Megan Hunter:
Welcome to It's All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most damaging humans, people with high-conflict personalities. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, Bill Eddy.
Bill Eddy:
Hi, everybody.
Megan Hunter:
We're the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In today's episode, we're going to talk about borderline high-conflict personalities. But first, we have a few quick reminders. Here's the deal. We want to hear from you. Have you dealt with a high-conflict situation, been blamed, experienced violence or abuse from an HCP? Or maybe you simply dread seeing that person again, but you probably have to tonight at home or tomorrow at work? Send us your questions, and we just might discuss them on the show.
You can submit them by clicking the Submit a Question button at our website, highconflictinstitute.com/podcast, emailing us at podcast@highconflictinstitute.com, or dropping us a note on any of our socials. You can find all the show notes and links at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast as well. Make sure you subscribe, rate, and review, and please tell all your friends about us. Telling just one person that you like the show and where they can find it is the best way you can help us out and help more people learn how to address high-conflict people. Remember, we're not diagnosing anyone in our discussions, merely discussing patterns of behavior. We appreciate you so very much, and now on with the show.
In this episode, we wrap up the five-part series about the five types of people who can ruin your life. In this episode, it's the last of the five types, those with borderline high-conflict personalities. The first four episodes covered narcissistic, antisocial, histrionic, and paranoid HCPs. If you haven't heard the term borderline, it can be confusing at first. We'll explain what borderline personality disorder is and then distinguish it from a person who may have a borderline high-conflict personality.
Unfortunately, over the years, a lot of information about this disorder has floated around the Internet for the last two or three decades, really. Add to that, several books have been written about BPD that have a quite dark theme without offering much hope. The good news is that's changed in the past, I don't know, five or so years with more positive stories coming out and some successes. We see a lot of BPD in divorce court because it's a disorder that shows up most prominently in romantic relationships.
BPD behaviors are super disruptors that leave their romantic partners in chaos and confusion and really drained and exhausted. Eventually, one of the other files a family court case, but we also see these behaviors in family relationships and friendships. But it's important to know here at the outset that not everyone with BPD has a high-conflict personality.
People with BPD get a bad rap because relationships with them can be extra challenging, and sometimes downright devastating. However, these are people who are in a lot of pain and don't have the ability to regulate their emotions and behaviors. What looks pretty ugly to outsiders is experienced as extreme pain to them, and there's a further line of distinction. Some with BPD are more isolated and less acting out while those with high-conflict personalities externalize their pain.
At High Conflict Institute, where Bill and I are co-founders, we've heard thousands of stories, from people who've been in relationships with others with BPD. But one that comes top of mind involved a couple who were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend. She was gorgeous, intelligent, very charming, sophisticated. She was a famous model and high-profile actress.
The guy was handsome, funny, successful, tall, the whole thing. They had an immediate huge spark. She woke up at his place the next morning and basically never left. At first, it was just the toothbrush and a change of clothes. But within a couple of weeks, everything was moved in. She was just there full-time. She was 100% completely and totally in love with him, devoted to him, and he with her. He had a soft spot for her because she'd come from a tragic background involving an absent alcoholic mother and a volatile, uncaring dad. His protective instinct kicked in.
But the first sign of trouble was the frequent calls and texts throughout the workday. Then over time, pretty quickly, there were the demands that he be home at a certain time, and, "Where are you? I don't know where you are. You need to be home now. You need to be with me. Where are you?" She would check his texts, check his emails, look in his phone, look in his computer. He had to be completely transparent with everything he did.
Then he noticed the drinking, lot of drinking. Then there was rehab. Then, ultimately, there was a point where he had a big meeting in another city. It was an annual board meeting. If you do those kinds of meetings, you know what a big deal that is. He was at the C-suite level, so he needed to be there and needed to report. What we'll talk about today is the abandonment factor that comes along with borderline. By him going to that city that day, she felt a little abandoned, and completely sabotaged the entire meeting for him that day, from afar. I'll finish up the story at the end. But, Bill, let's just dive right in and start talking about BPD. What is it in a nutshell? Then let's distinguish BPD from someone with a borderline high-conflict personality.
