The BPD onslaught has existed since the beginning of time.
This ain't your grandma's psychotherapy.
I stumbled on Borderline Personality Disorder, quite by accident. Only one college professor (and I use the term loosely) during my sojourn back into academia at 41, made our class buy a book that would supposedly introduce and illuminate us on the topic of BPD. His exact words at the time were: “If you SAY you’ve read this book (whether you have or not), you will get a passing grade in this course.” Hence, most of our planet’s populace today, has never even heard of the term, “Borderline.”
Typically, people manage to find my website (and 25 articles written on this disorder) when they do an internet search for “narcissism.” With any luck, this may lead them to a page that addresses “emotional vampires.” From there, they might fall down what we think of these days as a rabbit hole~ and eventually happen onto one of my articles written years ago about the emotionally agonizing experiences of having loved someone who has BPD traits.
All sorts of theories exist about what causes BPD. Most are grossly inaccurate. As a Marriage and Family Therapy intern in private practice decades ago, many suicidally depressed people found their way to my office door. This surprised me, as I was fresh out of school, having graduated with my Master’s in Counseling Psychology. I one day asked God why my practice kept attracting these folks. His audible reply was, “Schreiber, given your personal background (I was suicidally depressed at 20) I think you’ve got this.” And so, I began to trust that perhaps I could help at least some of these clients sufficiently recover.
Over the many years of working with core trauma issues in my client base, certain distinct patterns of thought and behavior not only became blatantly apparent, they were acutely predictable. This fact started me thinking about what sorts of baseline or global issues might powerfully contribute to what appeared to be such a high volume of emotional dysregulation, setbacks and stress in these people.
I think I’ve always been curious about and fascinated with human nature, and growing up with a schizophrenic mommy may have planted the seed of needing to find out how and why anomalous behaviors existed. Apparently, I’ve never lost my determined and tenacious pursuit to understand the “why’s” pertaining to obstacles that deter joyful, gratifying outcomes within the realms of life and love. This grew me in ways that would never have been possible, had I been able to enjoy a “normal” upbringing~ but I digress.
When an emotional or mental disorder captures our attention, I think most people want to understand its etiology, perhaps to shed light on how to rectify it. I just took it a step further. None of what (little) I read about Borderlines made sense, in context of understanding how BPD existed on such a humongous scale.
I could not help but start theorizing and hypothesizing about this topic~ particularly since virtually all my clients in those early days exhibited identical symptomology. They frequently used the same words and phrases to describe their pain, and all had experienced identical post-natal and early childhood experiences within their homes of origin, though they didn’t identify these events as “abnormal.”
Over the course of years, I developed rational, viable, etiological theories on “what causes BPD?” They made perfect sense to me, and perhaps they will to you. I’m not concerned with the many who might challenge my perspectives. I know in my core, they’re completely valid.
I’ve done no formal “research” into this disorder. My secondary schooling was a gargantuan waste of time, effort and money. I don’t regret that excursion, for it’s added to my ‘credulity,’ but I’d have been far better off purchasing a DSM-IV back then, and perusing it in my spare time. I’d already ironed out a lot of my own ‘wrinkles’ by the time I’d reached forty-one, and besides, psych schooling never teaches you how to be an effective therapist or healer: It’s a calling. You’re either born to this work, or you aren’t.
BPD starts in the first hours, days and weeks of a newborn’s life. As we are developing inside our mother’s womb, we are forming an intimate, unshakeable attachment bond with her. This is evidenced by our umbilical cord thru which we receive vital supplies of oxygen, blood and nutrients, and also thru what we hear and feel while housed inside her body, as a fetus.
In the womb, we hear our mother’s constant heartbeat and breathing. These utterly reliable, rhythmic sounds frequently lull us to sleep during our gestation period. In addition, we hear our mother’s voice and co-experience her emotions. Whatever Mother feels while she’s carrying us inside her body, we feel too!
[If Mom’s anxious or sad or frightened, we absorb and experience those feelings right along with her. Some of my clients have wrestled lifelong with what I’ve coined, Womb Anxiety. Anxious feelings were the predominant emotion their mother experienced while pregnant with them. No specific life event during their childhood or adulthood, ever spawned their anxious feelings or phobias, yet a generalized sensation that suggests an absence of safety and security, is with these folks lifelong.]
We feel an incredible sense of oneness with our birth mother. Our sense is, she is Us, and we are Her. There is no separation between us. We are ONE. This is often the sensation we initially get when we meet and start falling for a Borderline, by the way. We have a sense of oneness with that other, because they like the same things we do (music, food, activities, etc.), they share our tastes and preferences, they seem to view and relate to their world precisely as We do, and all that ‘sameness’ gives birth to an irresistible sense of compatibility, comfort and security.
There’s only one problem with this delectable sense of sameness we feel with Borderlines. They are spectacularly gifted at discerning what’s important, intriguing and captivating to us, and fashioning themselves in ways to precisely match whatever they sense will help them seduce us. Alas, people with BPD traits are consummate chameleons. It’s part of their seduction routine, and God help ya if you don’t know about this feature, or you’re so hungry for love, you don’t care about it.
