Archive for the ‘BPD and Identity’ Category

Personal Change and facing your fears to gain control of your life and/or recover or get well from challenges in your life means learning to cope with the process of change and the how to stop fearing your fears. It involves learning how to soothe yourself, be kind to yourself, take good self-care, love yourself, and becoming more aware of how, what, and why you think what you think. What you think creates how you feel. How you feel determines your experience in all areas of your life.

We’re all human and therefore we all have fears. Some of us fear death, others fear being alone, and others fear social situations. If you can think of it, there’s someone somewhere that’s afraid of it. But fear is a normal part of life. It’s what protects us and keeps us safe. There are times, though, when fear can hinder us and stop us from enjoying life and experiencing new joys.

All fears have their roots somewhere inside based upon negative thoughts and association with past experience. It is how you have internalized and perceived those experiences that dictates how much fear you have right now and how you may be doing some extreme things in your life to avoid that fear. Things that really are not healthy and won’t help you but will only cause you more pain and actually increase your over-all negative experience and your fears.

When your fear starts to limit what you do in life, you need to conquer that fear. Does your fear of flying stop you from traveling to visit family members or prevent you from taking the vacation of your dreams?

What about socializing with coworkers after work? Have you turned down social invitations simply because you were anxious about not knowing anyone in the group? If your fears are stopping you from taking advantage of the new opportunities in your life, then it’s time to regain control of your life and disallow your fears from paralyzing you. After all, you can’t live in a bubble! It’s time to start living your life instead of watching life passing you by.

To help you gain control of your life, here are a few tips on how to get over your
fears:

First, identify your fears. Get a piece of paper and write down exactly what you’re afraid of. It doesn’t matter how long the list is, whether it has one thing or 15 things on it. And it doesn’t matter if these fears sound irrational. No one needs to see the list other than you. This is about you taking control and getting over your fears.

Next, figure out why you have the fear. Try to remember a specific incident that might have caused the fear. Maybe your fear of flying intensified because you’ve been on a turbulent flight. Or maybe your fear of dogs stemmed from being bitten as a child.

If you’ve blocked out these memories because they’re too painful to remember, a professional can help you reach those memories and decipher their meaning. A professional can also advise other forms of treatment, such as hypnosis or the emotional freedom technique (EFT).

Now the hard part begins: overcoming or conquering these fears. Be patient and be prepared to do some work because, just as the fear took time to manifest, it will take time to
conquer.

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• Personal Change and Coping Audio and Workbook
• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life – 19 Coaching Exercises – End Negative Thought Patterns
• Developing Self Awareness and Creating Personal Life Change
• A.J. Mahari’s Coaching Guide/Ebook/Workbook – Quest For Self Awareness & Creating Your Story of Success Audio
• LONELINESS – Its Challenges, Lessons, Purpose and Meaning Ebook
• The Power of Gratitude – Nurtures Healing, Recovery, Self Improvement – Ebook and Audio
• The Importance of Observing The Moment Mindfully – Effective ways to Cope with Stress
• Unresolved Abandonment
• 1 – 60 Minute Life Coaching Session
• Audio About Borderline Personality
• Audio For Loved Ones of Someone with Borderline Personality

All content of all Ebooks, Video, Audios, and Workbooks are © A.J. Mahari and Phoenix Rising Publications/Life Coaching

 

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Take Baby Steps

In the movie What About Bob? there was a therapist who had a patient who was afraid of everything. The therapist used the baby step approach with this patient, which simply
means taking small steps, one at a time, to gain more confidence and eventually overcome the fear.

What would your baby steps be? It depends on your fear.

1. If you’re afraid of social situations, slowly start going to different events. Start with small groups, perhaps in very open environments, then transition slowly into larger gatherings. The purpose here is to prove to yourself that there’s nothing for you to fear.
2. Socialize with a small group of friends you already know. Polish your social skills among people who already know you. You have less to lose and won’t feel as if you must say the right thing at all times.
3. If you’re afraid of dogs, take this same approach by visiting a friend who has a dog. Small dogs are much less intimidating (although they might bark more frequently). If your friends don’t have dogs, ask your local vet’s office or animal shelter if you can visit.
4. Fear of flying is much more difficult to conquer because of the expense, but you can look into hypnosis. Also, some airports or flight schools might have classes in airplane simulators that help you feel like you’re in an airplane. That type of plan will take more research but will open the world to you.