Bill Eddy:
Basically, borderline personality is a mood swing type of problem. The person is driven by unmanaged emotions. They often call it emotion dysregulation. They truly honestly feel in a panic. A lot of the time, anxious. A lot of the time, relationships are very rocky. They range from really idolizing people, like Megan just described, but then they often turn to anger when they feel letdown, and almost anything can trigger that feeling of letdown. It's this wide mood swings, sudden, intense anger, that fear of abandonment. That's really, in many ways, driving those.
It's like think of someone who's an infant. Imagine if you're two years old, and your parents say, "Bye, we're going on a trip, we'll see you in two weeks," and you don't know what to do. It has that feeling, the person just feels driven from the inside. What's interesting is when people are starting to become aware of this disorder, if they're in treatment for borderline personality disorder, and there is treatment nowadays, that they feel that they can see that they're overreacting to things, that their moods are out of proportion, but still can't manage them. It takes longer to learn how to manage those moods.
Think of it that way. The term borderline really dates back about 100 years when they were looking at people with what they called neuroses, which was worried well problems and living anxious and depressed, and psychosis were people who were out of touch with reality, and they had this group they found were on the edge, so they called them borderline. But then it became a personality disorder in 1980 in the manual for mental health professionals. We're not teaching you to diagnose, so we're telling you more behaviors to be aware of. But these behaviors really go with feeling driven by emotions, and that's the main thing to understand.
Megan Hunter:
What are the main characteristics? You mentioned, I think, rage. Often, you hear about feelings of emptiness, and lack of impulse control is a big one. I have described it in the past, and the way it's resonated with some, either who may have it themselves and don't even know it, and also with those who are in relationships with them. It's like if you give it a scuba divers analogy, if you get trained to be a diver, you know that you must dive with a partner. You don't go under the water without one because you've got an air tank, a lot of things can go wrong. You dive in pairs. If one gets in trouble, then the other can give them their extra air regulator and they get the air they need to get back to the top.
With people who have BPD, some people, I shouldn't say all, it seems like they don't think they can get enough air. They're under the water, and they need air from someone else. They need the air hose, that air regulator from their partner, to feel okay because they feel empty without it. But eventually, what happens, that other person can only supply air for both people for so long, and then they eventually start running out of air, they get frustrated, and then the person with BPD is thinking, "You're not getting me enough air, it's all your fault." Is that an accurate description?
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. I think that's a helpful one, because you realize this person feels like they're going to die, and so it's really upsetting internally. Yet, maybe you're working in an office and you're going, "You just have paperwork, what's the big deal?" But it's this emotion dysregulation that takes over. If you think of it as abandonment, I think that's a good analogy, is that air hose, if you don't have it, you're going to die, you're going to desperately want to hold on to somebody who's got some oxygen for you.
It makes sense when you start realizing this person is desperate inside. People don't choose to act badly, but it's often inappropriate for the situation because of that intense feeling inside. I think that's the key thing to understand, these intense emotions inside feel desperate, feel survival oriented to the person experiencing them. It can be a roller coaster. But if you think of abandonment, so they cling, and then if they think you're abandoning them, go into a rage, which is very roller coaster, unpredictable. You don't know what triggers it because it's really going on inside of them.
Megan Hunter:
Then you combine that with the lack of impulse control. Where does that come from?
Bill Eddy:
In many ways, the emotions just take over. There isn't the ability to go, "Wait a minute, this is out of proportion." It's really disproportionate. On a scale of one to 100, they're reacting one or they're reacting 100. The treatment for that helps them learn, "Okay, this is a situation where, yeah, it is upsetting, but maybe it's a 10 on a scale of one to 100, not 100." Some people actually outgrow the diagnosis with good counseling so that they're able to moderate their emotional reactions more. That's important for people to know that that is possible.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. We'll circle back to that in this episode and give some more information on that. One of the things you said, one of the words, was intense emotions, right? I focus on the word intense because that's what we hear so much from people, is the intensity of the anger, and the wrath and the rage is beyond anything people have experienced before.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. Let me mention, because you asked about the difference between BPD and borderline high-conflict people. High-conflict people, as we've explained throughout this series, tend to have a preoccupation with blaming others, maybe one person or several people. It's this preoccupation with targets of blame that make them a high-conflict person. Now, I've worked in counseling with people with borderline personality disorder, and many of them aren't high-conflict people. They're in pain and they understand and they want to do something about that. They're not blaming anybody in particular, although at the moment, they may get angry at somebody, but it's fleeting.
