I don’t think that would be taken well and no amount of trying to get them into therapy will make them unless they actually want to, you’d just be giving more ammo to smear your name. It’s not our responsibility what someone does with their life, we can’t save them from themselves, and it’s better to just focus on ourselves, especially if you don’t want this person in your life. You say you already talked about it with her in the past so there’s no reason to again, is there? What’s the purpose? What do you think it will achieve?
If they are already blocked I wouldn’t attempt to unblock if I was in this position. It just opens you up to more suffering, assuming that’s what the friendship was like. But if you did send a message, which ultimately is your own choice (I’ve never been dissuaded by anyone because it’s such an individual choice when leaving, no one can make that choice for you), I would focus it on you and it being a goodbye message only.
I asked this same question when I broke up with my ex five months ago. The people here dissuaded from reaching out to her.
This person is permanently removed from your life. The only reason to contact them is to let them know it's over, but if you already blocked her, there's nothing to gain.
It will be weaponised, you will be the “gaslighter” you will be the obsessed one, you will be the “harasser”. Also I don’t think it’s actually fair to them, being that they struggle and are hiding from reality every day of their lives just let them move on, advice from someone they’ve painted black will never be taken on board.
I think the permanent painting black thing is fascinating, as sad as it is to watch unfold in real time. I had my ex say I was everything she ever wanted and that I gave her so much that most people wouldn’t be patient enough to give her. 5 days later she tells me if I ever contact her again she will file a restraining order, because I told her that her behaviour was abusive. Blocked on everything and done like it’s nothing, absolutely incredible.
Yep, anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their fantasy narrative is a threat to their new reality, you have no place in it 😂, NOTHING is permanent in the eyes of a borderline.
I wonder sometimes if they ever have the thought that they would want to circle back on someone that caught up to their antics. Mine came back more times than I can count but this time around she’s been ghost for almost 2 months. I’m hoping it bruised her ego but I’m also at a place where I can’t force myself to care.
Oh trust me you’ll forever be cemented in their mind along with every other ex that didn’t crumble. You are like that level on a computer game that couldn’t be completed, the ego never forgets.
I just want to address your wording of “abandoning her”… this comment from this sub helped reframe it a lot for me, so I saved it:
“You abandon children and you leave adults. I left a 24 year old woman. The idea that they are abandoned only feeds into their delusions that they can’t possibly take care of themselves.”
No.
That's who she is and she is not going to change. If she needed therapy, guess what? She'd be already there. She doesn't need it, you are not responsible for her, let her go. They are unrepairable, listen to people here, they will flip 180º anything you will do in their favour. Don't feel tempted with making new approaches to fix her, huge waste of time and mental health as well as other hazards.
NO, don't do it. That's just opening yourself up to more abuse, and she won't appreciate your insight anyway. It's worse than useless for her, it's actively harmful for you. Don't do this to yourself.
As to your other question regarding whether disordered people improve. A lot of us in this community struggle to understand what we're really dealing with. Personality disorders are not quirks, or caused by anything we did or failed to do. They're mental disorders - long-term patterns of thinking and behaving, baked in from early childhood, long before we ever met these people.
When we ask whether we think they've changed, we're really wondering whether they've improved without us and if their abuse was somehow our fault. It wasn't. And no, they haven't changed.
I grew up with several disordered people in my family and dealt with several others in adulthood. I never saw any of them improve. After years (even decades) of dealing with their abuse, I finally went no contact with all of them (a few died), so I have no idea how they're doing now, but I have no doubt they haven't improved. That'd require years of dedicated medical treatment none of them had any interest in.
If anything, they got worse over time and learned how to abuse and manipulate better (and hide it from outside parties who might hold them accountable).
There's stories of some people getting better with treatment, but fantasizing about slim potential based on hearsay is a waste of time and has no bearing on your life. Focus on you and moving forward with better people.
I was just feeling this exact way after we hadn’t talked in a month thinking she had enough self awareness. She sent a fairly nice message to me taking blame for stuff and I “dissected” her disorder and let her know how it made me feel at times. It always turns back in to my fault some how and she then told me she was seeing a guy who loved her better than I ever could.
2 days later and she left me a voicemail telling me she loved and missed me. It is horrible for my own mental health. I was abused by this person and I keep forgetting
We want to help because we care so much about them but they clearly have not cared enough about themselves or US because they would have started the changes already
I echo others but want to explain it in my way:
You already tried what you are saying you want to do ("I had already been telling her she probably had it").