By facing your fears and finding a way to overcome them, you will open up your life to many more opportunities. Take control of your life and take action and change what has you depressed, change why you aren’t in a relationship or a healthy relationship, change how you feel about yourself and others. Facing fear, in and of itself, is the way to make a new choice for personal change and learning to cope with it today. The only thing there is to truly fear is fear itself. That can take over your life if you let it. If you feel like fear has taken over your life, like you are blocked and stuck and want more out of your life, then it is time to embark on a journey of personal change.

© A.J. Mahari and Phoenix Rising Publications/Life Coaching, February 4, 2012 – All rights reserved.

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People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder do not know who they are. The arrested emotional development in the early stages of early childhood development that is suffered and that persists in life until and unless it is addressed, re-felt, integrated, and healed, keeps those with BPD from having any real known identity. This lack of identity, along with a very unstable sense of self, if one has much of any sense of self, contributes to too many people with BPD taking on this disorder, their woundedness as if it were an identity. This is the false self that is being lived through in very painful ways in the absence of an authentic identity that is lost in early childhood to unmet needs and the abandonment wound, abandonment fear, and abandonment depressions as Masterson writes about in his books based upon his years of trying to treat people with BPD. In this audio, BPD Coach and recovered borderline, A.J. Mahari, talks about the need for those with BPD to stop allowing their lack of identity to be defined by Borderline Personality and how it is possible to find your lost authentic self and along with it your true identity and to build a strong foundation of a stable sense of self on the road to recovery from BPD.

 

This audio includes 2 tracks and is 80 minutes long. You can purchase this audio by clicking on the picture.

 

© A.J. Mahari, November 9, 2011 – All rights reserved.

People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder often feel all alone. They are often triggered, when relating in various types of relationships and relational dynamics, back to what is their core wound of abandonment. BPD Coach, author, and herself someone who recovered from Borderline Personality Disorder in 1995, A.J. Mahari, talks about how and why people with BPD struggle with feeling all alone – so alone – so often, and what they can do about that. The goal is recovery.

You can become aware of the way to find the road to recovery by being fully present in the moment.

People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder often feel all alone. They are often triggered, when relating in various types of relationships and relational dynamics, back to what is their core wound of abandonment. BPD Coach, author, and herself someone who recovered from Borderline Personality Disorder in 1995, A.J. Mahari, talks about how and why people with BPD struggle with feeling all alone – so alone – so often, and what they can do about that. The goal is recovery.

You can become aware of the way to find the road to recovery by being fully present in the moment.The intense and often overwhelmingly sad and empty feeling of loneliness and being alone for those with Borderline Personality Disorder has its roots in a primal disconnect from authentic self.

A self lost to the arrested emotional development that strengthens BPD as one grows up and over those years is giving way, increasingly, to a false self a protective “borderline” false self. People with BPD often have fairly thick layers of defense between themselves and others that are needed to protect them from the emotional battlefield of landmine triggers that are everywhere.

Sadly, for those with BPD, the defense mechanisms that worked in younger years, in childhood, are now more deterimental than helpful. In adulthood they still serve a protective function. However ,they also wall-off the person with BPD from others. They keep the person with BPD stuck inside of what is an empty shell of a lack of self – a rock and a hard place that keeps them stuck the more and the longer they continue to abandon their pain.

Fear of being attached, fear of being connected, fear of abandonment keeps those with BPD walled off, walled in, behind a myriad of defense mechanisms that only perpetuate the false self and widen the gap of disconnection that exists between the borderline and his/her wounded inner-child. The size of that inner-disconnectedness is the measure of one’s outer-disconnectedness which is in direct proportion experienced as feeling alone, being alone, being misunderstood and so forth.

This is the source of feeling so alone, so empty, so unsure of who one is. It is often what drives patterned negative rumination and an out-of-balanced and unhelpful “self-focus. A focus that, in the absence of a known and stable sense of self isn’t connected to the here-and-now. It is a focus that is often perpetuated subconsciously and rather automaticlly serving as a scapegoat, in the absence of being fully connected to your feelings, for what feels like and is perceived (misperceived) as the reason you are alone – why you may believe you aren’t good enough, why you may think and subsequently feel like you are unworthy, helpless, hopeless, and destined to always feel alone in so much pain. This is your abandonment depression and your abandonment fear (Masterson) and the shame of your abandoment pulling you back via triggers, in the here-and-now, to re-experiencing the emotional dysregulation of what I call your unresolved core wound of abandonment. This fear coupled with the actual core wound of abandonment that is what initially required so much defense against, if you have been diagnosed with BPD, still requires incredible defense today unless and until you successfully address this in therapy and/or in working with a BPD Coach like me.

