BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
(This is an excerpt from my upcoming BPD Client book, soon to be published):
My passionate dedication to each of my clients, was always to help them recover, heal and grow emotionally, whether they were borderline disordered or not. The BPD client simply has more acute symptoms within the spectrum of core injury than the average person, but this doesn’t mean a non-borderline is emotionally whole and healthy.
Striking similarities exist between borderlines and their partners, as both suffered trauma to their emerging sense of Self during infancy, which caused vital emotions to be discarded or suppressed. Disconnection/dissociation from difficult feelings throughout infancy and childhood, results in arrested emotional development in adults.
The core of Healing Work is Feeling Work. Without this unique therapeutic intervention, a client’s emotional development cannot be achieved, and they won’t be able to outgrow their personality disorder traits.
A Borderline tries to gain a sense of Self through engagement with others. Their seduction tactics are compulsive, predatory and highly perfected, but they mask a deep inner sense of unworthiness connected to childhood insecurities. The greater the challenge their object of desire presents, the more heightened their sense of validation-reward is, in the conquest.
Even brief absences of contact with another, can make the Borderline feel non-existent, undesirable, invisible, unlovable and worthless. These shameful feelings prompt inner narratives and thoughts like, “If I'm this messed-up or defective, I have no right to be here~ and what's the point of going on?” Thus, suicidal ideation is catalyzed.
This client often wrestles with feelings of emptiness/deadness, and their need to distract from these sensations with dating, sex and casually attaching to others, is driven by deep anxiety and pain. The trouble is, they've never been able to trust real intimacy and closeness, for those responsible for their care in the earliest stages of life, were not emotionally equipped to provide solid, nourishing attachment experiences.