It's confirmed: I must get undiagnosed: how?

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I think this is right-on. Thank you, Marshall, for your contributions. I think another reason people don't like me is that I don't have a really distinctly defined personality, so people end up seeing that I'm just an empty shell and get bored, even when I don't lash out. I have between 4-6 external identifies, proto personalities, and value systems that are very shallow. But it's not DID because I have memories that go between alts. I would tend to think of them as "proto alts" because they are more like waves than compartments. A real person with DID--who had suffered worse abuse-- would not be able to remember events between different alts, according to my therapist, though she claims my memory is probably distorted somewhat. So BPD, which is basically just an underdeveloped version of DID, is the most appropriate diagnosis.

Anyway, each of the 4-6 "proto alts" is too shallow to build a real connection with anyone. People may try to "get to know" one of them and then either be surprised it's so shallow (if the same alt attaches to that person) or they will be shocked when they are presented with a different one, such as when a stressful event or the person setting off a trigger causes this to happen.

@ahogday: I don't think people with BPD consciously manipulate others. Some might, but a lot don't. People with BPD often have a conscience as well and often regret what they did. You should try reading the Psych Forums board for BPD. I have been following it for about six months.


I think people often confuse BPD with Antisocial Personality Disorder: (1) violence; (2) manipulation; (3) no conscience.They are not the same thing at all, though they have overlap. I have traits of ASPD, as do many others with BPD. But I do not meet the full criteria for ASPD because I have a conscience and do not consciously manipulate others on a regular basis. I am accused of manipulation, like other BPDers are, but it's not a conscious thing.

It's difficult for me to even comprehend the idea of having true alternate personalities. Well, I don't think my social skills are close to good enough to come up with a completely different convincing personality so I can't even fully imagine it. It seems like someone would have to be completely NT to have full on DID. Maybe not. I find the idea confusing. Maybe I'll add more later but I'm too tired to think right now.


I guess to most people the definition of manipulation is anything that makes them feel like they're being manipulated. Whether it's truly conscious or cunning makes no difference when the person feels like they're constantly being pushed around emotionally.

Yeah, well when you (meaning whoever) find out that you're the one who is manipulating people, then that's a real shock, and what follows is remorse of conscience

Not a personal judgement of mine, as I haven't really paid much mind to the BPD condition until I entered the conversation here. My statement was based on report of clinical analysis of a professional clinician, coming from decades of treating patients with the BPD disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline ... e_behavior

Manipulation by definition is conscious activity of intention to control other people's behavior. It is considered by DSMIV-TR, per link above, as a defining characteristic of the disorder. I think the clinician I was talking to would not likely diagnose someone with the DSMIV-TR criteria, for BPD, if they did not exhibit the intentional manipulative behavior to gain nurturance from other people. It was the defining feature for her, in agreement with what is described in the link above.

Those facts cannot invalidate the real life experience of anyone per their emotional internal reality, on the internet or anywhere else, but they seem to be leaning toward a current DSMIV diagnostic view of intentional manipulation as a defining characteristic of the disorder.

I didn't mean to imply that it being unconscious should be an excuse if that's what you're getting at (not sure). It's still wrong and should be considered abuse in more extreme cases. I just see it as perhaps a degree below true calculated antisocial manipulation. True psychopaths are so good at manipulation that the targets they pick don't even register that they are being manipulated. This is the opposite of BPD manipulation where usually the target is well aware that they're being emotionally pressured, feel it as abuse, and resent it.

On this thread I said that maybe I wasn't going to participate anymore which you said is guilt tripping. I'm willing to own up to that possibly unconscious purpose. If intent was there it seemed to work in hindsight because I got validation that I was appreciated. The thing is I normally see that kind of manipulation as weak and lame, i.e. not something I would normally resort to. It's one of those things if you do too much, especially as a guy, people start to see it as pathetic and will attack you for it. Overplaying the guilt-trip / sympathy-seeking card is dangerous because there are people out there that seemingly just don't care and won't hesitate to pour salt on your wound if they don't get what you're going through and think you've "cried wolf" too many times. So yea, in the case of this thread if there was purpose it must have been deeply unconscious.

