Many family members, loved ones, or relationship partners of those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) (non borderlines) often think and believe that the borderline in their lives is just seeking attention when they engage in self harm or self-harming behaviour.
Why Do Borderlines Often Discuss Their Troubled Pasts Repeatedly?
Those with Borderline Personality Disorder – especially if they aren’t getting treatment – not only often discuss their troubled pasts but they are re-living them more often than not. Troubled aspects of the borderline’s past are triggered in many ways but most commonly and most often through attempts to relate to others. This is the primary basis of so much of the behaviour (and often abuse) that family members or relationships partners of those with BPD (non borderlines) see and often have imposed upon them.
Borderline Personality Disorder – An Intractable Brain Disorder?
There is considerable stigma and a prevalant attitude among many professionals, let alone people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), that BPD is intractable and cannot be recovered from.
There are many theories as to the cause of BPD that are being forwarded by professionals. There is even an on-going debate about what BPD should really be called. There is this energy invested in all of the theories, all of the ideas about what this mental illness challenge is called or should be called to the point that the related distractions for those with BPD may in fact be blocking their chances for recovery.
From False Self To Authentic Self in BPD – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Child
Those who are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder get separated from the essence and conscious awareness of this precious part of “self” – the inner child – just as they are separated psychologically and emotionally from the lost authentic self.
The journey from the active throes of Borderline Personality Disorder to getting on and staying on the road to recovery is one that must include integrating one’s inner child and his or her feelings into your conscious awareness in the here and now.
Borderline Personality Disorder – The Inner Child
Each person diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder has the lonelist inner child. Until and unless the inner child is embraced through therapy the borderline continues to live a life split-off from him or her – dissociated from this lonely, needy, inner child that is in tremendous pain. Borderlines need to meet, greet, and learn how to soothe that lonely inner child in order to get on the road to recovery.
Everyone has an inner child. Do those diagnosed with BPD have the loneliest inner children? Often those with BPD abandon and re-abandon their aching and terrified inner children over and over again which in large part is the reason for so much of what is dubbed “borderline behaviour”. I urge borderlines to make the choice to get to know and to free their inner children. It is a vital part of healing.
Radical Acceptance – The Pathway to Freedom
Whether you have a mental illness, personality disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, love and care about someone who does, or whether you are stressed out, often anxious, or if you have been sexually abused or had a traumatic or even a merely difficult up-bringing (most have some wounds from childhood) or consider yourself to be healthy and just fine Radical Acceptance can and will enhance your overall quality of life and your spiritual experience in and of everyday life.
The Legacy of Toxic Relationships
It is in and through the dynamic of toxic unhealthy relating and relationships that The Personality Disordered and The Non Personality Disordered Interconnect and Suffer
Toxic relationships seem to be pervasive to the point where healthy relationships are in the minority. Toxic relationships are proliferating and have been doing so for the better part of the last few decades.
Toxic relationships are the coming together of adults, who carry wounded children deep inside of them, and who were raised in dysfunctional families that by their very nature are also toxic.
Toxic relationships are battle-grounds mistaken for what is thought of as “love” in which the personality-disordered and the non-personality disordered come together, intersect, interconnect and increase each other’s pain and suffering no matter how hard they try to make things work. (sometimes both parties in a toxic relationship are in fact personality-disordered)
Narcissism, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Borderline Personality
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is part of a wider continuum of narcissism not the sum total of it all. NPD is not the sole domain of narcissism. Narcissism, to varying degrees, is also a part of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Narcissism is a primitive defense mechanism common to both personality disorders though not manifested exactly the same and not serving the exact same purpose always. Narcissism in BPD is not as extreme as it is in NPD. However, that distinction made there are many people who are diagnosed with both personality disorders. Both NPD and BPD can co-exist within an individual.
Breaking Free of The Borderline Personality Maze – Recovery For Non Borderlines
Family members, loved ones, relationship partners or ex-partners of those who have Borderline Personality Disorder can break free from the borderline maze of chaotic and toxic relating. Non borderlines need to find their own recovery.
