Empath or Toxic? BPD Vs C-PTSD

Hello everybody, thank you for joining me for this week's question and answer video. I hope everyone had a good weekend. Welcome, I'm answering you guys' questions from the last question and answer video from last Monday, I do this every Monday. Please go down below in the comment section, ask me any question you want, I'll answer it next week. All I ask is please give us your location and consider liking the video. The last question and answer video, I just checked today, got 59 likes. If that continues, these videos will die. It needs your support, you guys are everything. I really appreciate considering just touching the like button if you like this. I know that hundreds of you guys watch this every single week, so it'd be nice just for you to hit the like button. I don't get paid for this, I do this for free just out of trying to give you guys information that will help your lives be better. Thank you very much. Let's dive into the questions. If you could, please consider signing and supporting a petition that I created, Stop Narcissistic Online Bullying. It's at change.org slash stopbullies. If you could please follow the link down below in the comment section, in the description box everywhere, just follow it, say you support it, that's it. It's worldwide, everyone in the world. Thank you very much. All right, let's get into the questions. First one is from The Healing Family from California again. Hello. Damn, you have been on point 100% with all the examples you give on people with BPD. You nailed it again. Ex-fiance was totally all about astrology, horoscope, black magic, et cetera. It's like you have known who I was with to the dot. Thank you. Why do they believe in all this? And so you're referring to what's called magical thinking. And again, I don't want to offend anybody who's into astrology and horoscopes. I've found them very interesting myself. I don't let it guide my life. I don't get stuck on I'm a Gemini, Gemini, Gemini, Gemini. Everything's about Gemini. As if I have one role in life and it's about being a Gemini because I was born during this month, you know? It's like, let it just be interesting. It can't define who you are, yeah? Certainly not guide you in life. That would be sad. And we're talking about all kinds of different things, black magic, et cetera. Sure. Why do they believe in all this? Well, we're talking about personality disorders. It is the disorder where I can't look at myself. I can't see myself. I don't like myself. I might have lots of shame and it hurts too much to look at myself. I don't know who I am. I lack self-awareness. Lacking self-awareness makes us want to know who we are when we go and look for answers. Looking outwards to see who we are inward isn't gonna help much. We need to look inwards, be able to look at ourselves. Being unstable, you know, can't protect myself, can't get myself what I need, you know, things like this that make them very easily suggestive. A lot of people who will manipulate you and use you a lot are also very easily manipulated. Thank you for your question. Rory from Ohio. Hi, Rory. Could you please talk about hypervigilance when we are in a relationship with a narcissist or a person with BPD? How does that affect us and them? Thank you, David. Hope you're having a great evening. Thank you, Rory. I hope you do too. Hypervigilance is a term used, it can be used for different things, I'm sure, but when we're talking about emotional trauma and abuse, hypervigilance refers to our brain keeping us safe and seeing danger where it may not lie. You talk, like maybe you take this scorned woman, right, who's been just dragged through the dirt for so long and she maybe raised so much child and was so betrayed, never grateful or thankful for everything that she did for him. She might be traumatized and she may not know how to take care of herself, protect herself, doesn't trust herself. And people will say, I don't trust people. I don't trust other people. I don't trust that. We need to trust ourselves and our own judgment, how we navigate relationships and how we meet people when we do. I'll be more technical. I hold my hand up saying these are the five true parts of your authentic self, at least, maybe more, but there's at least five here. And in these toxic relationships where we're abused, neglected, and traumatized, we don't have our needs met. This isn't what we want. They do things that feel bad, not good. We compromise our values, maybe not stick true to our beliefs. And we lose a sense of who we are and then what we are, our brain might take over. And the best way our brain can keep us safe is make us fear everything, right? There's a borderline trait of believing that, it's a fear of abandonment and taking preventative measures. It's extreme, extreme preventative measures to avoid abandonment. Even if you're not going to abandon them, you have no intention of abandoning them. And just the tone of your voice, or if you get angry or something like this, you don't want to be with them for a moment or something. And you're going to leave me, you're going to leave me. And that's that hypervigilance for them kicking in. For us, it might