 

 

 

• The Puzzle and Mystery of Hope on the Other Side of BPD
• Inside The Borderline Mind
• The Shame of Abandonment In BPD
• Breaking Free of The Borderline Maze – Recovery For Nons
  
• Facing the Facts of BPD – On The Other Side For Nons
• Overcoming Denial About BPD and Love

Audio Programs For BPD Loved Ones ? A.J. Mahari

Peeling back the layers of those defense mechanisms, false self defense mechanisms, is necessary, with support, in order to find the road to recovery, get on it, and stay on it. The first step that you can take, right now in this moment, if you haven’t already, is to radically accept where you are right now and all that means for you in your life right now. It is a first step toward accepting yourself as you begin or continue to discover more about who you really are.

Radically accept who you are, where you are right now, with an attitude of gratitude and you will be amazed at how much you can will begin to create much wanted and needed change in how you think and feel in your life. It’s a process. Change is created by increasing your awareness. You can Change Your Thoughts and Change Your Life. Radical acceptance in a mindful way and being present in each unfolding moment is the way to begin to get unstuck.

? A.J. Mahari, December 19, 2010 – All rights reserved.

Author, Life Coach, BPD and mental health Coach, asks you to think about this question. What is the story of your life with Borderline Personality? Are you aware of that story? Is it possible that the diagnosis of BPD and the application of the words Borderline Personality to you, in your life, has resulted in more negativity in your thoughts and your experience that has resulted in you being blocked from empowering your own recovery?

The story of Borderline Personality is one that is now being held hostage to biopsychiatry and its oppression. Many people take on the ways that BPD is defined and described as an identity in what is the absence of a known self that creates a need to search for identity from the ashes of a lost authentic self that has been lost to both abandonment and the shame of abandonment.

Borderline Personality, itself, may be a story that has been created for you. That doesn’t mean your experiences aren’t very real – of course, they are. What it means is that the lens through which you have seen yourself, your life, and your relationships, and that you have felt everything so intensely as a result of has put a negative spin on the story of your life in ways that can be shifted. Shifting the paradigm of not only the story but the meaning of Borderline Personality. Shifting the paradigm of Borderline Personality in ways that will render it less and less meaningful. And, in ways that will give you your first lasting taste of freedom from its grips.

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• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life – 19 Coaching Exercises To Change Negative Thinking Patterns
• The Legacy of Abandonment in BPD
• The Abandoned Pain of BPD
• The Shadows and Echoes of Self – The False Self in BPD
• Rage in BPD

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In a new BPD Coaching Program Beyond Borderline Personality that I am working with clients with BPD in who want to move beyond BPD and create a life worth living I can support your getting unblocked and teach you skills that will raise your awareness and help you to get to know yourself in new, healthier, and more meaningful ways. I have walked this walk – walked this path, 15 years ago. I can teach you skills and support you as you learn to practice these skills in ways that will help you to embrace the paradox of acceptance and change.

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• Borderline Personality Disorder For Beginners
• Finding Hope From The Polarized Reality Of BPD
• Are you Stuck with BPD?
• BPD Triggers – Gateways To Recovery
• Emotional Dysregulation in Borderline Personality

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If you are interested in this coaching program, Beyond Borderline Personality please email me with your thoughts about the story that BPD dictates in your life at touchstonecoaching(at)rogers.com. If you would like to blog about your story, the thoughts and the emotions of your story in relation to having been diagnosed with BPD please email me at bpdinsideout(at)yahoo.ca.