Newborns never have to learn to love their birth mothers. Studies with newly born babies have shown they can discern who their mother is in a roomful of women, just by the sound of her voice. When we are born, we are already in love with this female. Nine months (give or take) inside her womb, insures this bond with her is vibrant and unshakable. The only caveat is, she’s not necessarily in love with us.
Reference Post-Partum Depression, and you might imagine how incredibly wounding this is to a newborn’s sense of lovability and worth.
If as newborns, we cannot get a sense of our mother’s reciprocal adoration, this sets the tone for all that follows in our tender young life, and haunts us throughout our entire adulthood. An infant has no way to interpret nor comprehend why he’s not feeling cherished and adored. His thinking is not sophisticated enough to surmise that his mommy is emotionally impaired and incapable of bonding with him. His only way to understand this “something’s missing” experience, is to blame himself for being unlovable or not good enough.
This internal presumption becomes deeply entrenched as one grows into adulthood. Never does one crisis or trauma during the course of one’s life (like having been raped in childhood or adolescence) cause Borderline Personality Disorder. Its etiology begins for us as newborns, due to maternal deficits that are routinely reinforced throughout our ever-developing, young life.
Core trauma that spawns BPD is the result of a series of hundreds, perhaps thousands of little knife-wounds to one’s sense of lovability and worth. “Death from a thousand cuts” is how one client years ago described his painful childhood experiences with Mother. We tend to carry these wounds lifelong, until we can find someone with a unique and intimate understanding of this disorder to help us dismantle them and truly heal the heart injuries that resulted from early emotional neglect and/or abuse. And there’s the rub… “psychotherapy” doesn’t touch this long-standing cellular pain, nor assist it in moving out of the body.
BPD is such a vast subject, it’s nearly impossible to adequately edify you about it in this one post. Once I began writing about Borderlines, I couldn’t stop. 25 articles resulted from those passionate, irrepressible drives I felt to educate and enrich people’s understanding and knowledge about this incredibly rampant disorder.
Whenever you hear someone say, “children are resilient~ they’ll bounce back” rest assured that while these kids will figure out how to survive in this lifetime, very few will actually thrive. This does not mean they’ll fail to become financially solvent, but Self-esteem issues have existed for millions since they took their first breath, and these inhibit one’s ability to achieve happiness and contentment~ regardless of how much wealth he or she accrues.
A reprogramming process is essential in order to dismantle the inner-tape that keeps asserting, “I’m not good enough or lovable” in myriad ways this manifests within one’s own little private psyche. The tools to heal us are simplistic. Consistent use of them is not, as how many years or decades has one habitually shamed, guilted and criticized oneself?
Effectively reprogramming the conscious mind to accept nourishing messages to the Self, ultimately reroutes neuro-pathways in the human brain. This process is akin to skiing down a snowy mountain on fresh powder, as opposed to following smoother, well-worn tracks already laid by other skiers. Our ‘default’ setting is to follow already packed, faster and more familiar tracks in the snow. Human nature typically prefers the easier route, over ‘the road less traveled.’ I read Scott Peck’s book, at a very early age. Apparently, some of it stuck.
Results of core injury which causes Borderline Personality Disorder traits can take many forms, due to much needed dissociation from various difficult or painful emotions, from the time we’re old enough to talk and walk. Children who are unable to disconnect/dissociate from tormenting inner pain, “accidentally” fall off tall buildings or out of trees, to bring about a welcome end to their agony. Millions more childhood suicides than you might think, have been couched as ‘accidental deaths.’
But what in the world could make a young child so profoundly unhappy, that their only way to escape indescribable, confusing agony and shame, is to do away with themselves? We tend to overlook the fact that a child is extremely impressionable, sensitive and sentient. It doesn’t take much to dangerously rock that little boat. We can look back on our childhoods, and tell ourselves “it wasn’t all that bad,” but this emanates from our adult perspective… not that of a vulnerable, tender-aged toddler.
Nevermind, being left all alone to sleep in a beautifully decorated nursery once we arrive home from the hospital as newborns~ and why nobody has a fucking clue about what actually causes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (I see “SIDS” as Broken Heart Syndrome)! Nevermind, the advice of idiots who’ve written books for new mothers that assert you should just “let a baby cry himself to sleep,” to bolster his threshold for tolerating frustration.
Nevermind, all the new mothers who’ve believed “a baby” will finally fill the ghastly hole in their soul and eradicate their periodic and inescapable sense of emptiness, when all else they’ve previously experimented with, failed to do so. Nevermind, the developmental issues an infant suffers when his mom has a second baby during his critically important separation/individuation phase of growth (1 - 2.5 years), and he is essentially abandoned during a time he’s excitedly exploring his immediate universe, but is still highly dependent on mom’s consistent acceptance, affection and approval.
And what if, God forbid, an infant has a twin sibling? Caring for the needs of one newborn is a herculean task. Can you even imagine the demands on a new mother, that taking care of two at a time requires??
Nevermind all this, when you start to come outta the ether and start figuring out what your fragile, young Self had to surmount, just to reach the age you currently are. If you wish to learn more about core trauma and how it inevitably turns into BPD or it’s flip-side, pathological Codependency issues, read my book, DO YOU LOVE TO BE NEEDED, OR NEED TO BE LOVED? and visit my website’s articles page, to learn more about what it actually feels like to love a Borderline.