The high-conflict people that are borderline have the mood swings with a target of blame. That's where you really see the biggest problems in the workplace and relationships, romance, et cetera, is they just focus all those intense emotions on you. They may tell the world that you're a horrible, evil person. We see that in high-conflict divorce cases a lot. We also see them clinging to the children in high-conflict divorce cases, so they'll publicly blame the other parent for being abusive, doing this, that, and the other thing, and you dig under the surface and find out that parent wasn't abusive at all, that was the high-conflict person's perception.
When you combine borderline with high-conflict behavior, that's when you get the high-conflict divorces and such. That can really surprise everybody. They go, "Wow, I didn't know this person could be that intense." It's intense with a target of blame versus people with BPD who aren't high-conflict, who are intense but aren't necessarily blaming anybody. That's a big distinction. It's not all people with borderline personality disorder that blame people. That's important to know.
Megan Hunter:
In the divorce community, in the profession, the term high-conflict is well-established and well-known. It's becoming more well-known across the world, really, a lot because of our work, I'd have to say. But I think it would be helpful here to talk about what does that mean, what does high-conflict and high-conflict personality mean.
Bill Eddy:
We've defined it as four characteristics on the surface. That's preoccupation with blaming others, a lot of all or nothing thinking, solutions, it's my way or the highway. They fight for exclusive parenting time in high-conflict divorce. In the workplace, they fight to get the other person fired, things like that. Unmanaged emotions, which is pretty common with borderline, and extreme behaviors, so we see domestic violence, we see breaking things, we see just up and moving out of the state or something impulsive, extreme blame on the Internet, circulating rumors, knowingly false things because they feel justified because they feel hurt inside. That's the high-conflict personality.
What's interesting for people dealing with divorce cases is, I said earlier, BPD, some people with good counseling outgrow the diagnosis. I haven't seen that happen if they're also high-conflict people. The high-conflict court case person going into BPD doesn't necessarily change because they're so focused on the other person that they don't really work on themselves.
Megan Hunter:
What about statistics? What are the stats in the US?
Bill Eddy:
The big study that I keep referring back to the National Institutes of Health from the early 2000s said that that was around 6% of the adult population. If you think the US is 330 million people, 6% is, let's see ... I'm working on this because I can't do it in my head anymore.
Megan Hunter:
It's impressive you could ever do it in your head, because I can't.
Bill Eddy:
About 20 million people. Everybody knows somebody like this. But there's also a range. Some are high level managers. They're irritable. I think of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada movie where she was a manager, she was brilliant, but she sure had mood swings as someone, a high-functioning person with this personality. It doesn't mean that they can't work at all. Although it's true for some, they're so disabled, but many wouldn't be considered disabled at all. They're high profile and successful at their work, but they also have this problem, and that makes it harder to work with them.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. I think we hear a lot about surprise about a divorce of someone like this, because at work, they seem to be able to manage it better than they do at home, and they keep the relationship and the behaviors very secret. Their partner often thinks no one would ever believe them if they talked about how chaotic and rough the marriage is. But anyway, let's get back to the stats. Is there a gender differentiation in those studies?
Bill Eddy:
What's interesting is, when I became a therapist in the 1980s, borderline personality disorder was considered primarily a female disorder. 75% or more were women. This big study came out that it's very close to 50/50, like 47% to 53%, I think, slightly more women. But I think a lot of the domestic violence perpetrators I saw in high-conflict divorce cases, male had this borderline pattern. I think of some cases I had where both parties seemed to have borderline personality disorder, the man also had violence with it, whereas the woman didn't, it was more verbal.