Is Your Borderline Loved One Serious About Therapy? – Nons
What Every Family Member and Loved One with Someone With BPD in Their Lives Needs to Know It is important for any family member or relationship partner of borderline to be able to evaluate how their loved one with borderline personality disorder (BPD) is progressing in terms of recovery, if in fact they are in therapy. It is equally as important for the family member or relationship partner of the person with BPD to understand that if the borderline in his or her life isn’t in therapy and continues to choose to not face their issues there is absolutely no way to effect change in that person. This is, for many, in and of itself, a crucial thing to radically accept and often is a pivotal choice point as well. Some with BPD will not ever acknowledge that they have problems, let alone a personality disorder.
Preparing for Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
For those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder the idea of recovery is often a mystery. Many with BPD don’t believe that they can recover. I am someone who has recovered and I am here to share that it is possible and the steps that one can take to truly prepare for finding the way out of BPD.
Finding Hope From The Polarized Reality Of BPD
In this program A.J. Mahari talks about how those with Borderline Personality Disorder can find hope from her own experience as someone who had BPD and has recovered. Mahari knows what it is like to fight the battle of borderline negativity to find her way to the hope that helped her to go on and recover.
Facing the Facts On The Other Side of Borderline Personality Disorder – Nons
Facing the Facts of Borderline Personality Disorder – On The Other Side of BPD – For Loved Ones and Family Members of those With BPD Audio Program by A.J. Mahari examines 10 Central Key Facts about Borderline Personality Disorder that every “non borderline” will benefit from a greater understanding about.
Toward Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder leaves those diagnosed with it and family members or loved ones alike often puzzled as to what to do and how to cope. It is important for both the borderline and the non borderline to continue to pursue a clearer understanding.
Relationships: The Borderline Dance of I-Hate-You-Don’t-Leave-Me
“I hate you, don’t leave me” is a borderline mantra. It is a theme driven by a lack of known true self and primitive fear and anxiety generated by profound intrapsychic wounds in early developmental years by those later diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This dance or dynamic of pathological regressed relating on the part of those with BPD is the root cause of so much pain for those with BPD and those who love and care about them in relationships. It is a central causative reality as to why so many relationships fail.
Can a Non-Borderline help or Rescue a Borderline?
Can a non borderline help a borderline? Can a nonbp rescue a borderline? From my experience as both someone who had BPD and as a non borderline in a relationship with someone who had BPD (after my recovery) my answer is – NO. Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder must take responsibility for their own lives, personality disorder, abandonment wounds, abandonment fears, abandonment depression, and more to the point, they must take responsibility for their actions, words, and their own recovery.
Self Mutilation is a Borderline Language of Pain
Borderline Personality Disorder is a breading ground for self harm. Self mutilation and all forms of self harm make up the borderline language of pain. Cutting, burning, impulsive sex, impuslive shopping, overeating or undereating are all examples of self harm that many with Borderline Personality Disorder engage in.
Self-mutilation, for many who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), is a learned language of profound pain. It is a primordial scream for help. It is the apex of needing to be heard, validated, and soothed. It is one of the most prolific and anguished expressions of borderline pain. It is self-defeating and holds you hostage to the pain of the false self — to the pain that you can’t heal by further wounding your body and your precious soul.
What Is Abandonment?
Abandonment has often been thought of by many to be of a physical nature – as in desertion and neglect or primarily of an emotional nature – as in when a child is not nurtured or given the necessary attention and healthy love to feel safe and secure.
Both of these situations or realities do constitute forms of abandonment. There are other types of abandonment that are often significant in the lives of those who end up diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
If one has experienced the most prolific and painful wound of all, the core wound of abandonment without any balance for that experience, any subsequent loss and/or abandonment in life can turn your life upside down. Each and every loss or abandonment is experienced as it happens with the added pain of layers and layers of repressed pain and unresolved grief.
