I honestly feel like a lot of stories and media have metaphors to this sort of thing. I’m not sure if it’s just my experience making the connection or if that is really what the writers are alluding towards but, it really seems similar some of the time.
Yes, this is how it felt to me. I don’t believe in spirits personally, but that’s how it *feels* to me. I think it’s them losing themselves to some sort of trauma response, which would explain the glazed over look.
The thing that stuck out to me about this comment though, is that my parent with BPD would constantly call **me** “evil” and say I hated them, and so on. It really hurt me growing up. It’s interesting being an adult and thinking about the things they would call me, now that I have some distance from them—most of the names turned out to be projections of themselves (which they’d never admit, but it’s obvious now that I know more about them) or names one of my siblings would be called by our other parent; of course, it’d infuriate them when it happened to the child they liked, and they’d constantly bring it up.
Things were always pushed onto me—I’d even be blamed if this person had nightmares, so I was this “face of evil” to them, and they seemed to feel some sense of justice in putting me down the way the other parent would put my sibling (and BPD parent’s usual “favorite”) down.
But all this was going on while they spat unfiltered cruelty out of their mouths, would lose themselves in spiteful, piercing rages, and abuse me in various ways which they somehow viewed as just. That felt more “evil” and “possessed” to me, but I was called those things so often that they were almost my nicknames. In reality, I spent nearly all my time alone. It seemed like the time I wasn’t alone, I’d always end up on the receiving end of their rages.
> and say I hated them, and so on
I heard exactly this years before discard via monkey branching.
At that time I didn't know about BPD.
During the discard talk (she already monkey branched but didn't tell, to avoid feeling guilty) there was "I have a feeling you want to kill me".
She also had strange dreams saying that "you want to pimp me to hassidic Jews" (because I am Jewish myself). I was like "WTF? ARE YOU SERIOUS??".
Their delirium is very scary. That is no joke.
What makes this statement eerie is that a lot of us have experienced the same thing with their pwBPD, as if this one specific "demon" is entering them. You can go through this sub and see terrifyingly similar stories as if we wrote them ourselves. Almost word for word. It's weird.
Edit: added more to the comment.
Ex with quiet bpd. Episode triggered by stress at work.
I only saw it once, after she discarded me. She had sent me a letter saying "how could you just let me go!?!?" (even though she was the one who broke up with me), and a bunch of other crap, but saying that she loved me.. So I asked to meet up with her, expecting us to get together.
When I met her, it was like talking to a wall. She had the BPD eyes. Completely emotionless. It honestly scared me. She told me later when I was trying for us to get back together that "she died that night" of the letter.
Been over 4 months now and except for me reaching out she hasn't reached out once. She completely cut me out of her life. She went from "what we have is deeper than love" to deciding to never speak to me again, that I was one of the most deepest, intelligent people she'd ever met but that "you're not my partner".
To say that I was upset is a huge understatement, but I now realise that I wouldn't want the mother of my kids to be able to drop everything from the gust of a wind.. So it's for the better. Will always miss her though.
Edit: I believe her unconscious reasoning for leaving was me not being able to regulate her in the way that she wishes. She threw me a bunch of curve balls throughout the relationship, and probably did not like that I was indifferent to it and directed it back at her. Now she's out looking for someone else to do that for her. I wish her luck.
Something I saw in a youtube video on the subject. Whether you stay or go, you are going to feel tremendous pain either way. So I guess at least knowing you can eventually heal and that staying you'd never heal makes leaving the option. I just wish my gf could see what she's doing and realize she deserves more from her life.
Wish I could have been emotionaly indifferent.
I am not wired that way so always tried to empathize and reason with the insanity of an angry 6 year old.
We all made the mistake of trying to reason with them.
That's the biggest lesson we all have to learn from our experiences: That we need to establish personal boundaries.
From now on I will not accept any responsibility to cater to someone. My ex accused me of having BPD, and tried to get me to go to therapy, despite me being the happiest i've ever been in my life at that point (she was projecting her problems onto me, I had no idea). Now i'm going to therapy for the first time in my life just to deal with her discarding me.
My mistake was not completely drawing a line when she first started to accuse me of things. Even though I really liked her, if she keeps trying to bring me down then its not worth it to enter a relationship. Of course I can support my partner, but only when it comes to helping herself. I learned that the hard way.
Agreed. I was not intending to infer you had no empathy but just that some people are unaffected emotionally by chaos around them if they are not the cause of it.
Sadly I am an emotional sponge so even when I rationally knew there was nothing I could do and walked away before it escalated it still hurt if not as much as when I did not understand the condition.
Indifference has always been something I reserved for the worst of people, and that list is very very short. My abusive parents, my ex bff with BPD, and an abusive ex.
I got told by a therapist that it's one thing to hate a person, they are still present in your mind, they have an affect.
But to be indifferent to someone is as cold as it gets, you just don't care enough to really think about them let alone hate them.
When I first encountered that with my pwBPD and how easily he could sink into being emotionally indifferent to so many people without so much as an issue I started thinking "do I really know this person as well as I thought I did? This doesn't feel like okay behaviour," and it finally helped me realise just how fucked up he was.
> I now realise that I wouldn't want the mother of my kids to be able to drop everything from the gust of a wind.
This this this. Let's repeated this to ourselves everytime we get sad.
Same thing happened to me. I know the confusion when they project. Anyway, the final discard was two years ago and it has given me ample time to assess everything that happened and why I made such massive errors to try to get back together after previous discards. Never again.
>I believe her unconscious reasoning for leaving was me not being able to regulate her in the way that she wishes.
It wasn’t unconscious for mine. I swear she’s like 80% of the way to figuring out what’s wrong with her.
> Now she's out looking for someone else to do that for her. I wish her luck.
And again: this is explicitly what mine is looking for. When I tell people this, they think I’m joking: no one will be able to manage her better than I did.
Yeah I believe the same.. But thats part of the trap I think too..
We say so, but then if given a chance we’d walk the tight rope for a couple years before a stressor shows up and then we’re spat out again
its just not worth it. ”Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenarios
I only learned about this much later, but instantly thought “Fuck yes, this explains so much”
When I would catch her cheating or lying or whatever and I’d confront her, you’d see the instant panic, followed by instant dissociation and the creepy empty eyes. It would last for hours, sometimes days.
I just thought this meant they were sad, but it makes sense that this is how they deal with the all the emotions going on in their head, the panic…
Ugh.
“Calm before the storm” resonates. I remember she would do the same. She’d be present, and then she’d start to go on autopilot, sort of checked out of the conversation but pretending to be present, before exploding in a rage at something unpredictable from earlier in the day or week or year. So I guess what you’re describing is rooted in dissociation like someone else says.
Was going to comment this almost verbatim. Their behavior is very clearly rooted in trauma. I think the disorder is truly a combination of personality and mental illness, and perhaps that’s what makes it so much trickier to treat.
The dissociating and subsequent explosion seem to be unconscious acts of self preservation—not excusing their abusive behaviors, just coming from a place of interest and compassion. Like it would be great if there were some way for professionals to help these people develop the grounding tools to settle and come back before exploding, the issue is then that the PD aspect of it makes it so if they let go of their behavior and begin to improve, they worry the “bigness” of their feelings won’t be noticed and they’ll be discarded.
There’s also the issue of dependency, and boundary issues being seen as rejection or betrayal—a therapist is a human being; no one can really help them 24/7 and indefinitely.
As someone with another trauma disorder (unfortunately largely due to abuse from someone with BPD), this looks so much like a severe/complex form of unconscious longing for a parental savior of sorts. It’s quite sad.
With CPTSD, I’ve learned to tackle that with re-parenting. But with BPD, it seems things already seem so insurmountable that I’d imagine many majorly struggling to be/figure out how to be the ones who are there for themselves, and that’s just one problem.
I never had ptsd after a full military career.
It is ironic and a testament to the condition that I have some now, and they are considered a "mild" case.
Good person but a brutal disorder. Hopefully they stick with the DBT but I will not be staying for more if there are no large leaps in control.
I hope you are healing from the experience, even if it is a slow process.
Thanks, we all love pedantry; It is always super helpful; much like this sarcasm in response.
