Caution with therapy!!!!

Newbie posted a comment on "Successful Relationships......." that set off bells' in my head days' later and it was about an HPD using a therapist to validate their own feelings. The bell's went off days after the posting because my now ex-HPD did precisely this in three sessions with a therapist in the final weeks of our relationship.

She agreed to go under the auspices of us "learning how to better resolve conflict" and instead all she did was bash me over issues that she'd long ago pronounced "resolved" and loudly complained "how are we supposed to have a marriage if he............(fill in the blank)? It was issue after issue afer issue that was either a problem five years ago that she currently never mentioned, or she had never currently voiced it, or it was a patently false issue that didn't exist. We'd leave the sessions with me in a complete emotional tailspin and she'd act like everything was rosy, and if I tried to ask her about something in particular her response was "oh, it's no big deal". For the fourth scheduled session, I found out TWO days in advance I couldn't attend for having to attend a funeral wake (she knew the person too, and knew he was dying) and upon asking her for an OK to reschedule she refused declaring she'd go anyway. I got home at 8:00PM that night and a message was on my answering machine delcaring "that the therapist told me it was time to move on so I am" and the the crying and pleas "that she didn't have the strength to end it face to face". And bam, that was it! Thankfully now, I was too embarrassed to actually call the therapist to confirm that advice.

My emotions about her ending it on an answering machine aren't relevant to the story, but an HPD's abuse of the therapist is. I didn't recognize it during the first three sessions that her bashing me was the devaluing process (of course, I'd never experienced anything like that and couldn't imagine even an HPD manipulating a therapist) but that's clearly what it was. The big lesson here for those of you reading the message board with bewilderment over your own relationship is to enter therapy with your eyes wide open and with the fortitude to defend yourself. If he/she is HPD, don't allow them to use therapy to devalue you and prepare yourself to walk, even in the middle of the session if necessary, to preserve your dignity and self-esteem because if that's what's going on you're going to get discarded anyway.

Thanks Newbie!

Or just don't be a doormat, realize that people with HPD are (generally speaking) quite stupid, and easy to beat at their own games. It would have been easy to expose her fabrications to the therapist and put her in her place, instead you just describe letting her tread all over you.

Yeah ... you're the man, you need to assert your manliness. Not to mention if you were to do it in front of the therapist, ie another person, she would freak out even more.

Jay Mack,

I fully understand your experience.

If he/she is HPD, don't allow them to use therapy to devalue you and prepare yourself to walk, even in the middle of the session if necessary, to preserve your dignity and self-esteem because if that's what's going on you're going to get discarded anyway.

- a very important point indeed. Disengage before being devalued.


First of all let me say that couples counseling doesn't work in these situations, simply because:

1. While your intention is to resolve conflict and repair the relationship, the HPDs intention is to save face for herself. The HPD doesn't think like a normal person - saving her own facade becomes more important than the relationship.
2. As soon as you both go in front of a third person, you allow for "triangulation", which because of the HPDs childhood template becomes a mechanism for playing victim, with the therapist as the savior.
3. In couples counseling, it is no more an issue of love. It becomes a "war" - it is a conflict situation. In a war you can't survive if you play using conventional warfare when your opponent is using psychological warfare. While she will use lies and distortions to throw you off-balance, you have to be one-up and throw her off-balance before she can do it. Ofcourse this is counter-intuitive for a relationship, but that is how it works with people who are not normal. You can't be thinking of the relationship, when your own survival is in doubt. The adage - he who wants the relationship less, controls the relationship - becomes very important with disordered people.

The only solution is for the HPD to go for individual therapy. However, for it to be successful the following conditions are necessary:

1. The HPD needs to WANT to improve herself. This is often difficult, since she sees no reason to improve when her "easy way of life" had worked for her. Without a "seed" (of awareness) inside, you can't grow a tree.
2. To improve oneself needs courage. An HPD often doesn't have the courage to improve, since it implies facing pain. She obviously uses the path of least resistance, which she has learnt works for her.
3. The HPD needs to be in a phase in life where she needs the relationship in some way. Without this need, there is no reason for her for therapy, except to save face.

