BPD - Non Borderline - Information and Insight: July 2008

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Family Members Relationship Partners (Ex's) And 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. There are five main challenges to the world as you've known it or to the world as you might have thought it was going to be or wished it could have been. Each challenge faced by the non borderline arises out of what I refer to as this central and painful paradox on the other side of Borderline Personality Disorder.

The healthiest response that one can muster to this painful paradox on the other side of a loved one or family member with Borderline Personality Disorder hinges upon the degree to which you are ready, willing, and able to radically accept who your borderline loved one or family member is right now.

The first very formidable challenge to the non borderline is this radical acceptance. The second formidable challenge is the struggle to learn to disengage the chaotic rollercoaster of the emotional reality of the borderline in one's life. The third formidable challenge is to surrender any illusions that you have any control over whether your borderline family member or loved one is going to seek the help that they need and/or stick with therapy and get well.

The fourth formidable challenge is even more daunting for many non borderlines - it is the challenge of where you put your energy and focus. It is the juncture at which you must seek to take care of the 'self' in you that has been compromised, hurt, and negatively effected by the very toxic nature of the unhealthy ways that those who have BPD tend to attempt to relate.

The fifth formidable challenge for the non borderline is the process of letting go. For some this process of letting go will be in response to having to end a significant other relationship with someone with BPD. It may be in response to having to end contact with a family member with BPD or to having had the person with BPD in your life end all contact with you. There is also a process of letting go for many non borderlines that doesn't involve the termination of a relationship or the ending of all contact. Many non borderlines have to learn how to let go, essentially, even when they are still very much relating to a borderline family member or a borderline partner. Letting go in this context is about learning how to disengage and detach from the borderline's issues and about learning to identify, implement, communicate, and up-hold healthier boundaries.

Below are audio programs that you might find helpful.

Audio Programs © A.J. Mahari

If you are a family member, loved one, or a relationship partner of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, whether you stay in the relationship, keep relating to the borderline, or not, you will benefit from paying very close attention to the journey that is the recovery that you yourself need. You need to understand what you can about BPD - what is reasonable to know. Beyond that, however, seeking to figure something out that is really the borderline's personal enigma to solve will only keep you stuck in the paradox of your own pain and suffering. It is so important to shift a lot of your focus off of the person with BPD - at least to the point where it is not so out of balance or in some cases rather obsessive and to practice kind, gentle, patient, and loving care of yourself and any children involved.

Know that even though you may love and care about the person with BPD in your life, you cannot rescue them. No matter how much you may want to or wish you could - you just can't.

Friday, July 11, 2008

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.

The abandonment trauma that most agree is central to BPD remains (unless and until enough therapy is successfully worked through) unresolved. What is unresolved remains a focus for those with BPD. Borderlines, whether they are aware of it or not, live in a world that is all about avoiding and staying away from their abandonment trauma - the unresolved and dissociated pain of it. There is a strong need to remain in the victim role, often, because in this role one cannot be expected to take personal responsibility for what are essentially their reactions - reactions that are in and of themselves actions. However those with BPD stay focused on the reactions because reactions are "because of" what happened to them in their past (as they rationalize it) and therefore not their fault or responsibility.

On top of this reality then we see that the borderline transfers or projects his or her unresolved past - abandonment trauma - onto the non borderline(s) in their lives in ways that both see them discuss their troubled past and act it out over and over again.

This focus on the unresolved aspects of borderline abandonment trauma is not only discussed but as I've said is re-experienced and re-lived in what are known as repetition compulsions. In many ways the need to discuss their troubled past or aspects of it over and over is a part of those compulsions.

When I had BPD I also found that what was then a need for me to discuss my troubled past rather compulsively had all to do with the negative polarized way that I thought about things and experienced life and certainly relationships when I was in the active throes of BPD.

Ironically, when a person with BPD does engage compulsively in discussing their troubled and unresolved past repeatedly he or she really not only keeps it alive but drives the patterns of thought that set up the mindset from which borderlines cognitively distort the here and now into triggered dissociative re-enactments of the very unresolved trauma they so often speak of.

When I had BPD there was nothing to compare to or balance my experience with and until I was ready and learned how to take personal responsibility (in therapy) for my own issues from the past. I perceived (misperceived really) anything and everything from others (that I didn't want or like - that "felt" invalidating or critical) as being done to me on purpose with intent - in other words as victimizing me as I had been victimized by my parents as a child.

A.J.'s Ebooks

A.J.'s Audio Programs

A key thing to remember in all of this is that more often than not, those with BPD, again, who aren't committed to therapy and really working and making progress in recovery, do not have the same perception of their negative compulsive focus on the past as nons do. They are also often not aware of how much or how often they may discuss it anymore than they are aware of acting it out and re-playing it out in their lives.

Those who are living in the active throes of (especially untreated) Borderline Personality Disorder experience life in a parallel universe. They are locked into the recapitulation of their unresolved abandonment trauma in ways that obliterate both the here and now "shared reality" as non borderlines know it and that essentially leave the non borderline being related to "invisible" to their own projected out intrapsychic and pathologically narcissistic unresolved abandonment trauma.

The degree to which someone with BPD needs to discuss their past, or aspects of it, repetitively can be used by the non borderline as a gauge of where the borderline really is at. If there are cyclical patterns to your relationship with the borderline (whether chosen or unchosen) you can gain insight into what you may need to choose for yourself based upon this observation as opposed to just relying upon what are often unkept promises from the borderline.

If the person in your life who has BPD is often relating to you in ways that you can observe are from a parallel reality and that have more intensity than the average person would bring the situation in the here and now this is a good indicator that you are dealing with someone who has not yet found an understanding of what it means to take personal responsibility for him or herself and his/her issues. This means that you are definitely in for more of the same. You cannot change this pattern that the person with BPD will and must play out until and unless he/she gets skilled professional help in therapy that will help them gain awareness about this dissociation and cognitively distorted way of thinking, acting and relating.

Is Borderline Self Harm Just Attention-Seeking?

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.

Do borderlines harm themselves to get the attention of others? Do borderlines self harm to manipulate others?

There are times when a borderline harming his/herself may do so out of need for attention and/or to manipulate someone else. There is often, however, not a conscious understanding of this. That is not to say that a borderline does not ever self harm without knowing that they are attempting to induce guilt in the non borderline that they hope will illicit the emotional response they want or need to help them with dysregulated emotion.

Regardless of any and all potential motivating factors with borderline self harm, however, borderlines engage in self harm often impulsively and compulsively. They are often addicted to it as a means of attempting to cope with dysregulated emotions. Borderlines tend to experience dyregulated emotions most often in attempts to relate to others - often the non borderlines in their lives. This is one major reason why it may appear that borderline self harm is aimed at you or merely to get your attention.

Self harm in those with BPD, while it serves many functions, for most has some element of attention-seeking to it. Now, this may not be something that many with BPD are aware of when they do self harm. But self harm, for the different reasons it is engaged in, used, and done, is in many ways about the borderline saying - through actions - "Look how much I hurt", "help me", "I can't take the pain", "I don't know who I am or how to cope" among many other things.

Self harm gives the borderline a sense of control when the reality is that emotionally they are out of control and unable to cope. The focus on physically self harming oneself does give the illusion of a type of pseudo-mastery if you will. A pseudo mastery that attempts to make up for what is the absence of emotional mastery or competence.

Self harm, for me, when I had BPD, was a way of converting my pain (a lot of which, back then I was clueless about) from the emotional where I had no competence to deal with it, face it or feel it, to the physical where I felt that I had some control over it.

Self harm, in many with BPD becomes an addiction of its own. I think even more than any physical or biological response to it or relief gained through it, the real addiction is in defending against the intra-psychic pain - the pain of the core wound of abandonment - abandonment trauma - that is experienced by those with BPD as being something that feels as if it will kill them if they touched it, acknowledged it or even felt a bit of it.

