Are people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) able to fully understand the extent of emotional damage they are able to inflict on others?
I unfortunately suffer from BPD. I had little realisation of the extent of emotional damage I was inflicting on others, until I began to form close friendships with others similarly afflicted with post-traumatic mental health conditions (most commonly, child abuse survivors). All of a sudden, I was on the receiving end of the extreme mood swings, idealisation/devaluation, and chronic suicide threats. I tried and tried and tried and tried to help these friends, but they would never take my advice, they would shoot down all my ideas, they never got any better, they just kept getting worse, the more I tried to help... I was really quite baffled, and eventually, totally burned out. I was forced to distance myself from them (which was extremely painful both for them and for me, due to their fear of abandonment, and my fear of abandoning others). It was only after my last friendship with a severe BPD sufferer ended, that I realised I can't save other people from their problems, I can only save myself. And it was only after that particular friendship ended that I really understood the pain I had unknowingly inflicted on everyone around me when I was a teenager (and still continue to do so, sadly). That's why, ever since then, I've been able to forgive people who were forced to distance themselves from me. It's not that they hated me, but they just couldn't cope with my problems anymore. They needed to save their own sanity, and they did the right thing.
What was your worst “Oh, I’m really gonna be in trouble with my parents now!” moment as a kid/teenager?
Christmas/New Year’s 1958/59. I was six years old.For Christmas, I had gotten a really neatsy keen present: a little red Radio Flyer wagon! YAYYYYYYY! It was the first Wednesday after New Year’s Day. School was still out. I was running around my neighborhood and I noticed ALLLLLL those Christmas trees out by the trash. Lots and lots and LOTS of them.Now mind you, in 1959, there were FAR more real trees than artificial ones. Mind you also that this was Suburbia. The land of Dichondra Lawns. The land where EVERY man’s self worth and pater-familial PRIDE was completely wrapped UP in the status, hue of green, lack of weeds, and beauty of *his* Dichondra Lawn (second in place ONLY to barbecues in ‘one ups-manship). You have the image in your mind.Enter, an enterprising six-year-old little girl with a brand new Radio Flyer Wagon (Red, naturally) and Too Much Time On Her Hands. WOW! Looka all those TREEEEEES! I bet they’d make a GREAT “forest”!! I started shortly after breakfast. Mind you THESE were the days of “Free Range Kids”. Parents would shoosh you out of the house with instructions “Come home for lunch!”. No Internet, No TV, no NUFFIN! Except time to play!I started nearby. Gathering tree after tree after tree, loading two or three on my little Radio Flyer wagon (Red, naturally) and dragging them HOME. But of course trees must be PLANTED. That was easy… in the garage there was this garden shovel…..I hit BOTH sides of the street. Marie’s house, Virginia’s house, Pauline’s house, Bobbie’s house, Ted and Marge’s house, Fleet and Toddy’s house, even Edith’s house, ahead of the trash truck (they wouldn’t come until the afternoon and everybody was away at work anyway) and then the next block over. And the next. And the next.Each tree was lovingly hauled back and planted. I started with the front yard. I found that I could fit probably around fifty trees on one side of the driveway, another fifteen to eighteen on the curb-strip, another twenty on the other side. Then I started on the back. Each tree was planted in a nice foot or two foot deep hole.In my Dad’s Dichondra Lawn.I had started to populate the BACK yard with spruce, balsam, pine, fir… when I heard the car in the driveway.REALLY… I thought they’d be PLEASED! *sigh* You know… sometimes grownups are just too hard to figure OUT! At any rate, that was in 1959. I finally started eating my meals sitting DOWN last month!