I hope you will check back to this site and join me on my Beyond Borderline Personality Facebook Page and on a journey of finding a middle path to a different way of framing what you think about what Borderline Personality is or has meant to you in your life. You can get beyond BPD. I did. You can. You really can. I am going to be sharing much more of just how I did get beyond Borderline Personality and what that means. There is so much I still want to share with you. So much I have to add to the larger converstation out there in the BPD Advocacy world. A world of advocacy that I am somewhat on the sidelines of fundamentally because I do not believe that Borderline Personality is a brain disorder or a brain disease. I do not believe that you will be or have to be stuck with it. Biopsychiatry wants you to need them. Pharmaceutical companies want you to need to purchase their drugs. Both may well lead you to a greater lostness than you already know in your life. That is not how I got beyond BPD. That is not something I view as truth. It is disempowering you, not empowering you. Join me on this journey of learning how you too can move beyond Borderline Personality won’t you?

? A.J. Mahari, August 4, 2010 – All rights reserved.

Dr. John Breeding on Borderline Personality Disorder

My Interview With Dr. John Breeding

on The Psyche Whisperer Radio Show.

 

Life Coach, Author, BPD and Mental Health Coach, A.J. Mahari invites you to join her on her newest website, Beyond Borderline Personality with an open mind. There is a lot to be gained from thinking outside of the status quo box that is the ?medical? or ?biological? model that is a pseudo-science attempt on the part of mainstream psychiatry today, particularly in the United States, to explain a diagnostic category that in and of itself, can be questioned in many ways. Borderline Personality is a flawed stereotypical pathologizing of stigma against too many people, too many women, to what end? What happens when we challenge the status quo?

There is an inherent capacity to empower yourself when you can open your mind to shifting the paradigm of Borderline Personality away from the pseudo-science ?medical? model of biopsychiatry to a more postive-psychology based wellness model of achieving balance and find the dialiectic of the middle-path.

 

READ MORE AND WATCH VIDEO

? A.J. Mahari, July 26, 2010 – All rights reserved.

Life Coach, and Author, A.J. Mahari, invites you to join her on a new website, new Facebook Page and a new online support community designed to help you get on or move further along the path that is the journey beyond Borderline Personality, whether you?ve been diagnosed with it or are a loved one trying to cope. It is possible to get beyond borderline personality. A.J. Mahari knows because she, personally, got beyond borderline personality 15 years ago. You can create a life worth living now that is based in a wellness model and not in a pathological and stimatizing ?medical? or ?biological? model that would seem to indicate you are supposed to be stuck with borderline personality. I didn?t get stuck with it. You don?t have to be stuck with it. Join me and let?s talk. Empower yourself!

 

READ MORE AND WATCH VIDEO

 

 

? A.J. Mahari, July 26, 2010 – All rights reserved.

Does Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker meet the diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder? This was a questions posed, for some reason, and for an even less understandable reason answered by Eric Bui and colleagues at Toulouse University Hospital in France in what has been described as “a brazen act of arm-chair diagnosis”. Who does this serve? Who does this help – anyone? What is the meaning of this? Does it matter? It might mislead loved ones of those with BPD in unhelpful ways.

How can this “diagnosis” of a fictional character help anyone understand Borderline Personality Disorder? Isn’t it likely really to muddy the waters and be more of a case of mis-information? Just what BPD needs right? More confusion? How can anyone who loves or cares about someone with Borderline Personality Disorder really come to understand the the mind of those who are diagnosed with BPD? This diagnosis of a fictional character who many don’t believe is an accurate diagnosis anyway will only mislead loved ones away from the facts about BPD that they need to know, want to know, and will benefit from knowing.

How are people who have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder supposed to feel about this? How can this possibly be viewed as helpful? How can anyone with BPD think that people who already don’t understand their pain and suffering can possibly learn anything from such an irresponsible “diagnosis” of a movie character that isn’t even real?

Talk about a lack of sensitivity. What a lack of respect, really. Stigmatizing BPD while potentially trivializing it as well.

Does this “diagnosis” of a fictional character with Borderline Personality Disorder have any up-side? Perhaps, only in that it brought some media attention to Borderline Personality Disorder. Or some pop-culture attention. However, I think the negatives of this far outweigh that potential positive. It seems that when pop-culture or media mention or in anyway portray Borderline Personality Disorder (as they often do without making that clear) it ends up really only succeeding in the furthering of negative, damaging, and hurtful stigma against people who are living with BPD.

The down-side that I believe is being over-looked and that matters most is the way in which this further stigmatizes not only the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, but, even more importantly, the people diagnosed with it? Why? Because of the connection between the inherent evil of Darth Vader and the stigma that has long been perpetuated toward those with BPD as being evil.