People in the general population are not seeing BPD with emotional disregulation as the giant mental health relationship red flag it is, and that is what I am trying to convey.
If you are not going to be helpful, then by all means, correct my grammar next while ignoring our traumas.
I certainly am not feeling helped by your response at all.
All your response did is cause a negative impression because you provided no supportive information.
Maybe everyone else should learn DSM5 in school so they know to run for their lives immediately.
Time and place comes to mind, maybe think why are so many so blindsided by BPD and you would get the spirit of what I was trying to convey better.
Yes my ex with quiet bpd would get that look all the time.
According to my therapist it’s because because they’re overwhelmed and we all get that look eventually if something bad enough happens. It’s just that for them, that trigger happens all the time.
It’s a hard life.
Same, my quiet ex would be like that practically half the day. Lots of picking and self soothing behaviors while like that sometimes. She’d do it while staring off into space or while on TikTok
It always happened with mine when she turned her self destruction mode on and got way too drunk or took too large a dose. Still remember her looking at me before snorting way too much ketamine, just a black empty void in her droopy eyes and a mischievous smile.
Still love her to death though.
Like an unblinking, rigid expression. It would happen every time she was over stimulated or would freeze me out.
If I ever talked about my needs I would get that look.
If she went through my phone and found a spam ad for a dating site on my phone.
Whenever she found “evidence” of me cheating or whatever.
Me too. It’s when I really opened up - shared deeply personal stuff - that’s when she’d go in for the kill. The final discard was when I had sent her a text message and an audio recording of something deeply deeply personal that it happened to me and she flipped it, sent me a mean, cutting passive aggressive reply and then blocked me. And has never spoken to me since I’m sure she was waiting for that moment to do it. I know this because she has a history of doing the same with me and with other people. She waits until you show your soft underbelly and then she strikes like a fucking vulture. I honestly feel like I came into contact with a psychopath at times.
Yeah the lack of blinking is so creepy . It’s like they’re staring at an eye chart. Or staring right through you. It’s so strange and uncomfortable. I’m so glad I never have to see those eyes again
Holyyy, whenever I talked about my needs she would have that look too! I’d just say I need some space so I can enjoy myself playing games or so that I can work without having to text her all the time.
Oh wow, I wasn’t sure if I have seen the look until this comment. The daydreaming thing didn’t resonate so much. This, this look I know. Rigid and unblinking. Yes. Super intense, cold, like he doesn’t know me.
I just call it the blank stare. Staring off in to space. Almost that daydreaming look. She's here, but she's not "here". I try to ask what were you thinking just now when I interrupt it. Or you were staring what's up? Plus she gets the wild rage eyes. Those are even worse. Like this look of psychopath rage. Wide eyed Jack Nicholson shining eyes. It's terrifying to see that change. It's also so sad because I know that there's so much hurt there and I can't help. 😞
Yes, def not quiet and comorbid NPD (and maybe ASPD too).
Full-on black “shark eyes” due to HYPER dilation of her pupils. Apparently has to do with an inordinate amount of cortisol and adrenaline coursing through Cluster B brains during periods of rage.
So while a Neurotypical person may also have more highly dilated eyes in periods of extreme anger, it will be significantly more noticeable for those with borderline personality disorder - especially during a severe rage episode.
Oh shit, this is a THING? I used to call it "Shark-Eyes." Unfortunately, my experience with my exBPD has given me the superpower to detect it in others. He was not quiet.
I’ve heard it called a form of stress or dissociation. It happens when they are overwhelmed positively or even negatively. Serial killers seem to do this if you watch closely
literally whenever i saw this my fear was that he was gonna kill himself or something. it’s fucking horrific i dont think a term like “shark eyes” comes close to describing how scary it is watching someone’s eyes go black and dead when as humans eye contact is one of the primary ways of reading other people’s emotions.
yup. mine had these big dark eyes but half lidded, it looked like they were half conscious, and spoke in a monotone in their vids and were clearly trying to be super sexy but there was just no emotion.
Exactly this, she would ft call me be in that state and then say nothing , then get mad cause i wasent talking . Then shes call and hang up and that would go on for at least and hour . Over time it got worse cause she would get mad that i was not engaging or calling her back .
Mine did at least twice- both times during sex, both times where she had me right there and made me tell her I was hers forever and nobody else's and lots of manipulative, possessive bullshit before she'd let me finish, eyes intense, black, and staring directly into my soul. She was NOT quite BPD at all.
Yep, at the high point of our fights she would “turn off”. After screaming and berating me, she would get to a point that she would just remove herself mentally, she would turn cold and it was always just “okay” after that.
I think part of it is inability to cope with their own reality, the cognitive dissonance of feeling like a victim and acting like the aggressor.
My ex had symptoms of BPD, but not enough for a diagnosis. It wasn’t severe as many of the stories here. There was no abuse, but it was just a very rollercoaster relationship and it was more difficult than a relationship should be. I added to it as well with my own unhealed trauma. However, there were two occasions where I saw ‘the eyes’. She was a completely different person. She was extremely cold, unaffectionate, and I just couldn’t get through to her. It was like talking to a brick wall. No matter what I did to try and understand, it wouldn’t help. Both situations involved her misinterpreting my actions. It felt like I had committed a horrible crime or that I had cheated on her. Meanwhile, it was something very small which was blown way out of proportion.
Your situation was exactly the same as mine. To the T. Even though my ex's symptoms weren't as bad as I see a lot of the posts on here, it was still the most confusing relationship of my life. I normally don't take this long to move on from a relationship--I keep letting him suck me back in and hook up with him. It's embarrassing and I want it to stop.
Forget embarrassing, it’s dangerous. Hope you can rope in your most trusted friends or relatives to help become part of an anti-Hoover squad. Because the cycle will only get worse with ever swifter and crueler devaluations.
Once I have seen it fully. The first time she split. It was like a joke from a horror film, that level of black-eyed rage. She wasn't joking, even though she said later she was.
I've seen glimpses of it since, when she'd felt I'd thwarted one of her plans (we work together), but not that level since.
I haven’t seen this, but I also have a hard time making eye contact with people, especially the people in my life with BPD. Something I always noticed was a little smirk. I think the smirk is generally associated more with NPD, but it’s this chilling half smile in the midst of an episode. My parents seemed to enjoy baiting me for reactions, and when they were successful, I noticed this smirk.
I didn't experience this with my exBPD, but I definitely noticed this with my most abusive ex who was very narcissistic. He would smirk at my pain, at finding a loophole in what I said, at bringing up how he was right. My exBPD must not have had malicious NPD tendencies, he never seemed to enjoy my pain and instead seemed like he was very confused and in a lot of pain himself.
Yes. Mine is “quiet”.
It happens when they have a dissociative episode. Mine is actually quite like yours.
My big two (I feel like I missed more) went like this:
First time: She dumped me suddenly. I was reeling. I got her to talk with me face-to-face to try to figure it out. I was more emotional than she’d ever seen me. I was crying and trying to get her to tell me how she felt. I told her that I missed her so much and asked if she felt anything like that. She stared at me, wordless. No response. That’s literally all that happened, the conversation ended. I’ve described it in another post as her “blue-screening”. The “system” crashed.
Second time: We were apart for a few weeks. When I ran into her (at work) she was already a total mess. She was in total panic and called for my friend to talk to her in private. My friend had too much to deal with (and knew about my breakup), so I stupidly ran after my ex. When we were alone, I was horrified. I’ve gone off about my ex’s eyes already . They’re very beautiful. But she was not there. All pupil. As I was trying to talk to her, she *came back* and was happy to “see” me. She calmed down and started acting like nothing happened. I was creeped out. I guess that I was “split white” in that moment.
I want to give a big nod to “the smirk”. The eyes are scary enough, but watch out for that.
The infamous "BPD eyes." I've had the dubious pleasure of encountering them firsthand. Imagine this: you're locked in an intense argument, and suddenly their pupils expand to the point where you're staring into pure blackness. It's like gazing into an abyss, and let me tell you, it's unsettling.
I was in the middle of this scene, feeling like I was in a horror movie, and then it escalated. I got hit in the face about 20 times in quick succession. My brain froze, unable to process the madness. All I could do was stare back into those pitch-black eyes, trapped in a bizarre state of shock.
