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March 6 - March 23, 2019
Rather than change your thinking based on the lack of results, you make excuses for why the BP/NP isn’t responding, and you just keep on giving
The BP/NP doesn’t understand the concept of reciprocity, that is, the equal back-and-forth, give-and-take of relationships.
“Never give up” could be the Caretaker’s motto. To you it seems disloyal, selfish, and unloving for you to even consider giving up on any relationship.
much of the thinking and behavior of the BP/NP is illogical and self-serving and doesn’t make sense to anyone else.
the delusional belief that if you could just find the “right way” to explain things, then the BP/NP would see things clearly and the relationship could be healed.
BP/NPs seem to have a random mix of logical and illogical thoughts,
the BP/NP is unable to consistently resp...
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The BP/NP wants to be the sole focus of your energy.
If there is no way to get what you want from a direct approach, then manipulation is the only solution. Manipulation is the tool of the powerless person.
Good manipulation serves the needs of everyone without hurting anyone else. Bad manipulation hurts others.
One of the big problems with taking care of your own needs is that you may never have identified what your needs are. You may have very little idea of what you want other than a vague idea of being happy, feeling loved, or being cared for. If you can’t put these general feelings into some concrete behavioral terms, you can’t get very far in filling those needs.
Enmeshment happens to some extent in most long-term relationships, but it is extreme in the relationship with the BP/NP.
The difference between caring for others and being caring of others is that when you care for others, you are doing for them what they should be doing for themselves. In families, we appropriately care for children, but we should be caring of other adults. When you are caring of others, you give them the respect and freedom to be who they are, to take care of themselves, and to be responsible for their own actions.
Being caring of the BP/NP would mean allowing the BP/NP to be just who he or she is. It would include caring that the BP/NP is angry, hurt, fearful, and demanding without feeling responsible to “make” him or her feel better, without feeling that you “caused” the problem, and without thinking that you have to fix his or her feelings or do what the BP/NP wants. Being caring of the BP/NP would mean staying emotionally detached from his or her mental and emotional distortions.
personality disorders: people who have them cannot perceive the changes needed, they feel threatened by change, and they often don’t follow through with the changes needed.
the BP/NP does use anger as a way to control others.
Learning to stand your ground in disagreements and to handle the BP/NP’s anger is essential for you to function without being so vulnerable. Your fear of the BP/NP’s anger leads you to actually reinforce and increase this pattern of emotional blackmail from the BP/NP every time you give in to his or her demands when the BP/NP is angry.
Although Freud said that people select a marriage partner who is like the parent of the opposite gender, a more updated selection process has been observed. People coming from dysfunctional families select a marriage partner who is most like the significant family member with whom they have “unfinished business.” 1 That means that if you had a BP/NP parent, grandparent, or sibling, you are much more vulnerable to selecting a BP/NP spouse.
What is unfinished business? This refers to intimate interactions, emotions, beliefs, and patterned behaviors that you developed in childhood that you continue to follow with the BP/NP in the present even when you see that they don’t work.
This pattern of unfinished business or repeated patterns in marriage relationships has been observed for decades in the issues of alcoholism, multiple divorces, early pregnancies, abuse, and high conflict as well. Your family of origin is your template for how you live in relationships now unless you work to consciously change it.
Trying to fix, soothe, placate, care for, and appease the BP/NP are all forms of rescuing.
Your deep need for the BP/NP see what his or her behavior is doing to you and to make the changes that could heal your relationship are all part of denial.
Denial is a stage of nonmovement.
“Confusion is the mind’s way of buying time.”
Anger typically cycles in and out along with denial.
Your feelings of anger come about from having expectations that the BP/NP would, should, or could act normally. There is not yet an acknowledgment that the BP/NP has a real and permanent mental disorder.
Humans try to bargain away physical illness and even death, so it is not surprising that we would try to bargain away mental illness, which is much less concrete and more confusing.
Denial, anger, and bargaining tend to come in cycles.
Anger comes when negative events break through your denial. But since anger is so uncomfortable to Caretakers, you move to bargaining to try to change things without rocking the boat too much. Bargaining solutions may work for a few days or months, so then you might even move back into denial that anything is really wrong, until the cycle starts all over when the BP/NP’s negative behaviors pop up again.