It is what I refer to as the the abandoned pain of BPD. It is the source of not only self harm but so much of the borderline defense mechanisms that definitely interfere with any and all attempts to relate. It is the borderline's way of trying desperately to manage and cope with dysregulated emotion that is often triggered through relating by the threat of one's abandonment trauma rising up to an almost conscious level and that is a terrifying experience that most borderlines in the active throes of BPD must avoid at all costs because to them and for them it feels like impending death and they do not have any healthy interpersonal coping skills to cope in any other way with these dysregulated emotions that create such distress.

Self harm, is among other things, a legitimate, albeit pathological and self-destructive attempt by the borderline to cope with the distress of his/her dysregulated emotions in the absence of any other means of coping.

Self harm is a cry for help while at the same time it is often self punishment. The cry for help comes from the reality of the abandonment trauma no matter how dissociated from. The self punishment essentially comes out of the shame of the core wound of abandonment. Borderlines have often learned to associate need with shame.

Both the feeling of a need and its accompanying shame overwhelm the borderline and trigger the borderline back to his/her unresolved abandonment trauma.

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Borderline Dance - 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. In this dance of enmeshment between the borderline and non borderline perhaps the only thing that is truly mutual is the pain, suffering, loss and grief.

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.

The Dance of the Borderline can be defined as the projective-identification/transference of their identity to the extent that they do not know it on to someone else. What does this mean? It means that when the borderline in your life is sad, or hurt or afraid, rather than feel those feelings, as the non borderline would, the borderline will turn on you in an effort to have you hold, act out and be the very feelings that they cannot hold, handle or cope with. It is a sub-conscious way to have mirrored back to self all that one feels but does not know how to cope with and so those with BPD dissociate from these feelings, essentially, refusing to feel them. Borderlines "act out" or "act in" these dissociated from feelings because they do not yet know how to tolerate the distress of feeling them and they do not know how to soothe them. This is the reality of the abandoned pain of BPD.

It is essentially, the borderline trying to put distance between him or herself and his/her own pain. Little do most borderlines realize that in effect what they are really doing when they act out and push people away and erect walls to 'protect' them is wall themselves in with the pain. There is no relief from pain to be found in casting it out to those or to the world around you. The walls that a borderline builds will wall that borderline in and threaten to drown him/her in his/her own pain. The non borderline who does not have any boundaries is at risk of being sealed into that borderline wall of agony right along with the person with BPD.

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

It is through this dance that the borderline often sets him/herself up to continually re-experience what feels familiar. As most borderlines have a tremendous fear of abandonment the behaviour that they engage in often is the reason why people turn away, sooner or later, to maintain their own sanity. Yet when it is reasonable to leave or to take space (to a non-borderline) the borderline (usually not taking any personal responsibility) will blame you and will experience your taking space or your leaving as abandonment.

If you have Borderline Personality Disorder and you have often wondered why it seems that others abandon you, you may need to learn how to take more personal responsibility for what you are actually perpetuating in the ways that you relate to others. What feels like abandonment is often the person with BPD distancing the non borderline because he/she is re-playing out what I refer to as unresolved core wound of abandonment issues, in the here and now, in ways that make the person you may think you love invisible and the person you are actually relating to is the person from your past with whom you experienced the very painful relational rupture that caused your core wound of abandonment.

The borderline is in a very painful and real world of his or her own. Emotionally, it is a world that exists in parallel to the world of the "averagely healthy". Despite a usually above average intelligence and an often charming initial presentation most borderlines are emotionally vastly different from how they are intellectually. The discrepancy between a borderline's general ability to think and his/her emotional capacity is often an internal schism between self-known and self-unknown that is wider than the grand canyon. It is world that is run by terror and fear and often by the triggered-dissociations from the past of the borderline.

The Dance of the Borderline is experienced by the non borderline when all of sudden, yet again, they have become the focus of the borderline's pain, rage, anger, unmet needs, wants, demands, helplessness and so on. Questions I've been asked a lot of late in email is, "How do I not go there? How can I set a boundary? What do I do when he/she starts it all over again? Why is this happening?

So there is the borderline prone to repeatedly engaging in a deceptive dance of demanding devastation and the non borderline who cannot get into the head (understand the motivation) of the borderline. Herein lies the central quagmire of the non borderline.

The non borderline's quagmire is realized when he/she comes to the inevitable conclusion that he/she has to effect some change for themselves. There comes the realization that a choice has to be made. The choice is one that most often feels like, and is, a choice between equally unfavourable and disagreeable alternatives. This is the projected out predicament in which the borderline (to a degree) has lived within all of his/her life without knowing if fully. It is this similar dilemma/dynamic or predicament that is the fuel of the borderline dance in the first place. So you see the borderline and the non-borderline, in some ways, are not so far apart. The experience of each is painful. The experience of each is real.

What the non borderline must realize within this quagmire, however, is that they have the tools necessary to take care of themselves. The non borderline has the ability (not limited emotionally by a personality disorder) to responsibly react to what is not working for them or to what is hurting them. This realization, however, is a process.

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Borderlines, due to the very nature of the personality disorder, are not that emotionally/psychologically free to choose (until they've had quite a bit of successful therapy and worked through much of these issues.) Borderlines, in what I call, the active throes of BPD, are lost to the conscious awareness needed to create the kind of choices that can support getting on and staying on the road to recovery.

So, you are in a relationship with a borderline and you have reached this stage of quagmire. You want the relationship to survive. You have all sorts of mixed feelings toward this borderline in your life, what are you to do? The first thing you must do is decide what it is that you cannot live with anymore. Once you've identified that, you will then have the rather difficult task of communicating that to the borderline in your life. Before you communicate what your limits and boundaries are make sure that you are prepared to back them up. If you are not, or you do not you will experience the dance times one hundred and the borderline in your life will generate more chaos than before.

So, you've identified the problem, you have decided what your limits and boundaries are, you have a plan of action ready to implement and consistently stick to. At this point it's time to talk to the borderline in your life. As you do this -- remember, you must speak only to your experience and not to his/her behaviour. This will be the beginning of a difficult and painful process whether things work out or not. As with any quagmire, know that your pain is real and that pain is a natural part of change. Your pain does not have to cause you to doubt that you are doing what you need to do for yourself.

In fact, for both those who have BPD and non borderlines the more pain you are aware of being in, the closer to your own truth you getting. This is a positive thing. This is where radical acceptance is the best practice to implement. Whether you have BPD or you are a non borderline, radical accepting what you are now realizing and sitting with the pain associated with that rising awareness is the foundation of any and all change that you will choose to create in your life, in time.

The non borderline must communicate honestly, fairly and consistently with the borderline knowing full well that you cannot have any control, effect or say on how the borderline in your life will choose to react or behave.

The only way to not be engaged in the dance of the borderline is to identify, communicate and follow through with your boundaries. Your message in words and in action must be clear. If for example, the borderline in your life is demanding something from you that you cannot give, it is reasonable that you answer the demand calmly with a statement about how you feel and why you cannot do what you are being asked or manipulated to do. Then make a clear statement that you are not going to continue to engage in the conflict or issue. If the borderline continues to press or escalates his/her behavior then you have to disengage in whatever way you have set out as the way that you will do this. For example, if you made it clear you will leave the house for an hour or that you will take a half hour alone somewhere in the house then you must do this.

If you are finding that you have set boundaries and limits and that you have communicated them and acted upon them only to meet with more and more conflict, abuse, hostility etc then it is time to consider space. In order for you to take care of yourself and have your needs met, your boundaries and limits need to be respected. This is often next to impossible for many borderlines (not yet in therapy or refusing to get help). If the borderline in your life is not getting help, won't go get help, is in total denial, and will not respect your personhood then the choice you have to make in order to maintain your own sanity is one of space and distance, for a time, or altogether.

