Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life

by Margalis Fjelstad

The BP finds it hard to hold in mind different feelings and different qualities of personality together at the same time.

Often the BP responds quite differently to the same situation at different times. This makes it very hard to predict how a BP may act in any given moment.

Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats of self-mutilation. The BP’s emotional reactions to disappointment, loss, fear, anxiety, or abandonment can be extreme.

She may expect others to not think about her when she is gone but at the same time may be enraged by not having her needs anticipated. She may have no sense of who she is, what she wants in life, or what her skills, values, or beliefs are, but she may also expect a loved one to know these things for her.

In addition, the BP typically forgets what he said and did a few hours or a day later, and he almost never understands the emotional impact of his outburst on his loved ones. While the hurtful words and actions still sting in the other person, the BP sees no reason to apologize or even discuss what happened because as far as the BP is concerned, it never even happened or is “all in the past.”

Hostile, devaluing verbal attacks on loved ones while being charming and pleasant to strangers.

Blaming, accusing, and attacking loved ones for small, even trivial mistakes or accidents.

People who become Caretakers for a BP/NP also seem to have a certain set of personality traits. These traits do not constitute a “personality disorder.” In fact, they can be highly valued and useful to relationships and families, at work, and socially, especially when they are at moderate levels. They include a desire to do a good job, enjoyment in pleasing others, a desire to care for others, peacemaking, a gentle and mild temperament, and calm and reasonable behaviors. These traits can be the hallmark of someone who is easy to get along with, caring of others, and a good worker, spouse, and parent.

However, in the NP/BP family, the needs and wants of the BP/NP significantly dominate the time, money, and energy of the entire family. The spouse of the BP/NP spends most of his or her time taking care of the BP/NP, and the children are expected to act like adults by taking care of themselves as well as doing what they can to appease the BP/NP.

The BP/NP has much more intense reactions to all of their feelings than normal individuals. These negative feelings are so upsetting that they try to push them away by projecting them onto someone else, especially someone who is emotionally and intimately close, such as a child or a spouse. The BP/NP has a desperate need to have someone in his or her life to carry these overwhelming negative feelings, someone to accuse of causing the internal pain, someone to hate so as not to hate the self.

But when BP/NPs finds a Caretaker, he or she has found someone to dance to the relationship tune, someone who is adaptable and willing to be intimate and close one minute and who will also feel guilty and responsible enough to hang around when the BP/NP pushes him or her away. Caretakers find that it is extremely difficult to abandon a BP/NP. The Caretaker feels almost a calling to rescue someone who is emotionally hurting. It seems like the right and loving thing to do, but then you can’t see any way to leave without devastating the BP/NP.

Caretakers have a propensity to be responsible for everything. You may have filled the role of peacemaker, soother, or go-between in your family. Being able to create a calm feeling in an explosive, dysfunctional family; to diffuse intense conflicts; or to have compassion for the BP/NP’s pain may be ways that you feel a sense of contribution and value. Like the BP/NP, you may not have received enough attention or validation growing up, or you may have been rewarded for giving up your own wants and needs.

You are highly likely to have come from a dysfunctional family with a parent, sibling, or other relation who is a BP/NP.

Being a Caretaker to a BP/NP is equivalent to being a full-time, unpaid therapist even though the BP/NP is an adult who should be caring for him- or herself. BP/NPs need you to nurture, need you to listen, be caring and concerned, take responsibility for negative feelings, and create a world that is no longer scary. For the BP/NP, this means that the Caretaker must merge emotionally and psychologically with the BP/NP by thinking, feeling, needing, and wanting exactly the same as the BP/NP.

This can then lead to a dissolving of the personality of the Caretaker over time, resulting in increasing depression, anxiety, frustration, confusion, guilt, lowered self-esteem, and even physical stress symptoms.

BP/NPs have a unique way of “seeing” the world to make it feel safer and less chaotic. It is called splitting. Splitting is a defense mechanism that divides the world—all events, people, and feelings—into either good or bad.