be just somebody hurting us, somebody bad to us, somebody using us and betraying us. And our brains will see little behaviors and little things and make us scared. If we enter a relationship without healing from stuff like this, then we enter relationships with anybody. He doesn't have to be a narcissist or person with BPD. And we may be quick to throw them away. Oh, you did this, you said that. Oh, you meant this and you meant that. And your intentions are wrong and bad and just toss, toss, toss, toss, toss. And that would be my brain trying to keep me safe. Whereas who I am really wants relationships with people, but what I am says, nope, you can't do that very well. We're going to keep you safe. Everything's going to be scary and everybody's going to be bad. Let's see this often in depression. Does that help? I mean, you're saying, what does it look like? Talk about hypervigilance in a relationship with a narcissist or BPD. It's going to be worse, right? Because you have someone that's unstable, that doesn't match your values, that's showing you red flags, making us feel uncomfortable, crossing our boundaries. So this hypervigilance is going to kick in even more. At least it's protecting us with someone like that. Maybe you meant something else with your question that I'm not understanding, Maria. So please, please ask me. Thank you. Healing family from California here again. Hi, as you remember me and my little ones are slowly healing. Almost going to be a year in therapy and I've been here with you for over a year. That's amazing. I can't believe that already. Time flies when you're having fun. And good for you. And thank you. I'm slowly feeling better. I'm healing. But how do you think my ex-fiance feeling is feeling since he jumped right into another relationship? Love your thoughts. Well, people with borderline personality disorder, there's a couple of distinct traits, diagnostic traits of the nine. There's one that stops and starts relationships suddenly. Yeah. Just immediately, you know, everything's fine today. Tomorrow, hey, I got a problem. We got in a fight. I don't like something you did and I'm out of here. Right, and I'm going to go right to somebody that I've been talking to already anyway. On the back burner waiting for me. My suitor's listening to me and complain about my relationship and how bad it is and how bad she is. And she just abuses me all the time, but she won't let me leave right now because of money and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you get in a little squabble or fight or they just make it up and leave you and go to somebody else. And so we've got these two diagnostic traits and one is stopping and starting relationships suddenly, being unstable, impulsivity, impulsiveness. And then we have feeling empty inside. And this is the number one way. This is the number one way to feel empty inside. And that's to be in a massive traumatic abusive relationship or just, you know, I love them so much. It's so intense. And then it just, I end it immediately. I don't look at myself. I don't heal. I don't gather myself, my thoughts. I don't make sense of it. I don't learn nothing. I just label it as your bad, evil. And I go right to a new person and start telling them I love them. And oh my God, I can't wait to get married to you. You're so much better than my last one. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They say your name 127 times. Yeah, this, I mean, you know, I get all kinds of us that do this. Serial daters and Tarzan swinging and stuff like this. And it's just, it's the best way to just lose a sense of who you are. And if you don't know who you are already, like a borderline and you keep doing this, you feel lost, scared and totally empty inside. Totally lost a sense of yourself. A lot of you guys kind of know what that's like. Yeah. It feels awful. Past that we don't heal from and understand typically causes a lot of shame. Probably hates himself. Not healing from my past relationship. Meaning I have emotions from it still. He thinks about you and has emotions that come up. His body does things when he thinks about you and the children. That's what not healing is. And this is going to be very disorganized if he has BPD. Not processing thoughts and emotions in any kind of functional way. Thank you. Hope that helps. Hi David, this is Martin from Quebec, Canada. Hello, Martin. I have a question I would like to know what's the difference, if any, between the male borderline and the female borderline. The genitalia is definitely different. There's some big differences. If you were to go look it up. Males are more narcissistic in general. When you get to mental illness like this, they are very more narcissistic. So if you have just, if you have two people, male and female, both diagnosed with just borderline, they don't have anything else, the male borderline is typically going to be a lot more narcissistic. The female borderline will be, tend to accept children and want to raise them more, where the male borderline kind of just not involved with kids at all. The male borderline will tend to possibly be more violent. Can't say the word violent. They may tend to be more