Can a person with borderline personality disorder feel empathy?

People with BPD have lower levels of empathy than people without BPD.

Yet many people with BPD claim to feel higher levels of empathy. This is because they are confusing lacking healthy boundaries with others, enmeshment, co-dependency, emotional dysregulation, and personal distress with empathy. None of the aforementioned five things are empathy, though.

BPD is often caused by childhood trauma (most commonly child sexual abuse.) As a result of that trauma, the survivors grow up lacking an ability to set healthy boundaries with others, and so they often get completely enmeshed with loved ones to a high degree. This is why they often feel strong emotions at the emotions of others.

Additionally, untreated trauma causes survivors to be hypervigilant and ultra-alert to the emotions of others. This is because in order to avoid danger or protect oneself growing up in a dangerous or abusive environment, young victims had to be especially attuned to the emotions of others. This attunement to the emotions of others is not out of empathy or care for the other person, but out of a concern for the victim’s own safety. As such, when they grow up, their hyper-attunement to the feelings of others remains as a protective mechanism. Thus, BPD people feel extreme personal distress at the emotions of others. Personal distress is not empathy. Personal distress is often confused for empathy, because it is an internal feeling that arises based off the internal feelings of another. But personal distress is a state of internal turmoil based in one’s own need to feel safe. This is another reason that BPD people misconstrue that they feel higher levels of empathy or extreme affective empathy. BPD people will often try to comfort a loved one or try to make a loved one feel better; this is not done out of empathic concern as much as personal distress and fear; BPD people need for the other person to feel better so that they themselves can feel less distress of fear for their own safety. BPD people feel safe when others are calm or happy, and distressed in fear for their own safety when others are highly angry, sad, emotional, anxious, or panicked.

Lack of empathy is not a diagnostic criteria of BPD. There are many variations between people with BPD, including variation in the level of actual empathy they feel. But when you hear a BPD person say: “I feel too much empathy; I feel extreme empathy; I feel higher levels of empathy than normal,” what they are communicating to you is that the issues they are dealing with presently are lack of healthy boundaries with others, emotional dysregulation, and personal distress at the emotional reactions of others - as well as a lack of self-awareness. A bpd person who has substantial self-awareness will already know what I explained here, and will not express that they have too much empathy. There is no such thing as “too much” empathy. “Too much empathy” is not a thing. If someone tells you this, they are telling you that the first five problems I mentioned initially are the dysfunctions that person faces, as well as a lack of awareness that those are their dysfunctions.

Edit: In the case of my above answer, to clarify: it is not the case that it is either empathy, or enmeshment/dysregulation/personal distress. It is the case that empathy and the dysfunctions often appear together. So a person with BPD does not lack the capacity to empathize (as other disorders lack the capacity itself.) It is the case that enmeshment, dysregulation, and/or personal distress is most often what makes the empathy feel like “too much empathy” or “a higher than normal level of empathy.” Empathy itself is never “too much” - but enmeshment, dysregulation, or personal distress amplifies the emotional response until it feels overwhelming. (This is also why bpd people tend to overestimate their empathy levels - not because there is no empathy when they say there is - but because the feelings are amplified by issues other than empathy, but they mistake those other issues as added layers of empathy when they are something else that are separate resolvable issues.)

The borderline personality is one I call the disorder of deflected suffering. Your sister suffers but shows it by lashing out at others while inside, she is emotionally a train wreck. Clinicians at the Mayo Clinic describe borderline personality disorder in terms of how it affects how you feel about yourself, how you relate to others and how you behave.  It isn’t that she doesn’t have empathy for others but that her symptoms preclude her expressing it. Signs and symptoms may include:

“Impulsive and risky behavior, such as having unsafe sex, gambling or binge eating

Unstable or fragile self-image

Unstable and intense relationships

Up and down moods, often as a reaction to interpersonal stress

Suicidal behavior or threats of self-injury

Intense fear of being alone or abandoned

Ongoing feelings of emptiness

Frequent, intense displays of anger

Stress-related paranoia that comes and goes” (1.)

As difficult as it is to understand, those with the disorder are hurting and difficult as it is to live with, every effort should be made to understand what is happening with the individual sufferer. There is family help available and I hope that your sister is receiving some therapy for the disorder which is entirely treatable. Your local county mental health clinic or woman’s shelter can help with your sister if she’s not receiving therapy.

