Emotional Empathy

It isn’t easy having a loved one who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). One of the more hurtful things we hear about is their apparent lack of empathy. 

Empathy - To show empathy is to identify with another person’s feelings.  During times of dysregulation (an emotional response that is more intense than normal),  Borderline Personality sufferers are flooded with emotions.  This flood of emotions overwhelms the person with BPD (pwBPD), creating an internal focus that tends to be self centered and self absorbed. They literally don’t have room to spare to consider the emotions of others.  These exaggerated emotions are due to an over developed emotional sensitivity, which is likened to how a burn victim would respond to any perceived threats of being touched.  If a pwBPD perceives they are being attacked or criticized, or that there is even the possibility of being attacked, their defenses go into over drive and full attack mode. 

Adding to the confusion is the difficulty in how someone with BPD express’s themselves. The saying is “A rose by any other name is still a rose”, yet communication is accomplished due to our shared acceptance of what a word means. What-cha-ma-call-its are confusing, as are thing-a-ma-bobbers. If you can’t figure out or understand what something is, how do you then describe or share that experience with someone else? How do you find a common ground if neither of you can agree what to call a rose? A pwBPD has a noticeable problem with poor emotional vocabularies, meaning they find it hard to label - much less understand - their own feelings. This inability to understand or accept their own feelings leads to feelings of confusion, shame and self hatred, one of the defining traits of a BPD sufferer. 

When a BPD sufferer goes into self-protective mode, it is often misunderstood by their target. It is easy to see why those on the receiving end would become defensive. Being the target of someones dysregulation (which can often feel irrational and unjustified) is painful. The natural inclination for those targeted is to become defensive and/or aggressive themselves – yet it is this very defensiveness on the part of the targeted loved one which makes things worse.

When we try to understand their behaviors from a logical standpoint, we are judging them based on how we believe they “should” behave. This focus on “logic” leads to the conclusion that the pwBPD "should" be able to control themselves.  Believing these “should’s” prevents us from full acceptance that our loved one is mentally ill. Our judgments stand in the way of understanding how difficult it is for them to hear our logical arguments, due to their own emotional flooding. 

It’s hard to comprehend how someone’s emotions can get in the way of them perceiving the rightness of our “facts and logic” though.  After all, aren’t arguments won or lost based on who presents the best facts in the most logical way?  The problem with this line of thinking is that when a pwBPD is dysregulated, they aren’t operating out of the logical frontal lobe of their brains. Instead, they are trapped in the most primitive section of brain functioning, the amygdala. 

A recent study at Harvard Medical school using brain scanning to analyze how anger is processed, showed that people who were depressed had a decrease in blood flow to critical areas of the brain, reducing their inhibitions and interfering with their ability to consider the consequences of their actions. They experienced what researchers described as a double hit,  “A decrease in blood flow to these areas of the brain reduces both their ability to control impulsive acts and their feelings about the consequences of those acts, say punching someone in the mouth. There is both a lack of emotion and a lack of control. A double hit that adds up to inappropriate, even violent rage.” Normal individuals had an increase in blood flow to those reasoning parts of the brain. Paradoxically, their emotional sensitivity pushes them to become insensitive to others while simultaneously being unable to control their own emotions.

   Essentially we are speaking a different language (they are driven by emotions - we are defending with logic), thus why we so often wind up in those circular arguments that don't make sense.   Our use of logic and facts to try to persuade or convince them to see things "our way" only leads to an escalation in the argument. Our "facts" don't get the job done since it's "emotions" which are the problem, and those seem to be rarely addressed. This lack of understanding on our part is invalidating to the pwBPD. In essence, our logic (through our invalidation of their feelings) winds up hurting them.

One way to break this destructive cycle and to lessen the possibility of a pwBPD becoming dysregulated is to develop your emotional empathy.

Someone who suffers from BPD is constantly on the alert for any possible invalidation. Even the slightest criticism or hint of rejection hurts them and drives them into defense and attack mode. They become hyper vigilant to any possible threats (often making mountains out of molehills in the process) as a defensive measure to protect themselves. Until you accept this, you won't be able to empathize with the pain and paranoia they are constantly subjected to. To be more emotionally empathetic, you need to shift your views away from defending and explaining and justifying yourself, and work to focus on understanding and accepting the emotions and feelings your partner is displaying...

Non verbal signals and subtle communication cues are 80% of our message. Physical signs, like nodding your head to show you are paying attention, maintaining direct eye contact to show interest, taking the time to ask clarifying questions, using verbal cues to show you are paying attention like adding “uh huhs” and “I see’s”, and paraphrasing what they said while adding a label to describe the emotions you believe they are feeling will help the pwBPD to develop their own emotional vocabulary. These are some basic skills to shift things from your previous counterproductive response, to a more caring and accepting way of communicating. At it’s simplest - emotional empathy is taking the time to listen to what the pwBPD is saying, and trying to decode the emotions that are driving them, emotions they themselves may not understand. 

united for now