Many people are diagnosed with and trying to live with or are seeking treatment for Borderline Personality (BPD). Many are diagnosed with and over-compensating to live with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Twenty-five percent of those diagnosed with BPD are also diagnosed with NPD.
It is important for both those diagnosed with both BPD and NPD and their loved ones to understand that nature of this increased complexity. It not only means more complex experience for those with co-morbid BPD/NPD but for their loved ones and for Mental Health Professionals as well.
With those who have an BPD/NPD dual diagnosis you can see, in individual ways, the unfolding of much of the behaviour attributed to the description of each personality disorder. You may well, as a loved one, experience, a clingy, needy, vulnerable “borderline” and then minutes later, a raging, arrogant, controlling, blaming, explosion to distance you in the cold way of a gaslighting and highly manipulative calculating narcissist.
Trying to talk to the “borderline” aspect of your loved one, more often than not, (if they are not in treatment) will cause the stronger punishment of grandiose entitlement and verbal warfare of the Narcissist to be slung at you. They will be accusing you of doing to them everything that they are in that time, doing to you. There’s the crazy-making nature of the projection and punishment. You will be blamed because of a wound/trauma in his/her childhood. You will be required to give what the NPD side of the BPD/NPD wants, when they want it as they want it to have a chance to get out of the “dog house”. You can’t please a Narcissist so that reprieve will be short lived.
If you are a loved one you will need your own recovery and treatment. If you are a person diagnosed with BPD/NPD if you haven’t yet, you will benefit from seeking treatment. You don’t deserve to stay in your world of hurt. Others around you do not deserve to carry the burden of what you are not learning to cope with and change for yourself.
© A.J. Mahari, June 28, 2016 – All rights reserved.
