Borderlines are incapable of intimacy which leaves loved ones and family members – non borderlines -experiencing borderline push-pull which can be crazy-making. By the very nature of BPD, borderlines as the result of their defense mechanisms of splitting, projection, and narcissism, can’t help but push-pull. When those with untreated Borderline Personality Disorder try to get close to someone – attain emotional intimacy – they immediately fear engulfment so they push away or push the non borderline away.
Non Borderlines Trying to Understand Borderline Magical Thinking
What is Magical Thinking In BPD?
Magical thinking is essentially adhering to the (distorted) belief that thoughts can cause events. When someone with BPD is magically thinking and thoughts seem to cause events what is also often a part of this experience for the borderline is that what they feel becomes a fact to him or her in what is a distorted sense of “reality”.
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.
