Archive for the ‘BPD and Relationships’ Category

Author, Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach, recovered borderline, and adult child of two parents with BPD (one parent with BPD/NPD), A.J. Mahari has a new audio to help you to start and/or continue your own recovery. Learn effective tools and skills and boundaries to take back your own life. Learn to eliminate toxic guilt and feeling obligated to a personality-disordered parent.

In this audio A.J. includes insightful information, motivation, shares some of her own experience and what she knows it takes to recover as the adult child of two personality-disordered parents. Mahari has also included 9 Coaching Questions/Reflections Journal exercises for you to do that she includes in her Coaching with adult children of personality-disordered parents.

When you are raised in a family with one or both parents having one or more personality disorders you do need your own recovery. Some will be diagnosed with the same personality disorders and have a double-recovery process to undertake, like A.J. Mahari did. Others will not be as wounded or affected but will still have wounding issues from childhood that, if left unaddressed, can cause them to get involved in codependent, chaotic, toxic, enmeshed unhealthy relationships which do not make it possible to live authentically or to be happy.

If you are the adult child of a mother with BPD, a father with BPD, a mother or father with NPD, or perhaps a parent with both BPD/NPD and maybe even with other co-morbid diagnoses, you really will benefit from this audio and from getting started in a new and very consciously aware way to cope more effectively, to make new choices, and to find your own recovery.

? A.J. Mahari, February 16, 2011, ? All rights reserved.

Loved ones, family members, partners or ex-partners of those with Borderline Personality Disorder are often confused, in pain, and struggling to cope with a loved one with BPD. Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach A.J. Mahari was interviewed on the healthyplace.com Mental Health TV Show on the subject of BPD Loved ones and Coping with someone in your life with BPD. This interview has been broken up into three parts to fit on youtube. You can watch the there excerpts of this interview below or by going to my YouTube Channel

• The Puzzle and Mystery of Hope on the Other Side of BPDli>
• 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 Loved Ones of BPD ? A.J. Mahari

• 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 of Abandonment” series ebooks with From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – The Inner Chid Audio Program

• 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

Audio Programs ? A.J. Mahari

Please be sure to visit healthyplace.com where they now feature blogs including one written by someone with Borderline Personality Disorder.

In her latest Borderline Personality Disorder Inside Out podcast episode, Life and BPD Coach, A.J. Mahari talks about what she calls the core wound of abandonment and the negative impact that creates in the lives of those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). People with BPD need to find hope from the polarized negativity of BPD. Polarized negativity that has its roots in unresolved abandonment. Abandonment negativity impacts hope for those who have BPD and for their loved ones.

• The Abandoned Pain of BPD Ebook
• The Legacy of Abandonment in BPD Ebook
• BPD and Abandonment
• From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – The Inner Child
• Finding Hope From the Polarized Negativity of BPD

Ebooks & Audio Programs ? A.J. Mahari

The on-going Impact of The Core Wound of Abandonment in BPD continues to fuel rage – whether it is felt or acknowledged or not – and what has become constant suffering and a pain-perpetuating habit of negativity that precludes hope or any real connection to hope in so many with BPD. Hope is really needed in order to recover from BPD and is something that everyone with BPD needs to know more about. Abandonment negativity in people with Borderline Personality Disorder is at the heart of largely causes and then perpetuates polarized negative black-and-white thinking – the defense mechanism of splitting that negatively impacts both those with BPD and their loved ones and that is at the center of much of the experience of those with BPD and their loved ones in the many ways that BPD manifests in relating and relationships.

Listen to A.J.’s podcast episode Abandonment Negativity Impacts Hope in BPD

• 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 Loved Ones ? A.J. Mahari

Listen to A.J.’s podcast episode Abandonment Negativity Impacts Hope in BPD

For anyone with BPD or any loved one of someone with BPD thinking that somehow these deeply ingrained patterns of abandonment negativity will just go away will only prolong your pain and suffering. The negativity that is a lasting impact of unresolved abandonment trauma needs to be addressed by those with BPD. It is the only way to find hope. Hope is central to recovery from BPD.

A.J. Mahari’s Life Coaching Services

• General Life Coaching
• Emotional Mastery Coaching
• Coaching for those with Borderline Personality Disorder or Loved Ones
• Mental Health Coaching
• Codependence/Toxic Relationship Coaching

Borderlines are incapable of intimacy which leaves loved ones and family members – non borderlines -experiencing borderline push-pull which can be crazy-making. By the very nature of BPD, borderlines as the result of their defense mechanisms of splitting, projection, and narcissism, can’t help but push-pull. When those with untreated Borderline Personality Disorder try to get close to someone – attain emotional intimacy – they immediately fear engulfment so they push away or push the non borderline away.

