The Case For Maintaining Stigma and Judgement of BPD Behavior
Cluster B individuals all deny obvious realities as part of their mind games. In BPD in particular, this takes the shape of insisting that things happened in a way that they feel justifies their intense emotions and abusive temper tantrums. These are not unconscious acts, but instead a component of calculated systematic abuse, enabled by maintaining a serious character deficiency. The behaviors of BPDs deserve every bit of stigma the diagnosis carries with it.
How We Know They Know
At face value it’s not clear that a BPD knows what they are doing, and there is considerable debate on the topic. This confusion is the result of listening to (and believing) BPDs self-reporting. It is extremely easy to clear up with a single fact: BPDs habitually refrain from their overtly abusive behaviors when there are outside witnesses. If they have control and awareness of their actions to the degree that they can control when they do it, they must have control over if they do it. Similarly, they must know that others would judge them harshly if they acted out, or they wouldn’t bother acting differently with witnesses present. People with BPD are therefore: 1. Aware of what they are doing, 2. In control of what they are doing, and 3. Aware that their actions are considered reprehensible by others.
Some Typical Tactics
One implicit attitude that underpins a BPD’s abusive behaviors is that they believe their immediate feelings determine what is right and what is wrong. They even determine what is real and what is not. The degree to which they feel rage at you is the degree to which you have done wrong, in their view. Because they all are hypersensitive, insecure, and have a fragile ego, anything you say can elicit the BPDs rage.
To them it is unimportant if they misheard you, if what you say is factually true, if they have previously been on the same page, or if you swear you’re not feeling what they are telling you that you are feeling. It is their rage that determines right from wrong. They will use this implicit attitude to bully you into whatever it is they want. They will call you cold and heartless if you resist. BPDs will present their suffering as being caused by you, blame you for it, and outwardly insist that they are the victims. They do this while often initiating 100% of the conflicts in a relationship.
Another implicit attitude BPDs operate under is that they have a right to “have their cake and eat it too” or to “have it both ways”. Using these tactics, they construct arguments that jar other people into confusion. For instance, when talking about their condition, they might insist that BPD is as simple as “feeling things stronger than other people”. They then assert that it creates “difficulties in relationships” and claim that there is nothing more to it than that. They might then go on to assert that there are as many types of BPD as there are people with BPD.
Translating the BPD Newspeak
In doing so, they covertly claim the entire playing field. BPD is so simple it can be adequately described in a short and innocuous sentence, and simultaneously so complicated that no two cases are the same. They’ve now laid claim to BPD being both laughably simple and infinitely complicated. Both are complete fabrications.
The “relationship difficulties” they admit to is in fact an ongoing and compulsive pattern of abuse perpetrated by the BPD. The diagnostic criteria for BPD are inseparable from moral implications, but that fact is obscured by rigorously neutral medical lingo. The moral implications of the diagnostic criteria mean that the symptoms of BPD cannot be separated from the inevitability that they will abuse people systematically. For instance, “Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)”. This behavior is clear-as-day abuse when it is persistent. Another example is “Pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by extremes between idealization and devaluation (also known as “splitting”)”. Alternating between idolization and “devaluation” is a form of abuse that causes trauma bonds (like Stockholm syndrome).
“Relationship difficulties” is therefore a euphemism for something along the lines of “a pervasive and complex pattern of calculated abuse, both covert and overt, that causes severe and life-changing damage to their targets, while the BPD learns nothing, blames the victim, claims to be the victim, and goes on to do it all again”.
BPD is Far Less Complex Than They Want Us to Think
There are not “many” forms of BPD, and certainly not a unique form for every one of them (notice the inherent narcissism in the idea). The reason there is something called BPD is that patterns have been observed in people. Because many people show the same patterns for the same underlying reasons, the phenomenon has been given a name. In fact, BPDs are predictable for the most part. An understanding of the disorder and a few conversations with other former targets, and it becomes almost embarrassingly clear that they are all more or less the same in their disordered thinking and their toxic behaviors. They all have individual personalities, yes, and that may push the BPD expressions in one direction or another, but the disordered and toxic parts of them are common to each and every one of them.
The fact that we have given their disordered thinking and toxic behavior pattern a name and a place in the DSM means nothing more than that a pattern has been observed across many individuals, that the pattern is objectively harmful and abnormal, and that the pattern is considered pathological. BPDs love to frame their antics as an illness, something they have no control over, a medical condition like any other, and therefore undeserving of any stigma or judgement. This is another insidious mind trick.