that, more angry, outbursts. When you get into addictions, the male borderlines tends to be more alcoholics, smoke marijuana, and gambling. Whereas the female borderline may tend to be addicted to medications or abusing, misusing medication. And you guys, feel free to go down below and say some differences, what you think too. Without looking it up, trying to think of other ones. I can't think of any distinct differences. You know, it's the same mental illness. So they both meet the criteria. But they are a little different just as men and women are different, right? Yeah, the female, not saying that they'll make some great mother, but they tend to try, want to more, may lean on their children more, may use and exploit their children more emotionally. Whereas the male borderline typically doesn't want much to do with them. They're not involved in their life. They don't show them direction, don't meet their needs, maybe possibly more angry, violence, whether that's yelling, shouting, screaming, breaking things, not around as much, and the addictions are a little different. Anybody else that knows more differences, please list them. And if I had more time to think about them or look them up, maybe I can come up with more. Jimmy Toy, don't know where you're from, let us know your location next time. My ex told me she was an empath. I laughed in her face. You don't treat someone in the most horrible of ways and claim you're a caring person. I'll tell you what, especially with women, women that call themselves empaths are some of the most toxic, manipulative, destructive, gross, sickest people I've ever met in my life. I'm an empath, I'm an empath, I'm an empath. I understand that many of you guys watch us identify as an empath. I think that's general anyway. But that's the people in that group, typically pretty damn toxic. And I know, like I said, there's a lot of people that identify, you aren't toxic at all. You identify with this because you are more empathic than definitely the people that have been in your life, yeah. And that's reasonable to say. They say social pests have some empathy. Yeah, so I believe I have more empathy than social pests. So I'd be more empathic than them. But it's not something that I really identify with. I think what's important to realize is that like any spectrum, we can be too little or too much might not be good. And I just recommend people to have emotional boundaries with other people and that we don't need to feel other people's feelings. It can be quite draining and exhausting and it can interfere in your relationships sometimes. If you want an example, I had a friend once and if I told her how my day was, she would react to it as if it happened to her. And if it was something that wasn't good that happened to me, she would react to it and feel everything that I feel. And then I have to calm her down. Codependency, those are the codependent behaviors. Very typical of people who identify as empath also have codependent behaviors. And truth, don't know where you're from, truth. Please let us know your location next time. Thank you very much. Locations, locations, locations. Do you think if the father has a personality disorder like NPD, ASPD in particular, the son is more likely to develop it? And if the mother has it, the daughter has more chance? I think I read that somewhere. Well, I don't know the stats on it, you know. But just like any kind of toxic dysfunctional families, these things are cycles. They repeat each other. We're exposed to it. Just like alcoholism. If your father's an alcoholic, you have a higher propensity of having problems drinking. That could cause negative effects in your life. You have a higher propensity to become an alcoholic. Same can go with taking your own life. Someone in your family takes their own life, you have a higher propensity to do the same. If your father is a narcissist or a sociopath or a psychopath, you're not gonna be raised in a healthy environment. You're gonna be completely neglected, totally abused, exploited. Typically, a child is gonna come up with lots of self-doubt, not very much self-awareness. They have problems in their relationships. They'll have mental illness like depression and anxiety and CPTSD, all kinds of different things, right? So, of course, they have a higher chance of developing the same mental illness as their parent might have. But that's not to say to anybody who's had a parent with these disorders that you have a higher chance of being that because we all respond so differently. We all have different brains, like fingerprints. I mean, the neural network is formed by our own decisions and choices of what we do. So, now, there is an element of genetics. And when you talk about these particular mental illnesses, they'll say there's a higher propensity of being genetically predisposed to something like this. People with NPD and, let's say, sociopaths and narcissists don't regulate their emotions very well. Both of them have a wide range of emotions, don't really know what they are, don't look at themselves, don't regulate them very well. And this could affect genetics. You could be higher predisposed for what used to be called