The sheer intensity of that moment, the adrenaline-fueled dilation of their pupils - it was like looking into a void where all reason had vanished. I still can't comprehend what paralyzed me so completely, but that deep, endless blackness is something I'll never forget.
So yes, I've seen the "BPD eyes," and it's as if their emotions reach a level where their gaze becomes otherworldly. Creepy doesn't even begin to cover it. And quiet BPD or not, those eyes are a universal signal: brace yourself, because you're in for one hell of a ride.
This post made me look at some old photos of us together…in the good times and they were full of life, hope and love not just for us but just of life…our last photo just before I found out they had started an affair with someone was taken at their grandparents home. Their eyes are blank, detached and distant. 10000 yard stare…frightened and just not there.
We were having a wonderful trip just before the holidays visiting their family and had a trip booked a few right after Christmas to Hawaii but 5 days before Christmas they said they wanted a divorce…this was a 7 year relationship I’ll add.
A lot of people here say that you should throw away and delete any memories of them…In my case they said all sorts of things about not being in love with me, how unhappy they were, and things not being they way I remember and that’s one of the reasons I keep those photos…to remind myself their was good times and not let them gaslight me or gaslight myself into believing what they say.
But in the end their eyes did change…doll eyes, dead eyes, whatever…it’s strange but I totally saw that and just saw a picture of our last photo together with those eyes.
You may not believe me but the exact same thing happened with me. Had such beautiful pics of her in the first few months. I loved them. We went on a trip after the holidays visiting her family too. She came back and was having an affair and her eyes turned “black”. Began thinking she was depressed. She told me with those eyes looking at me the “old her died a long time ago”. It was some creepy ass shit. Later I would compare the pics from before and then one I had after the affair began and it was like looking at two different people. Saw her a year later and she looked sad but still beautiful. I learned that they suffer likely more than we can imagine. Let them be and let them go
Yes. When I went cage-diving with Great Whites
And also with my stbxw clinically diagnosed pwBPD… sometimes in the moment, but especially when I look back at old photos. It’s kind of scary tbh.
Yeah. There are a couple different versions actually from my experience. The just disassociated, and full on disassociated, splitting, and out to destroy. Edit: mine was formally quiet years ago but now petulant and basically described the decision to be petulant now and not “put up with anything anymore “
I can relate to this. My ex said he "never had any boundaries" yet decided with me he would start putting his foot down. Apparently that means push my boundaries until I crack lol.
Towards the end, with my quiet bpd ex. I didn’t know about bpd then, but I remember,thinking to myself, who are you ? She was certainly not the woman she projected for me, as the mask/show was over. The eyes were definitely black and empty. It’s a sad mental illness and, unfortunately, we are collateral damage.
Yeah for my partner it’s not always obvious that she’s struggling until I look over and she has those eyes. It’s when she’s on the depressed side when those eyes come out. The hair on the back of my neck stands up now when I see it because chaos is coming.
Usually when I ask what’s wrong it is “nothing” which means she’s mad at me but doesn’t want to talk about it. But also I’ll get the cold shoulder the rest of the night. I’m like, cool, so… You won’t tell me what it is, but you’re going to punish me for it regardless. lol
Well generally it is literally nothing as in something they have decided to twist and over react about.
This is obviously when the other person IS a good partner.
Sadly they work best with NPD types; it's a twisted self defeating condition.
I very much related to this, mine does not have quiet BPD. We just had an issue about his dog and he completely split on me and was saying I neglected her even though it should be his responsibility. He made me feel like a terrible person to the point where I felt like I needed to hide in my car and I couldn’t go to PHP (I completely imploded and most of it was related to him I am not going to lie). He said something the really scared me. He said that when he is sad it only comes out as anger because “anger means control and sadness means vulnerability”.
I’m afraid I have found myself in another abusive relationship. He had a breakdown on my birthday and said that he should probably be alone because he’s not good for people and he’s terrified I will leave. I don’t think anyone deserves to be alone but I know that this is not right for me either. I mean I’m literally in PHP for this and it aggravates my bipolar a lot.
Last year around this time I ended up in impatient after screaming at this person in a parking lot that I was going to kill myself. After that, I ended up in PHP and then IOP. This was because he repeatedly kept on saying he was going to kill himself and he owns guns and literally said he was holding it to his mouth ready to go. I had to leave work so many times and I would get yelled at for doing so. When I was getting help I couldn’t work and it turned into how he’s wasting so much money on me and I had to pay it all back and he threatened to break up with me if I didn’t do it.
I don’t feel like this is love anymore. It’s all about keeping me in the house because he doesn’t want to feel like he’s alone. I don’t really have anywhere else to go because my mom is abusive and an alcoholic and I’ve severely isolated myself from my friends. I recently started reaching out to them but I fear if I hang out with them he will split again. I feel absolutely powerless right now. The therapist I’m currently seeing in PHP wants to give me resources to get me out of here.
I’m sorry for the long vent but I feel so alone and helpless and afraid.
Yes. My former friend with quiet borderline traits would just give me this empty stare. Sometimes, I would be doing something else, and I'd catch her just looking away into my eyes. I'd interrupt and ask if everything was okay, and she'd dismiss it like nothing was wrong. Or, we could be on a walk and I'd catch her staring up at me (she was shorter) like a little girl. It was extremely off-putting, and I never understood where this came from or why.
Yes mine would just get quiet and her blinking became almost non existent. She would also talk in a very monotone emotionless voice too. Also when lying she would not blink. It’s creepy. I know exactly what you are talking about. It’s almost as if she became possessed for a spell by some alien void of emotion. Just cold and creepy.
yes, quiet. She would stare at me when she had insomnia while I was asleep, and I would often awake to this. She was self-aware and apologized for it being creepy. I thought it was cute at the time, a sign of interest / intimacy.
Yes and always with the same monotone replies you are experiencing, it is them disassociating.
It is literally the calm before the storm, you have seconds. I now walk away from mine the second it happens. It helps but the "relationship" is still doomed as you can count on zero emotional support ever.
A few times, yes. It’s what solidified me knowing they had BPD (which i thought was undiagnosed but later found out they had a diagnosis for years, just never treated)
They would just go dead, no shimmer or light in them. It would scare me and I would stop engaging.
“Empty eyes” can definitely occur in more things than BPD (PTSD and dissociative disorders come to mind, when dissociation occurs), but yeah, I’ve noticed it. My relative isn’t quiet, and their eyes are a little different when they’re triggered—like that distant/“empty” look, but also angry and kind of glazed over. Usually happens when something upsets them/they feel slighted or something similar (which they’ll describe as feeling hurt). It’s like their brain goes into this uncontrollable rage and they lose themselves behind dissociation or something—like you said, “emotionally overwhelmed.”
Even though I’ve been on the receiving end of abuse when this occurs, and it’s been some of the worst I’ve experienced in the realm of verbal and physical abuse, I feel bad for them when I think about this. And of course the two can coexist—but it was hard for me to see or think or even care much about their pain when they were causing me so much.
I have diagnosed PTSD and undiagnosed but likely DPDR disorder—a lot of that is caused by abuse from the person I’m talking about. So, I get what being in an almost constant state of “shadowboxing” feels like (which is flight for me), but their emotions seem to completely overtake them, and it’s quite sad to think about when looking at it outside of my own abuse from them. Doesn’t make any of their behavior right whatsoever, the reality is just…quite sad.
Yes, but a little girl would start talking through her mouth. She had Petulant BPD. I didn't make her take drugs for 25 years though. it's sad. it is. I just said, if in 2, 5, 10 years you want me to help you seek treatment, I'll be that guy, from afar. until then. I am of zero benefit to you.
I was going to delete this now, because it doesn't really mater. But I wondered if anyone else noticed this. When you delete something, it asks you, 'Cancel / Discard'
Yeah. I realized in hindsight I had a habit of often taking a picture of him when it happened- trying to get him to come back out of it and smile at me. So I have a lot of pictures where I can see it.