Tactics:
Fear, obligation and guilt - these are the tactics that have to be used against any disordered person. These tactics are used against you as well - they are all forms of abuse and control. Of these, obligation has to be cleverly intertwined with their "good girl" mask to make it affective against them. Guilt-tripping has to be used intermittently and indirectly. Obligation and guilt will not work if used too much, since they will soon feel trapped and justify against them. The most important tactic that has to be used is "fear" - of loss, abandonment, of being discovered - all veiled and indirectly passed on with attention. Fear of loss if effectively combined with the excitement of attention will be perceived as "love" by an HPD - you will be worshipped as God The moment "fear" is removed from the relationship, devaluation will start, and obligation and guilt will only work for a limited amount of time.

Timing:
I have realised that the timing to salvage an HPD relationship is very important. You can't use any "tactic" to salvage the situation when it has already moved to the "devaluation" phase. It has to be done when the "idealization" was in place - for a normal person, when this is the first dis-ordered relationship, it is often difficult to recognize and apply these tactics then.

Standards:
I know that being a "man" or such ideas do work during the idealization phase, but it also depends on how badly disordered your partner is. If your partner is really low functioning (badly disordered), you can't do much about it, how much ever you "man" up to it. If your standards (of values) are really high, you can't pull a really low-standard person too much upto your level. However, if your standards and her's don't have too much of a difference, then there is a good chance that your boundary setting will work.

Thought-process:
The HPD (or any Cluster B) mind is not very difficult to understand if you want to - its a one-track mind - however its not easy for normals to understand since we don't have such relationships everyday.

I myself realised all this too late, during the last stage of my relationship. My X had severely isolated me from my friends. I realised then the distortions she had used. I did ask her to see a therapist, but I realised she would do the same there as well. This is when I decided to dis-engage from this war and save my more precious relationships with my friends. It took me sometime, a lot of courage and much of my accumulated good-will amongst my friends to salvage all my friendships.

Newbie -

I spent eight years with this HPD and thought I knew all her tricks, but the single issue I had the hardest recocginizing quickly was the "devaluing" process. She came from so many slants, so many times, that it was often several days before I realized that it was happening. She really was transparent, I could always pick up on lies, blameshifiting and gaslighting very quickly; but, the devaluing process seems awfully insidious, I could never tell when it was being inflicted upon me. My HPD exhibited ALL the characteristic traits, chronically, and had destroyed every single relationship she'd ever had, and she'd had a lot. But the survivors of HPD's learn to quickly recognize those destructive traits in future relationships.

I spent eight years with this HPD and thought I knew all her tricks, but the single issue I had the hardest recocginizing quickly was the "devaluing" process. She came from so many slants, so many times, that it was often several days before I realized that it was happening. She really was transparent, I could always pick up on lies, blameshifiting and gaslighting very quickly; but, the devaluing process seems awfully insidious, I could never tell when it was being inflicted upon me.

I agree with you. Frankly, I still have doubts about the devaluation process - I understand the "theory" espoused by psychs, but my own experience is a bit confusing. My X didn't really devalue me completely, probably because the circumstances in which my relationship ended was too early for complete devaluation. In the last days, I could see that she was very confused and was trying her best to justify the breakup to herself and devalue me. My going into NC quickly and also fighting to get my friends back was not taken by her very easily - she kind of started to obsessively hate me just as much she loved me - it never really reached the stage of indifference which comes with devaluation. I never really went through the cycles of devaluation that I see often mentioned in this forum. So the devaluation part is not very clear to me from my own experience.

