After just replying to another post on empathy I wanted to expand upon my thought process to see if anyone else diagnosed with BPD can relate to my own experience:

I find myself to be a very empathetic person. I care deeply for others, especially those I care about and those who suffer unjustly. However, I have given a lot of thought recently to the anatomy, you could say, of my feelings in this context.

I have a fear of abandonment, my sense of self is often very unclear, and I feel intense loneliness. Much of this is tied up in past life experiences. In a way, I feel *comfortable* in situations of judgment and suffering, merely because I became accustomed to situations like this when I was younger. Hence, you could say I have a clear sense of identity as a victim. Similarly, based from those same experiences, I have a powerful desire for a protector/someone to comfort me. Someone who will not abandon me. This framework creates two roles that I can understand clearly and resonate with: a suffering victim and a comforting protector.

I feel like the experience of empathy, namely my powerful desire to care for others, is really a subversion of the roles I described above. I implicitly *understand* and can relate to someone suffering, I feel secure in that type of relationship because therein I can fulfill the role of protector. In so doing, I become valuable to the person I protect—valuable *in my mind, from my perspective*. Now, because I desire someone to comfort me more than anything else, if I become that person to someone else who suffers *then* there is no way that person could abandon me. My identity, purpose, and meaning becomes secured in that context. Hence, in my view my sense of empathy is in fact just an overzealous manifestation of my hidden desire to not be abandoned. Through empathy, I become the person I would never abandon to someone else; this is, in my mind, the only way for me to guarantee I will not be abandoned. Otherwise, I simply have no trust that I will not be left alone again. *Hence* the overpowering sense of empathy I feel towards others.

I hope that makes sense.

Is it really empathy? If not, does it detract from its value? Does it make our efforts to care for others disingenuous?

Maybe I think too much... Perhaps the above in plain English is simply: As borderlines we have suffered greatly. Therefore, when we encounter someone else who is experiencing something especially painful we are glad to comfort them because we are so well acquainted with the degree of pain they are experiencing and understand the gentleness they need.

Maybe it is some of both of the above.

Regardless, behind all of it my heart still really just wants someone dear to comfort and protect me.