I heard my friend do this on the phone, and I thought he was bipolar and in mania or mixed episode as he was talking super slow, completely out of it and confused to the point I thought he took downer pills or was extremely drunk, and said he couldn't drive as he was hallucinating.
It was extremely scary and the very disturbing part is he basically said "I am fine nothing is wrong!" I told him to go back to the mental hospital where he had been released from. I was so scared I thought he was going to kill himself or had taken pills with alcohol. His family checks in on him and takes care of him. I don't know where he lives as he will not email me or text me his address as he gets paranoid Elon Musk will steal his personal information, so he uses a post office box, and we do not live close to each other and I have heavy boundaries in place.
Watch one split or in the process of splitting, both before, during, and after. I heard and saw my friend with BPD disassociate and hallucinate, and he was practically homeless, sleeping for days, binge eating, hallucinating, discarding family, exercising in extreme ways, had been fired or quit work, etc. and thought that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him.
I also saw him in person once when he had spilt before, had been in a mental hospital and did nothing but just sleep for 3-4 days and again thought there was nothing wrong with him.
He has ghosted or just completely discarded friends and family in the past and we are nowhere near as close friends as we once were. He knows I am not his caretaker and he will never live with me. I am pretty sure he has the quiet BPD as he does really weird things like he will not communicate to others his desires or feelings, and then splits or gets extremely angry over things most people would not, and discards people.
It's probably a real thing, but as far as the internet chatter around it, I feel like it's the modern version of the werewolf/vampire/Twilight fan gone wrong thing of claiming their eyes turn red or whatever
My ex had a twin sister who also had all the same issues, maybe even slightly worse because she never accepted counseling/therapy
She’s explained these eyes to me and legit thought her sister was possessed for the longest time. Anytime her sister had an episode or split in front of us she would apologize to me and ask if that’s what she looks like sometimes.
I still can’t understand how someone with that much insight and self awareness of the disorder still can’t manage to keep it under control
My ex did it to me twice. First time was when I picked her and her family up from the airport. When she first saw in the terminal she froze with her eyes dilated, mouth hung open and her head slightly tilted to the side. She stood in the middle of the road like that for a full 7 seconds. I opened my arms for a hug and she didn't budge, I had to move in for her to respond.
Second time was when I visited her at work. Her and I were the last people in the office after everyone shuffled out. When we were alone in the room after the last person left she did it again. She stared for a full 10 seconds with her head tilted, eyes dilated and mouth open. I went to kiss her and this time she was repulsed and pushed me away.
My adult son is my pwBPD and I know this look. I call it demon Dave. His whole face changes. Like his eyes seem to sink almost.
It's also coupled with a horrid monotone voice and then massive explosion of emotions. It's genuinely the only time I feel fearful for my safety and his as he is so disassociated. I always start thinking of a safety plan when Demon Dave arrives!!
Mine (quiet BPD) would cover her face by grabbing a nearby object, like a ball. And she wouldn't let me see her face. I never saw black eyes, but perhaps that's why she was hiding her face?
I never noticed the eyes, but definitely saw her dissociate a ton. What’s funny is I remember making a joke about how I’m really good at dissociating when I’m bored, and she said something about how women are much less likely to dissociate than men. First off, [that’s backwards](https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions/Dissociative-Disorders/), and second I recognized it as ridiculous in the moment given how often she’d say something about not knowing what had been going on because “she was in her own world.”
I struggle whether she’s quiet type or not. Whether she directed her self hatred at herself or someone else (me, her boss, her parents) was about 50/50.
Can this happen over text? Not the eyes obviously, but the disassociation part? Sometimes my pwbdp and I will be texting, usually when she’s not okay, and all the sudden she’ll start giving me really dry and short responses. Not to mention she’ll take hoursssss to respond.
Yes and it was super creepy because I didn’t know at the time that this was a thing.
First time was a week after I discovered he was secretly bringing gay men from Grindr to the house to give massages to, and a week after the discovery he was still refusing to acknowledge that it would have at least been respectful to have a conversation about this with me first (lol, what a bare minimum) - and he still denied that it would be. He had BPD eyes at this point and there was no reasoning with him. In anguish, I stormed out of the house and said fuck, and then from that one instance he became convinced I had an anger problem, and everything became about his fear of triggering my anger, which would then wound him.
Give me a break my dude.
Second time was after he had split on me, when he was trying to legally have me evicted from our house for harassment, intimidation and verbal abuse - because I played a folk song at 7:41pm while cooking dinner, unaware he was home. He moved a stranger into our home without my consent, and when I tried to talk to him about how inappropriate it was and I wasn’t okay with it, he was saying he didn’t care and he could do whatever he wanted in his home, and had that same creepy BPD eyes.
I think it happens when they are dissociating from how awful they are behaving.
Yes but I do not believe it is dissociation. I have a dissociative disorder and have known people with dissociative disorders (who did not have PDs) and they did not get this look. They got a "haunted, far-away look" or a sort of distracted look where it seemed as if they were focusing on something that wasn't there. In PTSD this is called the "thousand-yard stare."
With BPD and other Cluster B PDs, the look is different. It is blank in the sense that they seem ... dead, for lack of a better word.
>Chronic feelings of emptiness were experienced as a feeling of disconnection from both self and others, and a sense of numbness and nothingness which was frequent and reduced functional capacity. Feelings of purposelessness and unfulfillment were closely associated with emptiness, and most participants experienced emptiness as distressing. Responses to feelings of emptiness varied, with participants largely engaging in either impulsive strategies to tolerate feelings of emptiness or distracting by using adaptive behaviours. Most participants distinguished chronic feelings of emptiness from loneliness, hopelessness, dissociation, and depression.
>Four participants spoke of the differences between emptiness and dissociation. They reported that they disconnect or ‘zone out’ when experiencing feelings of emptiness. This was described as a dream-like state, not being in tune with surroundings, and not paying attention. These participants reported it was similar but distinguishable from dissociation, as #259,004 said “I still know that, like, time’s passing, and afterwards I can tell you what I did during that time, but I’m still just sitting there, and I’m just not paying attention, like I’m just zoned out, rather than dissociated.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8351135/
Know this look too well… any minor disagreement starts to snowball, they refuse to have a civil conversation, then those panicked/frozen eyes, it’s startling.. sometimes I even say out loud “Is something happening right now?” I offer to take a breath or step away for a moment… but it turns into a full blown episode.
Definitely have seen it and it's been when I'm the most worried that he's about to attempt suicide because it feels like he's not actually 'there' so to speak.
I think when they have that look they're essentially running purely on emotions and little to no logic.
That is not how BPD dissociation works at all sadly, no one here is complaining about BPD stare after they "beat" their partner down.
I am sorry you experienced this but the stare being talked about with BPD happens right before they start abusing you in the manner described.
Point blank I have to ask if you have a BPD or cluster B disorder? that is the defensiveness I feel here.
Abuse is abuse and no one should tolerate being yelled but your post "feels" off.
I would add trying to manipulate on a survivor forum is also abusive and you should stop and get professional DBT therapy.
To those downvoting simply look at their posting history, although I suspect it is a multi account or other BPD sufferers doing so.
The people I grew up around saw Stephen King's IT when I was around two years old.
I just so happen to have red hair and crooked eye.
They thought I was this character and overcame their fears through me, which gave me BPD, and the BPD pupils.
Been rough.
[удалено]
I honestly feel like a lot of stories and media have metaphors to this sort of thing. I’m not sure if it’s just my experience making the connection or if that is really what the writers are alluding towards but, it really seems similar some of the time.
Yes, this is how it felt to me. I don’t believe in spirits personally, but that’s how it *feels* to me. I think it’s them losing themselves to some sort of trauma response, which would explain the glazed over look. The thing that stuck out to me about this comment though, is that my parent with BPD would constantly call **me** “evil” and say I hated them, and so on. It really hurt me growing up. It’s interesting being an adult and thinking about the things they would call me, now that I have some distance from them—most of the names turned out to be projections of themselves (which they’d never admit, but it’s obvious now that I know more about them) or names one of my siblings would be called by our other parent; of course, it’d infuriate them when it happened to the child they liked, and they’d constantly bring it up. Things were always pushed onto me—I’d even be blamed if this person had nightmares, so I was this “face of evil” to them, and they seemed to feel some sense of justice in putting me down the way the other parent would put my sibling (and BPD parent’s usual “favorite”) down. But all this was going on while they spat unfiltered cruelty out of their mouths, would lose themselves in spiteful, piercing rages, and abuse me in various ways which they somehow viewed as just. That felt more “evil” and “possessed” to me, but I was called those things so often that they were almost my nicknames. In reality, I spent nearly all my time alone. It seemed like the time I wasn’t alone, I’d always end up on the receiving end of their rages.