Acceptance can actually bring a sense of relief and calmness. It is at this stage that you finally understand that there is nothing that you can do to fix the behaviors, feelings, or thinking of the BP/NP. This understanding brings a sense of calm because now you know there is no longer any need to be angry at yourself or the BP/NP. There is no longer any need to put energy, thought, and time into giving in, placating, demanding, or tricking the BP/NP to make things work better. And there is no longer any need to continually work on understanding why the BP/NP does what he or she does.
The relationship with the BP/NP can never be normal. It will always be a relationship in which you are dealing with a mentally ill person.
Boundaries are the invisible separations between yourself and others. They identify where you (your thoughts, feelings, responsibilities, wants, and needs) begin and end.
And like skin, having boundaries protects your sense of self from foreign elements that could cause you harm, such as other people’s feelings, opinions, demands, and priorities.
Your sense of self is the psychological structure inside of you built from your genetic gifts, life skills, dreams, physical and emotional experiences, thoughts, needs, and yearnings for your own life.
Just as the first four stages of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression cycled over and over until acceptance was reached, so do the last three stages of setting boundaries, letting go, and rebuilding cycle over and over until true self-care is reached.
care sets up a reverse scenario. That is, you fill yourself up until you don’t need the other person to fill you up. Then, whatever you give will come from a place of abundance rather than neediness.
The only way to stop being a Caretaker is to stop playing the rescuer/persecutor/victim game with the BP/NP.
you are reinforcing the BP/NP’s behavior when you collapse in the face of his or her anger. If you give in to the BP/NP’s demands, he or she will demand more. If you take the blame for the BP/NP’s actions, he or she will blame you even more.
Do not fall into amnesia about the volcanic behaviors you’ve witnessed in the BP/NP. Do not feed the BP/NP’s emotion cycle. The fact that you don’t have these same interactions with friends or colleagues at work is the indicator that you don’t cause them to happen.
Seek approval for your sense of self from the facts of your own actions and decisions, not from the ranting of a person inside an emotional nightmare.
BP/NP communication is often vague, convoluted, and confusing, starting out with one topic and morphing into a dozen or more topics with no conclusions and no decisions made at the end.
the Yale communication model. Use it first with yourself to clarify what you actually feel and want. Then try it with your children. It works extremely well with kids. Then move on to using it with friends and at work. When you feel competent in its use, try it with the BP/NP: 1. When ____________ happens 2. I feel ____________ 3. I would like ____________ 4. Or I will need to ____________
the BP/NP is more affected by what you want. When you call something a need when it really is not, the BP/NP will challenge you and work to convince you that you don’t actually need it. When you identify something as a want, it then becomes harder for the BP/NP to sound sane and reasonable if he or she tries to convince you that you don’t actually want what you just said you wanted.
BP/NPs rarely negotiate because they feel certain that their own needs and wants will be ignored. They have learned to demand and grab to get their wants met.
The statement “Or I will need to . . .” is not to be used as a threat or a punishment. It is to be a statement of what you will do to take care of yourself without the cooperation of the other person, for example, “If you can’t lower your voice, I will need to excuse myself from this conversation.” The most powerful tool you have at this point is to stop interacting with the other person.
Even though another family member or a friend may pressure you to give in, it is very important that when you pick a battle, you stick with it. Otherwise, you give the message to the BP/NP that you really don’t mean what you say.
Believe it or not, you do not have to give people reasons or explanations for what you do, unless you want to.
You really do not have to give detailed reasons and explanations to anyone for what you want to do.
If I had given her reasons for getting pregnant or responded to her questions, it would have put the focus of the therapy onto me and made my personal issues vulnerable to her demands. Instead, I kept the focus on her fears, and we sidestepped the circular demand/explain dance that could have ensued and would have derailed our therapy relationship even more than my absence of a few months.
Very little gets changed with a BP/NP by talking. BP/NPs are masters of denial and delusion. They jump instantaneously from topic to topic, they are emotional rather than logical, and they usually forget any discussion that has been emotionally intense. Making changes in the relationship with a BP/NP requires taking new actions, not making agreements or coming to an understanding.
