Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

[email_link]

In two videos available exclusively only on A.J.’s Mahari’s website Borderline Personality Disorder From The Inside Out Mahari shares he  r thoughts about her journey in crossing the bridge between having been borderline to being recovered from BPD and the sacred reality of the pain that must be engaged when one has BPD. 

A.J. Mahari has been recovered from BPD for 14 years. She has new Ebooks and Audio Programs coming out often and is currently writing a memoir about her recovery. She will be adding more here and on her main BPD website about her recovery so please be sure to keep checking back.   

In talking about Crossing The Bridge From BPD to Recovered Mahari points out that she knows only too well the parallel worlds of Borderline Personality Disorder and the non-personality disordered or non borderline. Two simultaneously unfolding roads of experience in life that each is trying to navigate. A.J. Mahari has crossed the bridge that spans the intersection at which the world of the borderline and the world of the non borderline butt up against each other. She knows and understands both worlds.    

       Audio Programs For Loved Ones of those with 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 © A.J. Mahari

In talking about the Sacred Pain of BPD Mahari points out that the cognitive distortions of Borderline Personality Disorder are illusions that have created a story that those with BPD then adhere to and live by. A story, that while it is true to one’s past experience, fuels the illusion that what happened in the past is still applicable to the here and now. It isn’t. But when one has BPD the past gets dissociatively re-experienced in ways that obliterate the here and now and only add to the pain that those with BPD are already in.  

Audio Programs About 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
• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder

Audio Programs © A.J. Mahari

© Phoenix Rising Publications & Touchstone Coaching Services 2009 – 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 6 years experience as a Life Coach and has worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world.

[email_link]

There is a lot of debate about Borderline Personality Disorder. Can Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) be treated effectively? If it can be treated effectively, what does that mean for recovery? What is recovery from BPD? Many new studies now are claiming that BPD can be treated effectively and yet many professionals are still refusing to acknowledge, quantify, and/or even begin to explain what BPD recovery really is and means.

The scary thing is I think too many of them are waiting for some magical pill that isn’t going to come. A magical pill that if it could be invented or some pill that could do something for those with BPD (read to control them – not cure them) would be a huge pay day for drug companies wouldn’t it? But it really wouldn’t mean an end to BPD. I believe, from my own experience when I had BPD, that BPD is much more than merely something partly perhaps biological. It is psychological and spiritual woundedness. It is a hole in one’s soul. Now, you tell me, what pill is ever going to be able to fix or fill a hole in one’s soul? The answer is astoundingly simple – there never will be such a pill.

Essentially the professional party line in recent years has been one forwarding a belief that Borderline Personality Disorder can be effectively treated. Okay. Now, I guess, what we really need to know is, what the heck does that really mean to professionals who continue to refuse to acknowledge the actual recovery of people like me? What does it mean when there is “effective treatment” that so far according to professionals isn’t measured, defined, mapped or explained? What’s up with this? Does this make sense to you? Am I missing something?

“Can the label “brain disease” be applied to a cluster of willfull, irritating, often manipulative behaviors—from aggressiveness to roller-coaster emotional attachments—that may cause even psychiatrists to dismiss a patient as simply “impossible”? Impossible or not, these behaviors are part of a syndrome that psychiatry has consigned to the borderland between neurosis and psychosis, a gray area where more than one in ten psychiatric outpatients may be wandering, often without appropriate professional care—and where thousands will commit suicide. 

Psychiatrists Larry J. Siever and Harold W. Koenigsberg argue that the complexity of borderline personality disorder may stem from the interaction among genetic vulnerabilities (such as extremes of temperament), early experiences, and vast differences in patients’ coping patterns. Patients must be held responsible, they argue, but so must the mental health professionals whose role is to understand and help them.