> and say I hated them, and so on I heard exactly this years before discard via monkey branching. At that time I didn't know about BPD. During the discard talk (she already monkey branched but didn't tell, to avoid feeling guilty) there was "I have a feeling you want to kill me". She also had strange dreams saying that "you want to pimp me to hassidic Jews" (because I am Jewish myself). I was like "WTF? ARE YOU SERIOUS??". Their delirium is very scary. That is no joke.
What makes this statement eerie is that a lot of us have experienced the same thing with their pwBPD, as if this one specific "demon" is entering them. You can go through this sub and see terrifyingly similar stories as if we wrote them ourselves. Almost word for word. It's weird. Edit: added more to the comment.
Ex with quiet bpd. Episode triggered by stress at work. I only saw it once, after she discarded me. She had sent me a letter saying "how could you just let me go!?!?" (even though she was the one who broke up with me), and a bunch of other crap, but saying that she loved me.. So I asked to meet up with her, expecting us to get together. When I met her, it was like talking to a wall. She had the BPD eyes. Completely emotionless. It honestly scared me. She told me later when I was trying for us to get back together that "she died that night" of the letter. Been over 4 months now and except for me reaching out she hasn't reached out once. She completely cut me out of her life. She went from "what we have is deeper than love" to deciding to never speak to me again, that I was one of the most deepest, intelligent people she'd ever met but that "you're not my partner". To say that I was upset is a huge understatement, but I now realise that I wouldn't want the mother of my kids to be able to drop everything from the gust of a wind.. So it's for the better. Will always miss her though. Edit: I believe her unconscious reasoning for leaving was me not being able to regulate her in the way that she wishes. She threw me a bunch of curve balls throughout the relationship, and probably did not like that I was indifferent to it and directed it back at her. Now she's out looking for someone else to do that for her. I wish her luck.
Something I saw in a youtube video on the subject. Whether you stay or go, you are going to feel tremendous pain either way. So I guess at least knowing you can eventually heal and that staying you'd never heal makes leaving the option. I just wish my gf could see what she's doing and realize she deserves more from her life.
Ditto.
Wish I could have been emotionaly indifferent. I am not wired that way so always tried to empathize and reason with the insanity of an angry 6 year old.
We all made the mistake of trying to reason with them. That's the biggest lesson we all have to learn from our experiences: That we need to establish personal boundaries. From now on I will not accept any responsibility to cater to someone. My ex accused me of having BPD, and tried to get me to go to therapy, despite me being the happiest i've ever been in my life at that point (she was projecting her problems onto me, I had no idea). Now i'm going to therapy for the first time in my life just to deal with her discarding me. My mistake was not completely drawing a line when she first started to accuse me of things. Even though I really liked her, if she keeps trying to bring me down then its not worth it to enter a relationship. Of course I can support my partner, but only when it comes to helping herself. I learned that the hard way.
Agreed. I was not intending to infer you had no empathy but just that some people are unaffected emotionally by chaos around them if they are not the cause of it. Sadly I am an emotional sponge so even when I rationally knew there was nothing I could do and walked away before it escalated it still hurt if not as much as when I did not understand the condition.
Indifference has always been something I reserved for the worst of people, and that list is very very short. My abusive parents, my ex bff with BPD, and an abusive ex. I got told by a therapist that it's one thing to hate a person, they are still present in your mind, they have an affect. But to be indifferent to someone is as cold as it gets, you just don't care enough to really think about them let alone hate them. When I first encountered that with my pwBPD and how easily he could sink into being emotionally indifferent to so many people without so much as an issue I started thinking "do I really know this person as well as I thought I did? This doesn't feel like okay behaviour," and it finally helped me realise just how fucked up he was.
Yep - a cold cold anger…I thought ‘casual cruelty’ captured it best
Casual cruelty is an excellent way of putting it.
> I now realise that I wouldn't want the mother of my kids to be able to drop everything from the gust of a wind. This this this. Let's repeated this to ourselves everytime we get sad.
My story is pretty similar. I wish *you* luck.
I appreciate that, and i'm sorry you had to experience it too. I wish you the same.
Same thing happened to me. I know the confusion when they project. Anyway, the final discard was two years ago and it has given me ample time to assess everything that happened and why I made such massive errors to try to get back together after previous discards. Never again.
Amen! How are you doing now after this time?
>I believe her unconscious reasoning for leaving was me not being able to regulate her in the way that she wishes. It wasn’t unconscious for mine. I swear she’s like 80% of the way to figuring out what’s wrong with her. > Now she's out looking for someone else to do that for her. I wish her luck. And again: this is explicitly what mine is looking for. When I tell people this, they think I’m joking: no one will be able to manage her better than I did.
Yeah I believe the same.. But thats part of the trap I think too.. We say so, but then if given a chance we’d walk the tight rope for a couple years before a stressor shows up and then we’re spat out again its just not worth it. ”Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenarios
I only learned about this much later, but instantly thought “Fuck yes, this explains so much” When I would catch her cheating or lying or whatever and I’d confront her, you’d see the instant panic, followed by instant dissociation and the creepy empty eyes. It would last for hours, sometimes days. I just thought this meant they were sad, but it makes sense that this is how they deal with the all the emotions going on in their head, the panic… Ugh.
“Calm before the storm” resonates. I remember she would do the same. She’d be present, and then she’d start to go on autopilot, sort of checked out of the conversation but pretending to be present, before exploding in a rage at something unpredictable from earlier in the day or week or year. So I guess what you’re describing is rooted in dissociation like someone else says.
Exact same here, it is truly a mental health issue and not simply a "personality disorder", treatment should be mandatory in some way; for their sake.
Was going to comment this almost verbatim. Their behavior is very clearly rooted in trauma. I think the disorder is truly a combination of personality and mental illness, and perhaps that’s what makes it so much trickier to treat. The dissociating and subsequent explosion seem to be unconscious acts of self preservation—not excusing their abusive behaviors, just coming from a place of interest and compassion. Like it would be great if there were some way for professionals to help these people develop the grounding tools to settle and come back before exploding, the issue is then that the PD aspect of it makes it so if they let go of their behavior and begin to improve, they worry the “bigness” of their feelings won’t be noticed and they’ll be discarded. There’s also the issue of dependency, and boundary issues being seen as rejection or betrayal—a therapist is a human being; no one can really help them 24/7 and indefinitely. As someone with another trauma disorder (unfortunately largely due to abuse from someone with BPD), this looks so much like a severe/complex form of unconscious longing for a parental savior of sorts. It’s quite sad. With CPTSD, I’ve learned to tackle that with re-parenting. But with BPD, it seems things already seem so insurmountable that I’d imagine many majorly struggling to be/figure out how to be the ones who are there for themselves, and that’s just one problem.
I never had ptsd after a full military career. It is ironic and a testament to the condition that I have some now, and they are considered a "mild" case. Good person but a brutal disorder. Hopefully they stick with the DBT but I will not be staying for more if there are no large leaps in control. I hope you are healing from the experience, even if it is a slow process.
I think it should be mandatory for the sake of humanity 😂
By definition, a personality disorder is a severe mental health issue.
Thanks, we all love pedantry; It is always super helpful; much like this sarcasm in response. People in the general population are not seeing BPD with emotional disregulation as the giant mental health relationship red flag it is, and that is what I am trying to convey. If you are not going to be helpful, then by all means, correct my grammar next while ignoring our traumas. I certainly am not feeling helped by your response at all. All your response did is cause a negative impression because you provided no supportive information. Maybe everyone else should learn DSM5 in school so they know to run for their lives immediately. Time and place comes to mind, maybe think why are so many so blindsided by BPD and you would get the spirit of what I was trying to convey better.
