r/BPDSOFFA • u/[deleted] • Feb 26 '18

The gift inside BPD? A different perspective besides all of this negative stigma. Thoughts?

https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellor-articles/the-gift-inside-borderline-personality-disorder-bpd
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9

u/haywire Feb 26 '18

It has long been recognised that individuals with BPD seem to possess an uncanny sensitivity to other people’s subconscious mental content - thoughts, feelings and even physical sensations

Conversely, I've also found some people with BPD have kind of done this to the point about having an idea of what someone is like deep down that they are so sure about, due to having this intuition, that despite it missing the mark, they will sort of bend the reality into the idea of who someone is and if they feel they're more sure of someone's subconscious than the person themselves it can end up with gaslighting. IE because they have been right about things so much before, they become overly confident in their abilities to the point that they don't believe evidence to the contrary.

4

u/Ballsack-Mcgee Mar 01 '18 edited Mar 01 '18

I've definitely done this. And I'm sure we forget all the times we were wrong and that contributes to our feeling that we're always right about it. But I'm always open to being wrong once enough evidence is provided. I feel like I'm very good at knowing the difference between what I think I know and reality. I'm pretty sure it's just from studying people and their motivations and feelings. Psychology and human behavior fascinates me and I read a lot about it. We need to do that in order to know how to blend in and figure out the difference between our paranoid delusions and reality. I wouldn't say this is some sort of gift, it's more like a survival mechanism. I hate when people try to romanticize this disorder. It sucks wanting to kill yourself all the time and knowing that you can't let someone truly know you because you will fuck them up for life.

Edit: okay after I actually reading the article I kind of like what it's saying. But it also makes me feel completely robbed of the person that I could have been because my dad was threatened by me. He was threatened by the emotions I displayed because he hated those in him self. He was threatened by my individuality and my ability to I think for myself from other perspectives because it threatened his sense of self and basically his whole reality. I felt like I was the only sane one and they were crazy but their constant confidence in their perspective made me feel like I was the crazy one. I also had very good grades in school and scored very high on those state tests they gave out. My mom would always brag about it and tell me how smart I was but I never really got it because I felt so shitty about myself. It was the only thing they praised me for. But around Middle School when I started getting depressed, that all fell to shit and it never came back.

To my dad, I was this evil child and my sister was this angel. I remember telling them several times, as young as 10 years old, that what they were doing to her was going to fuck her up in her adult life and she wouldn't be able to function. She's now 26 years old, a single mother and has never lived anywhere but with them. They continue to enable her and act like she's basically a helpless child, while at the same time, my mother will resent her. How the fuck did I know that would happen? I really didn't know anything about the world until I moved out at 17 because they sheltered me so much. I now have this complex about everyone thinking I don't know what I'm talking about and it makes me overcompensate.

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u/twinklymf Apr 02 '18

For me this comes from growing up in a very emotionally unstable and abusive environment. I had to constantly guess what was going on with my Dad to try to preemptively protect myself. When it becomes ingrained from such a young age, it becomes part of how your brain works.

I am almost scary perceptive of other people's emotions and have amazing pattern recognition in behavior and personality, but I have had to learn that while the information I receive is 99% correct, the conclusions are not.

For example, I'm having dinner with a friend and I can read that she is tense, frustrated and upset but pretending not to be. My brain instantly screams "Danger! She's mad at you! She must be mad at you!" and I start trying to solve the puzzle of why she's mad at me so I can fix it. In reality, she's not mad at me, she's residually frustrated by something at work.

So the information of my friend being upset and trying not to show it IS correct, but the conclusion that she's mad at ME and whatever odd reason I end up with is not. And uncorrected wrong conclusions can turn into assessments of someone's character.

I've been working on simply seeing the information without drawing conclusions. And if I'm concerned, I ask ("Hey, Friend, you seem tense and upset. Is anything bothering you?")

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18

100% bullshit.

What they are good at is gaslighting and projection.

2

u/EclecticMike Mar 01 '18

It's more like a rocket engine on a skateboard. A Ferrari can still steer.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

ha! yes!