Ask even the experts about borderline personality disorder and you will get an array of theories and interpretations different enough to remind you of the proverbial blind men examining the elephant, each convinced that a part is the whole. The psychoanalyst will talk of “splitting” and distorted “object relations,” the cognitive behaviorist of “faulty schema” and “an invalidating environment.” The psychopharmacologist may refer to imbalances of brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine, and the sociologist to “identity diffusion” promoted by a culture rapidly losing its cohesive social norms. Probably they will agree only on certain observations of behavior: that the person with borderline personality disorder experiences rapidly shifting emotions, is highly reactive to surrounding events, and has a short fuse for irritability, anger, and impulsive behavior.”

Even during a recent online tv interview I participated in where the show’s subject was “Can Borderline Personality Disorder Be Effectively Treated?” there was a professional, Dr. Harry Croft, who said a few things that are evidence of the way that many professionals seem to be pinning their definition and scope of BPD recovery on not only biology but also on waiting until they can better control the brain. I find this somewhat troubling.

Let me just state clearly here, I am not angry or anything. I am not taking this personally. Personally I know my own truth and I know what my own life is like now. However, I am concerned and I was a bit confused. I wasn’t surprised mind you, that the medical director of a website would not be able to, any more than any other professional is willing to, actually validate BPD recovery. You see how much more work we really need to do? There is so much more advocacy and awareness-raising needed. Hard to believe, but true.

I take issue with some of what Dr. Croft said, not personally, but for much larger reasons. Advocacy reasons. BPD awareness reasons. Wanting to create positive change around the very negative and stigmatizing attitude by many (not all) professionals about BPD and toward those with BPD. Perhaps the irony of a show setting out to explore if BPD can be effectively treated that invites two guests on who have been successfully treated, so successfully treated that we recovered from BPD to only have a professional forward the very negative stigma that the show was, I thought, wanting to speak to in a helpful and positive way. Ironic indeed. Perhaps viewers of the show will find themselves puzzled by this as well?

Perhaps an increased awareness of the stigma that still surrounds Borderline Personality Disorder, its effective treatment, and definitely that surrounds daring to tell one’s truth – the truth of being recovered – past tense – versus still in recovery, will be even more highlighted by watching a well-intentioned professional help and then do more harm, I don’t know. What do you think?

• 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

Dr. Croft, a psychiatrist from San Antonio, Texas, who is the Medical Director of HealthyPlace.com and who also has a private practice of his own, seems like a very knowledgeable and caring professional. However, I thought it unfortunate and interesting that in the show when asked to comment as to whether he thought my recovery was “out of the ordinary” he said that the outcome of those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder is basically negative. He also did say that he thought the other guest and I were “living better lives” and that he wished us well and hopes that we are correct about our recovery – his exact words were, “ their assumptions.”

Interestingly enough a show that I think set out to help raise awareness of BPD and its treatment and to speak in a re-framing way about the pejorative and stigmatized stereotypical ways that BPD is thought of still by far too many professionals ended up in some ways forwarding that very stigma. That, to me was disappointing. I felt it important to blog about it because I clearly disagree with a few things that Dr. Croft said. Among what I found troubling about what he said was that at the same time he made some excellent insightful points about how many therapists aren’t skilled enough to treat BPD and how many feel negative toward BPD clients, Dr. Croft also spoke of BPD as being a “life-long pattern” when he was describing the difference between it and Bipolar Disorder.

• 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

Dr. Croft’s response to the question posed to him by the programs host asking if Tami and I were the exception to the rule of BPD recovery, citing issues with treatment and “the way most borderlines are treated, the conditions under which they are treated, the therapy that is used” Dr. Croft replied, “unfortunately most of the time the outcome will not be positive.”

He then went on to say, “That I think that these two guests demonstrate that under certain circumstances with the right therapist, the right group, and the sticktoitiveness of both the patient and the therapist it is possible for people to live much better lives. Until we get the place that we know exactly what part of the brain lights up with certain conditions then we can turn that part of the brain off that lights up inappropriately. Until we get there I don’t know if we can use the term recovery really and be sure of that term. But certainly both our guests tonight are living much better lives than they did before and they believe that their lives are different enough that they are not going to go back to the old ways of thinking and behaving, and God bless them, I wish for them the best in the future that they’re right about their assumptions.”