As someone who has gone through this from both sides of Borderline Personality Disorder (having had parents with BPD, having had BPD and recovered from BPD and then having had a relationship as a non borderline with someone with BPD) I can honestly say that often it is only through subsequent loss for the non borderline and what feels like re-abandonment to the borderline that healing can be realized.

When I was an adult in the process of working to recover from BPD, it took the loss of my family - it took me divorcing my family for me to create the kind of healthy foundation from which I could recover. When I had BPD, it took my losing people from my life before I could incorporate certain changes. When I was in a relationship, after my own recovery from BPD with someone with BPD, it took ending that relationship and losing the love I'd sought to gain (love that wasn't really love at all) in order for me to further mature and understand myself.

If you are staying in a relationship or continually caving or surrendering to "have peace" only to find that is not "right", or "good enough" for the borderline in your life either: you are doing NO ONE a favour by staying in that situation. You have to decide whether you are willing to remain a hostage anymore or not. Do you want your freedom enough? Yes in the pursuit of your disengaging the dance and your attaining your freedom you will hurt. The borderline will hurt. If life and recovery have taught me anything it's that you cannot grow and change without feeling pain. Let your pain motivate you to learn the lesson, whether you are a borderline or a non borderline.

If you have BPD and you are remaining engaged in a relationship where you know you are punishing or abusing or asking way too much from another because you don't know how to soothe yourself, take care of yourself, meet your needs, or live your own life, then you too will benefit from getting professional help to work out unresolved abandonment trauma so that you can learn to relate to others in healthier ways. Ways that can build relationships instead of destroy them and victimize others while you re-victimize yourself at the same time.

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Often we, borderline or non borderline have to lose in order to gain. We have to grieve in order to grow. We have to say good-bye in order to say hello to ourselves and to subsequent others in our lives. No one of us can change for another. No one of us can control another. Relationships are complicated and hard enough. For the borderline they are not truly possible until the borderline learns to relate to "self". Until the borderline learns to relate to "self" he/she will always be relating over and over again to "self" through "other". This reality pushes the "other" away. It also is why the borderline tries to take hostages. If the borderline (in throes of BPD) only knows "self" through "other" and "other" goes away the experience is one as real and painful as "death of self" -- annihilation. The end of a relationship to a borderline can be like a death of "self" as was known in "other". The end of a relationship for a non-borderline or averagely "healthy" person is a very sad, painful loss but it is not the loss of self. In fact, when a non-borderline leaves a borderline they often experience a very healthy and welcoming "re-birth" of "self".

If you are borderline it is up to you to take responsibility for yourself and to learn to respect the limits and boundaries of others. If you are borderline you need to find yourself and to live through that "self" and not project that lost "self" onto others. If you are a non-borderline you need to be realistic with yourself and not accept anything less than basic human courtesy and respect.

The Dance of the Borderline, the tune of which can only be heard by a borderline is music that a non-borderline cannot truly hear or appreciate. You live in one world, separated from itself, worlds over-lapping, yet not touching, worlds in parallel. Borderlines need to stop the dance and the non borderlines need to end their quagmire. Whether this can be done in tandem or whether you have to let go and do it alone, only each of you can decide.

Each one of us in this world has a responsibility to ourselves. We cannot extend any real love to another until we learn to love "self", borderline or not. And for those with BPD to be able to learn to love "self" they must first find and get to know that "authentic self".

A.J.'s Ebooks

A.J.'s Audio Programs

Unwinding the Traps and Hooks of BPD and Letting Go

Understanding the reasons for and meaning and usual outcome of borderline hoovering - the promises, the overtures, the short periods of honeymoon behaviour that always rupture.

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.

The first time a relationship appears to be on the rocks or ending the non borderline (even if the borderline is a family member that you are disengaging from relating to) will more often than not be met with hoovering - being re-contacted, or sought out, and being promised just about anything if one will stay involved with the borderline. These overtures are promises that the borderline who has not worked on any of his or her issues cannot possibly live up or consistently implement and maintain. Hoovering, when the non borderline engages it, invariably leads to a honeymoon phase. If you are in a cycling on-again off-again relational dynamic (not an unusual way to realize that one really has to end a relationship) the honeymoon phase of the hoovering promises will get shorter and shorter.

Promises made without the work having been done in therapy by the borderline will result in rupture after rupture. Nothing will change, In fact, things usually get progressively worse and all-too-often the non borderline gets even more embroiled, enmeshed, and invested in trying to rescue the hoovering borderline.

Letting go of a relationship that has ruptured with the person with BPD in your life not only presents many difficult challenges to most non borderlines but this letting go also unfolds a mystery of puzzle pieces that don't seem to fit together. This enigma that is, more often than not, an inability to achieve resolution with the borderline can keep a non borderline stuck, trapped, and held hostage to a type of emotional pain that rather than decrease upon the end of a relationship actually increases until and unless the non borderline can effectively learn what it takes to truly Break Free From The BPD Maze and find their way to what is now being referred to as non-borderline recovery.

I talk about this in my latest video below. I would also invite you to check out my Audio Programs and/or my Ebooks to learn much more about breaking free from the hoovering promises of a borderline in your life. My audios and ebooks can reinforce what is necessary for you to be as aware of as you can be in order to unravel the quest for a resolution and come to a deeper understanding of why what is happening for you on the other side of someone with BPD is happening or why it has happened. What was behind the powerful punch of the entire allure of the relationship in the first place? What has kept you involved? What do you need to know about yourself? What can you learn from all this?

As someone who had BPD and then recovered only to end up in an relationship with someone with BPD (and NPD) six years after that recovery, I know the pain of being on the non borderline side. I write about this relationship and all that it taught me and how I have been able to heal from it and leave it behind in my ebook Full Circle - Lessons for Non Borderlines which features over 85+ lessons that can aid non borderlines in letting go of the borderline and the constant quest, focus, sometimes even obsession of trying to make some sense out of it all.

Non borderlines will benefit greatly from as much understanding about the parallel and twisted "reality" that unwinds itself Inside The Borderline Mind but also must find a healthy balance between this quest for a greater understanding of everything borderline and the need to be as aware of one's own needs, responsibility, and issues as possible.

The Black Hole of Borderline Personality - Shame of Abandonment

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 shame of abandonment in Borderline Personality Disorder creates a black hole where the arrested development of the previously burgeoning authentic self was. In those who go on to develop and be diagnosed with BPD the authentic self is lost, fragmented and repressed. In its place, at the centre of this black hole rises up a borderline false self that operates from a base of cognitively distorted thought, is primitive, emotionally immature, needy, demanding, lacking object Constancy, and self-destructive.

The black hole of BPD is that abyss in between love and hate - in between consistency and inconsistency - in between congruence and incongruence. It is that aching, seemingly endless space of borderline dark dingy determined self-destructive drudgery. It is the piercing gut-wrenching wind that puts out the flame of so much hope and so much love. It is the beginning of the end of so many relationship opportunities. It is the end of the beginning of all that is new as it begins to end yet again and again. It is the personification of abandonment. It is the darkness of distance and the loneliness of lacking love. It is disconnectedness of "I-hate-you-don't-leave-me" and the punishing push-pull of borderline "get away-closer".

The black hole of BPD, for those diagnosed with BPD, is the toll that the shame of all of their unresolved abandonment trauma recapitulates in their thoughts, feelings, and experience of life.

The black hole of BPD, for those who are family members, friends, relationship or ex-relationship partners of those with BPD - non borderlines, is the seemingly unending cycles of toxic relating that leave them in pain and feeling confused and having to grapple, more often than not, with loss.

