and people with bpd even though they can behave in many different ways
and manage manifest many different types of behavior they largely have a huge shame wound
among other things fear of abandonment abandonment attachment difficulties and adverse experience
but they are always feeling often feeling most often feeling no matter how they behave
or what they externalize they're they're feeling less than they're feeling inferior they're feeling
lost they're in so much pain so much of the time and again they don't know why they don't know that
it's to hear you know trigger dysregulated pain from the past coming dissociatively into here now
to them every time they feel all this pain and they're usually in some kind of pain to one degree
or another untreated every time they feel whatever it is panic inside um agitation just cascading
emotions like the tallest waves in in in the sort of like most dysregulated dysfunctional ocean so
they feel like they're drowning and they've sort of thrown that that rope at you like you know or
put the lifesaver you know the thing around your head because you're gonna be that
object of not only their constancy for because they don't have it object constancy but you're
gonna be that that safety that harbor in an otherwise drowning emotional reality
and often when this is happening for people with bpd you'll you'll see behavior manifested
whether it's externalized out or internalized in but you're not going to really often know
that they're going through some of these cycles inside triggered just regulated motion the kind
of pain they carry with them pretty much 24 7 and then it can get worse when they're triggered
so they're they feel a lot like they're drowning it's been described to me like
this a lot by a lot of people with bpd so when they feel like they're drowning sometimes it's
the family abortion the wounding parent cluster b mother they'll go back there when they ghost you
sometimes it's moving on to the next person but each person with codependency who
falls in love with who you think they were and then the honeymoon phase ends and the first
split evaluation happens and you're seeing all of this stuff going on and or they're yelling at you
or they're giving you the silent treatment because now they've been triggered and of
course they have that close and distant kind of struggle right approach avoidance conflict
because if they're too close they feel engulfed and that leads them to feel like they're going
to be annihilated and then and then all this big waves of the trigger and emotional dysregulated
pain comes in again and they don't have a clue how to handle it or what to do with it so they will
externalize it out on other people and that's when what their behavior manifests there is not okay
you know like but so what i want to really say here for people in any relationship type
with somebody with bpd or that you have been or that you're considering even a family member or
you know a parent or a significant other or if you're the favorite person if you're a friend
you might really be like i can't take this anymore and what is going on etc well you know they feel
like they're drowning and what happens is when they reach out to you and the relationship begins
with that idealization mirroring and they're co-dependent people pleasing and then you
have your own issues as to why you don't have boundaries and that's all too good to be true
and it's fabulous and then after the honeymoon phase and as everything starts to deteriorate
and the roller coaster starts to really really move and you're walking on those big egg shells
it's like what's really happening to you is that they're try they're pulling you underwater and so
many people you know after these relationships and or people go no contact with a significant other
adult child of a bpd parent or you know a friend a sibling whatever it is the relationship type
people are like so exhausted so stressed out so worn out not that some people still care
some people maybe don't everybody's different but what's happening to you how do you lose yourself
well many different ways right through many different episodes of no closure of
their acting interacting out and what's really driving that is hard for people to understand
especially when you're on the receiving end of the behavior that results from what's going on
inside of people with bpd untreated internally so they're drowning in this emotional sea
that they don't have conscious awareness of and they've got the life preserver on
you and you are the life preserver and they grab that rope and you're losing yourself
every single time there's an issue an episode they're triggered to emotional dysregulation
there's an argument there's a fight there's a situation there's chaos there's drama the
roller coaster the eggshells because then they're pulling you into their emotional chaos and drama
which is like they're pulling you into the water of their dysregulated unending emotional pain
and so what that really does to you then is you know it for some people it can be a really apt
analogy this because if you don't get out of that relationship now or maybe you have and
you still can't go full no contact if you don't take care of yourself you are literally drowning
yourself and you're not drowning in the same ocean of dysregulated emotion as the untreated
borderline but now you've been pulled under the water by them in any relationship type
and you're losing yourself and everything is confusing and just to keep with the water analogy
it's like you're under water and you're trying to breathe there and it's like and you're just
gasping for air emotionally like what's going on what's happening and then people after the
relationship break up you know the x's are so like hard on themselves like i can't believe i was so
foolish i can't believe i was so stupid this is what i hear from people and i'm not saying you
were any of those things but people get really critical so people with bpd are always drowning
in in these emotional waters of lack of self arrested emotional development and adverse
childhood experience so that's one thing and they don't have a self they're always drowning
these waters and then come triggers that make it all more intense and worse so with that said then
they're looking for you to be that life preserver and they're going to be pulling
you under the water too and they don't know that and they don't they don't understand their
impact on others and again it's not an excuse it's just an explanation right
and so people who stay too long with puppy with other people with bpd
i mean with people bpd sorry um you're really losing yourself and now you're starting to drown