You don't want to reestablish the relationship but to someone with BPD, going NC then contacting then going NC again can be extremely triggering and confusing. She won't understand you only mean to give information. She'll take it as you are playing games with her, or giving her the go ahead to do the same (engage, discard).
I have not abandoned anyone in my life with BPD but I've been consistently abandoned by them. Their feeling of abandonment was misinterpretation based in trauma and illness.
Thanks to all who replied so far. The responses are pretty much what I expected and I will not make a move.
I honestly do not feel an urgent need to do so and am feeling fine enough as is.
My guess is that motivation wise this would be a way to “try to believe that all the effort I put on her was for something” (sunk cost fallacy for the win) and also because I still value the time I spent with her and do not want her or other around her to be hurt.
I know that me saying something to her may not help, although she was eager to know more about BPD by the end of the relationship (she lurked this sub while I posted with another account) so as long as her motivation hasn’t changed theoretically that would fit her needs. She actually wanted me to talk to her about BPD as much as I could by the last days of our relationship.
With that said, the low chance of change, the risks of triggering her, resetting the time I have been NC, etc. do not seem worth the effort. It is very sad, but it is what it is.
This is my take, and I could be wrong: You know the answer. What you seem to be asking yourself is why you're still hoping that a rational intervention will change anything. Just keep the thought and chew it over. Try to identify the drive to resolve and heal and see if you can accept that that's impossible here. Some of the behavior of pwBPD is so extreme that the damage can leave a lot of codependency/trauma bonding fragments. Try to imagine how you'd advise someone who has been in your position. All drawn from things I did long ago, so no judgment intended. And see my first sentence :).
yes they can improve with therapy and yes they do need it. the takeaway here is: they'll only do it once THEY see it. They may never see it and you telling them wont make it happen. In fact theres a HIGH chance it may cause the opposite.
I get this urge, I do, because I've been NC with a friend for 6+ months and considering this same thing. You make your own decisions, if it will really bring you peace of mind, nobody can tell you no.
**However, consider why you want to say it**--are you trying to advise and save them one last time? Resist the codependent savior urge. Do you want to "clear the air"? They'll twist it in their head regardless. Do you want to get the last word and have closure? Many times it isnt possible and might incite them to keep pushing in ways you havent thought of (remember the thing about them not liking rejection and closure in your mental healths/freedoms favor is rejection). Do you have hope that if you advise them this way that theyll listen, get better and you can restart the friendship? its possible, but not likely, even with non disordered people. Growing apart happens.
if youre going to go this route, I'd highly recommend a therapist on call and at the ready and to run it by them first. Youre leaving whats, if not outright abusive now, could become abusive depending on how your ex friend reacts. They might not, but its better to be prepared.
I'd say: do healing work on yourself, keep them blocked, and watch how the stress and drained feelings leave your life. Give it time and you might realize that actually, youre good just moving on. Personally, I still have thoughts of recontacting my friend occasionally, but the peace of the last several months is worth more to me than the trauma-wound of desperately trying to make sure my motives are understood. they arent, thats ok, time to heal myself. Whether or not our friends heal themselves we dont have the power to influence, it sucks, but sometimes, you have to just walk away and protect yourself. Whatever choice you make, I hope it works out well.
Tried with my ex when we reconciled. Tbf to her she went to see a mental health professional. It was a 30 minute meeting with a screening nurse who answered a few tick boxes. The guy said ‘you have traits of BPD, but everyone has traits of something, you likely have c-ptsd.’ In her mind that’s what she has, as it allows her to be the victim. In the end it just became an excuse for all her bad behaviour and a reason for me to allow her to walk all over my boundaries.
Our couples therapist was in the process of diagnosing her with BPD (with NPD traits). When the sessions got too hard she bailed on them and bailed on the relationship. After all, I ‘wasn’t taking good enough care of her.’
If your relationship is over, don’t bother. It took me over 2 years of dealing with rage, self harm, reckless behaviour, 12 discards, and devaluation cycles to get her to at least consider it. In the end she rejected she had an issue and simply put it down to ‘being in the wrong relationship’.
I am feeling the same as you, OP. I too am very interested to know if anyone ever had success with this.
My quiet ubpd ex has driven everyone and everything away, and at times of weakness expressed that he had a 'dangerous brain' and didn't understand why sometimes it took over and made him turn against everyone around him.
He was highly intelligent and could see on good days that there was sometjing off, but I know he has never even heard of bpd and would have no idea where to start with treating it.
He meets pretty much all of the criteria, and most threads I read here could be written about him, though he was never aggressive to me.