The black hole of BPD is love, in its most toxic form, sought and lost no matter what the cost. Love begged for and loved chased all in the name of trying to repair the damage of yesterday. It is the essence of the aching allure of love and the nurture that it holds out, precious promise of a chance to heal, a chance to grow, a chance to be re-parented and a chance to learn what one with BPD missed learning in his or her past.

The black hole of BPD, for the borderline, is the absence of known and congruent self. It is the emptiness that echos endlessly in the cavernous corners of a wounded soul. It is pain. It is agony. It is stolen youth. It is youth robbed of innocence. It is promise thrown asunder through the accumulated shame of abandonment trauma that supports the arrested development that borderlines re-live in repeatedly rupturing relational patterns.

This black hole of BPD takes all-comers. It is not discriminating. Whether you have BPD or know someone who does (non borderlines) the black hole will gladly open up for you. It will swallow your sanity if you let it. Countless non borderlines have fallen into the black whole of a loved one's Borderline Personality Disorder only to have the borderline project and transfer his or her shame and abandonment trauma onto them in ways that foster toxic relating and rupture any and all attempts to relate in ways that even remotely resemble healthy relating.

What does this mean about the borderline and love? Is there a difference between the love they seek and the love they can or try to give?

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD, more often than not, without being consciously aware of it, end up blaming the person or people in their lives that actually do care the most. From the centre of the shame suffered as the result of the core wound of abandonment in Borderline Personality Disorder those with BPD experience the drama, chaos, pain, and even toxic relationship rupture as being caused by the non borderline. This can be crazy-making for the non borderline because the borderline living actively with and from the shame of the core wound of abandonment steeped in polarized cognitively-distorted ways of thinking experiences life in a fragmented way that compromises or obliterates his or her capacity to engage in shared reality.

Borderlines, lacking a known sense of self, often lack the kind of awareness and insight that can mean the difference between constructive relating and destructive relating. The fragmented, destructive, polarized, and narcissistic false self borderline reality that exists within the shame of abandonment creates patterns of toxic relating and is the foundation of the black hole of Borderline Personality Disorder that devours devastates and ruptures relationships.

If you don't have BPD but care about someone who does have it will benefit you to be very clear about the difference between love and hate. Know the difference between love and abuse. Know the difference between those with boundaries and respect and those without both. Know that you deserve more than to be drawn deeply into the bottomless pit of someone else's needs and wants. Know that you do not have to be a willing hostage. Know that you can only be held captive as long as you participate in your own abduction. Don't confuse taking with giving.

Do not think that it is appropriate for an adult to be a child. Do not excuse the rage. Do not accept the anger. Do not allow the acting-out. Insist that there be peace, calm, reason and responsibility. Do not confuse love with need. Do not make excuses for the borderline's behaviour or for his or her lack of personal responsibility-taking.

The shame at the heart of the core wound of abandonment needs to be addressed in order for a person with BPD to be able to resolve his or her abandonment trauma and pave the way for the reclamation of the lost authentic self.

The black hole of BPD is wide and deep. It is weak and it is strong. It is depression personified. It is the pit within which combustion can fuel a fire of any size. It is the base of the flame, the match and the kindling. It is mutiny. It is a calm breeze that suddenly and without warning becomes a hurricane. It is a gentle rain that throws itself into a monsoon. It is a construction zone complete with holes in the road in the absence of caution signs. It is a universe onto itself. A life in parallel to the rest of the world. A world within a world. A painful place to be. A nightmare. Dark and destructive for both the borderline and the non borderline.

A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who, among other things, specializes in working with those with BPD and family members, friends, relationship partners or ex-relationship partners of those with BPD (non borderlines).

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 the lack of a known authentic 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. Those who are non-borderline in relationships with those with BPD need to understand why they are hated one minute and loved and/or needed the next minute.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) profoundly inhibits those diagnosed with it from bonding in healthy ways that can then lead to productive relating in any and all forms/types of relationships.

It isn’t really possible to bond with others in healthy ways when one does not know who they are and is not bonded to one’s own true self.

Most with BPD struggle with intense and very unstable relationships. All-too-often relationships just don’t work for them or those who love and care about them. There is a tremendous amount of pain that those in these relationships experience on both sides of the Borderline Personality Disorder fence.

Why is it the case that more relationships than not with and for those with BPD do not work out or last?

Put simply, it’s that Borderline Dance of “I hate you, don’t leave me.” This dynamic dance is set in motion when the person diagnosed with BPD tries to be close to someone. It kicks in for most when they are in a relationship in which attempts at intimacy are made.

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In order to be able to be truly intimate and not threatened and/or triggered by it one has to be able to tolerate distance. Many with BPD are unable to tolerate average healthy distance that is necessary in healthy relationships. Rather they experience this distance as rejection and/or abandonment. The intense feelings that these feelings of rejection and/or abandonment fuel is the impetus that causes those with BPD to feel a desperate need to defend against the very one they love and partly want to be close to. This distances the borderline’s partner in often abusive ways and leave the borderline feeling rejected and/or abandoned again. It is a very self-defeating circle to be stuck in.

For most with BPD, until they find themselves and reclaim true self and personhood in therapy, intimacy and being close to anyone is far too threatening. While they may really want to be close they fear it with as much, if not more, intensity, and end up defending against it and pushing away what they really want in need with and from the other person. This sets up the borderline to continue to re-experience this upheaval as rejection and/or abandonment which in a cognitively-distorted way then supports the borderline belief that they are not safe in trying to be close and that they need to defend. Thus a virtually unending cycle of self-defeat is perpetuate by many with BPD. This borderline cycle leaves those close to the person with borderline in a double-bind “no win” situation.

Why do those with BPD fear closeness and intimacy?

Closeness and intimacy are feared because lacking a stable sense of true identity those with BPD fear being engulfed which is tantamount for them to being annihilated and seeking to exist. What gets set up in relationships for those with BPD is the re-playing of their past relationships. Past relationships which often were riddled with emotional trauma, mixed messages, and insecurity. The feelings of being engulfed as a child feel annihilating because one is needy and dependant upon parents or caretakers.

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This child-like neediness is re-enacted with those who have BPD in intimate relationships (and sometimes in friendships too) because it is all those with BPD know. They know a fear that is so deeply ingrained in a profound woundedness that is then played out over and over in a repetition compulsion the genesis of which has at its source a deep-seated need to resolve the primitive emotional and developmental conflicts generated in the borderline’s experience of being neglected, abandoned, rejected and invalidated (real, actual and/or perceived).

This Borderline Dance of “I-hate-you, don’t-leave-me” puts an enormous amount of pressure and responsibility upon the friend or non-borderline partner. Many with BPD transfer their personal responsibility onto a partner. More often than not the partner of someone who is in the active throes of BPD (usually untreated) is seen more often than not as the parent of the borderline in what are constant triggered, fragmented, dissociated ways that the borderline is experiencing his/her past in most here and now relational moments.

The Borderline Dance of, “I-hate-you, don’t-leave-me” is a very painful dynamic for the borderline and the non-borderline partner to be in. It is important to gain awareness and understanding of this in order to seek help and to have an opportunity to change this dynamic before your relationship is lost to it. Professional intervention is necessary to take this unhealthy and painful dynamic and to help the evolution from this dance to healthier ways of relating.

If you have been diagnosed with BPD (and you haven't already) you need to get professional help to take responsibility for your own behaviour and for any and all pain that you are causing anyone else as well as yourself. If you continue to believe that it is your partner's fault or responsibility you will continue to remain stuck in a very painful dynamic within a relationship that likely isn't working and won't or can't survive as such.

If you are the non-borderline partner and you believe you are in this dynamic and dance of “I-hate-you, don’t-leave-me” with your borderline partner it is crucial that you understand you cannot change it or change your borderline partner, you must take care of yourself and hope that your borderline partner will seek professional help. Borderlines can be helped by competent therapists. They must be willing to get this help themselves. If they are not, than as the non-borderline partner in the relationship you really must assess your needs and perhaps get professional assistance yourself to determine what is best for you (and any children involved).

