Aspie v's Boarderline Personality Disorder

Post Reply New Topic

I understand that Aspies can develop BPD, yet, in the moderate to the severe end of the spectrum, I don't comprehend how this is possible as so many root issues seem to conflict completely. I've read through quite a few posts on this topic, so this isn't really the angle I'd like to hear about, but rather have you personally found any big issues dealing with people who have these kind of personality disorders (ie - 'Cluster B - Narcissism, BPD and Histrionic)?

My mother is very BPD/Narcissistic, and I've had a few friends throughout the years who have been diagnosed with it. The issues begin if I try to explain my perspective about any topic and it differs from their's, to find myself being attacked somehow. With my mother it's screaming, verbal abuse, friends have been honest enough to accuse me of trying to make them be like me. Personally, it always knocks me to a deer in headlights stage, their cognition of what I'm trying to explain is so far from what I'm actually saying that it's a real 'WTF??' moment. Feeling so alienated from most people, including my mother (which I'm sure you can all relate to as it's the nature of having autism), I don't think anyone on earth could be like me. On one hand, it's quite ironic, the other, really disturbing. To my understanding, you have to be pretty psychopathic to want such obeyance, all I'm asking for is for their comprehension from my perception, not their compliance to it.

Understanding intellectually about this condition does nothing to quell the churning I feel after dealing with someone with these problems. Alexithymia sux.

I've done everything I can to study about these conditions, try to alter my behaviour to suit their mentalities, but ultimately, I'm the one that ends up being hurt and they seem to just carry on as if nothing happened. After all, they are the 'victim', anyone else is the 'perpetrator' and have to live with that subliminal message until we work out what they are really doing and try and square it away within our own emotional states.

Have you had anyone like this in your life that you have to put up with? If so, how do you deal with the mindgames?

Yes, cluster B personalities clash greatly with me. I simply cannot deal with people who are like that. It’s like they make me function at a lower level. They’re my kryptonite.

For instance, I used to have a friend who was definitely, stereotypically BPD, though not formally diagnosed (family aversion to psychiatry; under-diagnosed in men). It was one of those friendships that starts in childhood but then continues much longer than it really should. I’ve actually broken off contact with him twice. Both times I’ve noticed radical improvements in my life.

Trying to alter your behavior to please them is fruitless. They will simply invent reasons to be upset with you. The best way to deal with their mind games is to not deal with their mind games. If at all possible, cut them loose. People with ASDs are the last people who need to deal with their abusive bulls**t, though they are all too often the victims of it.

Narcissists, psychopaths and histrionics want to ruin your life (and everyone else's) for the sake of satisfying their sadism and grandiosity. My father is a narcissist, and he mentally tortured my mother relentlessly. If your mother truly is a narcissist, I would advise covertly recording any abuse she might inflict on you and, when enough evidence builds up, present it to the authorities and hopefully get her in prison. Altering your behaviour to suit a narcissist's mentality will only cause further abuse as the narcissist becomes more confident.

Borderlines, by contrast, abuse because they are unable to control their intense emotions.

I dealt with my father's mindgames by punching him when I was around 18. He slowed it down considerably, though he continued to harass my mother at times. I am now away from home and would love to finally convince my mother to join me, but the decades of abuse have kept her from considering any other kind of life.

You really, really need a better role model than your mother, and it would do everyone good if you got her locked up. One guy told me a few months ago about how his narcissistic mother worked for children with special needs - and abused them so viciously that they cried whenever they were about to be sent to her for any reason. Even if you'll be safe, you definitely do not want her abusing other people.

Breaking off contact will provide a huge improvement to your life.

Thank you both so much for your replies. After a night filled with strange dreams on this subject I was relieved to see your answers this morning.

To Ah_Q - "They’re my kryptonite." So, so true! I think it is the conflict between the Aspie's lack of empathy and the BPD's misuse of it that makes the whole interaction very abusive. An NT has the empathy to keep up with what a BPD is doing and emotionally recognise why and how they feel hurt, whereas, we tend to be hurt without realising it until it's way too late. Even then, it's taken me over ten years of study, and reading about the subliminal damage they cause, before I started to emotionally cognate anything at all, before that it was just this indecipherable ball of black emotions.

Thank you for giving me an easy way to symbolise the effects of these relationships

To primaloath - I wish I could break off all contact with my mother, but unfortunately, the impact on the rest of the family will be too great for me to consider it. She has four grandchildren, one of them my 19 year old daughter, and to start any turmoil like that will only mean suffering for them. I'm her main target, for most grievances, especially since my father passed away three years ago, he was the other Aspie.