I think if it was me, I'd be glad to receive such a message that may guide me toward help, but then that's me thinking about it with a logical brain. Most likely he would just ignore any such message and tell himself I'm crazy.
You can send a text message out to someone while they're on block. How do I know this? Because my exwBPD did it to me the day she stabbed me in the heart for the final time.
Anyway, my two cents would be to let it go completely. People with BPD are not trying to hear this stuff. And even if they go to get therapy, they're almost never willing to go through with it because it takes so much work. That and their calling card says INCONSISTENCY in all caps.
You can give yourself closure without this last communication. Just treat the one that's already happened as the final correspondence. They're responsible for themselves, and you trying more really just opens up the concept again that you're somehow responsible for them.
It's kind of you to want to help, but it's also not healthy to interact with someone who doesn't see you as their everything one minute and the bane of their existence the next. They have to seek help and commit to it themselves.
I tried as my exBPD was dumping me for a second time after SHE came looking for me again. I tried everything so she could get herself to therapy for nearly 10 months and nothing did it. At the end she was making fun of me for suggesting she needed therapy for her personality disorder. She denied anything and everything even when I showed her messaged she sent me:
> “My mind says you dont belong here, whenever l'm around people, even my family"
> “I don’t know who I am”
> “I have intense fear/anxiety”
> “I’m really scared to have friends, to trust, to feel I resonate with people”
> “I abandon myself”
Nothing did it or said worked. Unfortunately she has a friend that’s doing 100x worse than her mentally and she pulls my exBPD down into the her living hell. The friend accused me of being a narcissist/manipulator for trying to get my exBPD to therapy.
If you do find a way please let me know. Although she’s off with someone else, I know one day she’ll come knocking on my door again. I still care deeply for her, and would still try to get her to help herself just in a different way this time. No more going back into a romantic relationship with her again.
Hi, I have a question. It seems like you're not being honest with yourself. Have you considered that you're not being honest with yourself?
You're saying you don't want this person back into your life because of the negative impact it will have on her in the long term.
Why aren't you being selfish and looking out for your own well-being?
What do you honestly hope that message will accomplish?
Do you believe that anything you can say will make a difference?
I don’t think that would be taken well and no amount of trying to get them into therapy will make them unless they actually want to, you’d just be giving more ammo to smear your name. It’s not our responsibility what someone does with their life, we can’t save them from themselves, and it’s better to just focus on ourselves, especially if you don’t want this person in your life. You say you already talked about it with her in the past so there’s no reason to again, is there? What’s the purpose? What do you think it will achieve? If they are already blocked I wouldn’t attempt to unblock if I was in this position. It just opens you up to more suffering, assuming that’s what the friendship was like. But if you did send a message, which ultimately is your own choice (I’ve never been dissuaded by anyone because it’s such an individual choice when leaving, no one can make that choice for you), I would focus it on you and it being a goodbye message only.
I asked this same question when I broke up with my ex five months ago. The people here dissuaded from reaching out to her. This person is permanently removed from your life. The only reason to contact them is to let them know it's over, but if you already blocked her, there's nothing to gain.
It will be weaponised, you will be the “gaslighter” you will be the obsessed one, you will be the “harasser”. Also I don’t think it’s actually fair to them, being that they struggle and are hiding from reality every day of their lives just let them move on, advice from someone they’ve painted black will never be taken on board.
I think the permanent painting black thing is fascinating, as sad as it is to watch unfold in real time. I had my ex say I was everything she ever wanted and that I gave her so much that most people wouldn’t be patient enough to give her. 5 days later she tells me if I ever contact her again she will file a restraining order, because I told her that her behaviour was abusive. Blocked on everything and done like it’s nothing, absolutely incredible.
Yep, anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their fantasy narrative is a threat to their new reality, you have no place in it 😂, NOTHING is permanent in the eyes of a borderline.
I wonder sometimes if they ever have the thought that they would want to circle back on someone that caught up to their antics. Mine came back more times than I can count but this time around she’s been ghost for almost 2 months. I’m hoping it bruised her ego but I’m also at a place where I can’t force myself to care.
Oh trust me you’ll forever be cemented in their mind along with every other ex that didn’t crumble. You are like that level on a computer game that couldn’t be completed, the ego never forgets.
I just want to address your wording of “abandoning her”… this comment from this sub helped reframe it a lot for me, so I saved it: “You abandon children and you leave adults. I left a 24 year old woman. The idea that they are abandoned only feeds into their delusions that they can’t possibly take care of themselves.”
No. Unless you want to be called a narcissist.