The Language of BPD - Can loved ones and family members learn to speak it?

Would a Non Borderline communicating his/her boundaries to a borderline (even he or she could) by attempting to speak the emotional language of the borderline be more successful?

Having had BPD, recovered, and subsequently had a relationship with someone with BPD/NPD in which I was in the non role, my answer is NO! Firstly, the language of BPD is not exactly the same for each and every person with BPD. Secondly, if one is trying to "speak BPD" if you will, one would more or less end up trying to play therapist. Or, one would end up essentially taking on the role of the parent that you are being experienced as by your borderline in his or her triggered repetition compulsions. I'd be concerned that trying to speak to a person with BPD in "BPD speak" would only increase enmeshment and strengthen the role of rescuer both of which really will not help out the borderline and both of which will increase the pain and suffering of the non borderline.

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

For most non borderlines trying to speak the emotional language of those with BPD would essentially twist your mind into a pretzel. It would take what you know to be average healthy relating and make it so complicated that you could easily lose your way in it alone - never mind trying to be both the communicator and the interpreter to the borderline. Non borderlines and those with BPD live in two separate emotional worlds and their communication styles and difficulties mirror that reality. It would likely be almost as difficult or impossible for the non borderline to truly speak the emotional language of the borderline as it would be for the borderline to suddenly clearly be able to speak the language of the non-personality-disordered.

A.J.'s Audio Program The Shame of Abandonment in BPD

Often non borderlines end up being enmeshed with those who have BPD. Many non borderlines have speculated that the enmeshment of being in the parent role may make what you say as opposed to how you say it more important. Many wonder if there is a way to put one's limits and boundaries in "bpd-speak" so to say in the hopes that it would then somehow, magically, be better understood by the person with BPD. Many nons think that if they can back up their boundaries this also will help make those boundaries clear to those with BPD. This is often not the case however as borderline are not only very skilled at challenging boundaries but also at manipulating nons right out of the very boundary setting and boundaries they know they need and that they often do try to communicate about. Is there more risk involved in communicating boundaries to the borderline in "non-borderline-speak" versus "bpd-speak"?

I am not so sure it would be any more of a risk but it would be the same level of risk, in most cases, in my opinion, as any type of communication of limits and boundaries. What you say about the non borderline's boundaries and backing them up and being clear mattering more than how they communicated makes sense to those who are thinking in logical ways (nons) but often will not make that same sense to those not thinking as logically or not experiencing the communication of limits and boundaries in the here and now.

The dilemma that exists for the non borderline trying to communicate his or her limits and boundaries to a borderline exists not because one is speaking "non-speak" or to the degree a non could try to "bpd-speak" but rather because the non and the borderline are trying to come to a meeting of the minds from what are parallel universes and uncommon experience. If even one can try to use "bpd-speak" it can backfire just as quickly because of the effect (triggers back to repetition compulsions of the borderline) of the "meat" of the communication itself.

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

The enmeshment or parent-role, in most cases, exists and unfolds in the experience of the borderline regardless of the message, delivery, or intent on the part of the non borderline. I think this is one aspect of BPD that still confuses a lot of nons. I offer this opinion based upon my experience in the years when I had BPD. Those entrenched in the active throes of BPD cannot and do not really know how to decipher the meaning of the message from its delivery anymore than they can receive its intent in age and situationally-appropriate ways that are common to the non borderline experience.

What a non says to a borderline can go awry as far and as fast as how that something is said. It is the nature of the communication gap between these two emotionally parallel universes.

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.

I know what this is like from the inside out. I had BPD. I lived for 33 years of my life without much, if any, sense of self. Did I know that then? No, not at all. What did it feel like though? It was confusing. It was crazy-making for me, even when I had BPD. I believe it is crazy-making for most with BPD. It was, for me, a source of constant angst. An angst I had no words for. An angst that terrified me and could send me into an anxiety-riddled panic in a heartbeat when I felt invalidated, abandoned, or when I was left alone.

Living without a self means that you can't know what you really want. You can't know who you are. You can't possibly really have emotional boundaries because there is no centre or container from which to have any understanding of the walls of an actual self. There is nothing between the borderline and others except this fuzzy frenzy of frantic efforts to not have to feel one's abandoned pain.

Dissociated from the pain when I was in the active throes of BPD was the cause of my borderline rage. I was in the active throes of a whirlwind of maelstrom proportions - the result of what was actually my rage addiction. Life pissed me off. Most everything made me angry. I experienced that being made angry as being everyone else's responsibility and/or fault and as having nothing to do with me.

Everything that I was feeling without understanding what I was feeling - so all the angst-filled rage that I was always feeling - felt like it was just happening to me. And what was happening to me, I thought, when I had BPD, it must then follow, must have been happening to me because other people were doing "it" to me.

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Consumed in rage the little fragmented piece of me that was hanging on for literal psychological dear life would stir me and trigger me in all aspects of my life - there was not time off - there was no peace - there was no happiness or time to feel okay or safe. When I wasn't feeling like other people were purposefully trying to hurt me and drive me nuts there was this part of me that just couldn't leave me alone either.

I felt victimized by everyone and everything. I would later, in the process of recovery, come to realize that I also felt victimized by this very fragmented and wounded part of me that just wouldn't lay off of me. This part of me would endlessly try to get me (whoever the hell that was then) to pay attention to the pain that I was way too afraid of and not very aware of. For three decades this part of me stayed her determined course and re-played out the past over and over again in attempts to get me to "get it".

When I was borderline I was consumed with rage because it is rage that is on the other side of loss. Not being able to tolerate that loss is what the protective borderline false self thrives on. It is what gives it its edge - its cruelty - its get-away-closer, I-hate-you, don't-leave-me, aloof closeness and its no-win emotionally-chaotic stone-cold intimate distance - its ability to hurt others as it hurts. It is what keeps it in the driver's seat, keeps it alive. It is the need of those with BPD to keep their abandonment trauma at bay at all costs, dissociated from in borderline reality - parallel to reality - though it be re-lived over and over and over again that "protects" them from feeling the very pain that must be felt in order to resolve the petulantly-persistent primal primitive rage.

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In my borderline experience it hurt to be close though close always felt very far away and very not good enough. It hurt to be far away because it had this pseudo-allure of a closeness most dysfunctional and severely strange - enmeshed - an angry, hostile, violent raging kind of closeness that knew no bounds and hated itself. A hatred for the lack of its self that was then projected out onto others without any awareness on my part.

On the other side of rage is loss. The only way out is in. What is in the way is the way.

The only way out is to fall into the pain. What is in the way is the pain and feeling and learning to tolerate the pain until it can be resolved is the way to recovery. There are no shortcuts or magic pills. There is no substitute for getting in touch with one's authentic pain - the pain that will lead to the finding of the lost authentic self.

I no longer rage.

I fell into the pain. I embraced what was in the way - it was the way that I recovered.

Is Borderline Behaviour Due To The "Illness" of Borderline Personality - The Brain Disorder?

Is borderline behaviour due to the "illness" of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)? Is it caused by the brain? Whose responsibility does this way of thinking make it? What happens to the concept of personal responsibility?

I wonder what I would have done, years ago, when I had Borderline Personality Disorder if I had been told and/or if I believed that it was a brain disorder? Would I have worked in therapy to come to not only know about and understand the concept of personal responsibility and then accept it and make a choice to take personal responsibility for my actions, my thoughts, my feelings - my (then) borderline behaviour or would I simply have chalked it up to something that I couldn't control, to something that my brain made me do?