Whenever they have bad feelings, BP/NPs become intensely frightened and fear being overwhelmed by them. So BP/NPs place all the blame and responsibility for those bad feelings on someone/something outside themselves as a way to get rid of those feelings. The BP/NP needs the Caretaker to carry these bad feelings and be responsible for them.

Codependent behaviors could be described quite similarly to those that Caretakers use. However, most Caretakers take on this role almost exclusively inside the family and primarily only with the borderline or narcissist. Often Caretakers are very independent, good decision makers, competent, and capable on their own when not in a relationship with a borderline or narcissist. It is almost as if the Caretaker lives in two different worlds with two different sets of behaviors, rules, and expectations, one set with the BP/NP and another with everyone else.

BP/NPs often require their loved ones to say and do things in very particular and exact ways. If you don’t get the words or actions exactly right or you stray into topics that are off limits, the BP/NP is likely to discount any positive attempts you have made and explode in anger or retreat into deadly silence.

Anyone who asks them for more than they feel they can do is likely to get verbally abused or made to feel horrible for even considering burdening them with such a request. Therefore, the Caretaker takes on more and more responsibility and family obligations because the BP/NP just won’t do them, and it is way too much work to even ask the BP/NP to do his or her share.

By blaming others for everything that goes wrong (including the BP/NP’s own uncomfortable internal feelings), the BP/NP is able to avoid his or her own hostile, internal self-judgment. This blame causes a feeling in the family that no one is ever good enough and that you, the Caretaker, somehow must fix the BP/NP’s pain.

If they feel a certain way, BP/NPs will assume that someone or something outside of themselves made them feel that way. As the closest family member, the Caretaker is usually the one who must take the blame for how the BP/NP is feeling.

BP/NPs often hold an extremely perfectionist standard for the behavior of others while expecting very few or no consequences for their own behaviors. This unfair yet rigid application of rules and roles by the BP/NP is treated as normal by everyone in the family.

After the BP tells you how uncaring you’ve been, she wants to be comforted.

BP/NPs do not see things from an objective or reality perspective. They have a feeling, act on it for their own benefit, and then make up a plausible reason for why they did it. The reason doesn’t have to make sense in reality because the BP/NP doesn’t operate in reality. The BP/NP’s motives and conclusions make sense only to the BP/NP. When you try to make BP/NPs see that their thinking doesn’t make sense, they can talk in circles until you are totally confused about what is going on.

However, that one has to be the BP/NP. You are expected to think like the BP/NP, feel like him or her, and share the same opinions and behaviors as he or she has. Differences cannot be tolerated and are attacked by the BP/NP because to disagree means to the BP/NP that he or she is wrong, bad, or shameful.

It is very difficult in this situation to know who you are, what you think, or what you actually feel.

Because of the demand for everyone to be the same in the BP/NP family, intimacy is completely absent. Intimacy does not occur when everyone must be alike. Your need for intimacy, however, is a deep human craving and is part of your life purpose. People in BP/NP relationships have both a great longing for intimacy because it is missing and a great fear of it because it would disrupt the pseudointimacy of the “all is one” feeling of merging that they believe keeps everyone emotionally safe and accepted.

True intimacy is really a mutual sharing of one person’s most personal and individual thoughts, feelings, and beliefs with another, the assumption being that the two people are unique and different and that the sharing is a test of love and acceptance of each for the other. Intimacy solidifies your sense of being seen and accepted for who you really are.

As a Caretaker, you have developed at least a limited sense of individuality or sense of self. Most often, this self functions pretty well in the outside world. In the world of work, you may be highly conscientious and helpful, do a thorough job, and be seen as a valued employee. However, Caretakers have a tendency to “burn out” because of overdoing, continual worry about being liked, and the constant striving to be perfect. In spite of that, the work world makes sense to you.

Occasionally, when you feel especially upset, you may lash out and say what you are feeling, but immediately you find yourself feeling profoundly ashamed and guilty for “being so mean.” You then apologize and begin trying to be even nicer, more thoughtful, and more giving but still without regard to what you are getting out of the relationship.