No. That's who she is and she is not going to change. If she needed therapy, guess what? She'd be already there. She doesn't need it, you are not responsible for her, let her go. They are unrepairable, listen to people here, they will flip 180º anything you will do in their favour. Don't feel tempted with making new approaches to fix her, huge waste of time and mental health as well as other hazards.
Only if you want to be personally attacked at your weakest points
No because all they want is that you become as fucked up as them. They think thats the only solution to deal with their own problems.
NO, don't do it. That's just opening yourself up to more abuse, and she won't appreciate your insight anyway. It's worse than useless for her, it's actively harmful for you. Don't do this to yourself. As to your other question regarding whether disordered people improve. A lot of us in this community struggle to understand what we're really dealing with. Personality disorders are not quirks, or caused by anything we did or failed to do. They're mental disorders - long-term patterns of thinking and behaving, baked in from early childhood, long before we ever met these people. When we ask whether we think they've changed, we're really wondering whether they've improved without us and if their abuse was somehow our fault. It wasn't. And no, they haven't changed. I grew up with several disordered people in my family and dealt with several others in adulthood. I never saw any of them improve. After years (even decades) of dealing with their abuse, I finally went no contact with all of them (a few died), so I have no idea how they're doing now, but I have no doubt they haven't improved. That'd require years of dedicated medical treatment none of them had any interest in. If anything, they got worse over time and learned how to abuse and manipulate better (and hide it from outside parties who might hold them accountable). There's stories of some people getting better with treatment, but fantasizing about slim potential based on hearsay is a waste of time and has no bearing on your life. Focus on you and moving forward with better people.
I was just feeling this exact way after we hadn’t talked in a month thinking she had enough self awareness. She sent a fairly nice message to me taking blame for stuff and I “dissected” her disorder and let her know how it made me feel at times. It always turns back in to my fault some how and she then told me she was seeing a guy who loved her better than I ever could. 2 days later and she left me a voicemail telling me she loved and missed me. It is horrible for my own mental health. I was abused by this person and I keep forgetting We want to help because we care so much about them but they clearly have not cared enough about themselves or US because they would have started the changes already
Nope, just move on.
I echo others but want to explain it in my way: You already tried what you are saying you want to do ("I had already been telling her she probably had it"). You don't want to reestablish the relationship but to someone with BPD, going NC then contacting then going NC again can be extremely triggering and confusing. She won't understand you only mean to give information. She'll take it as you are playing games with her, or giving her the go ahead to do the same (engage, discard). I have not abandoned anyone in my life with BPD but I've been consistently abandoned by them. Their feeling of abandonment was misinterpretation based in trauma and illness.
Thanks to all who replied so far. The responses are pretty much what I expected and I will not make a move. I honestly do not feel an urgent need to do so and am feeling fine enough as is. My guess is that motivation wise this would be a way to “try to believe that all the effort I put on her was for something” (sunk cost fallacy for the win) and also because I still value the time I spent with her and do not want her or other around her to be hurt. I know that me saying something to her may not help, although she was eager to know more about BPD by the end of the relationship (she lurked this sub while I posted with another account) so as long as her motivation hasn’t changed theoretically that would fit her needs. She actually wanted me to talk to her about BPD as much as I could by the last days of our relationship. With that said, the low chance of change, the risks of triggering her, resetting the time I have been NC, etc. do not seem worth the effort. It is very sad, but it is what it is.
This is my take, and I could be wrong: You know the answer. What you seem to be asking yourself is why you're still hoping that a rational intervention will change anything. Just keep the thought and chew it over. Try to identify the drive to resolve and heal and see if you can accept that that's impossible here. Some of the behavior of pwBPD is so extreme that the damage can leave a lot of codependency/trauma bonding fragments. Try to imagine how you'd advise someone who has been in your position. All drawn from things I did long ago, so no judgment intended. And see my first sentence :).