Herein lies part of the largest part of the danger in the ways that some are now touting BPD as a "brain disorder". Is this a way of saying, well, borderlines just can't help it? They think what the think and they feel what they feel so unfortunately they do what they do that hurts themselves and others because, well, their brains make them do what they do?

I do not discount that there is as has always been thought and said by professionals a "biological component" to BPD. But this is much different than saying "it's a brain disorder". It is a thought disorder. So in my experience what I've come to realize seems to be the argument of late is whether or not the disordered thoughts are in the hard-wiring or whether they are caused by the experience and/or perception of abandonment and the devastating affect this has on a developing personality.

Of course, even if one wanted to say that the disordered thinking of those with BPD was a hard-wiring related thing, who is to say, moreover, who can prove, that what may have gone asunder in the brain hasn't been caused by the experience of emotional and psychological trauma?

Just as the experience of abandonment and all that it encompasses can have an affect on one to the level of the biology and/or chemistry of the brain, many types of psychotherapy, can over time, make it possible for those with BPD to repair some of what may go awry in the brain.

I think that while it may seem that what I am saying here could be taken as semantics - it isn't - there is quite a slippery slope to the detriment of those with BPD to be found in the language of "BPD is a brain disorder".

In my own recovery from BPD I have experienced a tremendous amount of change in the way that I think, consequently the way that I feel, and subsequently the way that I act or behave. It was something that I learned in therapy I had all the freedom in the world to choose to learn, to enact, to consistently and congruently live from and through. What the process of my recovery largely involved wasn't medication - I didn't take any psychiatric drugs whatsoever. There was no pharmaceutical remedy to why I, as someone who had BPD, used to think, feel, and act the way that I did. It was finding my lost authentic self and re-parenting that self (first in therapy and then on my own) to a healthy developed and functional self. It was the process of growing From False Self to Authentic Self and getting in touch with, integrating with and developing a healthy attachment to and relationship with my inner child. It's not rocket science. It's not easy. It is a very painful process but it doesn't involved brain surgery either.

Modern science is a wonderful thing in so many ways. Yet, here, when it comes to BPD, all the speculation, research, and "brain disorder" theorizing is not only unproven but it is also negating of the reality that not everything that impacts the brain has a biological cause and that not every brain impacted by the trauma of abandonment and the development of BPD - the personality disorder - must be medicated to produce positive change. In fact often much of the medication given to those with BPD is described by them as not being helpful and only really creating increasing problems over-all. The whole "brain disorder" speak is negating of the reality that human beings can and do change and heal the wounds that may well impact the brain in that it has some negative effect on how those with BPD tend to think in distorted and polarized ways that are self-defeating.

Forwarding the notion that Borderline Personality Disorder is a "brain disorder" short of a miracle pill that no one has (or in my opinion ever will invent) invented misleads everyone about the reality that BPD can be recovered from. It misleads those with BPD who may well come to not only feel hopeless in the face of this theory but who also may then not ever be able to clearly realize just how personally responsible they are for what they think, what they say, how they feel, what they perceive, and what they do with how they think, feel, and perceive.

I don't see what is progressive or helpful about that.

When I had Borderline Personality Disorder I, and I alone, was responsible for the choices that I made. I, and I alone was responsible for the way that I behaved. I, and I alone was responsible for the way that I treated others poorly and the way that the relationships I had often ruptured.

When I had Borderline Personality Disorder the greatest challenge to change wasn't any physical reality hard-wired into my brain it was the devastation that was all the emotional and psychological pain that I had experienced as a very young child as the result of being abandoned and the result of experiencing what Klein and Masterson and others describe as the loss of my self to the psychological trauma of this abandonment.

Psychological abandonment trauma that essentially psychologically kills the otherwise burgeoning self. It is this loss of self that is played out and re-played out when one has BPD that is the foundation of what Masterson calls "abandonment fear" that causes those with BPD to protect in many elaborate and unhealthy ways - protect that damaged, wounded, essentially lost authentic self - from anymore pain. This, in my experience, this trying to protect against this pain that I had experienced at such a young age and then dissociated from to survive at all and this avoidance of this pain is what perpetuates and often worsens the symptoms or traits of Borderline Personality Disorder.

I am not a professional. I am not a neurologist. I am not a researcher. I am just one person who had BPD, one person who has recovered. One person, who from my own experience knows that my brain didn't make me do anything. It wasn't my brain, it was my pain.

In my recovery I learned just how many choices I had made - subconscious choices, at a very young age, based upon the trauma of abandonment and abuse and a cornucopia of environmental factors, not the least of which was a tremendous lack of nurture - choices that can be un-learned. Choices that can be changed. Borderlines learn through psychological trauma of abandonment (actual or perceived) to abdicate personal responsibility - it sort of goes with the psychological death of the lost authentic self.

It is not lost to some "brain disorder". It is not at the mercy of medication to bring it back or to find it. What pill could they ever invent to bridge the gap between the lost authentic self, the borderline absence of self and the borderline false self? There won't ever be one.

If you have BPD please recognize the danger in attributing your thoughts, actions, feelings and/or behaviour to something that your brain is responsible for. Those with BPD are often dissociated from the way that they, in fact, make choices, but that doesn't negate the reality that choices are being made. If you have BPD you need to know that taking personal responsibility needs to be your number one priority if you want to improve the quality of your life and get on and stay on the road to recovery.

Learning about, understanding, and accepting personal responsibility for how one thinks, feels, and acts, when one has BPD is the way to the road to recovery. Radical acceptance and mindfulness are both very important in the borderline journey to the kind of awareness that is needed to become more aware of the choices that you have been making - choices that once you understand them and the legacy of them in your life - you can change.

It's not about the brain (hard-wiring) it's about the psychological pain. Granted the pain is stored in memory imprints in the brain. But memory imprints and stored memories in the brain - even stored body memories do not a brain disorder make.

If I sound passionate about this - you bet I am! I may be but one small dissenting voice in a sea of "it's a brain disorder" believing people - but I know what I know because I have lived it.

How can those forwarding Borderline Personality Disorder as a "brain disorder" expect them to believe in their own personal responsibility? What happens to the concept and need to accept personal responsibility in this theory of the origin of BPD?

The danger of this forwarding of BPD as a briain disorder is that it can leave those with BPD with an even greater sense of hopelessness. Those with BPD, as well as nons need to understand that it isn't that the brain of the borderline makes them do what they do or think what they think and that means that they can't help it - it is the borderline's abandoned pain - not the hard-wiring of the brain.

A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who, among other things, specializes in working with those with BPD and non borderlines. A.J. has 5 years experience as a life coach and has worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world. A.J. works with those with BPD as an adjunct to their therapy (most often) through a methodology that supports the reality of the possibility for recovery if one makes the choice to recover and holds to it and takes personal responsibility for it.

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.

Both of my parents had Borderline Personality Disorder. It is also believed that my maternal grandmother also had BPD. I was also diagnosed with BPD at the age of 19. I recovered at the age of 38. I am sure that if someone were to go through my whole family history, sadly, what has been defined in the last 20+ years as BPD would likely be found throughout many generations of my family.

In my unfortunately rich experience with Borderline Personality Disorder - on both sides of it - I'd have to say that despite any genetics involved the perpetual abandonment, lack of nurture, lack of mirroring, lack of validation, constant criticism, anger and rage, abuse, and so forth really lays the foundation for each generation to be as afflicted as the one that attempts to raise them.

Borderline Personality Disorder can definitely be accurately described as a relational disorder. It manifests in and through relationships in chaotic, crazy-making, intense and very unstable ways. In the sea of family BPD there is really no such thing as being or feeling connected. The experience is one of broken mutuality (Bradshaw), enmeshed family dysfunction, and a love-hate that the word toxic barely begins to describe.

