Symptoms broken down

I hope that you can find the help you need in the forum. Therapy can also go a long way towards helping you to process all the emotional aftermath, and to find a way forward as you heal. Welcome to the forum.

Thank you.

Today, August 1st, the violence scalated,just as you sait it could happen. She threw a couple of objects at me, pushed me from behind several times, had me locked on the sofa, blocked my way out of the apartment when I tried to literally run away... At some point I could open the door and run out, and she ran out after me, grabbed me on the stairway, pushed me against the wall several times, trying to not let me get out. I finally could. She chased me and grabbed me several times. I kept telling her to stay away and not touch me. She kept grabbing me. She had taken my cellphone, so I couldn't call, so I started to scream on the street asking people to please call the police because I was being attacked. Two guys walked by, looked at me and laughed. My elbow was bleeding from the struggle. Finally, a woman called the police. She's out now. I'm processing a restraining order. She already know she can't come back here without previous notice nor without somebody else coming with her to pick up her stuff. I've been home for several hours now. I found some hospital papers from two years ago, from a psyc ward at a local hospital. I just read that back then, she had been diagnosed with HPD and BPD. I guess my questions are asked and my doubts solved. The match between diagnosis criteria and her behavior that I though I was seeing, but resisting to accept, it tuns out that the answers had already been found by professionals two years ago, when she attempted suicide which, in her narrative when we met, was attributed to the excrusiating pain she was feeling from the break up with her husband. It's devastating.

A restraining order is a good idea, and you'll need to log every incident, no matter how seemingly minor.

Hey, you'd get more support if you posted this as your own thread. Being part of the sticky at the top of the forum, it's less likely to be seen by people.

Displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions

The person with HPD harbours a deep hurt, so deep and intense that it is buried. They may use denial as a coping mechanism, often acting gregariously, using humour to deflect, and suppressing their inner pain. It is, however, never far from the surface, and never far from consciousness. At times it will emerge in short, intense, dramatic outbursts, often appearing as an over reaction to a minor event. This is scary for the person with HPD, who will immediately use maladaptive coping mechanisms to bury the emotion again, and it will disappear quickly. They are also often psychologically trapped at the emotional stage of their childhood when their pain began. Rather like a child, who cries easily and intensely at the slightest provocation and then just as quickly is distracted by something amusing, the HPD switches emotions rapdily. This can be bewildering for a non, who has learnt how to process their emotions in an adult manner, and they can perceive the person with HPD to be emotionally labile and shallow, with emotions that seem fake. They are not fake, however, and are intensely felt.

That one makes a ton of sense (not HPD as far as i'm aware, but still!). Masq, did you know that you're fabulous?

masquerade you are wonderful to read! My son's girlfriend has all of the symptom's you described.

The symptom of dressing provacatively: She had breast augmentation before they met, and she has a really nice body I must say. She has long dark hair and a beautiful smile. I've had people ask me if she is a stripper??? Her breasts are always peeping out of every outfit she wears. She's very concerned and preoccupied with what her body looks like. In fact, when she was pregnant, she told me that she planned to breastfeed my granddaughter because it helps the uterus contract, and you get your pre-pregnancy body back faster. The outfits she goes out in look like something a hooker would wear to work. Very high heels, micro skirts, no back blouses that barely cover her breasts, etc. I was helping them move recently, and I was shocked at some of the clothes in her closet.

She seems very naive about things. Stories I've heard about her picking up strangers, giving strangers rides who just knocked on her door and asked, letting people move in with her that have no place to go that she didn't even know (which by the way ended up with her vehicle being stolen and totalled). It's scary to me, and luckily we live in a low crime area, and there are very few murders, etc. around here.

Wow, this is all so fascinating! I was involved with a woman for a year and a half that i initially thought a borderline - but after stumbling onto this site, I'm pretty sure she was HPD - can anyone explain the difference?

Your post is very, very good. I am 54 years old and my siblings and I have only recently realized that our chaotic and troubled relationship with our mother is because she is HPD. We get sucked into her dramas, and then when she is finshed playing with us she moves on as if nothing has happened. I thank you for your post.

I know that no one really knows except the person who does it, but I'm trying to figure out why this person I know does what she does. She's BPD but also seems to have histrionic and sociopathic traits. Anyway, I read that people with BPD need love and affection badly, but this woman spends most of her life as the mistress of a married man and in her spare time and on the weekends, she seduces married people, both male and female, and convinces them to cheat on their spouse and have sex with her. I guess this last part is an ego boost for her. What I don't understand is, the married people she seduces fall in love with her and some end up wanting to leave their spouse to be with her but she just has sex with them a few times and then abruptly abandons them to search for her next victim. She even calls them victims. If someone needs love so badly, why would they toss aside people who love them in favor of being someone's dirty secret (mistress). Also, the married man she's with seems to be a narcissist. Can anyone explain the thinking behind this behavior?

trying to understand wrote:If someone needs love so badly, why would they toss aside people who love them in favor of being someone's dirty secret (mistress).

I think what makes it hard to understand is that the initial assumption itself is partially mistaken. Love may be what they really need, but I don't think it is what they seek. What they (people with BPD or HPD) effectively seek is the feeling of having the source of affection/attention under their control.

Paradoxically, the very behavior that promotes this deceiving feeling is the same type of behavior that keeps away healthy affection. To actually have something, you need to come to terms with the knowledge that you may lose it unexpectedly. BPD and HPD make this knowledge unbearable.

Read the OP and other important bits.

Just wondering; how do you explain a person claiming to have HPD who doesn't come across as HPD IRL, and whose behaviour doesn't entirely make sense with the disorder ? - also their reaction to being treated in different ways don't make sense. (They don't respond positively to the stuff people with BPD or HPD are supposed to, instead they just use it to further take advantage, yet have attempted to claim they have BPD/HPD.) A lot of their portrayals of people with those disorders actually look like more like they're taking the piss out of them, but they seem determined (more so in the past than present) to convince people that is who they were.

Read and absorbed regardless though.

For the trolls, lol: I'm not talking about myself when I mention people not seeming HPD on the outside but being HPD on the inside. At times in my life, I've been far closer to the other way around. People would think I used impressionistic speech lacking in detail because I actually had a pathological inability to disclose and a need to keep my life, thoughts and intentions very private. The question is not about me.