Here’s the excerpt from the show I quoted above:

I am not sure what to say about Dr. Croft’s interpretation of what I know about my own life and recovery from BPD being identified as “assumptions”. After all isn’t it the professionals who are in the business of what I would identify as the science of assumptions?

Whether one is a professional or not one cannot know, without having actually assessed someone, whether it is appropriate or accurate to label their experience and the sharing of that experience as being “assumptions.”

I have yet to hear a professional speak on the issue of recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, when coming from the perspective that BPD is a “brain disorder” in a way that is congruent, consistent, and that makes sense from beginning to end. Dr. Croft may have thought that we don’t know what we know about our own lives and recovery and yet I think that Dr. Croft and other professionals, with all due respect, don’t know exactly what they are saying because they just don’t have the conclusive proof to back up their theories and then again not all professionals believe what that BPD is a “brain disorder”.

“At a time when psychiatry is grounding one severe mental disorder after another in brain biology, borderline personality disorder confronts us with an enigma—and a clinical dilemma. We have little trouble understanding how a man with a tumor impinging on his frontal lobes may become irascible and display poor judgment, or how someone with an abnormal organization of her brain may hear voices and act out of touch with reality. But we resist seeing the moody, irritable, apparently manipulative and willful behavior of “borderlines” in terms of the biology of the brain; it seems to absolve them of responsibility for their aggressive, antisocial, or even outright criminal acts. Thus we may dismiss them as “impossible” without comprehending the extent of their inner turmoil and pain.”

The language of BPD as a “brain disorder” does not speak to what I believe is still baffling about the opinions of many professionals – that they think there will some day be this magical pill that will take the so called “borderline brain” and fix it. How can, or will they ever know, that a pill that would shut off one area of the brain would address BPD fully? Even if they do identify more about what might be part of BPD biologically in the brain whose to say they could “shut off” the problem without unwanted side effects or even more problematic issues?

These same professionals when they do speak in terms of recent (yet really still inconclusive evidence) studies and use the language of BPD being a “brain disorder” oddly enough just don’t include the reality that even if there are changes or differences in the brains of some or most who are diagnosed with BPD that these changes can be changed via effective psychotherapy and the many other forms of effective treatment for BPD out now. There are many forms of effective treatment yet still so many professionals want to tell all of us that BPD is a life-long “sentence”. It isn’t. It doesn’t have to be.

In answer to the question as to whether or not Borderline Personality Disorder can be effectively treated or not, in my life experience, the answer is yes. Yes it can. And, in my case, yes it was.
 

Watch for one up-coming soon on my thoughts about BPD as a “brain disorder”, something I really do not believe. I have written about this – see my blog post Borderline Personality Disorder – An Intractable Brain Disorder? What do you think? Does hearing BPD being referred to a “brain disorder” if you have it, effect your ability to find hope, hold out, and maintain hope? I’d like to hear your opinions and comments on this.

Recovery is possible. Believe that. Find and have hope!

Except for the quotes in italics which are © Doctors Harold W. Koenigsberg and Larry J. Siever from an article entitled: The Frustrating No-Man’s-Land of Borderline Personality Disorder

A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who, among other things, specializes in working with those with BPD and non borderlines. A.J. has 6 years experience as a Life Coach and has worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world.

[email_link]

A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who,
among other things, specializes in working with those with Asperger's Syndrome and their partners, relatives,
or friends. A.J. has 6 years experience as a
Life Coach
and works with clients from all over the world.

[email_link]

[email_link]

Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder is possible. Borderline Personality Disorder is treatable. But, is it about the science or is it about the self?