The unresolved abandonment trauma and its legacy sets up an on-going intergenerational dynamic of an astounding lack of affect synchrony (Viviane Green in her book "Emotional Development in Psychoanalysis, Attachment Theory and Neuroscience") that is so needed by a young developing infant if one is to have a chance at developing a relatively healthy personality.

When one lives in a BPD family one learns that love is war and that connection represents a primal threat to one's actual or perceived survival. Nothing is real. Nothing is. Everything goes. Everyone takes turns taking hostages. Punishment is as common as the air that one needs to breathe. Oddly enough it becomes equally as sustaining.

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Life in a BPD family is a nightmare. There are no boundaries. Boundaries are not understood. Boundaries are not allowed. The BPD family relies on the enmeshed and toxic bonds of perpetual betrayal. Betrayal teaches the young developing borderlines how to manage the split reality of "I-hate you, don't-leave-me" and "get-away-closer". It helps one navigate the crazy-making duality of aloof-closeness and/or intimate-distance.

Life in a BPD family teaches one that emotional availability is a powerful tool with which to manipulate, punish and control. It teaches that helping others really means controlling them to be the way that you need them to be for you. It teaches one that they only exist in and through the existence of the other and that when the other is disapproving, distant, or maybe just not paying enough attention, one is invisible, non-existent and absolutely not ever safe.

There is nothing to trust in a BPD family. Really the only thing that there was to hold onto, aside from false hope against all hope that one's needs might someday be met, was the full-on raging chaos. The raging chaos of utter despair disguised as want, dangled as the rarity of recognized need, was the salve that soothed the absence of a self that was so dissociated from yet so palpable as to be the pain filled numbness of a living death.

Lack of Object Constancy In BPD

Lack of object constancy in Borderline Personality Disorder is at the heart of borderline abandonment trauma and repeated relationship rupture.

As a person who had BPD and who has recovered from BPD, I am a great believer in what Masterson describes object constancy to be or the lack of it to be and its central role in being a major causative factor in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

I believe it is a direct result (as Masterson outlines) of insecure attachment and failure to bond which contribute heavily or are major causative factors to what Masterson calls "abandonment trauma" and what I call, from my own experience with it, the "core wound of abandonment".

Those with BPD, until and unless they get a lot of therapy, therapy that is somewhat successful at the very least, emotionally/psychologically experienced an emotional arrest in development usually between or around the ages of 2 or 3. If you think about it this way, the borderline is emotionally 2 or 3 years old and lack of object constancy is a stage of development in those early developmental years that are not mastered by those who go on to be diagnosed with BPD. So just as a young child cries or screams for mom or dad when they leave, not yet having the ability to understand they will come back, a child in this stage of development experiences much of his or her world as "out of sight, out of mind." This is, what I came to understand about my experience when I had BPD. If someone wasn't directly relating to me or in the environment they were more or less out of sight and therefore out of mind.

When those with BPD experience this out of sight, out of mind, stuff, protective defense mechanisms kick in that result in them splitting and devaluing the "lost" or experienced-as-lost "object" - person. For many with BPD they require the constant attention of "other" to feel connected to "other". Remember, also that for most with BPD, in the active throes of BPD, "other" = "self" - the "self" that borderlines don't otherwise have.

In terms of the answer to the question "what is object constancy as relates to BPD?" Borderlines do not have object constancy. They lack object constancy. They do not relate in any consistent way. That's why you see the swing between all-good to all-bad, then back to all-good until they shift back to all-bad etc. Borderlines do not have the inter-personal skills to relate to "self" or "other" in any consistent or lasting way.

Lack of object constancy in BPD is a direct result of the relationship rupture that results from the core wound of abandonment.

Lack of object constancy, in my opinion, isn't so much about emotional amnesia or a forgetting as it is about dissociation and splitting in which there are dual realities in operation at the same time or that shift back and forth, if you will. "Out of sight, out of mind, isn't so much an inability to remember certain things about a person as it is more about abandonment fear that drives borderline defense mechanisms like splitting and devaluation to kick in because the state of being left alone isn't tolerable when a borderline doesn't know how to soothe him/herself. Just as the young child in the playpen starts to cry when mother goes to work, for example, and experiences a discomfort with separation, borderlines experience a triggering back to abandonment fear, abandonment trauma (Masterson) which they do not have the inter-personal skills to cope with - thus the maladaptive pathological defenses kick in.

Often also those with BPD will punish "other" for leaving or being busy because when "other" isn't immediately available to provide the soothing and reassurance the borderline needs, the borderline experiences feelings (related to original core wound of abandonment trauma which is often repressed - dissociated from) which is more about intra-psychic trauma and unresolved abandonment trauma from the borderline's past than it is about actual "memory issues". Borderlines cannot hold the experience of "other" or any connection to "other" when "other" isn't right there.

Masterson describes borderlines being "unable to hold the memory of significant others in mind" - not to say this isn't correct, but as I experienced this in my borderline years more than what I couldn't keep in my mind what was most central was my borderline fear of abandonment coupled with the reality that I was unable to form bonds or attachments in a way that could survive or be held through times of separation.

Separation, even brief separation threatens the borderline and essentially triggers him or her back to what is actually (until and unless enough therapy is undergone successfully) their original experience of "the core wound of abandonment". It produces terror, fear, very primal emotional reactions on some level in those with BPD. The key thing about his, however, is that many borderlines have no conscious awareness of this. They are dissociated from this repressed pain - what I refer to as the abandoned pain of bpd (which I have an ebook all about by the way).

The Shame of Abandonment in BPD perpetuates this deep-seated and complicated lack of object constancy in those with BPD.

Borderlines do not experience the kind of bonding or secure attachment that would provide a foundation for being able to shift between closeness and distance. It is this lack of object constancy that is the heart of the toxic relational style of the borderline false self. It is this lack of object constancy that leads borderlines to search for their missing "self" through others and leaves those others feeling invisible in what is a toxic relationship feuled by the broken mutuality the borderline experienced at the time of their original abandonment trauma and that their lack of object constancy continues to trigger the re-playing out of within relationships.

© A.J. Mahari June 24, 2008 - All rights reserved.

I am An Adult-Child of a Borderline Mother

I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I was treated for BPD. I recovered from BPD. One thing has remained a constant throughout all the years of my life and all of my healing - I am the adult-child of a mother with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Notwithstanding that I am now by virtue of recovering from BPD, no longer a borderline or no longer borderline, and that I am now living my life as any other non borderline, my mother remains as borderline as ever.

My mother has not ever acknowledged her "issues". My mother has not ever sought treatment. In fact, my father (deceased) was also borderline - he never sought treatment either. What this meant for me early on in my life must have been but mere writing on the wall it would have been so obvious to the onlooker with knowledge - I was destined via genetics and/or environment - the double whammy - to end being diagnosed with BPD. I was diagnosed with BPD at the age of 19, in 1976.

What this meant for me as a child was emotionally devastating. Ironic as hell now really, at this point in my life that I have come to realize that there is some grief to feel and process even now. I think that as I face this head on as I am currently, it is ironic because I was always in pain over the loss that was the reality that my mother and I never bonded. I have in many ways and at many levels grieved this loss in many different ways.

In the past I had therapists who told me that "mother work" was the usually the last work that many get through. I have gotten through a ton of it. Oddly enough I sure did leave it until the end in my recovery from BPD too. I held out as long as I could. I had always taken this approach in my life that my mother just wasn't important. Years ago in therapy, that misconception and actual protection on my part was shattered. What was most important about my borderline mother in my life however, wasn't her, it was the enduring emotional absence of her in what was her otherwise physical and hateful presence in my life.