On the other hand, or relatively quickly and perhaps within the same interaction, the slightest moving out or distance taken by someone upon whom they feel dependant sends the borderline flying back to pulling for more that very closeness they just had to repel. Until and unless a borderline gets adequate treatment and begins to change and recover from BPD (to some extent) he or she is simply not capable of consistent, congruent, age-appropriate emotional intimacy. Something that many non borderlines continue to remain in denial about and hope against hope about.

Can You Rescue a Borderline?
Splitting in Borderline Personality
Facing The Facts on The Other Side of Borderline Personality Disorder

Read More …

? A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.

Borderline Personality Disorder Inside Out Audio Podcast by author and Life Coach and BPD/Mental Health Coach, A.J. Mahari. December 12, 2009 – Emotional Dysregulation in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Emotional dysregulation is at the heart of so much of the way that people with BPD experience daily life. It is also at the heart of how their loved ones experience them. Emotional dysregulation in BPD causes those with BPD a lot of pain and suffering. It often hurts and confuses loved ones as well. 

Learning to regulate one's emotions is an important part of recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder.

Click here to listen to the podcast episode Emotional Dysregulation

? A.J. Mahari December 12, 2009 – All rights reserved.

BPD Coach, A.J. Mahari, responds to a mother of a daughter with Borderline Personality Disorder about coping with her daughter’s splitting, acting in and acting out and her concern for her grandson along with her own pain. Loved ones of those with BPD can and will benefit from radical acceptance practice and detaching with love.

“I have an adult daughter who has BPD. She refuses to go see someone about her condition. The situation is escalating and reeking havoc in her marriage and in her family life (she has an 11 year old son), and certainly with her extended family.” 

“She switches from “acting in” but completely avoiding me or giving me the silent treatment, to “acting out” with horrible diatribes and being completely disrespectful. I have read much that you have written about BPD and I have found your material to be among the best at explaining to family members what’s going on inside the head of a BPD, and how they are experiencing feelings of abandonment.”

“My question has to do with how I react when my daughter is both “acting in” and “acting out”. During the “acting out” phase, she tells me she hates me, that I love her brother and his family more than her and her family, and she is beyond disrespectful, rude and hurtful. She takes reality of a situation and completely distorts it to match how she feels. I simply don’t know how to handle these outbursts. I try to depersonalize them and to tell myself that she has a mental disorder, but it is crushing to me. She is rude, disrespectful and hurtful. In the “acting in” phase, she totally cuts me out of her life, never answers phone calls, and distances her entire family from me often times with me not even knowing what has precipitated this “acting in”. She keeps my grandson from seeing me. The stress of life seems to overwhelm her at every turn.” – Mother of BPD Daughter – U.S.

The BPD Coach A.J. Mahari responds:

In response to your question as to how you react when your daughter is consumed by the defense mechanism of splitting that is central to Borderline Personality Disorder, it will be important for you to learn to not react at all. Of course one has feelings in the face of such punishing and inappropriate behavior. Coping with your borderline daughter’s acting in or acting out can most effectively be stabilized for you by radically accepting that this is how your daughter is, right now. Even more than depersonalizing her acting in or acting out, you will benefit from having a neutral emotional stance that allows you to meet any and all turmoil with compassion and understanding but also without reacting to it or feeling responsible for it. Detach with love.

• The Other Side of BPD – Mindfulness and Radical Acceptance for Non Borderlines
• 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 togetherwithout 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 ebooksor Mahari’s 3 “Core Wound of Abandonment” series ebooks with From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – The Inner Chid Audio Program

I can understand how emotionally, your daughter’s behavior is crushing to you. Validate your own feelings inside and keep that process to yourself in the presence of your daughter. In relating to your daughter it will be important to not express your feelings and to not lead with your own feelings. When your daughter is acting in or acting out she will not be aware of how it effects you. Those with BPD have no time for and less awareness of how their actions effect others because they are so busy reacting to their own perceived abandonment and/or rejection sensitivity. Sadly, if she feels judged or let down by you she, like many with BPD, will likely seek to punish you. She will react to how she feels and perceives her interactions with you. What she reacts to, more often than not, will not be rational in the here-and-now. You may clearly understand that intellectually. It is just as important for you that you allow that intellectual understanding to reach your emotional understanding as well.

READ MORE …

In her latest audio podcast A.J. Mahari talks about the reality that exists about love when Borderline Personality Disorder is a part of the mix. Borderline Personality and Love are not congruent. What does this mean for those who have BPD? What does this mean for family members, friends, loved ones, ex or relationship partners of those with BPD?

