When I was a kid, I went through life guard training. An ironic lesson was taught to me that I had trouble understanding until I witnessed it in person and then it made sense. Before that, I believed it was rational to think a drowning victim wanted to be saved. When the lifeguard swam to them, they would be relieved and would calm down and comply with what you told them to do so you could bring them to safety.
But that's often not the case. In fact, we were taught to approach a drowning person carefully and be prepared to physically manhandle them. Further, we were taught how to kick them, punch them, turn them around and other tricks designed to free ourselves from their grasp.
The reason for this is a drowning person is in a state of panic. If you swim up to them in a casual manner, the person is likely to grab onto you and then will push you under in an effort to climb onto your shoulders. The panic is so overwhelming that, rather than give up so you can rescue them, they will fight you in an effort to prolong drowning. The risk is that both of you drown, the victim and the rescuer. The victim has simply prolonged their own death when they could have been saved. The only difference is that you, the rescuer, are now dead. And until I saw this in action, it was not intuitive. But now that I understand it, it makes sense. Fear and panic overwhelm any sense of reason when you're about to drown.
And so it is with BPD. We so much want to rescue them. Can't they see everything we have done, and continue to do, for them? And yet we're met with abuse at every turn. Why is that? It's because they're drowning. They're drowning in their BPD and fear and panic have taken over. None of our rational rescue attempts make sense to them. They just don't want to drown and so standing on our shoulders and pushing us under is the only way to survive.
So the lesson here is two-fold: first, we must understand that not everyone wants to be rescued. What they really want is to not drown. That survival instinct overwhelms the desire to be rescued. The second lesson is for us to learn just how dangerous it is when we go into the deep end of the pool to try and rescue someone. We swim to them in a passive manner and expect them to float on their back while we Gaul them to shore while breathlessly professing profound thanks all the way in. But we know from experience it doesn't work that way. When we go into the deep end of the pool, we have to be prepared for a fight. We have to be prepared to defend ourselves. We cannot let the BPD get control of us. If they do, then we've lost the upper hand. We are no longer the rescuer. Now we are the second victim in need of rescuing. Guess who is going to be the first to drown?