neurosis. Now, it's like anxiety. You could have a higher propensity of anxiety because in your family is high anxiety, which would make you more propensity to borderline if you're being neglected or rejected and abused and traumatized. So, yes, I would say you're more likely to develop it, just a higher chance, that's all. What is that chance? Maybe not much, but higher than somebody who's raised with people who don't have mental illness like that, for sure. As far as the son affected more if the father has it, the daughter affected more if the mother has it, maybe. Like I said, I don't know all of the stats on stuff like that. It'd be interesting to know what they are, I guess. It's hard to measure things like this, man. It really is. It's hard to trust the accuracy of statistics when it comes to personality disorders because I guarantee you there's more than 1%, 4% of people have NPD in the world. And when you look at statistics, it says 1% to like 14 to 30%. So which one's right? I mean, how do you measure? I don't know. I guess it comes down to our opinion. What do you think? Aquarian from BC, Canada. Hello. I've researched it before, but what's the biggest difference between BPD and CPTSD? Watching some of these videos offends me sometimes because I see myself in some of the behavior. Well, you're offended by your own behavior then, right? If you don't like your behaviors, change them. I have quite a lot of CPTSD symptoms as well as codependency. I'm quite sensitive also. So codependency is not a diagnosis or an illness or a disorder. It's just behaviors. I've always wondered if I have BPD, go find out and ask a doctor. Go ask a therapist. But I'm not crazy, like cheating constantly, crazy, hurtful behavior. Those aren't diagnostic traits. Just high propensity. If anything, my BPD tendencies are the quiet type. I tend to self-destruct from the inside and keep it in. In the past, I've had anxious attachment, but I've been single and not dating for about eight years now and find myself developing anxious avoidant attachment from being hurt in the past. I might delete this comment. I'm looking for advice from Dave or others. With helpful insight, thanks. So, you know, again, we don't self-diagnose this. It's just so, this stuff is so hard to do. It's hard enough to do with people that are closest to you in your life, let alone yourself. So they're just complete, they're different mental illnesses. And they're in different categories. There could be definitely some similar traits and behaviors, sure. Someone with CPTSD is gonna read the diagnostic traits of borderline and go, wow, I can identify with some of these, maybe, for sure. But you're talking about a personality disorder and then a stress disorder, or sometimes it's classified as anxiety disorder. With CPTSD, there is a very distinct diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder, now known as emotionally unstable. There's nine. You need five out of nine to have the disorder. If you don't have five out of nine and you only have four, you don't have the disorder. So not only do you have to meet that criteria and have five of the nine traits, but they must be very pervasive patterns consistently. Now, it says personality disorder, that doesn't necessarily mean it's who they are. But there's problems with their personality that causes negative effects in their life. So as you read the criteria for borderline, each one, and you ask yourself, do I have a pervasive pattern of this? Do I always do this? Has this always been a problem in my life? And has it caused negative effects? Do I have a tendency, you know, have I had suicidal thoughts? Yes. That doesn't mean you have the diagnostic trait of ideation. Right? Do you see that? I've had thoughts, but it doesn't cause negative effects in my life and make me wanna do it or sabotage my job or something. Right? Whereas a borderline, it does. It's a pervasive pattern that causes negative effects in their life. And they can't stop it on their own. They need massive help, professional help. A lot of people with CPTSD can heal and recover on their own. I don't think anyone with BPD can. It says they can. It says some people can just kind of grow out of it. I don't know. I haven't seen it. I'm not denying it. So, you know, there's a lot of shared common symptoms. CPTSD, common symptoms are self-doubt, depression, anxiety, addiction, and all these could be disorders. So badly, they cause negative effects in my life. It could be more situational. I had CPTSD. I believe it started in my childhood, like where I think everyone's does. These caused problems in my life where I had anxiety in my childhood and growing up. But the biggest problem was in my relationships. I didn't have problems working, going to school, daily functioning, self-care, you know, things like this. It seemed to be the worst when I was re-traumatized in a couple of bad relationships. And it slowly just started getting better. You can measure borderline personality disorder in a brain scan. It happens during development and becomes a very big part of who they are. Both are, I think brains are affected by both disorders and experiences. Very, very common too. I mean, people