I have worked my way through all of my childhood issues that go back to my mother - yet, still, there is grief. This grief is the grief of an adult-child of a borderline mother - not the grief of a borderline who is still emotionally a child in search of a mother. I let go and grieved and laid down that a long time ago now. I have processed the incredible pain of the grief and sadness of not really ever having had the mother I wished I'd had, I wished she would have been, or the mother I so needed. I am a healthy adult who is in the process of letting go of any false hope about any resolution that I'd so hoped my mother and I could one day process together.

My mother and I not only didn't bond but we've never had any measure of a relationship. We co-existed (barely) in the same house for the first 17 years of my life. But, living in the same house does not a relationship make. Well, we co-existed if you count her sexually, physically, verbally, and emotionally abusing me and my screaming and raging at her in my late childhood and early teens co-existing that is.

There was always some level of degree of pain about this reality in my life but in the past when I had BPD and when I was as emotionally unhealthy as she was, back when the battle royal was my fair also I was too busy living it all to really get to the bottom of all of the sad. When I had BPD I was way too angry to get to the sad.

Of course, throughout all the therapy I had on the journey of my recovery from BPD there was tons of work and focus and yelling and crying and suffering and journalling about my mother. There were millions of attempts on my part over the years to talk to her, to get through to her, to help her - God, I so wanted to rescue her. All attempts were not only in vain they took their own emotional toll on me. They were accruing really. I wasn't paying enough attention.

Perhaps even though I had dealt with so much about my mother and my childhood in therapy and in recovering from BPD the reason that I hadn't been as aware as I wished I'd been about the toll that this "pseudo-relationship" or shadow-relationship was taking on me and was actually accruing within me was because I was so wrapped up in the shame of my survivor guilt.

You know, for me to recover from BPD, and to have stuck with therapy through all that that demanded and took, I had to walk away from my family. This was merely the beginning of the ending. Endings sometimes take more time than we wish they would. But when in the middle of our process with an ending, it is just that, our own process. We can only have insight into what we are able to grieve, I've come to learn. That means, we can only know what we are willing to let go of. Yes, we can only really come to an awareness and acceptance of what we are willing to surrender to - no matter how much it hurts. What blocks awareness often when change is needed is focusing on trying to control something rather than just letting it go. It is the sad sullen slow surrender to what needs to be let go of that is the increasing awareness of unfolding personal enlightenment.

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

A.J.'s Audio Program The Shame of Abandonment in BPD

A.J.'s Audio Programs For Borderlines and Non Borderlines

Recent life events have for some reason, of late, given me this blessed kind of radical acceptance of who my mother is and always was. I have for years had compassion for her. I have for years, since I recovered from BPD in the mid-1990's let go of so much to do with all that I suffered in large part to the failings of my mother. Of course to recover from BPD I had to make the painful and gut-wrenching (at the time) distinction between learning to take personal responsibility and letting go of blaming my mother along with being practical about what affected what when I was a child under her "care".

I think what has put in me touch with this latest round of grief about my mother is my recent decision that despite very little contact over very many years now, I have to again strengthen a boundary, I had partially relaxed in the years since my father died. I had given it enough time. Nothing has changed. In the few times we've even talked each time was like she could easily have picked the tiny scab remaining around my healed wounds if I let her.

You see even though I have recovered form BPD that certainly does not make me super-human. Nope. Just human. Therefore, in my humanity, imperfect as the next non borderline so to speak, there is still this tiny scab where I wish there was a fortress to be honest.

Though I don't think I would be being me if I didn't still have a tiny scab. I think I may have that tiny scab for the rest of my life.

Is it somewhat devastating, as in, painfully sad, that I now realize that there won't be any closure on such a toxic past with my mother? Yes. But I can easily cope with that. Yes, easily. It hurts. But then so do many things in life over which we just don't have any control right? I have resolved as much as one can without the benefit of the other party being willing and able to meet one half way in mutual resolution. However my whole life experience with my mother is one of what Bradshaw calls "broken mutuality" anyway and the sad truth is that since she is not in therapy, nothing will change and the legacy of this broken mutuality is now mine, and mine alone, to grieve.

I feel like I have finally turned the corner on my survivor guilt. I am no longer going to hold onto that feeling of guilt because I recovered and my mother is the same as she always was. That's about personal choices and personal responsibility. I stepped up to the plate of what was my devastated borderline life in the past and I changed that. I took personal responsibility. I made a choice to get better. My mother hasn't been able to make either of those choices. Perhaps she is, like so many other borderline mothers, a victim of her generation and its mind-set?

My mother is 83. In her day if you had a piece of your mind left at all you wouldn't go to a psychiatrist. That would be like admitting you wanted an all-expense paid trip to the nearest nut-house. I get that. But in all these years since self-help and the reality that getting help is a good thing, is okay, in fact is something to be celebrated - well, no shift in her way of thinking, no keeping up with the times there at all.

There it is - the really sad in all that's been sad in my life. It was also really sad that my father didn't get help and that we didn't have any closure before he died. What can you do?

I know what I can do. I can take care of myself. I can grieve and keep moving on. I can let go. I can accept that for the reasons I was born into the family that I was, there was purpose. Oh the pain, yes the torment - not fun. But the most important thing for me now is to always remember from where, what and who I came. To know that I made a choice that cost me even having a family let alone any family support. That choice was to INDIVIDUATE - a word that spelled BETRAYAL to my borderline parents who projected out their own betrayal of me onto me and had their borderline script read that it was me, A.J., getting well, taking care of myself, moving on and finding purpose and meaning my life, that was somehow an intolerable betrayal of and to them.

The thing about the toxic reality of relating borderline style is that individuation isn't allowed. Individuation to the career borderline, to the person with BPD who just won't get help or who just can't acknowledge their "issues" equals and is perceived as full-scale abandonment. It's no-win really.

What they couldn't tolerate, what they wouldn't support, and what they didn't have the emotional and perhaps even intellectual tools to understand was that I was no longer willing to be the wasteland garbage pain container of their unregulated, untreated, and un-controlled borderline toxic dysfunction. I always had (even in my own borderline years) a strong sense that I was born to be my own person for whatever reason God sent me to this earth despite all the crazy-making evidence of my parent's borderline smear campaign to the contrary - I was not born into this world to be them, or to be like them, or to continue their abusive toxic borderline way of life. I was born to create change. I was born to learn. I was born to meet the promise, potential, and purpose that God had long-ago known I would find a way to step up to the plate of - way before I had a clue what any of that could and would mean in my own life.

I wonder, when many an adult-child of beloved parents, after having lost both to death, feels likely understandably like an orphan, (as I've had friends describe - not something I can relate to actually) if I won't just end up feeling freer. I have felt freer since my father died. I think I will feel even freer when my mother passes on - not that I wish that on her - that's not my business. I am letting her go now, on my terms, in my own way, in the way that I have to for my own well-being. As to when God calls her home, well, hey that's not up to me for sure.

I was orphaned before I was 2 years old - emotionally. I was the child that existed to carry the toxic and projected emotions of 2 borderline parents that couldn't tolerate themselves let alone what they felt. I abdicated that role almost 20 years ago now. So much of what life is about - is choice.

Oh yeah, the grief is everywhere right now. That's okay. It's just so very sad. It is what is. We often can't control the cards that we are dealt in the hand of life but we can take responsibility for playing them to the best of our emotional and intellectual ability in a paradoxically balanced and healthy way.

I have learned through my recovery from BPD, ironically enough, how to surrender to that which I cannot control and how to be at peace with that.

I am currently writing my Memoir about My Recovery From BPD

A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who, specializes in working with those with BPD and non borderlines. A.J. has a unique perspective from both sides of BPD. She brings her passion to help those on either side of BPD who are in search of understanding and are in pursuit of peace and happiness. A.J. has 5 years experience as a life coach and has worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world.

I am writing my memoir about my recovery from BPD and you can check on the progress of it and keep informed about its up-coming availability at ajmahari.ca