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES or 3 Non Borderline Ebooks packaged together with audio.
• Purchase all 5 Core Wound of Abandonment in BPD ebooks
• Non Borderlines – You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together without audio or
  6 ebooks bundled together with 2 audio programs 6 ebooks packaged together with 2 audio programs
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari’s 3 “Core Wound of Abandonment” series ebooks or Mahari’s 3 “Core Wound ofAbandonment” series ebooks with From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – The Inner Chid Audio Program
  

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Dr. Bui, apparently came up with his ?diagnosis? of Darth Vader while watching two of the three Star Wars prequel movies, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. He theorizes that young Anakin Skywalker was separated from his mother at an early age and his father was absent and that these are the factors that could have contributed to his mental illness.

Apparently in his theorizing, Bui, also believes that also indicative of this character’s supposed Borderline Personality Disorder are his ?infantile illusions of omnipotence? and ?dysfunctional experiences of self and others.?  It is perceived and concluded that he often showed impulsive behavior and had difficulty controlling his anger. Anakin Skywalker’s eventual turn to the Dark Side and name change, to Darth Vader, could represent the ultimate sign of an identity disturbance is the apparent reasoning behind this entire exercise of “arm-chair diagnosis”.

It can be argued, though it’s hardly worth it, that “infantile illusions of omnipotence” would point more at Narcissistic Personality Disorder than BPD. As for “dysfunctional experiences of self and others” I think it reasonable to conclude that Walker/Vader’s transformation is not the experience of people who have Borderline Personality Disorder. Here’s where diagnosing a movie character makes it tricky doesn’t it? I mean, the archetypal nature of this shift in a character’s identity is a work of fiction that no doubt seeks to depict many epic human struggles and not just struggles or challenges that can be described as being the result of any mental illness, let alone Borderline Personality Disorder. The archetypal richness of this character speaks to many interpretations. However, ascribing this character’s experience or interal feelings, perceptions, and the like to BPD, let alone any mental illness is nothing short of ridiculous. It misses the entire point of the character really.

Anakin Skywalker’s eventual turn to the dark side and name change do not have anything to do with BPD specifically or exclusively at all. Where this conclusion comes from who knows. It doesn’t follow any type of logic. But then, how could it? This eventual turn to the dark side of Walker’s as he took on the identity of Darth Vader is not something that bears any resemblance to the experience of people with BPD. People diagnosed with BPD do not have a stable sense of identity. This, however, does not mean they go from who they are (or the not being sure about who they are) to being drastically different and turning to some dark side. This comparison is evidence of the equating of  BPD with evil which is irresponsibile and not accurate.

What is it in this world today, anyway, that everything has to be pathologized? Isn’t it ironic how black-and-white many people in the world are thinking – people who are not diagnosed with BPD? People who invoke the topic of BPD, diagnose fictional characters, like this psychatrist, Bui, or lay-people who are busy diagnosing anyone and everyone they know but themselves?

The dilemma here, in terms of understanding is hidden, perhaps for many, within the central and often over-looked definition of what Borderline Personality Disorder actually is. The way it is defined in the DSM-IV by psychiatrists outlines 9 traits. Out of these 9 traits a person must meet the criteria for 5 of them in order to be diagnosed as having BPD – by a professional.

The very traits that form the basis for what defines borderline personality disorder are human traits. They are human traits that are found more intensely and more often in those who meet the criteria for BPD. They are not some separate set of traits that just define BPD. My point here is that many others who may not meet the criteria for BPD will struggle with some of these traits. Why? Because they are human traits firstly and foremostly. Those with BPD and people who are not personality-disordered do not have different core traits. What is different is the way that these traits manifest themselves and are perceived and experienced – but not the traits themselves.

Is it any wonder then that people who love or care about someone with BPD may end up thinking they themselves have BPD? People are going around thinking this person or that person has BPD because he or she did or said this or that, or because he or she was angry or thought in a black-and-white way about something. In other words, there is this over-pathologizing going on. People pointing fingers at others and at each other. And, now, psychatrists at a fictional character for crying-out-loud – Vader – as having  Borderline Personality Disorder.

