There’s a document making its way around the web world right now (for about the dozenth time) which purports to list “Your Legitimate Rights”.
This list has been circulated as part of the “loose paper” in dialectical behavior therapy groups for about ten years, and it was finally revised and published as part of a recent dialectical behavior therapy workbook. For those who are unfamiliar with dialectical behavior therapy, it is a cognitive-behavioral treatment program designed specifically to treat borderline personality disorder.
Unfortunately, as a guide for borderlines, the list of rights falls more than a little short. It is lacking some codicils to address the errors that so frequently accompany borderline thinking.
This lack was addressed in discussion when the list was distributed as part of group therapy, but on the net, I usually see it posted as a standalone document without any of the necessary additional explanations — so I’m adding those myself.
For anyone who has not yet seen this list of rights, here it is:
Your Legitimate Rights
- You have a right to need things from others.
- You have a right to put yourself first sometimes.
- You have a right to feel and express your emotions or your pain.
- You have the right to be the final judge of your beliefs and accept them as legitimate.
- You have the right to your opinions and convictions.
- You have the right to your experience – even if it is different from that of other people.
- You have a right to protest any treatment or criticism that feels bad to you.
- You have a right to negotiate for change.
- You have a right to ask for help, emotional support, or anything else you need (even though you may not always get it).
- You have a right to say no; saying no doesn’t make you bad or selfish.
- You have a right not to justify yourself to others.
- You have a right not to take responsibility for someone else’s problem.
- You have a right to choose not to respond to a situation.
- You have a right, sometimes, to inconvenience or disappoint others.
Doesn’t that just make you feel all empowered and strong?
Well, don’t let that feeling run away with you just yet.
The problem is, there are a few common errors in borderline thinking which are exacerbated rather than helped by this list of rights, and that is why it requires additional discussion when it is distributed in therapy groups for borderlines. The list as it stands is open to a number of potential abuses through misinterpretation — and borderlines are a population for whom misinterpretation is not merely a symptom – it’s an art form.*
The most confused member of a dissociative system doesn’t hold a candle to a borderline when it comes to misinterpretation. There is no other population who can so universally manage to take a pat on the head, turn it into a kick in the teeth, and then respond in kind with interest and feel completely justified about doing it. And yet they wonder why the diagnosis has such a negative stigma in the therapeutic community? Where’s the source of wonder? They earn every bit of negative press they get.
In any event — this list of rights has always required additional discussion simply because the rules of appropriate interaction can never be assumed to be self-explanatory to a borderline — and it’s not doing anyone any favors to circulate the list without the discussion. So here, for the record, are the codicils to Your Legitimate Rights.
You have a right to need things from others.
This is true. You do have a right to need things from others. What you do not have the right to do is expect that others will meet your need just because you have it. Nobody owes you anything. Nobody is obliged to meet your needs. Needing something from others does not make you wrong, but failing to meet your need does not make them wrong either – and attacking someone because they don’t meet your needs does make you wrong.
You have a right to put yourself first sometimes.
This is true — but unfortunately, most borderlines are already far too self-centered as it is. They benefit a lot more from learning how to see things from others’ perspectives than from being encouraged to greater self-involvement.
You have a right to feel and express your emotions or your pain.
By all means, express it – in appropriate places, and in appropriate ways. However, beware of the many inappropriate ways in which you might be tempted to express your pain. For example, stalking someone is an inappropriate response. Another inappropriate response would be filing frivolous complaints with a work supervisor, the police, or an ethics board in an attempt to get someone fired, arrested, or reprimanded. You do not have the right punish anyone because you are in pain, not even if you think your pain is their fault.
You have the right to be the final judge of your beliefs and accept them as legitimate.
Very true – but of course, the same thing might be said to a schizophrenic. A schizophrenic might believe that the government is bugging their television and that wearing tin foil hats will protect them from thought interference, and they have every right to accept their beliefs as legitimate. On the other hand, it’s not likely that anyone else will agree with them. You might think you sound a lot more rational than the average schizophrenic – but that doesn’t necessarily mean you do.
You have the right to your opinions and convictions.
Again, true – but your conviction of being right does not subjectively mean you are right, so have a care what behavior you base on your opinions.
You have the right to your experience – even if it is different from that of other people.
True as it stands.
You have a right to protest any treatment or criticism that feels bad to you.
Yes, you can protest. But your freedom to protest is the same freedom that allows someone else to criticize you in the first place, so be aware that protesting the criticism is not the same thing as attempting to prevent the criticism, and it is definitely not the same thing as seeking revenge for being criticized. A revenge plot is not a protest.
You have a right to negotiate for change.
True – but “negotiation” implies “compromise” – and “compromise” means you won’t necessarily get everything you want. You might not even get everything you think you need. A negotiation has not failed if you don’t get everything you want. However, it does fail if you get huffy or whiny or accusatory because you aren’t getting your way.
You have a right to ask for help, emotional support, or anything else you need (even though you may not always get it).
Well, at least they tried to include the important codicil here. You may not always get what you ask for. Again – that doesn’t make you wrong for asking, but nobody else is wrong for refusing you either.
You have a right to say no; saying no doesn’t make you bad or selfish.
True. You have this right. Other people have the same right, and it doesn’t make them bad or selfish either. Even when the person they’re saying “no” to is you.
You have a right not to justify yourself to others.
True. And nobody has to justify themselves to you either, so you do not have the right to throw a hissy fit if you don’t get the full explanation for why something has happened, or if you don’t like the explanation you get, or if you don’t believe the explanation you get. Nobody owes you an explanation at all.
You have a right not to take responsibility for someone else’s problem.
True. And nobody has to take responsibility for your problems either, not even when you really really want to make your problems into someone else’s fault or say that they’re someone else’s responsibility to fix. If the problem involves your reactions or your feelings or your behaviors or anything else that is yours then the problem is also yours.
You have a right to choose not to respond to a situation.
This is poorly phrased. It was not originally intended to read as though people were being sucked into responses they didn’t want to give, but to address the frequency with which people wanted to respond to situations that they had no business involving themselves in. Maybe this was supposed to be a nice way of saying that there are some situations to which you should choose not to respond.
You have a right, sometimes, to inconvenience or disappoint others.
True. And others have the right to inconvenience or disappoint you – and if they do, it is not an excuse to hate on them, to hurt them, to trash them behind their backs, or to otherwise attempt to cause them harm. Everyone has the right to protect their own rights – and standing up for your rights does not mean you can trample on somebody else’s rights.
We all need to learn our rights as free human beings – so many of us were denied those rights when we were young – but many of us, and borderlines especially, also need to learn how to meet our needs and stand up for our rights without infringing on the rights of everyone around us.
If we step on someone else’s rights in the current day, or if we hold expectations of others that are not respectful of their rights, or if we attempt to “punish” others for disappointing us or hurting our feelings or otherwise failing to be or do what we want of them – then we are acting the part of an abuser ourselves. That is never benign, it is never justified, and it is never small enough to escape being wrong.
We deserve better treatment than that from the people around us – and our friends, our relatives, our co-workers, our therapists, and even the strangers on the street deserve better treatment from us.
* If anyone is wondering where I get the nerve to make these sweeping generalizations about borderlines – it comes from twelve years of experience with them. My experience includes long-term contact with over 150 diagnosed borderlines in a variety of inpatient, outpatient, individual, and group settings. So when I say “borderlines”, I mean the majority of the diagnosed borderlines I have known — and my experience did not involve any kind of selective process. Rather, it developed over time simply from whatever walked in the door. So I believe that what I have seen is a fairly representative sample of the borderline population in general. And that is where my generalizations come from.