(1.)http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseas......

https://www.bpdcentral.com Help for Families

BPD ..... with Borderline Personality Disorder is support for the families of those struggling with BPD.

For Loved Ones - Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified

Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified

Good luck and thanks for the request.

It is easy to confuse the borderline’s selfish and manipulative behavior as coming from an inability to empathize with others. But this is an incorrect reading of their behavior. Borderlines are not like the sociopath who cannot feel empathy at all. It's quite the opposite, borderlines feel a lot. Too much.

So why do people believe borderlines lack empathy?

When faced with desperate situations, particularly in close relationships where their fear of abandonment or their extreme need for revenge takes over, borderlines lose their ability to consider the feelings and needs of everybody involved. Not because they don't feel, but because they're overwhelmed with feelings. They short circuit. Their emotional pain is so great they become selfish short-term thinkers concerned only with soothing their own inner pain. They are like a burn victim desperately pressing the button for more morphine, oblivious to the destructive addiction to come. Their emotions rage out of control, blinding them to the bigger picture and other people's feelings and needs. Many borderlines say they know that people don't like it, but they can't stop themselves. In these moments, they make decisions they later regret. They can also destroy lives in these moments.

This tidal wave of emotion also causes borderlines to confuse their feelings. They may view their own internal pain as empathy. This is why they say they feel “too much” empathy. But crying for two hours because you see a dead dog on the side of the road is not empathy. It does nothing for the dog and requires nothing of the borderline. True empathy requires the ability to sacrifice something you want, be it financial, material, emotional, because you see another person’s viewpoint. It requires cooperation and compromise. Borderlines mostly cannot do this, especially when they are emotionally distraught.

Another reason people view borderlines as lacking empathy is because borderlines often have an uncanny ability to read the emotions and vulnerabilities of others, often better than the person themselves. However, because close relationships trigger the borderline’s extreme emotions, they use this information to gain an upper hand on others in order to ease their own inner suffering. Believing that the borderline’s empathy is genuine or harmless, the other person lowers their defenses. The borderline then quickly begins to manipulate in order to dominate and control the other person. The rush of domination and feeling in control soothes their inner turmoil. Again, it is not a lack of feeling that drives the borderline to act this way, but a desperate attempt to end uncomfortable feelings. However, the end result is the same as a lack of empathy. People feel conned and manipulated. This is why many people view borderlines as sociopathic. (Some psychologists believe that BPD is the female or “hot” emotional version of being a sociopath.)

One final note on empathy. BPD is often co-morbid with other Cluster B disorders. Therefore, a borderline may exhibit traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder, complicating the ability to understand the true motivation behind their behavior. The borderline I was entagled with was completely able to formulate and carry out involved schemes and scams. These are probably the types of borderlines that most people abhor. It's hard to see this behavior as a momentary emotional meltdown.

As far as BPD going away with age, there is no real evidence that it does. More likely, what actually happens is that because BPD tends to be acted out through close relationships, when the BPD no longer has children or romantic relationships later in life, they calm down. There is nobody there for them to attack. Or the attacks are so infrequent that the illusion of BPD not being there takes hold. Not the same as it going away. Many people talk about their difficulty in dealing with their elderly BPD parent.

I’m someone with BPD myself. Though, I’m not one of the abusive ones, thankfully. But to ask if someone with BPD can feel empathy? YES. It depends on the person, not all of us are the same. It’s like autistic people saying: “You met one person with autism, that means you only met ONE person with autism.”

It’s the same for your person as well, you have only met one person with BPD, we are not all the same. So, you must handle her as an individual.

But yes, we are capable of feeling empathy based upon our character, rather than our personality. There are good people with BPD, there are bad people with BPD, there are in between people with BPD. Lumping us all into one category or another is what we do naturally, and it isn’t how things should work.

Your sister sounds manipulative. And some people with BPD have that, some don’t.

If you have tried the soft touch on her, to be sympathetic to her emotions, treading on egg shells and that doesn’t work, maybe a hard drop is needed. A shock to the system, perhaps. You have to set boundaries. Sometimes, people with BPD understand absolutes better. It’s that black and white insanity thing. It may put you in the black category, and that will happen. Expect it. But absolution is sometimes the only thing that can get through to them.

Is she going to therapy? Therapy helped me a lot. There are still difficulties to sort through the emotions, but it does help when the person is committed.