No it will go right through them
yes they can improve with therapy and yes they do need it. the takeaway here is: they'll only do it once THEY see it. They may never see it and you telling them wont make it happen. In fact theres a HIGH chance it may cause the opposite. I get this urge, I do, because I've been NC with a friend for 6+ months and considering this same thing. You make your own decisions, if it will really bring you peace of mind, nobody can tell you no. **However, consider why you want to say it**--are you trying to advise and save them one last time? Resist the codependent savior urge. Do you want to "clear the air"? They'll twist it in their head regardless. Do you want to get the last word and have closure? Many times it isnt possible and might incite them to keep pushing in ways you havent thought of (remember the thing about them not liking rejection and closure in your mental healths/freedoms favor is rejection). Do you have hope that if you advise them this way that theyll listen, get better and you can restart the friendship? its possible, but not likely, even with non disordered people. Growing apart happens. if youre going to go this route, I'd highly recommend a therapist on call and at the ready and to run it by them first. Youre leaving whats, if not outright abusive now, could become abusive depending on how your ex friend reacts. They might not, but its better to be prepared. I'd say: do healing work on yourself, keep them blocked, and watch how the stress and drained feelings leave your life. Give it time and you might realize that actually, youre good just moving on. Personally, I still have thoughts of recontacting my friend occasionally, but the peace of the last several months is worth more to me than the trauma-wound of desperately trying to make sure my motives are understood. they arent, thats ok, time to heal myself. Whether or not our friends heal themselves we dont have the power to influence, it sucks, but sometimes, you have to just walk away and protect yourself. Whatever choice you make, I hope it works out well.
Tried with my ex when we reconciled. Tbf to her she went to see a mental health professional. It was a 30 minute meeting with a screening nurse who answered a few tick boxes. The guy said ‘you have traits of BPD, but everyone has traits of something, you likely have c-ptsd.’ In her mind that’s what she has, as it allows her to be the victim. In the end it just became an excuse for all her bad behaviour and a reason for me to allow her to walk all over my boundaries. Our couples therapist was in the process of diagnosing her with BPD (with NPD traits). When the sessions got too hard she bailed on them and bailed on the relationship. After all, I ‘wasn’t taking good enough care of her.’ If your relationship is over, don’t bother. It took me over 2 years of dealing with rage, self harm, reckless behaviour, 12 discards, and devaluation cycles to get her to at least consider it. In the end she rejected she had an issue and simply put it down to ‘being in the wrong relationship’.
I am feeling the same as you, OP. I too am very interested to know if anyone ever had success with this. My quiet ubpd ex has driven everyone and everything away, and at times of weakness expressed that he had a 'dangerous brain' and didn't understand why sometimes it took over and made him turn against everyone around him. He was highly intelligent and could see on good days that there was sometjing off, but I know he has never even heard of bpd and would have no idea where to start with treating it. He meets pretty much all of the criteria, and most threads I read here could be written about him, though he was never aggressive to me. I think if it was me, I'd be glad to receive such a message that may guide me toward help, but then that's me thinking about it with a logical brain. Most likely he would just ignore any such message and tell himself I'm crazy.
You can send a text message out to someone while they're on block. How do I know this? Because my exwBPD did it to me the day she stabbed me in the heart for the final time. Anyway, my two cents would be to let it go completely. People with BPD are not trying to hear this stuff. And even if they go to get therapy, they're almost never willing to go through with it because it takes so much work. That and their calling card says INCONSISTENCY in all caps. You can give yourself closure without this last communication. Just treat the one that's already happened as the final correspondence. They're responsible for themselves, and you trying more really just opens up the concept again that you're somehow responsible for them. It's kind of you to want to help, but it's also not healthy to interact with someone who doesn't see you as their everything one minute and the bane of their existence the next. They have to seek help and commit to it themselves.
I tried as my exBPD was dumping me for a second time after SHE came looking for me again. I tried everything so she could get herself to therapy for nearly 10 months and nothing did it. At the end she was making fun of me for suggesting she needed therapy for her personality disorder. She denied anything and everything even when I showed her messaged she sent me: > “My mind says you dont belong here, whenever l'm around people, even my family" > “I don’t know who I am” > “I have intense fear/anxiety” > “I’m really scared to have friends, to trust, to feel I resonate with people” > “I abandon myself” Nothing did it or said worked. Unfortunately she has a friend that’s doing 100x worse than her mentally and she pulls my exBPD down into the her living hell. The friend accused me of being a narcissist/manipulator for trying to get my exBPD to therapy. If you do find a way please let me know. Although she’s off with someone else, I know one day she’ll come knocking on my door again. I still care deeply for her, and would still try to get her to help herself just in a different way this time. No more going back into a romantic relationship with her again.
Hi, I have a question. It seems like you're not being honest with yourself. Have you considered that you're not being honest with yourself? You're saying you don't want this person back into your life because of the negative impact it will have on her in the long term. Why aren't you being selfish and looking out for your own well-being? What do you honestly hope that message will accomplish? Do you believe that anything you can say will make a difference?
No.
No.
No, you are just teaching them how to hide their condition better. T
Giving advice to someone you're in conflict with isn't usually going to go well. So it depends if you're in open conflict or not.