Accountability

Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness (bpd)So I want you opinion here:

Can a person be held fully responsible for their actions if they are not of the mental capacity to understand their actions?

Can the BPD wife be held accountable for her temper tantrum?

Can she be held accountable for manipulating someone, when she has no idea she’s even doing it?

According to our court system a person who is declared insane does not receive full accountability for a crime they commit. But does that transfer over to the mundane day to day actions?

Should I no longer hold my husband accountable for his emotional break down that lead to him ordering me to quit my job at circuit city 5 years ago?

Are we being too tough on those in our lives who have obvious limitations?

Or is insanity simply an over convenient excuse to the affair between a BPD woman and her white knight lover?

Right is right and wrong will always and forever be wrong, after all.

What do you think?

14 thoughts on “Accountability

  1. I think it can be tempting to let a mental disorder excuse bad decisions. Like a kid with Tourette’s saying stuff that they know they’ll get away with because, hey, they can’t help it. They’ve got Tourette’s, right?

    I guess what I’m saying is that there should be more lee-way, but people still should be accountable for their actions. Just because someone has a disorder doesn’t mean they can’t do fucked up shit that they know is wrong.

  2. Fair enough Mr Pope, you do present a valid point. But what about the cases when they honestly don’t know it’s wrong?

  3. People are always accountable for their actions. There are always consequences. Our courts say that if you’re mentally impaired, you’re not responsible. But that doesn’t mean you won’t get locked up in a mental hospital if you murder someone.

  4. Treatment as a punishment doesn’t seem hard core.

    But let’s look at a smaller level.

    The 20 year old woman who throws a temper tantrum in response to her boyfriend leaving for work. She doesn’t know why, it’s pure impulse driven. She feels abandoned, he’s running late. Clearly he has to go. Should he be harsh with her? Grow up and get over it attitude? Or does she deserve gentle understanding. He is, after all her lifeline. Her safety net. Her white knight keen on abandoning her in what very well may seem like, to her anyways, her hour of need. Would a few more minutes to sooth be the end of the world? Or is it time she get over herself?

  5. He’s human too, and people sometimes run low on patience and respond emotionally rather than intellectually.

    To me, the question of whether something like this should “be held against someone” is more about whether she should feel remorse and make up for her outburst once she calms down, rather than whether her boyfriend gets angry or is understanding.

  6. From my point of View it seems like you(as the only example I have Karen) know what you did was wrong when you have an outburst, a Lapse of right/wrong, etc… because you always show remorse after the fact.

    I do try my very best to be understanding, but when I’m the whipping boy, the target of the attack, and/or the person in charge of cleaning up the mess thats left behind… Its hard for a person without their own demons to not get frustrated, let alone someone with the Issues I have.

    but then again does my mental health issues make it easier for me to be understanding? I dont know.

  7. So then does remorse remove the need for further accountability?

    For that matter what kind of accountability can there be? Does this leave remorse and an apology as the only option? On the non-criminal level of course.

  8. Remorse is not enough.

    in the past three years you have got better at holding back a Temper tantrum, looking at it and seeing both the black, and Grey Side of it.

    with ‘training’ and a LOT of hard work on the borderline’s part it is possible to not react to the impulse and be wise minded.

    so I do hold you accountable for your actions, but at the same time I’m understanding that its a lot of hard work to control your impulses and a lot of variables can make it easier or harder from day to day.

  9. How do you hold me accountable? Is there a punishment system? SHould there be?

    If I’m acting like a child should there be the punishment of a child?

  10. the most common “punishment” is also one of the causes of a lot of your outbursts. I become More withdrawn and less willing to Cook, Play, etc..

    its the catch 22 that makes this Relationship Wonderful and Unbearable depending on how we are treating each other.

    but this is swerving into a topic all its own :P

  11. Ok on a slightly different tangent.

    If the BPD person craves structure and stability. Would a set cause and effect be the answer?

    Like a behavior jar. Misbehave and you owe the jar a quarter (for the kids it would be a dime). Once it’s full it gets donated to charity. An example would be going to krogers and buying foor for the local food pantry.

    Could that be the cause and effect of accountability with a set list of things that cause you to have to pay up?

  12. If anyone wants to know my two cents it’s this: we are our actions and words. Mental disorders can only be under control when we counter it with medicine and control our habits. I’d suggest stop running off of feelings because they obviously lie and start running off of the facts in your life. Coming from someone with a mental disorder, it’s helped me quite a bit keep a grip on the real things.

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