Inside The Borderline Mind – Insight For Non Borderlines

Inside the borderline mind there is a very profound split, fragmentation, and in some cases a shattering of the ego due to the narcissistic intrapsychic injury sustained at a very young age as the result of abandonment (actual and/or perceived) that arrests emotional development.
What does every family member, friend, relationship partner, or ex-relationship partner (non borderline) need to know about what goes on inside the borderline mind? Why does understanding the workings of the borderline mind matter to those who are non borderline?

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.

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.

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.