Or, The Toxic Dance of Borderline Personality Disorder and Codependence
I have been on the receiving end of abusive behavior from adults with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), or Borderline traits (BT), both personally and professionally. By abusive behavior, I mean the offloading of personal responsibility that often comes with an explosion of criticism, blame, and anger.
No one is immune to being affected by abusive behavior. If you are a caring person, it is upsetting, confusing, and painful to experience.
Being a therapist, I’ve noticed patterns with this type of toxic behavior, and I am going to share them as well as the distorted thoughts that fuel them, in this post. I hope this will validate your experience and help to bring some insight into what’s going on.
It starts with an adult who refuses to take responsibility for their problems
It’s not listed in the diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder, but having worked in this field for decades, I can tell you that people with BPD/BT often defend against accepting responsibility for their problems. It is a priority to see themselves as a victim, and to deny their own agency, or their role in problems that happen.
Potential areas where people may avoid taking responsibility can be: managing their finances, dealing with problems with their children, their relationships, their own mental health, emotions, or trauma, substance abuse, workplace problems, or their work or life purpose. In general though, people with BPD/BP often want other people to take care of their needs and problems for them.
As adults, we all must take responsibility for our own problems and for having what we want in our lives. No one else has the power to do this, not even a therapist. As a therapist, I can only try to lead people towards healthy behavior, I can’t control their choices.
They latch on to a caring and responsible person
When a person with BPD/BT finds a caring and responsible person, who is willing to have some type of relationship with them (personal or professional), they are drawn to them. Over time, they latch onto this person in a dependent way, that is inappropriate for an adult.
In the beginning, they may put the other person on a pedestal, creating a sort of parent/child dynamic or a powerful/helpless dynamic. The person with BPD/BT begins to act out their pattern of helplessness and playing the victim (complaining a lot about others or talking about how they have been wronged by others or by situations), which elicits sympathy from a caring person at first.
If you are a person with codependence, you may also feel drawn to this person in return, because it gives you the opportunity to prove yourself and play the role of a rescuer or fixer (Spoiler alert – this is your childhood trauma getting triggered. Did you grow up with a parent or other adult who didn’t take responsibility for their problems?).
A person who is not codependent may feel compassion, but would also see that the habit of playing the victim and acting helpless is a big red flag.
An expectation that the other person will take over responsibility
The person with BPD/BT has an expectation that the caring and responsible person will “fix” or “rescue” them by taking over responsibility for whatever their problems are. Sometimes this expectation is voiced, sometimes it’s not. But it’s there, and it gets stronger over time.
Therapists are especially vulnerable to this, because people are coming to us for help with their problems. But when a person continues to refuse to help themselves, refuses to take responsibility for their problems, and continues to self-sabotage, they will not get better, even in therapy. This is also very difficult for therapists to address directly, because a person with BPD/BT often experiences any challenge to their behavior or choices as rejection or invalidation, and will double down on their helplessness, self-pity, and play the victim role with the therapist. For example, they may claim the therapist has now wounded them by suggesting they do something different, how could they say that if they truly understand them? They must be a terrible therapist.
Their jealousy, self-pity, and shame begins to show up in the relationship
Over time, invariably the person with BPD/BT begins to feel jealous or envious. Why does the other person have what I want? That’s not fair. All the while, they avoid acknowledging that the responsibility for things to be different falls squarely on them, and it’s impossible for another person to give them what they want, or to do it for them.
As they engage in a relationship with a person who takes responsibility for their lives and their happiness, the person with BPD/BT becomes filled with jealousy, self-pity and shame over their unaddressed problems. They continue to self-sabotage. They run to the other person expecting to be rescued.
Impossible expectations lead to blame and anger
Eventually, the person with BPD/BT begins to blame and become angry at the other person for failing to rescue or fix them. They begin to think, How dare the other person not give me what I need! Can’t the other person see I’m suffering? The answer must be, they don’t really care about me. They want me to be stuck in this misery. They are mean. They are uncaring. They are selfish.
At some point, the person with BPD/BT blows up all their anger and blame at the other person. It can erupt seemingly out of nowhere. The person with BPD/BT reaches a peak of jealousy and shame and their anger takes over. They see themselves as being wronged. They’ve been expecting the other person to fix or rescue them, it’s not happening, and now they are gonna let that other person know just how uncaring, stupid, and selfish they are and how much they’ve hurt them.
When you are on the receiving end of this anger and blame, it is confusing and hurtful. If you have self-worth and good interpersonal boundaries, you might feel angry at the attack. If you defend yourself, it won’t do any good. They will double down. Seeing themselves as the helpless victim of any situation is how people with BPD/BT function. You are not going to be able to change that, either. They will refute any logic, because they need to maintain their view of themselves as the victim.
If you don’t recognize that you don’t have the power to control another person’s choices and problems, it can be extremely hurtful and painful. You’ve been trying your best, but ultimately, you cannot control them. In either case, when you are a caring and compassionate person, you may take the blame and the anger that’s being directed at you, and question yourself. It’s hard not to be affected by this distorted perspective.
They play the victim role, even when they are being abusive
The purpose of all this anger and blame being directed at you is to pressure you to take responsibility for them all the harder. If you don’t take it up, you may be discarded by this person. Because in their minds, you have hurt them.
This anger and blame is the person with BPD offloading all the shame they feel for their problems onto you. It’s not your shame, you are not the one in the wrong. You can’t stop another person from sabotaging themselves. You cannot control their choices, no matter how much you care about them.
To make things more confusing, often the person with BPD/BT intends to continue the relationship, even after this abusive explosion. They may try to avoid talking about it or addressing it, and want to just act as though it never happened. If you show that you are affected or upset by it, they’ll ask “what’s wrong with you?” They will not acknowledge that you are human, that you have feelings of your own, or that their behavior could impact you.
In worst case scenarios, you’ll be gaslighted into it being YOUR problem if you got upset, because they were just telling you like it is. If you stay in the relationship, you are now participating in a cycle of abuse. If the person with BPD/BT doesn’t take responsibility for their behavior, the anger and resentment will build, and the explosion and blame will happen again.
They are stuck in an abusive cycle
The only answer to their problems is for the person with BPD to recognize that only they have the power to take action or make different choices to help themselves. As long as they are shopping around for someone else to fix it, they will stay stuck in this abusive cycle with other people.
If you have been on the receiving end of this type of abuse from a Borderline, I can help you understand and process this confusing experience, and to release the toxic shame and anger that has been offloaded onto you.