Do I say this only because I have recovered, and been recovered for 15 years now? Do I say this because I do not have to work at recovery, because I don’t grapple with anything borderline anymore? Do I say this because recovery means much more than just not meeting 5 out of the 9 diagnostic criteria for BPD?

In a word, yes, and in a way No!

I know that BPD is treatable and that recovery is possible, firstly, yes, because I lived it, did it experienced it, recovered from it so very long ago now in what were really still the dark ages of treating BPD, if you will. I have been banging the drum of the possibility and reality of recovery from BPD for 14 years now. Some of those years I didn’t really have any company online that agreed with me or any other examples of others who came forward, at the time I first did, online, to lay their lives out in the way that I have to a great degree to inform and to provide hope for others.

When one no longer meets the 5 out of the 9 criteria does that mean they have recovered? In my experience, no. It is a very significant and important signpost as to one’s journey of recovery. It is a long way down the road toward recovery but in and of itself, say having 1-4 traits still out of the 9 that define BPD, means one is still in the on-going process of one’s recovery. It is important not to try to rush the process or to think you are recovered before you are. To do so can create considerable confusion.

Of course the reality that BPD is highly treatable isn’t made so just because I say it. However, I do say that BPD is highly treatable, (and have been for 14 years online now) and want you, if you have BPD, to not just read this and think about it, but want you to believe it and know that you too can find the treatment you need to recover as well. I say this also, partly, because, finally science is catching up with something I’ve been living for over 14 years now – that there are ways to address the thoughts that are generated in patterned and negative ways at a brain level. The good news is that whatever aspect of BPD that may indeed involve some changes in brain chemistry due to early childhood trauma and/or abandonment and so forth can really be healed in therapy.

If you have BPD you really can learn to change the way that you think. You can take that journey From False Self to Authentic Self that involves Finding Hope From the Polarized Negative Reality of BPD through le arning to regulate what is the Emotional Dysregulation of Borderline Personality - namely, the borderline false self through which your thinking and subsequent feeling is generated along with the reality of the lost self and its role in perpetuating the impact of the core wound of abandonment  in BPD.

Is recovery from BPD really so much about the science of it?

Professionals are now more able to speak about certain components of BPD in terms of brain science that gives them a base from which to finally shed some light on the fact that BPD is treatable and that it isn’t some “life sentence”. Facts that are beginning to help in the fight against BPD stigma. A stigma that still persists as strongly as ever, however, in some countries, some mental health delivery systems and even in the minds of some therapists.

I recovered before the revelation of this new wave of (pseudo) science when it comes to BPD and other forms of mental illness that proclaims “brain disease”. I know that I was very fortunate to have dedicated therapists who believed in treating those of us with BPD long before it was shall I say, acceptable to hold that view. I encountered tons of stigma. Some of it was very harmful and hurtful to me. Is mental illness and recovery from it, more about the science or the Self?

• 60 Minute Life Coaching Session
  
• More Life Coaching Options
  

  ---

BPD and Recovery From it – It’s really all about the self

Based on my own experience I don’t believe that recovery from BPD is so much reliant upon the science. I know, from my own experience, it is so much more about the self – specifically the authentic self lost which leaves the borderline false self defending against the loss that is caused by abandonment actually experienced or perceived. It is this legacy of abandonment in BPD that supports the polarized and distorted thinking patterns of those with BPD leading to a stock-pile of rage that keeps one’s lost authentic self at bay, often outsideof one’s conscious awareness.

For those who have BPD, perhaps newly diagnosed, perhaps stuck in the patterns of negative thinking and the way it perpetuates emotional suffering, quite naturally you seek to protect yourself from the emotional pain. You seek to avoid the pain that you may not emotionally understand. It is that very pain, the pain of the lost self that can keep you in the rock and a hard place of BPD. 

For many who are older, with BPD, having been diagnosed years ago, perhaps in the ’70′s like I was or before, when stigma was everywhere, science was nowhere to be found, and the idea that BPD was treatable could only be found in that rare dedicated professional who dared to think differently than his or her colleagues, it can be very difficult to end relationships with therapists that may well be thinking in what would now be described as old-school ways. 