 

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• The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
• From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Child
• BPD and Abandonment
• Finding Hope From the Polarized Reality of BPD
• Preparing For Recovery From BPD
• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder
• Breaking Free of The Borderline Maze – Recovery For Nons
• Facing the Facts of BPD – On The Other Side For Nons
• Overcoming Denial About BPD and Love

  Audio Programs ? A.J. Mahari

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Where has common sense gone? The traits that define BPD are human traits. Each and every one of us as human beings has these traits. It is not pathological to have these traits in reasonably balanced and paradoxical ways.

Bui, et al, diagnosing Darth Vader with Borderline Personality Disorder seems to give creedence to the many ways that people disparage people who have BPD. I don’t agree with this at all. I think the diagnosis of a fictional character – even if they get it right (let’s not forget there are many reasons to doubt Darth Vader would be a candidate for BPD if he were a real person) is in any way responsible or worth the time or effort given to it.

Why do I write about it here then? To say that the danger of this is the further stigmatizing of BPD and those who have BPD. It sensationalizes BPD and what it means to have BPD while at the same time trivializing it. It doesn’t serve anyone. I also have concern that this “arm-chair diagnosis” that equates BPD to this fictional character, who was a personification of evil, is highly irresponsibile and frankly, offensive.

Darth Vader has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Aside from the issues of that equating BPD with evil, so what, who cares?

Where’s the relevance? Where’s the significance? How can this be a worthwhile teaching tool for tomorrow’s psychiatrists? How can this benefit anyone with BPD? How can this really serve to help others understand BPD in balanced and compassionate ways?

The answer is - it can’t.

All this diagnosis of Darth Vader with Borderline Personality Disorder does is serve as a prime example of its being equated with evil. It serves as a prime example of the stigma of BPD. It may even give rise to more people with BPD distrusting the very body of professionals who are supposed to treat them, and I might add, with respect.

 

? A.J. Mahari, June 26, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 

Life Coach and BPD Coach A.J. Mahari, in an excerpt from a workshop about Psychosocial skills, talks about how and why these skills are important for people with Borderline Personality Disorder. The reality that learning psychosocial skills is part of recovery from BPD. Mahari also talks about the main obstacle blocking the learning of these psychosocial skills when someone has Borderline Personality Disorder.

The term psychosocial refers to your psychological development in and interaction with a social environment. The term psychosocial was first commonly used by psychologist Erik Erikson in his 8 stages of social development and his life-stages of development in which he notes that development continues throughout the course of one’s life.

Difficulties that occur in one’s psychosocial functioning can be referred to as “psychosocial dysfunction that refers to the lack of development or atrophy of the psychosocial self. These difficulties can arise from other dysfunctions that may be physical, emotional, or cognitive in origin.

Psychosocial skills allow us to age-appropriately interact with, perceive, and relate to others in situationally-appropriate ways within reasonable boundaries.

Psychosocial skills include:

• your ability to appropriately experience, display, and perceive emotional states in ways that are in balance with your age and stage of life
• being able to relate to events and the environment, or any changes in the environment, in and from flexible balanced emotional experience – emotional experience that is modulated and regulated from the inside out
• involve communication skills – including listening skills
• ability to cooperatively and consistently interact and function within an age-appropriate and socially meaningful context
• implementing and learning skills in ways that support recovery – engaging your personal journey that involves developing hope, a secure base and sense of self, supportive relationships, empowerment, social inclusion, self soothing and general coping skills, along with purpose and meaning.

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES or 3 Non Borderline Ebooks packaged together with audio.
• Non Borderlines ? You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together without audio or 6 ebooks bundled together with 2 audio programs 6 ebooks packaged together with 2 audio programs
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari’s 3 “Core Wound of Abandonment” series ebooks or Mahari’s 3 “Core Wound of Abandonment” series ebooks with From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD ? The Inner Chid Audio Program
• Purchase all 5 Core Wound of Abandonment in BPD Ebooks or 3 Non Borderline Ebooks packaged together with audio.

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Healthy and balanced psychosocial skills require a stable sense of self – knowing and trusting a self with boundaries and a healthy differentiation between that self and others. Psychosocial skills aim to nuture emotional health, balance, maturity, emotional and self mastery along with self-efficacy.