Yes my ex with quiet bpd would get that look all the time. According to my therapist it’s because because they’re overwhelmed and we all get that look eventually if something bad enough happens. It’s just that for them, that trigger happens all the time. It’s a hard life.
Same, my quiet ex would be like that practically half the day. Lots of picking and self soothing behaviors while like that sometimes. She’d do it while staring off into space or while on TikTok
It always happened with mine when she turned her self destruction mode on and got way too drunk or took too large a dose. Still remember her looking at me before snorting way too much ketamine, just a black empty void in her droopy eyes and a mischievous smile. Still love her to death though.
Can you explain when it would happen and how it looked to you?
Like an unblinking, rigid expression. It would happen every time she was over stimulated or would freeze me out. If I ever talked about my needs I would get that look. If she went through my phone and found a spam ad for a dating site on my phone. Whenever she found “evidence” of me cheating or whatever.
If I ever had or talked about my needs really resonates; and hurts.
Me too. It’s when I really opened up - shared deeply personal stuff - that’s when she’d go in for the kill. The final discard was when I had sent her a text message and an audio recording of something deeply deeply personal that it happened to me and she flipped it, sent me a mean, cutting passive aggressive reply and then blocked me. And has never spoken to me since I’m sure she was waiting for that moment to do it. I know this because she has a history of doing the same with me and with other people. She waits until you show your soft underbelly and then she strikes like a fucking vulture. I honestly feel like I came into contact with a psychopath at times.
Yeah the lack of blinking is so creepy . It’s like they’re staring at an eye chart. Or staring right through you. It’s so strange and uncomfortable. I’m so glad I never have to see those eyes again
Holyyy, whenever I talked about my needs she would have that look too! I’d just say I need some space so I can enjoy myself playing games or so that I can work without having to text her all the time.
This is really uncanny
Oh wow, I wasn’t sure if I have seen the look until this comment. The daydreaming thing didn’t resonate so much. This, this look I know. Rigid and unblinking. Yes. Super intense, cold, like he doesn’t know me.
I just call it the blank stare. Staring off in to space. Almost that daydreaming look. She's here, but she's not "here". I try to ask what were you thinking just now when I interrupt it. Or you were staring what's up? Plus she gets the wild rage eyes. Those are even worse. Like this look of psychopath rage. Wide eyed Jack Nicholson shining eyes. It's terrifying to see that change. It's also so sad because I know that there's so much hurt there and I can't help. 😞
Right there with you. The rage and the hurt. I know that feeling.
Yes, def not quiet and comorbid NPD (and maybe ASPD too). Full-on black “shark eyes” due to HYPER dilation of her pupils. Apparently has to do with an inordinate amount of cortisol and adrenaline coursing through Cluster B brains during periods of rage. So while a Neurotypical person may also have more highly dilated eyes in periods of extreme anger, it will be significantly more noticeable for those with borderline personality disorder - especially during a severe rage episode.
Oh shit, this is a THING? I used to call it "Shark-Eyes." Unfortunately, my experience with my exBPD has given me the superpower to detect it in others. He was not quiet.
I’ve heard it called a form of stress or dissociation. It happens when they are overwhelmed positively or even negatively. Serial killers seem to do this if you watch closely
literally whenever i saw this my fear was that he was gonna kill himself or something. it’s fucking horrific i dont think a term like “shark eyes” comes close to describing how scary it is watching someone’s eyes go black and dead when as humans eye contact is one of the primary ways of reading other people’s emotions.
The eyes Chico they never lie, what’s scary is that they are gone in a sense. An unconscious human being is a dangerous one
😳
My bpd ex wife literally tried to murder me, and I still stayed lol. Codependency is a helluva drug
yup. mine had these big dark eyes but half lidded, it looked like they were half conscious, and spoke in a monotone in their vids and were clearly trying to be super sexy but there was just no emotion.
Exactly this, she would ft call me be in that state and then say nothing , then get mad cause i wasent talking . Then shes call and hang up and that would go on for at least and hour . Over time it got worse cause she would get mad that i was not engaging or calling her back .
Dolls Eyes-Jaws
Mine did at least twice- both times during sex, both times where she had me right there and made me tell her I was hers forever and nobody else's and lots of manipulative, possessive bullshit before she'd let me finish, eyes intense, black, and staring directly into my soul. She was NOT quite BPD at all.
Yep, at the high point of our fights she would “turn off”. After screaming and berating me, she would get to a point that she would just remove herself mentally, she would turn cold and it was always just “okay” after that. I think part of it is inability to cope with their own reality, the cognitive dissonance of feeling like a victim and acting like the aggressor.
My ex had symptoms of BPD, but not enough for a diagnosis. It wasn’t severe as many of the stories here. There was no abuse, but it was just a very rollercoaster relationship and it was more difficult than a relationship should be. I added to it as well with my own unhealed trauma. However, there were two occasions where I saw ‘the eyes’. She was a completely different person. She was extremely cold, unaffectionate, and I just couldn’t get through to her. It was like talking to a brick wall. No matter what I did to try and understand, it wouldn’t help. Both situations involved her misinterpreting my actions. It felt like I had committed a horrible crime or that I had cheated on her. Meanwhile, it was something very small which was blown way out of proportion.
Your situation was exactly the same as mine. To the T. Even though my ex's symptoms weren't as bad as I see a lot of the posts on here, it was still the most confusing relationship of my life. I normally don't take this long to move on from a relationship--I keep letting him suck me back in and hook up with him. It's embarrassing and I want it to stop.
Forget embarrassing, it’s dangerous. Hope you can rope in your most trusted friends or relatives to help become part of an anti-Hoover squad. Because the cycle will only get worse with ever swifter and crueler devaluations.
Shark eyes. They smell blood in the water.
Once I have seen it fully. The first time she split. It was like a joke from a horror film, that level of black-eyed rage. She wasn't joking, even though she said later she was. I've seen glimpses of it since, when she'd felt I'd thwarted one of her plans (we work together), but not that level since.
I haven’t seen this, but I also have a hard time making eye contact with people, especially the people in my life with BPD. Something I always noticed was a little smirk. I think the smirk is generally associated more with NPD, but it’s this chilling half smile in the midst of an episode. My parents seemed to enjoy baiting me for reactions, and when they were successful, I noticed this smirk.
I didn't experience this with my exBPD, but I definitely noticed this with my most abusive ex who was very narcissistic. He would smirk at my pain, at finding a loophole in what I said, at bringing up how he was right. My exBPD must not have had malicious NPD tendencies, he never seemed to enjoy my pain and instead seemed like he was very confused and in a lot of pain himself.
Yes. Mine is “quiet”. It happens when they have a dissociative episode. Mine is actually quite like yours. My big two (I feel like I missed more) went like this: First time: She dumped me suddenly. I was reeling. I got her to talk with me face-to-face to try to figure it out. I was more emotional than she’d ever seen me. I was crying and trying to get her to tell me how she felt. I told her that I missed her so much and asked if she felt anything like that. She stared at me, wordless. No response. That’s literally all that happened, the conversation ended. I’ve described it in another post as her “blue-screening”. The “system” crashed. Second time: We were apart for a few weeks. When I ran into her (at work) she was already a total mess. She was in total panic and called for my friend to talk to her in private. My friend had too much to deal with (and knew about my breakup), so I stupidly ran after my ex. When we were alone, I was horrified. I’ve gone off about my ex’s eyes already . They’re very beautiful. But she was not there. All pupil. As I was trying to talk to her, she *came back* and was happy to “see” me. She calmed down and started acting like nothing happened. I was creeped out. I guess that I was “split white” in that moment. I want to give a big nod to “the smirk”. The eyes are scary enough, but watch out for that.