@Tyrion:

The fact that you said you think people get bored reveals something to me. I think that is a little bit of projection. You get bored because you see the purpose of the relationship as mutual entertainment. What's seen as shallow is not being able to go beyond entertainment and show true affection. That's the difficulty. Clearly you've had interesting life experiences and plenty to share, so you're not "boring" as a person. If you really were that boring you probably wouldn't have been able to get even temporary partners.

Last edited by marshall on 12 May 2013, 11:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.

This is a difficult subject to talk about from the perspective of the DSM-IV diagnostic codes, but I'm glad you brought it up, as I think it is important.

First of all the BPD patients who come to the attention of therapists are generally people in the throes of a crisis who have, due to stress and/or other external circumstances reverted into a temporarily psychotic stage or begun to revert back, and so are manifesting overt symptoms, such as suicide attempts or self injury. but, generally speaking, when not in the throes of such a crisis, they are able to cope. I think a lot if not most of these people are teenagers or people in their early to mid twenties.and after the initial episodes where many of them do end up in mental hospitals, they then begin to develop coping skills as a part of maturing in general, and coping with their particular condition is factored into this, but, due to the nature of the condition, a person with BPD who is not because he is in a crisis forced to seek help is probably much less likely to seek therapy then a person with some other kind of psychological problem. In any case, when not in the throes of a crisis the manipulative behavior may not be apparent, so technically it might be possible to be married to such a person and not observe such behavior especially if the other party is not that good at observing emotional affects in others. (This latter is neither here nor there,exactly, in terms of this discussion imo, but just mentioned it).

Secondly. just because a clinician has had years of experience and has been able to help you does not necessarily mean that she has a complete perspective. Most of these people's perspectives are angled out of a particular framework and lots of wrong and/or lopsided assumptions slanted in. To see how this works look at how the ideas of psychotherapy, or should I say psycho--therapy have evolved over the years, going back to some of the whacky antics of Sigmund Freud and his crew.

Thirdly, in terms of manipulation, in its more subtle form a person can know on one level he is doing it, but also kind of not know it, and the person who is being manipulated may not know it, depending upon how clever the manipulation is, though am guessing that if your wife is manipulative you probably would know it, but again this is not necessarily true. The point is if she is coping and not in overt crisis and you are having a stable relationship, it might not matter. I am not really sure why you would ask your therapist about this, but you must have had some kind of reasons.regarding your wife's behavior.

Finally want to mention the point of males with BPD. I will not go into detail now, but for lots of reasons it is much less likely that a male would express the same kind of characteristics as a female, but this does not mean he could not have the same kind of disorder: if the disorder is being diagnosed by overt manifestation and the person is not at the time displaying such due to a the situations of his life not leading to overt crisis, then it would be hard to pinpoint.

I think many psychologists do not even really have that much of a understanding of this disorder, especially regarding how it might manifest in a male, and also, technically the diagnosis should not be stigmatizing to the degree it is, and so something might be wrong there.

My therapist works with a team of professionals that specializes in helping people with ASD and BPD, among other disorders. Given that and the DSMIV guideline, I cannot reasonably take one viewpoint of one author relating their experiences in life on Wiki, over the rest of the world on this disorder per expert opinion. It seems more likely to me given expert consensus that was the outlier opinion rather than mainstream view based on control study research and this disorder per the actual diagnostic features provided by the DSMIV-TR.

My spouse and I have been married for 23 years. I have worked with the public for two decades with hundreds of people in a week. I have seen every form of personality imaginable, and my spouse ranks at the bottom of the manipulator group. Moody, low self esteem, and difficult childhood yes. But manipulation is not part of the recipe.

There do seem to be some people that have a deficit in their ability to manipulate other people, that is also equally a deficit in influencing people in a positive way not considered pathology, which is the valued part of the human attribute of cognitive empathy.

