So please don't feel like this is an attack on you or diminishing that you feel the way you do. To survive my own emotional abuse (not in any way related to or caused by you) I like to play a game silently, by myself. A midst the chaos and calamitous irrational explosions over small things that lead to my wife wanting divorce or threatening me and screaming in my face while I treat her with love and respect- the game I quietly play is mental connect-the-dots as I try to figure out why or how she feels that way or thinks X. (the hook is this: there is often no logical explanation for an irrational mind... but then I turn to illogical logic and cheat to win my sanity)
My biased take:
However I can't help but get a bit defensive when posters describe their narcissistic relatives as 'BPDmom/BPDdad' or 'my Nsister, who I'm 100% sure has BPD'. Yes these people had terrible experiences at the hands of someone who may have had BPD, but BPD does not define us all as abusers, right?
Why would your defensiveness be their fault? I know it is a common way of saying it, but you mention you "can't help but" feel this way because of what amounts to them sharing their hurts from abusive relationships. Victims of abuse should be able to share their hurts so I don't believe they made you do anything. It seems worded where your defensiveness or anger isn't your fault, but is directly their fault. That would absolutely be normal abnormal thinking compared to my wife, but one thing I always have to do in dealing with her is the literal opposite. I have to NOT LET myself feel bad, hurt, or defensive, while the other party actively gives 110% to try to make me feel bad, hurt me, and attack me. Even then, other people cannot really be blamed for my actions, let alone my feelings.. and I do my best to have control over the only thing I do in this life: myself.. my feelings, my words, and my actions. It is not easy for me either, but it is necessary in my BP abusive relationship that since one person (the BP) is 'the victim' and all their bad is someone else's fault, for that lie to work that person must have someone to blame and to be at fault (me).
In your mind do you differentiate Narcissist Personality Disorder from BPD? I see that you believe those NPD's really treat their loved ones horrid and it reads like you take offense at BP's being related or lumped together by their victims (I could be mistaken). I understand that you do not want to be viewed as or accept yourself as an abuser. That is a healthy and normal feeling if you use it to actually not be an abuser (rather than simply using it to fuel denial and defense). In fact, that healthy desire against being an abuser is likely a powerful force that gets some BPD's to the lowest bottom they allow before really working for change.
Maybe I'm being petty but I hate the way BPD is seen within communities of victims of abuse.
Does when those people talk about BPD's make you feel like the persecutor instead of the victim? It is exceptionally hard for my wife to accept her fault, blame, or abuse, as she wants to be the victim, would being defensive that people have been abused by BP's be an extension of that?
Do you hate that they are being compared to NPD, where it may be easier for you to see the emotional abuse or do you hate that in those stories/threads the victim role is taken from the abuser (who is "suffering" with BPD)? Why I can see that would hurt is that I know my wife can believe the most irrational 'explanations' for why she is the victim and her horrid abuse is my fault... but it isn't. I imagine if she read some other BPD's VERY similar relationships that she would find it hard to point at similar actions to her own past and current abuse (by the thread OP's BP or NP), but be able to easily conjure reasons why that's normal or different from her actions or in the best that they should be given more sympathy as the 'real victim' of a personality disorder.
Yes these people had terrible experiences at the hands of someone who may have had BPD, but BPD does not define us all as abusers, right?
I cannot answer this universally, but for my wife I think it does. She would not abuse me at all, but especially in this way (I hope) if she didn't have BPD. On the flip-side of that, I cannot picture many BPD diagnosis going past 'depression, anxiety, rage, insecurity' or the base elements, without the interpersonal relationship aspect of true BPD. I do think that un-treated BPD is rather defined (or brought to light) by emotional abuse in relationships. It is very clear that you don't want to be that- and that is GREAT- you don't have to be. That's why I think acknowledgement of the disorder as well as acceptance of 'our own' feelings/actions/abuse are the only way to get better (which would preclude defensiveness to seeing victims of BPD/NPD's understanding that they go hand-in-hand with abuse).
