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Friendship Issue

I am not a psychologist. I took two semesters of psychology in college and then I quit because psychology is depressing.

But my understanding of the classical theory of personality disorders is that they are usually motivated by some underlying "obsessive" fear or "neurosis". Those words are in quotes because doctors don't use them anymore.

So for example psychopathy is usually motivated by the fear of being controlled, narcissism by the fear of being insignificant, Machiavellianism by the fear of being betrayed (this is me), and BPD tends to be motivated by the fear of being abandoned.

He has blocked me on all social media. He won't explain why he's upset with me. He has finacial issues and was going to do some work for me to earn money (he won't borrow money) but he just bailed on that which puts me in a tight position but he doesn't really care.

The shoe fits perfectly: this guy didn't just stop talking to you or say he didn't want to be friends with you, he ran out the door screaming and left his coat on the rack. That is extremely typical of the way people react to BPD behaviors. I can color in the picture with the usual script: he pulled back a little, you responded by trying to force yourself into his space, he got frightened and ran away.

This is called the reenactment cycle. The fear of abandonment leads to possessiveness which leads eventually to abandonment, usually in a sudden and painful way that reinforces the original fear. So where's the possessiveness?

I'm very intuitive and could tell one time when I was living further away that something was off with him and he's not great with messaging so, despite beinig crazy sick, I drove an hour with some excuse and saw him and, sure enough, he was going through a depression phase. I haven't known him long enough to know that it was depression but I could sense that something was wrong. And we talked and it was. And we discussed it. And then he was okay for like a bit. Then he got it again. And I was living closer so I was able to be there a bit more and talk to him about therapy and I looked up some therapists that I thought would be good for him since he's never been to therapy and kinda explained how it worked and stuff like that. He's broke so I was finding resources that could help with that too. But I'm pretty sure I'm the first friend he opened up to about this.

I think that'll do it.

There are two necessary (usually) conditions for breaking the reenactment cycle: you have to recognize the feeling which causes the behavior and you have to forgive yourself for having it. These steps are usually called (IIRC) insight and integration.

An important part of integration is being able to see both the negative and positive effects of the behaviors in question while still realizing that you need to control them. For example, it is possible that your fear of abandonment caused you to visit him when he didn't want to talk on Facetagramchat. It is actually likely that in SOME situations, this impulse can be valuable and it can lead you to help people and build stronger relationships. It is important to realize that learning to manage this desire does not mean that you will lose this part of yourself. But it is equally important to accept that following this feeling too easily or too often can cause you to "smother" people.

What is important about BPD is that it is, as an internet-famous Pittsburgh psychiatrist puts it, "an adaptive coping strategy". That is, the key aspect of BPD that makes it hard to break the reenactment cycle is that it works, it prevents the perception of being abandoned in the near-term. Because it works, people with BPD are often resistant to change. In order to change it is important to avoid the feeling of a drastic break with your former self (that never works).

The other thing, which I know less about, is that usually the bad defense mechanism needs to be replaced by a better defense mechanism.
 
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/\ I also thought that part strange reading it but you summed it up better than I wouldve.
 
Here's the thing: it's really important to remember that just because a certain action might be an instance of an unhealthy pattern that doesn't mean that the action itself is bad.

Like, the first time she went to visit him when he was feeling bad, was certainly unique. It's not something everybody would do. But it would be a little silly to contrive some distinction between the motivation here and the reason she did the other things. Yet I think that was actually a really kind and fully appropriate thing to do. That is the kind of personality trait someone can reasonably be proud of.

But in the subsequent cases, where "he got it again", i.e. withdrew from contact with others, her repeated attempts to be supportive probably started to feel like intrusions, and in some sense they were. You can't just jump into someone's life and start trying to fix all of their problems.

In fact I feel a little weird being this analytical about what someone else is doing. Internet forums are strange. This beer is called "Make America Juicy Again" lmao
 
and juicy it shall be^

seriously though people will pull back from drama

too much is offputting

being emotionally supportive is draining also if you got two people with mental health issues at some point they wont see eye to ey
 
This is very useful information in general. Still don't completely understand but getting closer anyway
 
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