My spouse is selfless in taking care of other people, like a mother Teresa figure. A giver not a taker. That is amazing considering the childhood of my spouse. My spouse has a sister that is an extreme manipulator, but not the kind that plays the poor me card. And not good enough at it, to hide it for more than five minutes.

It is extremely hard for a manipulator to escape detection by an extreme detail thinker. Most often I believe it is because they are not as vulnerable to what is described as "the power of suggestion". I cannot be hypnotized, but on the other hand I rarely am influenced by others with deceitful intention. Typically a manipulator takes advantage of those vulnerable to the power of suggestion. These are the folks that people like "Alex Jones", pad their wallets with.

From the limited information I have about BPD, it appears to me that it is not complex manipulation that is the focus of that condition, which alternately requires a high level of cognitive empathy.

It is described as the "unhinged" type of response when one does not get their way.

I have seen textbook examples of that on the internet, in the Autism community, that I could link from memory, which is actually supported by others enabling that behavior for periods of months and years.

That is a new real time illustration of that type of manipulative behavior that the internet provides that one can view in the past with a google search. It is hard to hide it in written text. However, that by itself is not necessarily indicative of BPD or NPD, without the other characteristics.

I rarely see that on this site, but I don't often visit the "touchy", "feely" parts of it. I like analysis over that experience, which is also a deficit of substantial difficulty. More reflective of what I see Tyrion experiencing and many others on this site per difficulty in regulating the internal experience of emotions, vs. regulation of overt emotion affecting others.

What was most telling to me was when Tyrion described he was uncomfortable with your statement but wasn't sure why. That is opposite from the type of paranoid ideation one would see with someone experiencing extreme emotions that is another described hallmark in the DSMIV for the BPD disorder. That statement was a classic Alexithymic statement.

Marshal displays an unusual amount of empathic concern for others, in what I have seen from others on this site. He comes across as a very nurturing individual to me, in written text.

My spouse cannot put it in words like he does, but it is more reflective of the empathic concern my spouse shows for others in emotion and a limited number of "touchy" "feely" words.

It takes me paragraphs to describe in "effective" communication to even attempt to get a concise point across in regard to emotion expressed in empathic concern for others, but my spouse can do it with a facial expression alone.

I find it interesting too, as when I do feel strong emotion and write, instead of analysis, my readability score on Microsoft Word moves from 20% to 50% territory and the grade level comes down to high school effective communication in connecting with others. Fewer words to me means more emotion. All these words I write, is an overt expression of that deficit in emotional language I experience.

Interesting to me that I can objectively measure it with Microsoft Word both from an analytical and emotional viewpoint.

Whenever I check my writing with Microsoft and the meter pegs up toward 50%, I know the therapy I have been receiving for Alexithymia is somewhat effective.

The definition of manipulation is vague. Children and some older people on the autism spectrum have trouble with white lies and social graces. If seen for what it is a lot of normal day-to-day behavior is false or dishonest but is considered acceptable, even necessary. The word "manipulation" has negative connotation that doesn't apply to white lies or acts of politeness. It's not just the falseness. Whether something is considered "manipulation" has more to do with how it affects the target. It's considered manipulation if it's seen as harmful, unfair, or done in bad faith. Smiling and acting warm towards someone when you don't feel that way inside might be literally dishonest, but it's still considered a good/necessary thing. It's not in bad faith even though it's literally dishonest.

I think what's seen as deliberate manipulation in codependent type relationships sometimes really amounts to lack of empathy on both sides. It can be that what looks like calculated manipulation and falseness to the non-BPD person is really the characteristic emotion-driven changes in valuation. It looks so inconsistent and irrational the natural assumption is the person cannot be for real. They must be playing games or acting for attention. That's how it looks from the outside to someone with no understanding. If these sudden changes seem like betrayal it hurts. In that situation, feeling hurt, it's easier to tell yourself they were never for real in the first place. Because it's impossible to deal with such an inconsistent person it's easier to completely dismiss them as manipulative a-hole and be done with it. Thus the stigma.