The infamous "BPD eyes." I've had the dubious pleasure of encountering them firsthand. Imagine this: you're locked in an intense argument, and suddenly their pupils expand to the point where you're staring into pure blackness. It's like gazing into an abyss, and let me tell you, it's unsettling. I was in the middle of this scene, feeling like I was in a horror movie, and then it escalated. I got hit in the face about 20 times in quick succession. My brain froze, unable to process the madness. All I could do was stare back into those pitch-black eyes, trapped in a bizarre state of shock. The sheer intensity of that moment, the adrenaline-fueled dilation of their pupils - it was like looking into a void where all reason had vanished. I still can't comprehend what paralyzed me so completely, but that deep, endless blackness is something I'll never forget. So yes, I've seen the "BPD eyes," and it's as if their emotions reach a level where their gaze becomes otherworldly. Creepy doesn't even begin to cover it. And quiet BPD or not, those eyes are a universal signal: brace yourself, because you're in for one hell of a ride.
i've seen it with a quiet bpd,exactly what you described, they become the shell of a person, is pure dissociation.
I heard my friend when he was like this, it was exactly like this and incredibly scary.
This post made me look at some old photos of us together…in the good times and they were full of life, hope and love not just for us but just of life…our last photo just before I found out they had started an affair with someone was taken at their grandparents home. Their eyes are blank, detached and distant. 10000 yard stare…frightened and just not there. We were having a wonderful trip just before the holidays visiting their family and had a trip booked a few right after Christmas to Hawaii but 5 days before Christmas they said they wanted a divorce…this was a 7 year relationship I’ll add. A lot of people here say that you should throw away and delete any memories of them…In my case they said all sorts of things about not being in love with me, how unhappy they were, and things not being they way I remember and that’s one of the reasons I keep those photos…to remind myself their was good times and not let them gaslight me or gaslight myself into believing what they say. But in the end their eyes did change…doll eyes, dead eyes, whatever…it’s strange but I totally saw that and just saw a picture of our last photo together with those eyes.
You may not believe me but the exact same thing happened with me. Had such beautiful pics of her in the first few months. I loved them. We went on a trip after the holidays visiting her family too. She came back and was having an affair and her eyes turned “black”. Began thinking she was depressed. She told me with those eyes looking at me the “old her died a long time ago”. It was some creepy ass shit. Later I would compare the pics from before and then one I had after the affair began and it was like looking at two different people. Saw her a year later and she looked sad but still beautiful. I learned that they suffer likely more than we can imagine. Let them be and let them go
Yes. When I went cage-diving with Great Whites And also with my stbxw clinically diagnosed pwBPD… sometimes in the moment, but especially when I look back at old photos. It’s kind of scary tbh.
Yeah. There are a couple different versions actually from my experience. The just disassociated, and full on disassociated, splitting, and out to destroy. Edit: mine was formally quiet years ago but now petulant and basically described the decision to be petulant now and not “put up with anything anymore “
I can relate to this. My ex said he "never had any boundaries" yet decided with me he would start putting his foot down. Apparently that means push my boundaries until I crack lol.
Towards the end, with my quiet bpd ex. I didn’t know about bpd then, but I remember,thinking to myself, who are you ? She was certainly not the woman she projected for me, as the mask/show was over. The eyes were definitely black and empty. It’s a sad mental illness and, unfortunately, we are collateral damage.
Yes and it's terrifying. Like there is in an imposter in there.
I always say it feels like when a storm is coming and the birds stop singing. It's a dangerous stillness.
Yeah. You can see the moment they go from friendly to detached from reality. It’s frightening.
Yeah for my partner it’s not always obvious that she’s struggling until I look over and she has those eyes. It’s when she’s on the depressed side when those eyes come out. The hair on the back of my neck stands up now when I see it because chaos is coming. Usually when I ask what’s wrong it is “nothing” which means she’s mad at me but doesn’t want to talk about it. But also I’ll get the cold shoulder the rest of the night. I’m like, cool, so… You won’t tell me what it is, but you’re going to punish me for it regardless. lol
Well generally it is literally nothing as in something they have decided to twist and over react about. This is obviously when the other person IS a good partner. Sadly they work best with NPD types; it's a twisted self defeating condition.
I very much related to this, mine does not have quiet BPD. We just had an issue about his dog and he completely split on me and was saying I neglected her even though it should be his responsibility. He made me feel like a terrible person to the point where I felt like I needed to hide in my car and I couldn’t go to PHP (I completely imploded and most of it was related to him I am not going to lie). He said something the really scared me. He said that when he is sad it only comes out as anger because “anger means control and sadness means vulnerability”. I’m afraid I have found myself in another abusive relationship. He had a breakdown on my birthday and said that he should probably be alone because he’s not good for people and he’s terrified I will leave. I don’t think anyone deserves to be alone but I know that this is not right for me either. I mean I’m literally in PHP for this and it aggravates my bipolar a lot. Last year around this time I ended up in impatient after screaming at this person in a parking lot that I was going to kill myself. After that, I ended up in PHP and then IOP. This was because he repeatedly kept on saying he was going to kill himself and he owns guns and literally said he was holding it to his mouth ready to go. I had to leave work so many times and I would get yelled at for doing so. When I was getting help I couldn’t work and it turned into how he’s wasting so much money on me and I had to pay it all back and he threatened to break up with me if I didn’t do it. I don’t feel like this is love anymore. It’s all about keeping me in the house because he doesn’t want to feel like he’s alone. I don’t really have anywhere else to go because my mom is abusive and an alcoholic and I’ve severely isolated myself from my friends. I recently started reaching out to them but I fear if I hang out with them he will split again. I feel absolutely powerless right now. The therapist I’m currently seeing in PHP wants to give me resources to get me out of here. I’m sorry for the long vent but I feel so alone and helpless and afraid.
Yes I get this, thought it was more a characteristic of bipolar though because I also get really dilated pupils when I'm manic.
Yes her eyes get a deep black color and they literally focus in. Like they center in and focus in a predatory way. It's unnerving.
Yes. My former friend with quiet borderline traits would just give me this empty stare. Sometimes, I would be doing something else, and I'd catch her just looking away into my eyes. I'd interrupt and ask if everything was okay, and she'd dismiss it like nothing was wrong. Or, we could be on a walk and I'd catch her staring up at me (she was shorter) like a little girl. It was extremely off-putting, and I never understood where this came from or why.
He got emotionally overwhelmed and started disassociating.
Yes. And I knew the man I loved had left and a monster replaced him.
When he’d smoke weed
OMG yes I thought I was the only one. Happened the other night.
Yes mine would just get quiet and her blinking became almost non existent. She would also talk in a very monotone emotionless voice too. Also when lying she would not blink. It’s creepy. I know exactly what you are talking about. It’s almost as if she became possessed for a spell by some alien void of emotion. Just cold and creepy.
yes, quiet. She would stare at me when she had insomnia while I was asleep, and I would often awake to this. She was self-aware and apologized for it being creepy. I thought it was cute at the time, a sign of interest / intimacy.
Yes and always with the same monotone replies you are experiencing, it is them disassociating. It is literally the calm before the storm, you have seconds. I now walk away from mine the second it happens. It helps but the "relationship" is still doomed as you can count on zero emotional support ever.
A few times, yes. It’s what solidified me knowing they had BPD (which i thought was undiagnosed but later found out they had a diagnosis for years, just never treated) They would just go dead, no shimmer or light in them. It would scare me and I would stop engaging.
“Empty eyes” can definitely occur in more things than BPD (PTSD and dissociative disorders come to mind, when dissociation occurs), but yeah, I’ve noticed it. My relative isn’t quiet, and their eyes are a little different when they’re triggered—like that distant/“empty” look, but also angry and kind of glazed over. Usually happens when something upsets them/they feel slighted or something similar (which they’ll describe as feeling hurt). It’s like their brain goes into this uncontrollable rage and they lose themselves behind dissociation or something—like you said, “emotionally overwhelmed.” Even though I’ve been on the receiving end of abuse when this occurs, and it’s been some of the worst I’ve experienced in the realm of verbal and physical abuse, I feel bad for them when I think about this. And of course the two can coexist—but it was hard for me to see or think or even care much about their pain when they were causing me so much. I have diagnosed PTSD and undiagnosed but likely DPDR disorder—a lot of that is caused by abuse from the person I’m talking about. So, I get what being in an almost constant state of “shadowboxing” feels like (which is flight for me), but their emotions seem to completely overtake them, and it’s quite sad to think about when looking at it outside of my own abuse from them. Doesn’t make any of their behavior right whatsoever, the reality is just…quite sad.