Click Here To Listen

? A.J. Mahari, December 24, 2008 – All rights reserved.

Power and control struggles are at the heart of much of the relating of those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The underpinnings of BPD are firmly established in dysfunctional and polarized distorted and magical thinking that, in relationships, results in power and control struggles with others.

Often these power and control struggles do not take place on a conscious level. They are rather the by-product of the loss and dissociation from true self that leads those with BPD to feel helpless, powerless, and hopeless ? essentially lost and often very angry about that too.

The reason that so many with BPD feel the need to struggle for power and control stems from what is essentially their trying to live for or through others. The lack of known self drives the kind of projection (the attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others) that blurs the boundaries between where a known self would end and others begin. Without personal boundaries those with BPD often end up feeling helpless when they relate to others because essentially they ascribe everything about how they feel and what they think as taking place in others. (And often what they feel and/or how they may judge others those with BPD then believe that others are judging them.

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

It is this very process of projection that leads to untold feelings of helplessness and varying degrees of experienced regression that leaves many with BPD feeling (on a conscious of sub-conscious level) as if everything in their environment is somehow connected to them. This is the futile defense of narcissism that raises its head when the Borderline without personal boundaries feels literally like they have no emotional skin separating them from others and the world.

What is meant by Power and Control Struggles?

Power, in a paradoxical and healthy environment and personality, is best described as the ability or capacity to perform, behave, or act effectively and appropriately.

The misuse of power that is often seen in those with BPD is usually the borderline over-compensating for feeling powerless or helpless and/or hopeless.

When one feels powerless one then feels that others have power over him or her. This is a distortion which often has its roots in unmet childhood needs generally and an invalidating environment specifically. (Or an environment in which one that is then later diagnosed with BPD experienced and/or perceived invalidation.)

Power that is exercised in a maladaptive and defensive presentation as seen in BPD often results in abuse and punishment, manipulation of others and the environment to try to re-assert a sense of safety and personal control. Personal control can often only be felt to have been regained when one (with BPD) intimidates or exercises control and/or power over another. This is often seen, for example, in the dance of ?get away closer? wherein the Borderline struggles with a desire for closeness and intimacy while feeling annihilated by it at the same time.

This personal control is lacking and that is what causes the borderline to react in ways that are transgressing boundaries and age-appropriate behaviour and causing him or her to overtly or covertly control those around them and the environment.

Power and control struggles of many with BPD are reenactments of very young childhood attempts to individuate that for most with BPD failed (or they didn?t feel, perceive or understand this sense of development) leaving behind enmeshed styles of relating.

Audio Programs For Those With BPD and Loved Ones ? A.J. Mahari

• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• 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
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder

Control is really about regulation. Emotional regulation, personal regulation, thought regulation and the ability to be centered and grounded within one?s self. For many with BPD, in the absence of a known authentic self they project most, if not all, of what should be their inner-reality onto those around them. Therefore, when they feel out of control it is others in the environment and/or the environment upon which they exercise the kind of intimidating, invalidating, self-absorbed and often abusive dominance that they need in order to feel that they have protected themselves. What they are actually protecting themselves from in the here and now is the past and is also their own inability to regulate themselves internally.

This control can be insidious. Often is it is presented with the kind of manipulative skill that leaves those around the borderline feeling like they are crazy and confused as to what is actually happening between them and the person with BPD. This can be the case when, for example, someone with BPD self-harms and/or engages in or acts out parasuicide or suicidal ideation or desire which are often a cry for help, attention, and a way of controlling what they feel. (And often those around them whether they realize this or not.) In the long run these types of dominating, controlling behaviour that externalizes the internal chaos of the Borderline on to those around him/her are very distancing to others. Unchecked ?get away closer? usually, at some point, will result in the loss of others around one that is experienced and re-experienced as abandonment by those with BPD.

In order for relating to be healthy each person has to be honest and taking responsibility for his/her behaviour, feelings, and issues.

Philip Kavanaugh, is quoted by James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy, Pg 84, as saying, ?The need for control and the addiction quest for dominance is a universal quest aimed at avoiding the inner- void.?

• 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

While this inner-void is likely to some degree felt by all humans who are alive, it is the intensity and unwavering experience and acting out of this experience by those with BPD that make their style of power and control struggles like an addiction onto themselves and so devastatingly divisive, defeating and often abusive.

This inner-void is prominent in most with BPD. (until they receive enough therapy to begin to invest in getting to know who they really are versus just protecting all that they are not.