However, as far as I understand -

An HPD is forever creating fantasies about her life. Her own mask is a reflection of this - its an idealization of her own self. Similarly when she starts a relationship, she starts with a fantasy and in keeping with that fantasy she creates a mask for you too - an idealization of you. This is very normal for her since this is what she is used to. This idealization of you then becomes an obsession for her which she thinks of as "love". She never really tries to know you as a person or your qualities, and even if she does, she still prefers to dwell in your idealized masked fantasy, rather than you. This is why her idealization is extreme, even when she choses a person who seems completely unsuitable.

Your best bet to not be devalued is to further her idealized view of you and keep her obsessed, by letting her chase you and by increasing her "longing", which means that you have to continuously create confusion and remain in control.

Normals don't do this. We prefer understanding the person and we also open up to expose our own personal selves to our partners and build intimacy. Now this goes against the very grain of the fantasy idealized view. Also when you try and expose her mask, she goes on the defensive and exposes you. So in a way, with each incident of exposure of yourself or her, this fantasy breaks down and so does her "longing" and also her obsession for you. Once her fantasized, idealized and obsessed view of you is broken down, you can no longer sustain her fantasy of "love" and is quickly devalued. As normals, we don't get this part, simply because living in a fantasy is not normal for us and we don't understand why and how it breaks down.

To the HPD, all of this seems normal. She actually thinks that this is how the world operates and doesn't know that her thought pattern is distorted. Though she too longs for a stable and long-lasting relationship, she is often confused why it doesn't last for her. The world of self-exposure and partner exposure to achieve mutual intimacy is unknown to her. Unable to understand her own distorted thinking she blames you for not living up to her expectations.

Each normal relationship goes through the idealized honeymoon stage, the conflict stage, the mutual conflict resolution stage and then the permanent intimacy stage. However, for an HPD, the second stage - the conflict stage - breaks down the fantasy of love and the relationship is unable to progress beyond it.

Conflict resolution and permanent intimacy is normal for normals, but completely unknown to an HPD, since the "wiring" required for this is impaired in an HPD. I think that for retaining object constancy, one needs to use the idealize-devalue cycle and finally arrive at a consistent view of a partner, but this means you need a frame of reference and the ability to externalize-internalize thoughts to arrive at this consistency. For an HPD, this frame of reference is missing since her inner self is either missing or repressed by the mask. Also missing is the ability to integrate the external-internal into a whole. This results in a kind of attention-deficit if viewed from a normal's perspective - probably from an HPD's perspective attention is given to what is available, which is the mask or the idealized/devalued view. The HPD therefore doesn't retain an integrated internalized view of the partner, but merely a fantasized idealized/devalued view, which is why its natural to over-value or devalue and discard it.

Therefore for an HPD relationship, you have to accept that its not a normal one and keep it in such a way that it always remains in the idealized honeymoon stage. It will always remain superficial and the deep meaningful relationship with mutual acceptance of each partners flaws is not possible, unless your HPD becomes aware of this need (or you make her aware) and with therapy she is able to "rewire" herself to achieve this.

I also had bad experiences in couples counseling. The HPD is a master at manipulation, even when "professionals" are involved. For confirmation, all you have to do is look at the number of people on this forum who are in psychology or related fields.

And that makes it even harder for the victim. You have a "professional" who is basically validating everything the HPD is saying, maybe even outright sucking up to the HPD. Plus, the counselor will tend to focus on the victim to change their behaviors - either because they have bought into the HPD's lies, or because on some level they realize the victim is the only one who is capable of change.

Possibly everyone is sick of me posting this link (and thanks to whoever posted it on here to begin with) but this is the best thing I've ever read on how the HPD behaves in therapy. Especially scroll down to page 158.

http://books.google.com/books?id=N4SSNA ... er&f=false

"The beginning mental health practicioner finds the histrionic patient one of the easiest to interview... is reassured by the patient's eager compliance... is usually pleased with his new patient [and] experience the vague aura that accompanies a new romance... The histrionic patient establishes "instant contact" at the beginning of the interview. He quickly develops apparent emotional rapport, creating an impression of a strong commitment to the interviewer, although feeling little involvement. The patient's first comments are frequently designed to please and flatter the interviewer."