As for the empathy thing. We can feel empathy, it is dependent upon the person and how BPD affects them.

But someone with severe BPD, the issue of empathy is…they can feel empathy, is that they are drowning in their own emotions first and it is hard for them to express empathy towards you because they have to swim through the sea of emotions they are experiencing now. So, their behavior, their emotions, will cloud their thoughts that what they are doing to you is harmful. Their emotions will blind them to your needs or at understand that what thy are doing is hurting you.

But the concept of understanding that someone can be hurt, and that you can feel bad that, that person was hurt isn’t lost to a person with BPD.

There are many times when friends of mine have been hurt by other people, horrible people, and hearing their cries, hearing their sorrow that person harmed them in any way…I feel for them of course, and then I get really furious at the person who hurt them.

Or if one of my friends or family lost someone dear to them. I’m usually the first person they run to when they need a shoulder to cry on. I did that with my grandmother when my grandfather died. I was torn up inside, but I knew my grandmother needed to cry first. So, I was that shoulder, and I held her knowing that though my grief was great, hers was much worse.

That is empathy.

So, yes, we are able to feel it, very much so.

So, your sister may have something else going on in her head. And it sounds like you’re looking for her to feel sympathy for you, rather than empathy. Sympathy is something those with BPD have trouble with. Sympathy can be disingenuous with people with BPD, so that’s why we have issues understanding its concept.

BPD’s have intense feelings. Empathy is a pretty abstract word and it gets used pretty loosely. Let’s define emotional empathy as being able to see from someone’s emotional perspective and acting in the best interest of that person’s emotional well being. This is what people usually mean when they talk about empathy.

There is also cognitive empathy. This is creating a logical frame work in which emotions can be guessed at and then an empathizer can mimic the emotions to facilitate something happening. Usually this something is understanding someone else but it could also be used as information to facilitate acquiring something for one’s own needs(common tactic with NPD, anti-social, and histrionic, less common with BPD). A very easily understood form of cognitive empathy is cognitively empathizing with fictional characters. Cluster B personalities are usually very good cognitive empathizers but people dealing with BPD come with the extra kick of having very intense feelings. So during cognitive empathy, which all the cluster B’s can do, someone with BPD will have very intense feelings. It’s these feelings they are looking to cater to and not the feelings of the person they are empathizing with.

So there is a very big catch to how BPDs deal with other people’s emotions. If you have ever been close to someone with BPD and you spend enough time with them you’ll realize their empathy isn’t quite like the empathy that most people think of. It involves the BPD acting in the best interest of their own emotional well being instead of the person they are empathizing with. Sometimes the reaction of the BPD is exactly what the other person needs and it’s a wash. No harm no foul. Sometimes the feelings are positive. Maybe a friend gets promoted at work and a BPD sufferer will spend the next hour smiling, happy, and showering the friend with praise. But often it’s not these scenarios.

There are already some great examples provided in some of the answers in this question thread that illustrate this. Paraphrased:

I empathize so much that when I see a fictional character being abused, and then later see someone who looks like the fictional abuser, I’ll be mean to that person! That’s how much I empathize!

Normative personalities would never ever do this. They recognize that it’s not in the best interest of the fictional character (because it’s a fictional character and it doesn’t matter). More importantly they’d recognize that the look-alike is A REAL PERSON with REAL emotions and a REAL perspective. But again BPD type empathy is not about other people’s feelings, it’s about their own feelings that can sometimes be triggered by other people’s feelings. It’s like a mimicked empathy and the differences become apparent if you are around someone dealing with BPD for long enough. Consider the answer where someone abused a dog and the answerer almost murdered the owner. What about actually doing something to help the dog? A normative personality empathizing with the dog would do something to help the dog.

Another thing is that cognitive empathy can be wrong. This is when the difference becomes really apparent with BPD empathy. The person suffering from BPD will still be trying to fix their own feelings even though they aren’t anything like the feelings of the person that triggered the cognitive empathy episode.

I think Alana Winner’s answer is good. Yet, all the responses have something to say which does show that BPD comes in many shapes, sizes and colors. There are definite diagnostic criteria for BPD and lack of empathy is not one of them. That ( as pointed out ) does not mean the empathy is consistent. The BP who loves you and feels your pain on Sunday may hate and be oblivious to your feelings on Monday.