The Indictment
As has been shown, BPDs are aware and in control of their actions and know that those actions are reprehensible. To claim they suffer from an illness and to assert those implications from that, is abuse at several levels. First, as shown, it’s a lie that they cannot control it. Second, it’s an inherent minimization of the severity of their reprehensible behavior. Third, they’re going for the victim status, despite being chronic perpetrators. Fourth, the things they do to others deserve every bit of stigma and judgement that can possibly be levied against them. Notice the choice of words here. It is not the “illness” itself that deserves it – it’s the actions all BPDs engage in that deserve our condemnation. This may seem like splitting hairs, but making that distinction banishes any doubts around being ableist or otherwise unfairly judging a “medical condition”.
A particularly deceptive method they use to gain sympathy is to point out that they themselves were victims of child abuse, and that the abuse is what made them this way (again, so they can’t help it and are absolved of responsibility). This tactic uses a truth to perpetrate a lie. It is true that a majority of BPDs were abused as children. It is not true that this fact makes them any less responsible for their actions, and it was already shown that they really can help it. The reason their childhood in no way diminishes their responsibility is simple.
BPD is a Medical Characterization of Socially Destructive Behavior Patterns
No matter what they’ve experienced, there are millions of people out there who experienced the same or worse and who did not turn out to be persistent abusers themselves. This necessarily means that the inherent character of a person plays a deciding role in how adverse childhood events affect a person in adulthood and thus if a person develops BPD, or not.
Because the diagnostic criteria for BPD are inseparable from obviously immoral actions, and because character is the fixed and intrinsic factor in developing BPD, it is fair to say that BPDs persistently act in violation of morality (or they wouldn’t get the diagnosis) and that they maintain a deficient character. A person who habitually acts against commonly accepted (and arguably innate) morality and whose character is deficient would certainly fit the usual mold for “being a bad person”.
Parrying the BPD Pity Party
Some will try to temper our outrage by trying to get us to believe that “everyone can change”. It doesn’t matter if that is true or not, a person is what a person has done. If a chronic abuser sets out to change, that’s wonderful. That doesn’t mean that the person’s victims should feel sympathy, hope, desire reconciliation, or not tell the world what the BPD did to them. BPDs and enablers like to moralize over the things the victims of the BPD say. As if telling the truth of what they did is somehow unfair, as if the abuse perpetrator gets to decide what the innocently targeted has to say.
They love to shift both blame and burden of proof. A person as foul as a chronic abuser is the one who must prove that they have changed. Meaningful change would include understanding the devastation BPDs inflict. A person understanding this would not argue to end the stigma, because active BPD means chronically and willfully serial-abusing others and stubbornly maintaining a deficient character. Instead, they demand compassion and unconditional absolution, almost always sliding right back into characteristic behaviors if met with resistance. Nothing could be more deserving of stigma.
Their Delusional Antics and Assertions
BPDs chronically “forget” what they have done, claim you have done something you didn’t, generally twist reality, and use abuse to enforce these assertions when challenged. The nature of the disorder includes being unable to fairly self-reflect and unable to maintain a stable personality. The result is that they alter the facts to fit whatever mood they are in. BPD therefore necessarily includes a component of delusional thinking, the magnitude of which changes depending on the intensity of their feelings from moment to moment. They can accurately identify their feelings but are unable to internalize why they are feeling them (the answer to this is almost always an underlying fear of abandonment). Because BPDs cannot maintain a stable perception of what is real and what is not, are unable to accurately self-reflect, and willfully assert fantasy as reality, they are the least qualified people to speak about the disorder.
These BPDs, whose condition is inseparable from delusional thinking as well as rejecting accountability for their misdeeds, would try to convince us that the pervasive negative perception of them is a result of misunderstanding. This is nothing but wishful thinking. It is BPDs who misunderstand their condition, and this is at the heart of the nature of the disorder itself. Taking a BPD’s word for what their condition is and what it is not is no different than trusting a psychopath to give you accurate insight into themselves. It is a fact that BPDs are much more similar to psychopaths than they are to people who do not have a Cluster B Personality disorder.
What You Can Do
In conclusion, BPDs deserve every bit of stigma that can be mustered, and non-cluster B people will avoid them at all costs or risk losing everything worthwhile to an almost-psychopath.