Last edited by marshall on 12 May 2013, 11:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Aghogday,
thanks for the response, but you seem to have missed most of what I was trying to say in my message---to put it succinctly, there are some kinds of problems with the diagnostic manual and therapy in general, and no I am not saying that therapy in some circumstances cannot help people, but suggesting that once people are stuck in looking at things in this way, through the subjective often flawed therapy lens, it could limit their possibility to get help, though it others circumstances it might also be helpful. It is all really kind of iffy.

I did not get your point about Wiki. Is there some kind of reading I missed or do not remember that you are referring to? Whatever it is, I cannot imagine that anyone is putting the point of view of one person who wrote something there against that of the entire world or however you phrased it---cannot quite recall..That seems to be to be way off scale.

You seem to have missed the fact that what I wrote was a suggestion of a (possibly) more integrative way to look at mental illness, and I admit that my style of processing data is sometimes hard to understand. Here is a case in point about BPD to illustrate how active thinking needs to come into play: Many therapists say a personality such as BPD is not curable, and yet, for example, once paranoid, not always paranoid or perhaps only very slightly and subtly paranoid in certain situations. And yet if a person is not displaying paranoia and certain other characteristics then he is not BPD. Give me a break. Under stress he may display this characteristics---so then a person first is, then is not, then is?

Also this wasn't really about your wife or your therapist---at least to me...you're the one who brought it up and I was just kind of riffing on that, but maybe unnecessarily. I had the sense that you were just sharing this info about manipulation which came up when you asked your therapist about your wife because you thought that info would be helpful here, I am not sure if it is, though it could be.... this is one of the problems---one reads this or that and then wonders if so and so if this or that, autistic, BPD or whatever and then one asks someone, perhaps a therapist, who is some kind of professional, and then this whole long analysis of this or that person takes place either with other people or in ones mind---and I do it, too, at times. and this is not the same as experiencing direct empathy, which, by the way, translates perfectly well on line, and by empathy I am not really talking about defending someone. but something else that is interconnected to a direct and joyful response to another human being in relationship which I think is a healing elixir which works a lot faster than any kind of psychotherapy,not to imply that psychotherapy always works. and of course this direct empathy can also be experienced in a therapy situation, but the main point is it comes from within oneself, is not generated from the outside, nor by thinking, but can be kind of picked up from someone else who is experiencing it, as the human system, the physiology sort of resonates together with others, but if a group of people are going to turn on a dime and start scapegoating someone who is not on their enabling and rescuing track, not speaking of anything here, necessarily, then that is not the dew of life. The people who are healed either in therapy or elsewhere are able to see things in a new way that generates such a healing elixir. Almost all people have the capacity to do that, but mechanical processing data does seem to me to go along with the experiencing of negative emotions. There is a different way emotion can spontaneously work with thinking, a different kind of mind, but the old way of thinking will not lead to it. This is really not about you but to anyone who can see themselves in what I am saying. I, too, have to think in a new way.


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In terms of pathology of personality disorder and psychological assessment manipulation is clearly defined as underhanded, deceptive and even abusive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation

In vague terms it could refer to almost any type of social communication between two people, when there is a motivation to gain a response from the other individual.

Psychology is far from a concrete science; there are some therapists that can read people well and some that can't, which plays into the accuracy in assessing personality disorders in other people, in a clinical environment. And there are some people that cannot be read, no matter what the skills of the therapist might be.

I tend to provide too many details. You stated you were not sure why I asked about my spouse, which I had already discussed in the thread, as motivated by what I heard in the thread, so I repeated that to you in much greater detail.

My point about Wiki was in reference to the Wiki article on BPD I provided and Raziel's detailed description of the author's experience with BPD referenced in that article. It was the only source provided in Wiki that attempted to counter the DSMIV opinion on BPD as a disorder defined by a behavior of psychological manipulation to gain nurturance from other people.