That can be a real roller coaster, because it's a push-pull relationship. People get angry, push each other away, and then they become wanting to get the person back, and they become charming and seductive again, and so they're back and forth with each other. It's really very painful, but they can't get out of that cycle. When we see people get out of that cycle, they often have a lot of growth and really go on to have happier lives, but it's usually not with a person that has the same problem.
Megan Hunter:
I was just thinking about one of the biggest questions or statements that we hear from people from the very beginning of starting our organization is people who call and say, "My child, my adult daughter, my mother-in-law, my brother, whoever, is bipolar." My first question is, "Okay, well, let's talk about that. Is that diagnosed or is that something that you believe?" I think it's because it was a popular and well-known diagnosis, 15, 20, 25 years ago now. If someone seemed to be acting unusual or erratic, they got labeled bipolar by those around them. I think what we've seen is many really have the behaviors of this borderline high-conflict personality. Let's talk about that a bit.
Bill Eddy:
Bipolar disorder is one that's more over time. It's also a mood type of disorder. Someone may have more of a manic episode, say, for a couple of weeks. They're not sleeping, they're spending, they're meeting strangers, doing all of these things, high-energy things.
Megan Hunter:
Gambling? Buying Houses?
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. Yeah. Getting overextended in different ways. I knew an older woman with this, and she would just go meet people and bring them home to her house and ended up having things stolen from her house, but her judgment was impaired by this manic episode for a couple of weeks. Then she'd go into a depression for a couple months, and you wouldn't hear from her. You had to call up, "Are you still alive? Are you there?" It's that kind of over time type of a mood difficulty.
Whereas with borderline, it may be minute by minute mood swings, friendly, sweet, loving, in a rage, just you're terrible, you've done everything wrong. Then an hour later, somehow or other, back to normal. You're wondering, "Well, what was happening an hour ago?" My suggestion is you don't ask that question. If they're in a good mood, let it stay while you're having it. Keep in mind, again, this is all being driven emotionally from the inside. They're not planning to be on a roller coaster. It's very painful for them, but also for the people around them. That's why we're educating people so you understand and, ideally, they get into treatment.
But the key thing here is bipolar and borderline are two separate and different disorders. Bipolar seems to be more chemical imbalance and medication has more success. With bipolar, medication may soften things for someone with borderline, but it's not a treatment really for borderline, that they really need to change a set of behaviors which seems to take two to five years if they're committed to doing that. Some never change, they just stay this way throughout their lifespan.
But I did want to mention that big study in the early 2000s found that about 40% of people with borderline personality disorder also had bipolar disorder. Some people have both. I know when I worked at psychiatric hospital, the psychiatrist would prescribe medication for bipolar, and then see if the person got better, then they probably didn't have borderline personality disorder. If the person didn't get better, or maybe even got worse, they figured, "Okay, we're dealing with borderline personality disorder, in addition to or instead of bipolar." They're different problems, but same person could have both.
Megan Hunter:
It's so important to have this piece of information, because to get better, to really improve the BPD side, the borderline piece, like you said, medication is not going to help it, and going to continual talk therapy, maybe there's some benefit, and I wouldn't say there's none, but you really need treatment specifically designed for BPD. We'll circle back to that in a bit. But I wanted to ask first, let's talk about where did this come from. I think those who know about BPD realize there's, typically, some trauma in the background, and that's why it's so important to be trauma-informed when you're working with anybody with these types of behaviors. Where does this come from?
Bill Eddy:
There seems to be a couple sources. One is trauma, and usually early childhood trauma, so that first four or five years of life, child abuse, physical child abuse, sexual child abuse. For many years, in the 1980s, when I was trained, it was thought this was a result of child sexual abuse. But what's been learned is it seems to be the result for many people of any kind of abuse, so physical abuse, even repeated emotional and verbal abuse. That can even impact the person's brain structure.
There's a scientist group of people out of Harvard who studied the development of the corpus callosum in the brain, which is the middle part, the bridge between right and left hemisphere, and found that repeated abuse of any kind can cause that to be damaged and smaller. If the person gets too much cortisol from stress on their brain as a young child, it influences this part of the brain so that they have a harder time going back and forth from logical problem-solving to defensive reacting.