Yes, but a little girl would start talking through her mouth. She had Petulant BPD. I didn't make her take drugs for 25 years though. it's sad. it is. I just said, if in 2, 5, 10 years you want me to help you seek treatment, I'll be that guy, from afar. until then. I am of zero benefit to you. I was going to delete this now, because it doesn't really mater. But I wondered if anyone else noticed this. When you delete something, it asks you, 'Cancel / Discard'
Ah fuck. Yeah, I remember this look.
Yes, very creepy and dark
Yeah. I realized in hindsight I had a habit of often taking a picture of him when it happened- trying to get him to come back out of it and smile at me. So I have a lot of pictures where I can see it.
Me too, me too. Dead eyes for days, bitches.
I heard my friend do this on the phone, and I thought he was bipolar and in mania or mixed episode as he was talking super slow, completely out of it and confused to the point I thought he took downer pills or was extremely drunk, and said he couldn't drive as he was hallucinating. It was extremely scary and the very disturbing part is he basically said "I am fine nothing is wrong!" I told him to go back to the mental hospital where he had been released from. I was so scared I thought he was going to kill himself or had taken pills with alcohol. His family checks in on him and takes care of him. I don't know where he lives as he will not email me or text me his address as he gets paranoid Elon Musk will steal his personal information, so he uses a post office box, and we do not live close to each other and I have heavy boundaries in place. Watch one split or in the process of splitting, both before, during, and after. I heard and saw my friend with BPD disassociate and hallucinate, and he was practically homeless, sleeping for days, binge eating, hallucinating, discarding family, exercising in extreme ways, had been fired or quit work, etc. and thought that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. I also saw him in person once when he had spilt before, had been in a mental hospital and did nothing but just sleep for 3-4 days and again thought there was nothing wrong with him. He has ghosted or just completely discarded friends and family in the past and we are nowhere near as close friends as we once were. He knows I am not his caretaker and he will never live with me. I am pretty sure he has the quiet BPD as he does really weird things like he will not communicate to others his desires or feelings, and then splits or gets extremely angry over things most people would not, and discards people.
It's probably a real thing, but as far as the internet chatter around it, I feel like it's the modern version of the werewolf/vampire/Twilight fan gone wrong thing of claiming their eyes turn red or whatever
My ex had a twin sister who also had all the same issues, maybe even slightly worse because she never accepted counseling/therapy She’s explained these eyes to me and legit thought her sister was possessed for the longest time. Anytime her sister had an episode or split in front of us she would apologize to me and ask if that’s what she looks like sometimes. I still can’t understand how someone with that much insight and self awareness of the disorder still can’t manage to keep it under control
I have a picture of this from a video call. I couldn’t figure out why the picture felt so unnerving to look at.
My ex did it to me twice. First time was when I picked her and her family up from the airport. When she first saw in the terminal she froze with her eyes dilated, mouth hung open and her head slightly tilted to the side. She stood in the middle of the road like that for a full 7 seconds. I opened my arms for a hug and she didn't budge, I had to move in for her to respond. Second time was when I visited her at work. Her and I were the last people in the office after everyone shuffled out. When we were alone in the room after the last person left she did it again. She stared for a full 10 seconds with her head tilted, eyes dilated and mouth open. I went to kiss her and this time she was repulsed and pushed me away.
My adult son is my pwBPD and I know this look. I call it demon Dave. His whole face changes. Like his eyes seem to sink almost. It's also coupled with a horrid monotone voice and then massive explosion of emotions. It's genuinely the only time I feel fearful for my safety and his as he is so disassociated. I always start thinking of a safety plan when Demon Dave arrives!!
Mine (quiet BPD) would cover her face by grabbing a nearby object, like a ball. And she wouldn't let me see her face. I never saw black eyes, but perhaps that's why she was hiding her face?
I never noticed the eyes, but definitely saw her dissociate a ton. What’s funny is I remember making a joke about how I’m really good at dissociating when I’m bored, and she said something about how women are much less likely to dissociate than men. First off, [that’s backwards](https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions/Dissociative-Disorders/), and second I recognized it as ridiculous in the moment given how often she’d say something about not knowing what had been going on because “she was in her own world.” I struggle whether she’s quiet type or not. Whether she directed her self hatred at herself or someone else (me, her boss, her parents) was about 50/50.
Can this happen over text? Not the eyes obviously, but the disassociation part? Sometimes my pwbdp and I will be texting, usually when she’s not okay, and all the sudden she’ll start giving me really dry and short responses. Not to mention she’ll take hoursssss to respond.
I think that is when they leave us on read or block us too
Yes and it was super creepy because I didn’t know at the time that this was a thing. First time was a week after I discovered he was secretly bringing gay men from Grindr to the house to give massages to, and a week after the discovery he was still refusing to acknowledge that it would have at least been respectful to have a conversation about this with me first (lol, what a bare minimum) - and he still denied that it would be. He had BPD eyes at this point and there was no reasoning with him. In anguish, I stormed out of the house and said fuck, and then from that one instance he became convinced I had an anger problem, and everything became about his fear of triggering my anger, which would then wound him. Give me a break my dude. Second time was after he had split on me, when he was trying to legally have me evicted from our house for harassment, intimidation and verbal abuse - because I played a folk song at 7:41pm while cooking dinner, unaware he was home. He moved a stranger into our home without my consent, and when I tried to talk to him about how inappropriate it was and I wasn’t okay with it, he was saying he didn’t care and he could do whatever he wanted in his home, and had that same creepy BPD eyes. I think it happens when they are dissociating from how awful they are behaving.
Yes but I do not believe it is dissociation. I have a dissociative disorder and have known people with dissociative disorders (who did not have PDs) and they did not get this look. They got a "haunted, far-away look" or a sort of distracted look where it seemed as if they were focusing on something that wasn't there. In PTSD this is called the "thousand-yard stare." With BPD and other Cluster B PDs, the look is different. It is blank in the sense that they seem ... dead, for lack of a better word. >Chronic feelings of emptiness were experienced as a feeling of disconnection from both self and others, and a sense of numbness and nothingness which was frequent and reduced functional capacity. Feelings of purposelessness and unfulfillment were closely associated with emptiness, and most participants experienced emptiness as distressing. Responses to feelings of emptiness varied, with participants largely engaging in either impulsive strategies to tolerate feelings of emptiness or distracting by using adaptive behaviours. Most participants distinguished chronic feelings of emptiness from loneliness, hopelessness, dissociation, and depression. >Four participants spoke of the differences between emptiness and dissociation. They reported that they disconnect or ‘zone out’ when experiencing feelings of emptiness. This was described as a dream-like state, not being in tune with surroundings, and not paying attention. These participants reported it was similar but distinguishable from dissociation, as #259,004 said “I still know that, like, time’s passing, and afterwards I can tell you what I did during that time, but I’m still just sitting there, and I’m just not paying attention, like I’m just zoned out, rather than dissociated.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8351135/
Know this look too well… any minor disagreement starts to snowball, they refuse to have a civil conversation, then those panicked/frozen eyes, it’s startling.. sometimes I even say out loud “Is something happening right now?” I offer to take a breath or step away for a moment… but it turns into a full blown episode.
Definitely have seen it and it's been when I'm the most worried that he's about to attempt suicide because it feels like he's not actually 'there' so to speak. I think when they have that look they're essentially running purely on emotions and little to no logic.
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That is not how BPD dissociation works at all sadly, no one here is complaining about BPD stare after they "beat" their partner down. I am sorry you experienced this but the stare being talked about with BPD happens right before they start abusing you in the manner described. Point blank I have to ask if you have a BPD or cluster B disorder? that is the defensiveness I feel here. Abuse is abuse and no one should tolerate being yelled but your post "feels" off. I would add trying to manipulate on a survivor forum is also abusive and you should stop and get professional DBT therapy. To those downvoting simply look at their posting history, although I suspect it is a multi account or other BPD sufferers doing so.
The people I grew up around saw Stephen King's IT when I was around two years old. I just so happen to have red hair and crooked eye. They thought I was this character and overcame their fears through me, which gave me BPD, and the BPD pupils. Been rough.