From the adult-child of 2 borderline parents to being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) to recovering from BPD at the age of 38 to the non borderline role in a relationship with someone with BPD. I have extensive experience with the pain of both side of BPD. Six years after I had recovered from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) myself, I ended up in a relationship with someone who had BPD and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. What a mess. Paradoxically a mess that would make sense and order in my life in ways that I could not have ever imagined.
Leaving My Borderline Ex – A Good-Bye Letter To My Ex’s Family
A.J., I have been so blessed by what I’ve read on your websites. Recently I had to leave a destructive BP relationship – leaving the state in which we lived – I wrote a letter just before leaving to his lovely family who was also aware of the condition. Basically, I broke up with him right after in a “hoover” maneuver he finally researched BPD and accepted it (or so I thought but more abuse and insanity followed)
Coping with the Borderline Behaviour of Our Children
How can we as parents cope with our Borderline children or adult-children? Somehow, BPD has robbed these children of reality on all levels. I don’t think our BPD kids realize how far out there they really are. It’s as if they truly believe normal people live the way they do. Our parental examples do not seem to make any impact or bear relevance to their lifestyle.
Ending a Relationship with a Borderline – Contact or No Contact? The Illusion of Kindness.
What is best for you to do if you are in a relationship with someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and you are coming to the conclusion the relationship isn’t working? What do you do if you want to end the relationship? Do you need to institute no contact or is there another way? What is kind and what isn’t kind in this circumstance often experienced as a dilemma for relationship partner of someone with BPD – the non borderline?
Borderline Diary – The First Cut Is The Deepest
Cutting myself feels. Cutting myself makes the feel real. The first cut is the deepest. The first cut is the emotional experience that screws me right up. The first cut comes always from someone else. It isn’t my fault. I don’t do it. I don’t ask for it. People just deliver it to me constantly – treating me like shit.
Family Members Relationship Partners (Ex’s) – The Painful Paradox on the Other Side of Borderline Personality
For anyone who is a family member, relationship or ex-relationship partner of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (often referred to as non borderlines) there is a central painful paradox that is a common experience.
Borderline Loss of Self Equals Rage
Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality (BPD) have experienced the loss of the authentic self. This loss of self creates a void, a vacuum that then is filled by a fragmented and wounded pseudo-false self. This loss of self is largely, if not entirely, the result of the core wound of abandonment and its legacy.
BPD Family
Some people have BPD in the family whereas I came from a family of BPD. Children do learn what they live. The effects of Borderline Personality Disorder on family members is far-reaching and profound.
Borderline Personality Disorder and Unrealistic Expectations
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), regardless of what is thought to cause it, manifests as a relational disorder. Those with BPD often have unrealistic expectations. This disorder of relating is largely driven by distorted thoughts and unrealistic expectations.
Borderline – Non Borderline Common Ground
Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and their family members, relationship partners – non borderlines – have intersecting reality where common ground is encountered. This common ground, however, is not experienced in the same way by the borderline and the non borderline.
From Fragmented Denial to Understanding, Change and Recovery
The journey from Borderline Personality Disorder, (BPD) and Fragmented Denial to Understanding Change and Recovery is the journey from false self to authentic self.
Re-Think Borderline Personality Disorder
I think there is a tremendous need for those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder to re-think BPD. I think also that those who are family members, friends, relationship or ex-relationship partners – non borderlines – also need to re-think BPD.
Personal Responsibility Central To Recovery From Borderline Personality Disorder
Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) often struggle to understand the concept and practice of taking personal responsibility. Personal responsibility must be realized and accepted by those with BPD if they are to recover.
Are Borderlines Abandoned or Do They Abandon Others?
Abandonment in relationships with adults with Borderline Personality Disorder – are borderlines abandoned or do they abandon others?
The Shame of Abandonment: The Black Hole of Borderline Personality Disorder
The black hole of BPD affects both borderlines and non-borderlines. It is painful and real on both sides of Borderline Personality Disorder. The shame of abandonment is an enduring self-destructive schema for those with BPD. It is a pattern of toxic relating and relationship rupture.
The Traps and Hooks of Unwinding the Mystery that is the Process of Letting Go – Non Borderlines
For those who are the family member, relationship partner or (ex-partner) of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) – non borderlines – there are countless traps and hooks in the need and even the want of letting go of a relationship (chosen or unchosen) with someone with BPD. A.J. Mahari explains in her audio program series Inside the Borderline Mind many of the puzzle pieces of the enigma that so many non borderlines find make letting go of a relationship with a borderline much more difficult than other relationship break-ups.
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”.
The Borderline Dance & The Non Borderline Quagmire
There is a central truth about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). It is a truth that is all-too real and painful for both those diagnosed with BPD and those who are family members, relationship partners (ex – relationship partners) children or parents or friends of those with BPD (non borderlines).
Borderline Personality Disorder creates layered situations from which extrication is very difficult. This is true for the borderline or the non borderline.
There is a dance that takes place between those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder(borderlines) and those who try to relate to them (non borderlines). It is painful. The reality of Borderline Personality Disorder in a loved one, partner, family member, or friend, sets up a toxic and painful quagmire for the non borderline.
Borderline Personality Disorder and Relationships
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) puts a tremendous strain on even the best or closest relationships. Whether you have a partner – husband or wife, a girlfriend/boyfriend, friends or even a family member with BPD – any or all relationships can be very strained, if not lost, if those who have BPD do not work to heal much of the aspects of how the BPD traits affect them and the ways that they relate to others.
In my experience, when I had BPD, the most profound area of life that was affected by BPD was that of relationships. In my experience with BPD, that was the case right from my relationship to and with myself, to the relationships within my family of origin, friendships and romantic relationships. All were drastically affected by the way in which BPD had manifested itself in me.
Awareness of The Core Wound of Abandonment Will Change Your Life
It is the core wound of abandonment in those who have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) that is the source of insecure or non-existent attachment that leads to the toxic and unhealthy ruptured relationships that have at their centre emotional enmeshment and an insatiable need for love. These broken relationships, often rupture under the weight of the child-like behaviour and needs of the borderline still searching for the much-needed unconditional acceptance, validation and love of a parent as the result of unmet early childhood developmental needs.