If you grew up in a war zone, that may help you, you may need to respond quickly. If you grow up in an abusive environment, you may need to respond quickly to escape and not get hurt. But that doesn't work well in an office environment on the 20th floor, where you can't just run out of the building and yell at people. But we see that it's getting really understood more and more. There's a lot of science to this. But the most important thing is this isn't a switch that somebody rationally turns on and off as an adult. This is something that takes some rebuilding and learning skills. Methods such as dialectical behavior therapy and other cognitive behavioral therapies have had some good success at helping people manage all of this.
But I want to add a piece that I've learned really over the last 20 years, and that is there's some people with no abuse history who have borderline personality disorder. It seems to be more like a genetic tendency, that it's part of the gene pool of personality DNA, whatever it is, they haven't figured that out yet, but that some people just come out borderline.
They look back and say, "My parents didn't do anything unusual. I came from a loving family, but I was really difficult. They'll say I was suicidal and I was angry at everybody." Then we can't point to anything. Maybe siblings seem more ordinary. There may be some genetic tendencies for some people. We don't always assume that it's mom and dad's fault. But the thing to know as an adult is the person didn't choose to be this way. I think that's the most important thing.
Megan Hunter:
For sure. Now, interactions and relationships with people with BPD can be gigantically exhausting and confusing, obviously. Arguments come out of nowhere, complete meltdowns, rage, and getting blamed for things and cursing, swearing coming out of people who don't ordinarily curse. As you and I know, this is the type of stuff that comes out when a person is stuck in those right brain emotions. Let's talk about talking to the right brain, which is a Bill Eddy phrase, and why it works.
Bill Eddy:
It seems that when you think of the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and brain scientists differ on this, but the ones I follow say the left is more where you have reading, writing, talking, listening, problem-solving, low blood flow for those activities. Right brain seems to be very creative, intuitive, big picture, but also where a lot of the defensive, protective emotions are. Your intense negative emotions seem to be much more active in the right brain.
When someone's feeling these intense emotions, what we've learned is we need to speak the language of the right brain, which is empathy, which is, "I'll pay attention to you," respect for the person, calm tone of voice, all of that. You're really helping the person manage those upset emotions that they're having a hard time managing themselves. Talking to the right brain is using what we call EAR Statements, saying, "You know, I know this is a hard time. I'm with you on this. Let's see what we can do."
There's a sense of working together instead of fighting each other. People often quickly calm down when they feel you sincerely want to work with them and want it to be easier and happier for them. That way, if they're going into a rage, you can say, "I can see you're really frustrated right now, let's take a break," or "Tell me more, I want to understand why this is so upsetting." That can calm the person down. I think that's what you're talking about.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. It's easy to talk about, right? One of the absolute hardest things to do when you're faced with this, because it happens so quickly, often, where you're in a conversation with someone and suddenly they're angry, and now you're a little bit hooked, you're a little angry, your heart rates up a little bit, you feel a little bit tense, right? It can be exceedingly difficult to give empathy when you're being hooked like that. It requires a high level of empathy, right? How do you summon the empathy required to interact with them when they're in this upset, and you're a little hooked?
Bill Eddy:
That's pretty hard, in many ways. It's easier for me as a therapist because I've had clients with borderline personality disorder. They'd suddenly be outraged with me and say, "Wow, you're really, really feeling that intense. Now, I'm feeling really bad. Is that what you're feeling?" Being able to talk it through. Relationship partner, a dating partner, usually isn't going to be able to do that. Taking a break is often one of the most important things, and then say, "Let's come back and talk about this later." Later, you may have someone with BPD apologizes. They say, "I'm sorry, I got so upset. I'm going to try not to do that again." Sometimes they don't apologize, because it is all your fault, and they want to remind you of that.