Those with active BPD are enmeshed. Enmeshed with their pasts. Enmeshed with family of origin issues. Enmeshed with trauma. Enmeshed with all that results when people born with a proclivity toward being very sensitive meets with (what seems like or is) an invalidating environment and/or unregulated emotions projected onto others and for which many with BPD abandon all responsibility.

For many with BPD this void, this lack of a known authentic self, coupled with unresolved abandonment trauma leaves borderlines often reacting in highly sensitive and instense ways. Borderlines often feel the Shame of Abandonment that creates dysregulated emotions that stress them to the point where their first reaction to so many things relationally is rage. Rage is often seen as an abusive effort to control, and while there is this facet to it, borderline rage is much more complicated than that. It is often a protective reaction to thwarted needs, feeling or being rejected, abandoned, or invalidated. It is an emotionally immature response to unresolved abandonment trauma from the past that causes emotional dysregulation in the here and now. This emotional dysregulation fuels the narcissistic and protective borderline false self as it feels out of control and as a result exercises (often) abusive control in an attempt to overcompensate for vulnerability often not realized consciously by those with BPD and for which the borderline lacks the inter-personal skills to cope with.

Those with BPD are enmeshed with others because they lack any known sense of self. This enmeshment is often seen in the projection that those with BPD inflict upon themselves and others. They are essentially so enmeshed with their polarized thoughts, unmet needs, unresolved emotional conflicts that stem from the core wound of abandonment that they can?t see you (other) for who you actually are – as someone separate from them – because they have to see you for who they think they are, or more classically, for who their mother or father was (or abuser was).

Both those diagnosed with BPD and anyone in or who has been in a relationship with them will greatly benefit from gaining as much understanding of
BPD and the Impact of the Core Wound of Abandonment so that they can gain much needed insight and awareness into the power struggles that covertly or overtly are a part of this relational dynamic.

Borderlines (again until they do considerable healing work in therapy) have not individuated. They do not have much, if any, working understanding of the true self within that needs to mature past the point where emotional development was arrested for whatever reasons.

Philip Kavanaugh is quoted by James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy, Pg 84, ?Individuation begins when we look inside ourselves for answers when we stop blaming others for our feelings and begin relating to our emotions and intuitions as our teachers?.

In order for anyone diagnosed with BPD to individuate it is essential that he or she learn to take personal responsibility for how they feel, how they think, what works and doesn?t work in his/her life. This process of individuation is a huge part of the maturation beyond arrested emotional development. The kind of arrested emotional development one has experienced and subsequently been stuck in the self-defeating cycle of perpetually.

Healing and recovery from power and control issues demand that those with BPD not only individuate but also take responsibility for choices made. No matter what happens to us in our lives or what needs are or aren?t met, whether or not we are abused and so forth, each one of us has to choose to stop investing in the blaming of others (or blaming ourselves for things we couldn?t control as children) and the continuing to invest in being a victim of our pasts, our parents, our lives, and/or our life circumstances.

• 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 or Non Borderlines
• A.J.'s Audio Programs For Non Borderlines

Power and control struggles are no longer necessary when one actively assumes responsibility for him/herself. What emerges then with an individuated known true self is an open non-polarized thinking person who makes an active choice to mature, to heal, to recover, to learn and grow ? to be open as opposed to the polarized Borderline choice to remain closed and protective seeing and experiencing everything and everyone as threatening. It is these perceptions that cause those with BPD to remain entangled and enmeshed in the power and control struggles that are essentially the roots of normal development throughout childhood to individuate and create and support one?s own true identity.

Power and control struggles and the manipulation and deceit that accompany them will give way to limits and boundaries, goals, known beliefs, ethics, values and choices. This can only happen when those with BPD make the choice to invest in recovery rather than continuing to invest in staying lost, enmeshed, and protective of what is a very self-absorbed and annihilated place and way to be.

Polarized thinking keeps the need for power and control struggles alive also. Learning to think in rational, pragmatic age-appropriate ways that make paradoxical thinking and living possible will extinguish the need to try to have control over anyone but yourself or to try to take power from anyone else.

Power and control struggles are only made necessary in the absence of age-appropriate maturation that is a direct result of the arrested emotional development of those who are diagnosed with BPD. Choice is everything. Choosing to recover must be an active choice to stop engaging in self-absorbed, self-protective regressed behaviour that does not and cannot serve one in adulthood. Power and control struggles are made necessary by the absence of true self and by a lack of boundaries, limits, goals and age-appropriate honest assertion of one?s needs and desires.

? Ms. A.J. Mahari, June 20, 2005 – with an addition July 3, 2008 – All rights reserved.

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.