with CPTSD used to be diagnosed with borderline before there's more information about it. Again though, if you just have CPTSD, then that means that you probably don't have this massive fear of abandonment, feeling empty inside all the time, always, always ideating and obsessing about taking my life, you know? And a pervasive pattern would be, I feel this way at work. I feel this way with my friends. It's not just one or two relationships I had, situational kind of thing. That make sense? I've done entire videos on this. Maybe go watch that on my borderline personality disorder playlist. But feel free to ask more specific questions and anybody else, feel free to chime in and tell us what you think some of the major differences are. Victoria from the Bay Area. Hello, Victoria. Thank you for responding to my question. You're welcome. She no longer wants to live anymore with cancer and medication. Unfortunately, she passed away. I'm so sorry, Victoria. You lost a friend. My question is, why am I so mad at her for leaving early? That's something we tend to do as human beings when we lose somebody. The stage of grief is anger. It's actually something I help my clients get to. Sometimes they've been so traumatized and abused and betrayed so badly and they're not even angry. Gosh, I just love them. Okay. Let's get closer to anger. Why do we get angry? Didn't work out the way we wanted to. Sometimes we aren't happy with ourselves. Loss has everything to do with us. And when we lose somebody in our life that was very close to us, we're left with ourselves and we become critical of ourselves. Sometimes it hurts so much to look at ourselves. We can't do it. Sometimes we look at ourselves and we get angry. There may not be a specific reason, Victoria. I don't know. I'm very sorry for your loss. Your stage of anger is something that you need to express. Just saying it here, I hope, helps tell other people. But you're getting closer to acceptance. It's good. Emily from South Africa. What are the requirements of a good friend? I don't know what your requirements are or anybody else's out there. When I think of a good friend, first of all, I got to think about somebody that's in my life. And no one is allowed in my life unless I know for sure they value everything I value. That's my standards. I value a lot of things and it helps that I'm aware of these things that I value so I can have my standards and see them in people right away. And because I'm worthy, I take my time before I allow a stranger in my life I know that they value what I value. That's a standard of mine. Anyone in my life that I have relationships with have to meet the emotional needs we have in that relationship. They need to be able to reassure me all the time. They'll always be my friend and always be there for me and always have my back. I need to feel that way all the time. And they care how I feel. They only do things that make me feel good. Things like this. It's good to know what you require for people to be in your life. I have terms also. No violins in my life. You can't yell and scream and break things and hit me and you can't threaten to not be my friend. If not being my friend is something that's always on the table and an option for you, I really don't wanna be your friend anymore. If you write down everything you morally value, it covers everything. You gotta treat me the way I treat you. You gotta have respect and all that. Just write them down. You value respect, they need to too. You value self-respect, they have to too. You value honesty and integrity, they must too to be in your life or you compromise who you are. So I love diversity. I love people being different, not just like me. They don't have to have the same opinions or the same interests. I've been friends with people that have opposite political and religious views than me. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. But what's important to me is what I value and what I need. Big time. And you've got to value what I value. You gotta give me what I need and I'll give you what you need in this relationship. What are some requirements for you guys? Anything else? JR. Oh, where are you from, JR? I know this. God, I wanna say Georgia, Atlanta. Somewhere around there, Gulf state. Every time I hear the word empathy and especially empath, I cringe. Because so many women, usually BPD, have said over and over to me, I'm an empath. Ever since I learned about BPD, now as soon as they say it to me, I bail. I can't deal with it. I was texting this one girl recently and after a few weeks, she told me she's an empath. I blocked her. I don't know if this is a good thing or not that I immediately cut them off. But it's my immediate reaction. My question is how do I get rid of a third party in a relationship like my girlfriend's mother from being involved in what goes on between myself and my girlfriend? This has been an ongoing problem with my on again, off again girlfriend to the point I told her we can't be together unless she leaves her mother out. Yeah, I was just talking about hypervigilance, right? I see possibly a little hypervigilance there, right? The last people who abused me called themselves