That information along with opinion on internet forums is not enough information to convince me that the DSMIV and an entire clinic does not have a good understanding of what the DSMIV has determined as a diagnosable condition.

Particularly when that information is so easily referenced. That is not to say people don't experience BPD as described by the author in Wiki, but it is certainly far from evidence of the majority experience of people actually diagnosed with the Disorder as observed in research, clinical studies, and the clinical experience.

Mechanical processing is understood to repress the pathways in the brain responsible for empathy, in research, so that seems a very reasonable suggestion you have in directing attention toward the full experience of emotion rather than the repression of it.

However, emotional contagion experienced from others is not understood in the state of current empathy research as a full experience of empathy which includes empathic concern and compassion for other people.

That experience of emotional contagion can be blocked by repressing the experience or attempting to avoid it, by avoiding people and focusing on mechanical cognition. An extreme example would be playing video games all day, without any interaction from flesh and blood human beings. It is though, how some spend their leisure time in lieu of activities that might result in flesh and blood human interaction. Without people in the equation the potential for empathic concern is at least limited.

I am not close minded when it comes to therapy; whatever will work for an individual is within my parameters of possibility. Finding something that will work for another person can be difficult because of the distance that often comes in world view and experience. That is part of why it is often limited to what research says will work, in terms of potential therapies.

I'm not saying it's all roses, far from it. I work in the field of psychology, I know in many ways it is very screwed up, too much of it is based on theory or assumptions that are out of date or simply incorrect, and too much of the time it never addresses the underlying physical processes that often contribute to them.

Personally I only know 2 therapists in my city that I could recommend in good conscience to someone.
The good thing is that those who are truly good at what they do will be fairly easy to find with some research. Such people tend to do quite well and end up with a reputation, and it's fairly easy to validate whether that reputation is true or not by speaking to previous clients or by going to see them at conferences and speaking engagements, and asking questions or interacting with them one on one later in the night.

I have similar issues but didn't find CBT very helpful because I also find it difficult to identify the emotion or know what I'm feeling at any given time, so 'addressing negative thought patterns' didn't help and seemed basically impossible. Has anyone else found this? I've got a self-help book on DBT which I'm about to start working through... For me, self-help is better because I get nervous around people and find it difficult to talk to people unless I feel comfortable around them, which hardly ever happens when it should do!

That's actually what many BPD experts think what happens and why people with BPD are very often regardet as so high manipulative but very often don't even have the best social inside themself.
I've dealt with some people with BPD and most of them I didn't view as manipulative at all, but I also know states of high emotional distress, so I was aware of that how it feels like and didn't see it as something manipulative.

Marshall has some really good insight into how the behavior of BPD's can be misread, but imo the actual stigma has nothing to do with this, but rather that the borderline client is difficult to treat, so many therapists will not take a client with this kind of diagnosis, (which maybe is just as well anyway if they are not going to be able to succeed in helping him:-) Of course this does really not solve the problem of helping people with this condition.

I think a good question to ask when reading and writing on this thread is, "Who is it going to help and how?" For me there are many ways participating in this thread can be good. It is not just black and white. For one thing, staying focused and trying to process data more comprehensively than usual opens up a door to a new way of understanding. Tyrion is the obvious focus of this thread, and whatever else, he knows people here really do care about him, and also I think he knows there is a commonality in that what he is experiencing, in some way, and on some level, represents to others some aspect of themselves, so something is touched upon from both directions, making a bridge, and everyone's participation is part of creating that. Facts are a part of it, but a fact in itself does not make a bridge as facts mean different things to different people. Understanding does begin to make a bridge, and the affect can be felt as tangible. So little by little this begins to build a feeling of community that is endurable, and this can and will will affect the world, both ones inner world and the external world, so there is a reason---things make sense, and this reason is connected to thinking in a new way, comprehensively, from many different angles.