Some days, I'd love someone in authority to make her face her 'crimes', yet, I learnt at a young age, that's not a good idea. It was twenty five years ago now, so times have changed (I hope!), but telling my school counsellor about her violence only brought me more as the counsellor didn't follow protocol, but just told my mother.

On gathering evidence, due to the Listening Devices Act in Australia, you can't record someone without their knowledge and use it as evidence against them without a court order. Basically, I'd have to be a cop and apply for a warrant to do anything like that, otherwise, the court doesn't recognise it.

Thank you again so much for your advice though. Really, the only solution is to cut off as much contact as possible. The very thought alone makes me feel better!

Ironically, although we are so averse to and repulsed by the mere thought of a lie, narcissism, megalomaniacs, and any other defect of the ego, as Aspies (I include myself here although I think I'm borderline or NVLD), we tend to be most likely to get caught up in their web of BS and manipulation. I know I myself was, and I was tortured for literally a year over it. I look back and when I realize that I emotionally wasted a year of my life (and probably more, since my lifespan will undoubtedly be shorter as a consequence of all that adrenaline and cortisol ), it sickens me, but c'est la vie.

I don't think it's possible for BPD to coexist with Asperger's, since they are essentially opposites. Anyone who says otherwise clearly doesn't understand the disorders and their very definitions and distinctions. BPD = extremely high level of social empathy and reciprocity, just an inability to cope with, control, and mitigate emotions, as well as a chronic feeling of emptiness, but generally highly functional in casual social situations, etc. Asperger's = extremely low level of social empathy and reciprocity, and often cannot even identify higher-level emotions which results in a physical/physiological meltdown and stimming.

Can I just point out here that there are people on this board who have been diagnosed with both AS and BPD.

I am one of them, and it was hell. I was also diagnosed with traits of NPD and Anti-social PD and "psychopathic anti-social problems".......This was way before Aspergers was even heard of, especially in women. Now, the NPD and ASPD and "psychopathic blah blah" have been retracted since the AS diagnosis. Things are not always as they appear.

I lived a life of severe isolation and fear at times and I could be violent if provoked.

Take care

Mics

Sorry to hear you went through all that. If I may, I might suggest that perhaps the whole time, as you acknowledged, you simply had a "nonexistent" disorder and the docs threw the closest-fitting labels at you that they could discern. When they realized that AS was a possibility, the puzzle fit together a lot better and they retracted your other diagnoses.

What I guess I'm saying--and you're probably aware of this--is that being diagnosed with both doesn't mean you have both, but there is some overlap in the two, so I can see how there would be confusion. I honestly think that a lot of psychiatrists just aren't educated about AS enough to know that it can easily encompass most of the symptoms of BPD--and a lot more--but it not-so-subtly different ways.

Sorry to hear of your struggles Michhsta, sometimes I think psyches do more damage than good.

From what I understand, BPD (and all 'cluster B' disorders) stem from a lack of self identity so that their mind is attuned to a polarized cycle of idealisation and devaluation (a constant judgement of good v's bad) to obtain an ideal identity through other's perception. Whatever someone says to a BPD/narcissist/histrionic is subject to this evaluation and the BPD reacts in a manipulative manner to try and adjust the other person's point of view.

This seems differential to autism in that an autistic does not have the empathy to attempt such an exchange. Maybe in mild cases, but once past a certain point of severity, the empathy deficit ensures a very literal mind. To read into people's statements isn't an option.

As nova2012 said, I believe BPD is a differential to Aspergers, and many female Aspies have been quite wrongly diagnosed with BPD. A combination of PTSD and autism can appear like BPD to the observer, this is why it is imperitive to be diagnosed by someone who is experienced in the autistic spectrum.

From a personal perspective? I feel that many autistics are so self aware, their identity seperate from the outside because of sensory processing issues showing us that anything outside ourselves is seperate in itself (if that makes sense), or that the thing doesn't exsist because our senses don't perceive it. The judgement of 'good & bad' is not based upon others views, but mostly upon what stimulates us or hurts us. It's the fact that we are so self aware, but blind to others, that it makes us feel very alone.

I think Tennessee Williams said it best -"We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life." My theory is that most autistics are hyper aware of this, whereas, a BPD person tries to find the opposite.

Yea, I'm another person diagnosed with autism who has some rather strong traits of BPD as well. I don't seem them as opposites, though someone with both will obviously present very differently from someone with one and not the other.