Self

Recovery of a durable sense of self – a known self – your authentic self – the self that is lost to the arrested psychological development experienced by people who end up being diagnosed with BPD is at the center of developing an emotional and cognitive balance that lends itself to mental health. Those with BPD need to learn how to nurturing personal psychological space that allows room for developing understanding and a broad sense of self, interests, and values. This process of recovery and the learning, practice, and incorporaton of psychosocial skills education for those with BPD is usually greatly facilitated by experiences of interpersonal acceptance, mutuality, and a sense of social belonging which can be challenging in the face of the typical barrage of overt and covert negative messages that come from the broader social context and stigma about mental illness, generally, and Borderline Personality Disorder, specifically.

Empowerment and Inclusion

Empowerment and self-determination are important to recovery. For those with BPD what is especially important, after finding one’s authentic self is learning how to have self control – how to regulate your own emotions. This involves developing confidence in your newly-found self and learning to trust your decision making and help-seeking. Achieving social inclusion means coming to terms with the stigma and prejudice that exists about mental illness and its misunderstood differences. Stigma and prejudice that those with mental illness internalize in ways that are then turned against the self in what can be self-criticism and a lack of patience with self. Empowering yourself also involves learning and practicing psychosocial skills.

Coping strategies

The development of personal coping strategies such as emotion regulation and boundaries are central elements to learning to cope more effectively. Developing coping and problem solving skills to manage individual traits and emotional challenges involves you actively becoming engaged in learning to recognize and identify key stress points and possible crisis points – being mindful and aware in radically accepting ways that will enhance your awareness and understanderstanding of your own needs and assist you in developing personal ways of responding and coping.

Purpose and Meaning

Finding purpose comes with getting to know your authentic self. The more you can learn and practice psychosocial skills the more you will be aware of who you authentically are. Developing a sense of meaning is important for sustaining yourself during and after your recovery process.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder will continue to experience major challenges in learning and being able to incorporate psychoskills in the process of recovery until they can find that lost self inside. It is truly the central most important aspects of recovery. Once that self starts to become more known progress from that point speeds up, things make more sense and coping is enhanced the stronger one’s sense of self becomes.

? A.J. Mahari, May 12, 2010 – All rights reserved.

There is so much hope for recovery from  Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Author, BPD Coach and Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, talks about the reality of this hope for recovery from BPD in her latest audio Hope for Recovery From BPD in which she also shares some her experience in her own recovery from BPD 14 years ago.

Each person with Borderline Personality Disorder, in his or her quest to find and reclaim his or her Lost Self can learn to Find Hope From The Polarized Reality Of BPD - a hope that is a cornerstone of recovery. It can feel as though it is impossible to create the kind of change required to recover. But do not let how you feel fool you into thinking that everything you feel is what really is. It isn’t.

So much of what those with BPD feel is ascribed to being what they think. Learning to differentiate between what you think and what you feel will help you to learn to make new and healthier choices on your way toward building emotional competence.

 READ MORE …

? A.J. Mahari, September 23, 2009

People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder do not have a sense of known self or a stable sense of identity. In both a video below and on youtube and an in depth audio program available for purchase at, phoenixrisingpublications.ca, Author and Mental Health Coach and Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, talks about the lost self in BPD and the need and search for the lost self and for identity. Mahari talks about what it means and what it feels like to not know who you are and how that can effect your life and keep those with BPD stuck in the suffering and victimization of past abandonment trauma. Mahari knows because years ago, when she had BPD, she did not know who she was either. In her recovery from BPD 14 years ago Mahari did find her lost authentic self and her identity.

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES or 3 Non Borderline Ebooks packaged together with audio.
• Non Borderlines – You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together without audio or 6 ebooks bundled together with 2 audio programs 6 ebooks packaged together with 2 audio programs
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks or Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks with From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – The Inner Chid Audio Program

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At the center of BPD is the core wound of abandonment – an abandonment wound so traumatic that it causes what Melanie Klein referred to as the "psychological death of the otherwise burgeoning authentic self"

This "psychological death" that anyone diagnosed with BPD experiences causes such overwhelming pain at such a very young age in childhood that there is no way to cope with it. This pain then is effectively also abandoned which coupled with the loss of self creates the need for the rise of the borderline false self that in many ways is at the center of the on-going impact of the core wound of abandonment.

 

 

Read more and purchase A.J.'s Audio Program

Lost Self In BPD – Need and Search For Identity

 

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A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who specializes in working with people who are searching for ways to improve themselves, the quality of their lives with BPD or who are loved ones of those with BPD. A.J. has 6 years experience as a Life Coach and has coached hundreds of clients from all over the world.

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