It's something to try if you can do it, giving them some empathy, sentences that start with, "I can understand how frustrated you are," or "I can hear how difficult this is," or "I can see this is a hard time." That helps. That's empathy. That's like, "I can, I can understand, I can see, I can hear." In other words, "This is something I may have felt sometimes," and sometimes you can say that. "I feel that way sometimes, too." It's connecting rather than rejecting the person, but it's not always easy, not always successful. This is where counseling can help, even a couples counseling can help if the therapist understands this problem. Otherwise, they get focused on who's to blame, and that doesn't help either person.
Megan Hunter:
Who's to blame and who's the victim, right?
Bill Eddy:
Yeah.
Megan Hunter:
Speaking of empathy, people with high-conflict personalities typically have little to no empathy for others. It just seems to be a characteristic that goes with this because of the fear-based personality. Those with BPD, we often see a higher level of empathy than just people who don't suffer a personality disorder. Is that true? If so, why?
Bill Eddy:
It seems to be people with BPD have a lot of intense emotions, and some of those are intensely positive emotions. I think of people with BPD, say, with a pet, and they just love their pet, and they're affectionate with the pet. Some of them raising children, have intense positive emotions with the children, but then they also have intense negative emotions. That's a roller coaster, that's tricky for kids. I'd say they have a lot of positive emotions, and they can have a lot of empathy for other people, but that sometimes it can vanish in an instant when they go into a rage. It's a roller coaster of empathy, intense empathy, mild empathy, no empathy, intense, mild.
This is part of why you can see them being really sensitive in, really, relationship, being really caring and just wonderful. It's two sides of this person, and that's something to build on rather than just getting angry at them. It's really, I think, understanding this, especially if you have a family member like this, is understanding they don't have much control of this, and hopefully get them to get some counseling to really deal with this, because learning to manage those emotions can just make a world of difference for them.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. That empathy, that can be extraordinarily high with them sometimes. Like you said, it can flip on a dime. At that moment, it has to be all about them, right? It can be very confusing to those on the outside because they've experienced this beautiful gift of empathy from someone like this, and then in the next minute, it's gone and it has to be completely about that person.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. Let me just say, as parents, sometimes they have a huge amount of empathy, but they lack emotional boundaries, so that they see the child and themselves as experiencing the same feelings, thinking the same way, when that's not really the case. They have a harder time letting the child be an independent person. They have empathy for the child's pain, but when the child differs from them, they might have a harder time having empathy at that moment.
Megan Hunter:
Okay. Jealousy is often associated with BPD. For example, I recall seeing jealousy from someone with BPD over a dog, an absolute hatred toward the dog of their partner, because the dog got attention from the person that they loved. They meaning the person with BPD. Why is that?
Bill Eddy:
It goes back to that fear of abandonment, because they really feel threatened. An example is, say, you're married, you're six months pregnant, and now your husband's starting to become abusive because they're jealous of the attention you're giving to your pregnancy. They can see the handwriting on the wall, this infant's going to be more important than they are for a while. That's when we often see a lot of domestic violence begins, when it's going to begin. Most people, let's say, 80% of men are not violent in relationships. But some people are, you just don't see it for a while.
It seems like six months pregnant was when I've noticed a lot of cases, people start reporting that's when that became, and it really was a jealousy. They may have wanted to be a parent. They may know this is going to be a boy, and "I always wanted to raise a son," and this and that. Yet, they feel these jealous feelings inside and they can't control them. That's what you see. That's part of what you see in high-conflict divorce cases, is they're really angry at the former spouse and so they're clinging to the child. When the child says, "Hey, I had a fun time at dad's house this weekend," that they feel terrible because they want the child to reject the father and just love them.
Megan Hunter:
Yep. Let's wrap this up with, I guess, one last question. If you could summarize the borderline high-conflict personality in one word, maybe two, we'll give you that, what would it be?
Bill Eddy:
Rageful blame.
Megan Hunter:
Rageful blame. Interesting.
Bill Eddy:
Because the rage comes from borderline and the blame comes from the high-conflict personality.
Megan Hunter:
If you could give helpful information to someone in a relationship like this, what would it be?