and you know emotion maybe maybe you're not feeling it but you're starting to drown in in
confusion and cognitive dissonance and emotional dissonance and and with codependency people really
don't know how to pace themselves you've been really abandoning yourself as you've been over
giving and taking so much responsibility for this person with bpd which is a whole other thing about
why codependents do that but make no mistake about it they're so they always people bp with the pain
they're always in and it rises and it lessens but it's always there this emotional tidal wave of
pain inside them so they're always under the water emotionally they're always way down there and then
sometimes when you 1am when they try to get you back or they get into this over compensatory
defensive kind of maladaptive behavior where they look like they're in the i'm okay position
and they're putting you in the you're not okay position and you're thinking what now they're
acting like as if they're all superior they're just trying to get up to the surface of the water
and it can look very different right but that's essentially emotionally what's really happening
and what motivates them they don't know this in their consciousness so they're really trying to
pull you down yeah because they're trying to get out of the emotional agony they're in so they're
pulling you into the water so that they can try to get just a little higher up and try in the water
to try to get to the surface so they can feel some relief so they can somehow yeah sometimes just
dump some of that pain and and so you're getting dragged into the water and and they're not trying
to really get you with that but they're just so desperate to try to get themselves up a little bit
so if they're down near the bottom of the ocean in this emotional you know metaphor then when they
pull on that rope of you're the life preserver you go smashing into the water confusion chaos drama
and they're not trying to do that to you on purpose but it happens and then they're
just trying to get up a bit in the water or to the surface you know for some air and relief
and then what happens is you know you're you're down you're down under it all now and and so these
cycles repeat and repeat and repeat but make no mistake about it people with bpd untreated
are most of them not they're not all the same but they're not trying to do this to you on
purpose to get you or you know somehow it's all calculated it's really about what they're really
going through inside that people can't understand from the outside even though you can know they're
in pain you can't understand the degree and the level of that although sometimes by the
end of these relationships a lot of people in any relationship type who have codependency
start to almost feel like they're in about as much as pain as much pain and so it's
different from the person with bpd but so many people after these relationships
where in people bp might call you a narcissist by the way which doesn't mean that they're accurate
you might also feel like you have bpd i've had so many clients over the years that just can't even
count how many people have said to me are you sure i'm not borderline i think i'm borderline after
being with somebody with borderline personality so make no mistake about it you're you're not
only the parent representation they're desperate for love but in this metaphor this analogy i've
used of the water they are always underneath it down near the bottom and and then they
pull on that string and they you know in all the manifestations of maladaptive behavior
that involve you that pull you into the cast and drama you're trying to rescue fix saved you're
enabling them now you're under the water and they're just trying to get to the surface and it
feels like it's all so purposefully manipulative and i'm not saying sometimes some things they do
aren't manipulative but this is about their survival and they have the arrested emotional
self arrested emotional development their survival 24 7 for them feels threatened almost always and
so if you wonder why they can't love you they can't give love they can't receive your love
that they're so unpredictable or sometimes for each individual predictably predictably
unpredictable it's because they just don't have a self and they're drowning in the emotional seas
of all kinds of emotional pain and even when they're not triggered they're still carrying this
with them and this is a huge difference between people untreated or people with bpd and people
with npd people with nbd are not experiencing all this pain that people with bpd do so hope
that might help some people today to understand that these people are in an incredible ocean
of pain they feel like they're drowning they feel less than they can overcompensate with defensive
strategies maladaptive to try to look like they think they're superior because they're just
trying to get their head above the water but they don't even understand why they're drowning inside
and then yeah they're going to pull you in the water too and that's how you lose yourself
and that's how people come out of these relationships feeling like they're a borderline
or having been called a narcissist and believing it but you have so much self-doubt because you've
been really losing yourself every time they plunge you in to the depths of their trigger dysregulated
emotion and whatever that looks like and however that manifests they're dragging you into the water
to try to get just a little bit of relief and they don't understand the impact they're having so
people with bpd are desperate for love but they can't receive it there's no self there to receive
it they can't give it untreated and and they ca and and they don't trust there's no self there
so i hope that this might have been helpful different way to put it um these are really
compelling relationships and and they're devastating for people with untreated bpd as much
as they are for those well not as much but you know in a very similar ways they're devastating
to people who try to love somebody with bpd or are close to somebody with untreated bpd
and they're really not out to destroy you at all and a matter of fact they don't even have the
strength from which to do it so i'm talking about generally most untreated people bpd
male or female and the fact is that you know not the more severely impacted that many people
have experienced and we're seeing a lot of people talking about on this channel and online so hope
that was helpful and just know it's not all as conscious as you probably think it is but it still
devastated you hasn't it so what are you gonna do about that today for yourself and take care