Incidentally, I see this same behavior in some of the histrionics that post on this forum.

caro81VA wrote: And that makes it even harder for the victim. You have a "professional" who is basically validating everything the HPD is saying, maybe even outright sucking up to the HPD. Plus, the counselor will tend to focus on the victim to change their behaviors - either because they have bought into the HPD's lies, or because on some level they realize the victim is the only one who is capable of change.

This is precisely what happened, Caro! We spent most of the first session answering the therapist's background questions and in the last fifteen minutes my HPD unleashed a barrage of complaints, like, trying to get it in before the clock ran out, and the therapist just sucked it up as gospel, validation, as you state, before even asking me for my viewpoint, or perception of the issue. And, the therapist totally ignored my assertion that the HPD was stating how she felt as a matter of fact, rather than as simply how she felt. If my HPD made an accusation, it was true! This went on into the second session and I finally recognized an obvious bias but I didn't know how to change the dynamics. The HPD repeatedly talked over me with the therapist chimming in as well.

I didn't fire the big bullet, my belief of her HPD, I knew I would have been immediately excoriated by both of them and I recognize now that she would have had hurt feelings to justify dumping me rather than her own distorted reasonings.

After 8 years of a tumultous relationship, the experience with the therapist finally reinforced my suspicions that a healthy relationship with an HPD was/is not possible, at all. The operative word there is "healthy". As discussed on other threads, some disordered personality types may be more compatible than others, but for a healthy person, it's simply not possible.

Jay Mack wrote:

caro81VA wrote: And that makes it even harder for the victim. You have a "professional" who is basically validating everything the HPD is saying, maybe even outright sucking up to the HPD. Plus, the counselor will tend to focus on the victim to change their behaviors - either because they have bought into the HPD's lies, or because on some level they realize the victim is the only one who is capable of change.

This is precisely what happened, Caro! We spent most of the first session answering the therapist's background questions and in the last fifteen minutes my HPD unleashed a barrage of complaints, like, trying to get it in before the clock ran out, and the therapist just sucked it up as gospel, validation, as you state, before even asking me for my viewpoint, or perception of the issue. And, the therapist totally ignored my assertion that the HPD was stating how she felt as a matter of fact, rather than as simply how she felt. If my HPD made an accusation, it was true! This went on into the second session and I finally recognized an obvious bias but I didn't know how to change the dynamics. The HPD repeatedly talked over me with the therapist chimming in as well.

I didn't fire the big bullet, my belief of her HPD, I knew I would have been immediately excoriated by both of them and I recognize now that she would have had hurt feelings to justify dumping me rather than her own distorted reasonings.

After 8 years of a tumultous relationship, the experience with the therapist finally reinforced my suspicions that a healthy relationship with an HPD was/is not possible, at all. The operative word there is "healthy". As discussed on other threads, some disordered personality types may be more compatible than others, but for a healthy person, it's simply not possible.

Why would anyone with a brain think it's possible to have a "healthy" relationship with someone who has a fundamentally "unhealthy" personality?

Jay Mack wrote: But the survivors of HPD's learn to quickly recognize those destructive traits in future relationships.

That is so true.

A couple of months ago, an acquaintance (not a very longstanding or close friend) got annoyed with me and started throwing out comments such as "Nobody likes being around you anyway" and "that's why you don't have any friends".

For a moment or so, because these people somehow ALWAYS know your weak spot, I really hurt and was thinking to myself something like "Oh no! I don't have any friends! Nobody likes me!"

Then I stopped and realized... I DO have friends. In fact, I have a LOT of really good friends; in particular, I have friends that have stood beside me through this past year when things got really rough.

It was the experience with the HPD, and what I learned from it, that equipped me to recognize this case of devaluation, and to shrug it off.