Bill Eddy:
That we're seeing more and more people that can improve with this. They go through some kind of therapy that addresses learning skills of self-management, of relationship self-management, emotion self-management. I worked as a therapist with inpatient and outpatient people with cognitive therapy, and they're slowly learning to rewrite the messages that they have when they're upset. "I can manage this." People in domestic violence groups learn, "I can take breaks. I don't have to get defensive now, this isn't about me." Some relationships really can improve when the person works on themselves, but the key is getting them to work on themselves. That's where the difficulty lies. If they do, then they can. We have good treatments nowadays.
Megan Hunter:
Right. I lied, I said there'd only be two questions, but here's the final. Is there hope for someone who's in a relationship with someone with BPD? In the past, they've just been thought of as a throwaway relationship. "My partner has BPD, so there's no hope, it will never get better." As we've seen, this can improve, relationships can improve if both people learn the skills necessary. Correct?
Bill Eddy:
Yes. It really is about skills. You're right, it's both parties, because how you react to someone with these difficulties can make a big difference, and how they work on their own emotions. There are people I've seen, usually going through intensive treatment. I might mention that if they have a substance abuse problem and they go through substance abuse treatment, that helps them with their borderline personality disorder because they learn more self-management, self-reflection, more, in a sense, humility from a 12-step program, helps them really have more empathy for their partner and to be able to say, "Whoops, I went too far just then and I'm working on myself."
That's the key. If you have two partners in a relationship who are both working on their own skills, how they manage themselves, there's a lot of hope for getting along. If you have only one working on themselves, or nobody working on themselves, and one has BPD, it's going to be a roller coaster.
Megan Hunter:
Speaking of roller coasters, back to the story we started in this episode with the relationship between the beautiful actress and her boyfriend. The ultimate results of that is the relationship did break up, but it was a very long and difficult breakup because of that abandonment fear and that need to stay attached and stay connected despite not being able to have a good relationship and not being official in the relationship, but just needing to have that phone contact or texting contact in some way.
I promised to talk about the meeting as well in the city, the board meeting, that was absolute mess of a day with the woman threatening suicide all day long, right? Sending text messages to her boyfriend while he's presenting to the board of directors. He would present for 15 minutes, run out into the hallway, check his text. She didn't tell him where she was. It was this very obvious fear of abandonment and feeling completely spiraled out of control because he was in a different city. She told him she was in a hotel room in a yet different city. He didn't know where she was. He was in complete panic mode. It sabotaged his day altogether, his meeting. He was so worried about her because he did love her a lot.
Ultimately, their relationship, like I said, it did end. A few years later, she actually passed away at a fairly young age. I think that's common when there are other substance abuse issues involved. That's a tragic outcome. But I guess we want to give hope that there can be better outcomes with treatment, like Bill was just talking about. There are many stories that we can attest to. Those who work with people with BPD can attest that lots can go on to have a really beautiful life and beautiful relationships after the right treatment.
But if the light bulb just went on for you about this personality type and you think someone in your life may have this, it's important to avoid telling them that you think that about them, because you might be wrong. No one wants to be told that you think they're flawed. People with high-conflict personalities don't have the kind of insight needed to absorb that kind of information. Just keep it to yourself, get educated, and learn the necessary skills to manage the relationship with them. Remember, once again, we're not diagnosing anyone, and you shouldn't either.
With this episode, we've wrapped up the entire five types series. In the next episode, we're going to be answering questions you've submitted. Thank you for submitting questions. Then that'll be followed by domestic violence and family law cases with special guests, Atty. Annette Burns and retired Judge Karen Adam, who've interviewed along with Bill 16 experts in domestic violence and family law cases. It will absolutely be fascinating, and you won't want to miss it.
Be sure to look in the show notes for links to our books. There'll be some extra books by other authors. One is Shehrina Rooney who wrote the big book on borderline personality disorder, she has lived experience with it and has recovered, and a couple of books by Amanda Smith from Hope for BPD. Then we have several of Bill's books, and a couple of mine, and a lot of courses on there as well. Be sure to take a look at those and then tell your friends about our podcast. We wish you all the best in your relationships.
It's All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, and transcripts at trustory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.