Regarding the abuse, from my experience alone: Any relationship where one person see's others as ALL good or ALL bad, and themselves in a never-to-blame cornucopia of complexity that 'you just don't understand', that view their SO without feelings or opinions (if they ever fail to conform to the BP's), and have impulsive and irrational self destructive chaos explosions over small or imaginary slights from 6 months ago.... will be a relationship with abuse. One-sided abuse at best until it finally rips apart. To me at least, that describes my wife and her BPD left untreated. We don't have to have an abusive relationship, she can decide she wants to make progress in those areas and work at it- or she can continue to decide that she is the victim and never accept reality or her behavior. I bet most BP's don't get treatment, most NP's certainly don't. If that description is the untreated BP relationship it would be the most common kind of relationship people have with BP's. If a BP doesn't want to have that kind of relationship there are mental health services and hopefully still loved ones ready to help. If my wife tries to ignore her disorder, not actively work to improve and is in denial that she is currently abusing me or that BPD is tied to the abuse in our relationship- the disorder will open her up again to choosing to abuse me again. That realization and acceptance I imagine will be valuable if she ever starts working to stop this abuse.
I'm finding it difficult to articulate what I'm feeling... I am very aware that not all people involved in relationships with BP's act in this way and please tell me if I'm making something out of nothing or misunderstanding people when they act like this.
It would make sense to be unable to define this, if my wife were you I would know it hearkens from the fact that she can't view me on multiple levels at once and often doesn't understand her own motivations. I can't be a good person who says something or believes something she doesn't want me to, I can't be treated like a human being by her if there is any small thing she could imagine a reason to complain about. It is the all-or-nothing, black / white aspect, she sees me as the enemy if she sees me as having feelings at all (that don't immediately sacrifice themselves to conform to her's) and whenever she sees me as the enemy she is about to start a war.
I am very aware that not all people involved in relationships with BP's act in this way
You say here though that you understand not all of us in relationships with BP's act this way? In what way were we supposed to or not supposed to act? Are you upset that the victims of abuse feel like they were abused and view the condition that contributed to their loved one's abusing them as a condition that contributed to their abuse? Do you feel just as defensive for alcohol and alcoholics when a 250lb man beats his wife with a tire iron- IF the wife has the gall to blame her husband or his alcoholism?
I see that you can recognize in yourself that you have multiple levels and shades of understanding, good / bad, confusing and multi-layered emotions. I even see you extend that to those you relate with regarding BPD. As you surely don't believe yourself to be as bad as the worst stories you've read or every one of them to feel exactly as you. You are right. Where I see that line ends is outside those who share your BPD. Must they all be black or white. These are people that are often emotionally tortured. They are victims in their lives and homes trying to hold families together, while caretaking a BPD actively having impulses over imaginary slights that "make" the BP explode in self-destruction and try to tear it all down... They feel like victims of BPD because they are. Most still wouldn't view you as a monster for having the same disorder. Most of us understand that BPD is neither an excuse/permission nor a chain tethering you to abuse. You feel like a victim of the BPD because you are. Yet you extend other BP's the understanding that 'we are all shades of black and white that are misunderstood', and then the real victims of abuse must be cold-hearted and all-bad since they misunderstand you and don't grant you the same acceptance you don't grant them.
Honestly I think that the disconnect is when speaking of BPD, when the victims of their abuse post- they are not posting regarding healthy, non-abusive BP relationships. They are posting of relationships and problems relating to abusers who are either not getting treatment or are getting under-treated, or haven't acknowledged their disorder or taken responsibility for themselves. If I was to post a story about how great my marriage is and how much I love my amazing wife, I doubt I would blame that on BPD, people post about BPD when it is at the heart of tearing apart their lives, sanity, and health. Instead of getting angry and defensive you could recognize you both are fighting the same disease.