This post really hits home for me. I tried to make a post elsewhere yesterday but the nasty PMs picked up again from trolling children, so I am going to post over here in response to this and sort of wander off again.
I think that FLEAs do this, as well, as the mistaking the empathy.
I had an ex who was very mentally ill and I spent many, many years with her and one of the things I picked up from that was a keen sense of the completely unempathetic, not sure if that's a word, but it's the right word for this. However, I missed and still don't know, the behaviors of my latest ex and I have yet to determine if she was empathetic or not. She sort of revealed her true self after she left and told the rest of the world how she really felt about me, called me all sorts of names, etc.
I don't think she was ever the type to follow me around reddit, etc. However, if she was, I would point her to this post and say: Please explain to me if this was what was going on for both of us? Did we make a mistake in thinking things about each other and assuming our own situations were THIS? I think having this in mind for a research topic/counseling subject would have been the key to us having a successful post-relationship friendship or continuing our relationship. Why? Because we both came from situations where our tuned up senses would have done this and could have mistaken this for something else.
We both ended up pointing the uBPD finger at each other when what is happening here might have been the results of us having spent years with uBPD and uNPD and uASPD people.
Thanks for posting and getting this off of your chest. The FLEAs I have developed could have happened from dealing with exactly what you describe, for years no less.
The line that stands out for me the most is: The thing I find so ironic is that most BPDs could not handle being on the receiving end.
We both did handle it, but I think our both being with people for so many years that didn't caused us to over ramp our sensitivity to what you describe here and develop our own sense of trying to figure out "fake empathy" or "projections".
Hope my rambling makes sense. I need coffee.