empaths and you're saying you're an empath? It's like, I'm just saying I'm empathic. See ya. That might be hypervigilance. Might be a good example of it. I'm not telling you not to do it. On and off again relationship needs to stop. It's already over. You guys already ended. Why do you get back together? And again and again and again and again. This causes addiction. This is codependency. This makes it harder and harder to leave somebody you can't stand like an addiction. God, David, they just are so bad to me and trying to ruin my life. They're so dangerous, put me in jail. I love them. Why can't I leave them? And how do I get rid of her mother? Well, you're never gonna get rid of her mother. So you tell her how it feels. Look, this is why it's good to know who we are. And I have an emotional need. I think everybody does. And it's security. And part of that emotional security means that everything that we talk about and discuss and do together will never be shared with someone else ever. You will not tell your mother about me, about our relationship at all. Don't need to. You have a problem with our relationship, go talk to a professional or me. Don't share these things with your mom. I bet she does, just have a feeling. We need to feel secure that she won't do that. And also there's respect, right? We also have a need of intimacy, alone time. Do you have alone time with her? How is the mother interfering in your relationship? Does it cause you stress? Tell her, it causes me stress, I don't like it. I don't like that you share so much about our relationship with your mom. You know, I don't know what kind of problems it's causing for you. Maybe you can tell me this time, Cher, down below, what are some of the problems it's causing? And then you can at least identify the problems and tell your girlfriend, this is causing problems. If she doesn't care, say, this makes me feel A, B, and C. If she doesn't care, she doesn't care about you, right? Emotional language. Talk about how we feel, not what we do, not what they do, how it feels. You talk about what people do, they'll defend it, they'll excuse it, all kinds of shit, it won't work. It's about how it makes me feel. Narcissist Hex, NF9EQ. Don't know where you're from, let us know. Oh, I'm in the US, thank you. Good evening, David, good evening. I'm a self-aware diagnosed narcissist. What do you think may happen to narcissists if they try to change for the better? I think I have, but I still make mistakes. I was diagnosed in 2022 and have been working on myself since. Good, that's great. I encourage everyone to work on themselves, for sure. Your question, what do you think may happen to narcissists if they try to change for the better? Well, on the outside, you might have an easier, less stressful life. When you're talking about narcissists, we're talking about people with narcissistic personality disorder. That's a severe mental illness, and it doesn't feel good. And I don't need to have it to understand it, how people feel with it. I've known enough, I learned enough about it, and it sucks. Very, very high in taking their own life. Very high in stress, anxiety, and depression. So trying to change for the better would mean increase our self-awareness, know who I am more, learning to start accepting that, loving that maybe. This is how we can navigate in relationships because we need to, we need people in our lives, right? We need our needs met. We need to know how to do this, and it's just impossible if I have a type of disorder where I can't look at myself, where I don't know who I am, where I can't communicate things to them, right? Everyone can be a better version of themselves, every one of you. It doesn't matter. Don't let some label or mental illness hold you back. Anyone, any one of you out there. I don't care if it's CPTSD, anxiety disorder, every single person can become a better version of ourselves and we should try to do that every single day. Some problems we may not be able to fix. We have to accept that about ourselves and learn how to be more functional. But some of the problems that you're gonna face trying to change for the better, depending on how you do that, is coming to terms with who you are. That might not be easy for you. I don't know how you feel about yourself. Learning to accept who you are and forgive yourself and love yourself unconditionally might be very, very, very difficult. Trying to do this, looking at ourselves and introspecting can be very scary. That's all I think could happen negatively. Positively, you have an easier, less stressful, more successful life. The difficult part will be facing yourself for the first time in many, many years. But I commend you for trying. Good, please ask me anything else. That's the last question, thanks guys. That's it. Please, please ask questions, please thumbs up, please subscribe to the channel. Like I said, I have 59 likes in the last video. That ain't gonna cut it. We need more. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of you watching. How about all of you give me a thumbs up? Just this time, just once and see what happens. Thank you. Ask questions, love yourself first. Have a beautiful week, bye-bye.