Chronic low-level depression is common when you ignore your own needs and feelings for long periods of time.

You may find yourself stuck in the relationship with the BP/NP because you are a good-hearted person, caring, understanding, and rather confused by the strange behavior of the BP/NP.

However, not showing emotion does not mean that you have no strong feelings. It simply means that you have trained yourself to deny your own responses in favor of paying attention to the BP/NP.

You can’t get out of the Caretaker experience of being a doormat until you can acknowledge the real level of emotional reaction going on in the borderline, in the narcissist, and in yourself.

When you deny your wants and feelings over and over, try to smooth things over for the BP/NP too long, and force yourself to stay calm even when you feel furious, it is not surprising that you eventually blow up, start an argument, or feel like you just can’t stand a certain irritating situation one moment longer. Then, seemingly out of the blue, you explode. This can be startling and surprising to you and to others.

Fear of anger puts you at the mercy of the BP/NP who has no fear of expressing his or her feelings and even blaming them on you. As long as you are afraid of anger, you will find yourself stuck in the Caretaker role.

Caretakers consistently say they are not needy. After all, you can’t be the rescuer if you have needs, too. You see the BP/NP as the needy person, and certainly he or she demonstrates neediness in a continuous fashion. However, Caretakers also have very deep and unfilled needs.

When you look inside, you will see that you have a secret and intense desire to be seen, heard, cherished, and nurtured just like everyone else. However, you may not become aware of these needs until you are exhausted, ill, overwhelmed, or completely beyond your ability to cope.

This explosion of neediness and vulnerability is often interpreted by you and the BP/NP as evidence that both of you are alike. Keep in mind that your show of neediness happens once or twice a year and that the BP/NP’s neediness happens dozens of times a day.

Caretakers do not let go of any relationships easily; you will try everything possible, including giving up your own feelings and needs, to save the relationship with the BP/NP. You may feel that letting go of this relationship is a personal failure.

Why does any possibility of your relationship with the BP/NP ending make you feel so anxious? Could it be that being in a relationship (even a dysfunctional one) gives you hope that someone else will meet your needs, that is, the needs that you don’t acknowledge but have anyway?

The belief that you have to have the BP/NP in your life to function and be happy is an emotional distortion. Believing that you absolutely must be successful in this relationship or else you are a failure is another.

Feeling deeply unlovable keeps you believing that you are “lucky” that anyone would want you. As long as you dislike and disapprove of yourself, you will need someone else to prove to you that you are lovable by his or her attention and need. When the person from whom you are seeking that approval is as mentally and emotionally dysfunctional as the BP/NP is, you can never fully get that validation.

Whenever you make a mistake or you are less than perfect, you are blamed, criticized, put down, or made fun of by the BP/NP. Although BP/NPs respond with rage to any expectation of perfectionism from you, Caretakers respond by making greater attempts to do a better job. This demand to be perfect leads to anxiety, a sense of failure, and negative self-attack.

Expecting perfection in yourself leads you to be too responsive to criticism from the BP/NP. You take his or her criticisms to be facts rather than merely opinions. This gives the BP/NP lots of ammunition to manipulate you. All the BP/NP has to do is criticize you to get what he or she wants.

On the one hand, you may feel you are the superior person because you act better and are often more competent than the BP/NP. But you still get the message that you are the inferior or “wrong” person who is to blame. This double message can create long-term confusion, resentment, stress, and hostility, even though you may not be aware of it. In order to follow your assigned role in the family as the Caretaker, you must always be “good” or “nice.”

When you do not know what you want, what you feel, or what you really love, you do not have much of a life to call your own.

You think and hope that by your example the BP/NP will somehow learn to give back to you. It can be quite awhile later before you become aware of being hurt and angry at not getting anything in return. The BP/NP doesn’t change by the example of others. He or she is too self-absorbed to notice.

You may even find that you can’t let go of the relationship with the BP/NP until he or she gives in and starts giving you back the love you have been giving for so long.