For many who are older, in their 50′s, 60′s, and beyond, still in the active throes of BPD, wondering why and reading more about younger people finding recovery more often of late, you may feel like time has passed you by. Please know that it hasn’t. In many cases what stands, still, between you and recovery, are two primary things: 

• That you may not yet believe you really can get well
• That you may still be with a therapist who you have been with for years who doesn’t believe you can get well

Recovery from BPD is about finding that lost self.It isn’t about the science. Yes, science has contributed to methods of treatment, but, what’s  more important than that, still, is the relationship between the client and a therapist who believes you can get well, a therapist who is trained in the various therapeutic approaches now being documented as yielding positive outcomes for more and more people with BPD. 

Each individual person with BPD has to make a choice to do the work in therapy necessary to re-connect to that lost authentic self. Each must re-connect to his or her abandoned pain. It is from within the pain that is so protected against that you will find the self that you so long to find, to know, to think, live, and feel from. The self that you need to learn to take personal responsibility for and healthy care of. This self that you were born to be and that you are still meant to be.

© A.J. Mahari, March 2, 2009 – 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 many years experience as a life coach and has worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world.

Author, Life Coach and Strategist, A.J. Mahari, in a video recorded in August of 2007, talks about her choice to recover from BPD – why she made that choice. Mahari also talks about how you can make that choice today, if you have BPD, and you haven’t already made a committed choice to get into the kind of professional help that can and will lead you to the road of recovery from 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
• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder

In my latest video, Borderline Personality Recovery – Paradox of Pain I talk about how central grasping this and all paradox was to my recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. Shifting from the polarized and largely negative mind-set of BPD to a profound understanding of the paradoxical nature of life and specifically of pain I came to realize that pain is, in fact, a sacred teacher.

• 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

This journey of recovery from BPD has taught me so much about the sacred nature that is housed within the spiritual paradox of pain. It taught me just what a sacred teacher pain really is. Engaging and embracing this sacred pain, for those with BPD, is the way to find the bridge from the parallel world of the borderline zone that you can walk across, in the process of therapy, to your own
recovery.

My latest video, Borderline Personality Recovery – Paradox of Pain

© A.J. Mahari, August 21, 2008 – All Rights Reserved.

I am currently writing a memoir about my life with Borderline Personality Disorder and my recovery from BPD. You can keep up-to-date about it and read some excerpts coming soon at ajmahari.ca

Borderlines and Non Borderlines live in different worlds. Different worlds that are parallel emotionally. Non borderlines live, at least, somewhat in the here and now whereas borderlines are often unaware of the here and now because they are re-living the past over and over again.

These parallel and different worlds do not inter-connect in any healthy way. They connect through toxic, troubled, intense, unstable, and often co-dependent relational dynamics that leave everyone involved hurt and emotionally wounded.

In my  latest video "From Borderline Personality Disorder To Mental Health" I talk about my experience of transitioning between the borderline zone – the parallel emotional world of BPD- to the non borderline world of average mental health.

© A.J. Mahari, August 21, 2008 - All rights reserved.

Borderline Personality Disorder is the absence of an actual personality. For those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder it is not who you are. You can make a choice to find out who you really are in and through making a choice to recover. I talk about the choice that I made to recover from Borderline Personality Disorder and how and why I made that choice.

When I learned about choices and the actual personal power I had to make them I was so angry with the person who sought to teach me about the reality that I had been responsible for making choices all of my life. This man's gift to me – his good deed – did not go unpunished at the time. It was something that it would take me a few years to really come to understand. The walls of my borderline defenses, at that time, were really that thick.

It took time to figure out how to let go of feeling and acting like a victim and of experiencing everything through a small negative, protective, and incredibly fearful wounded inner child from whom I was very disconnected.

In retrospect, it was very difficult for me to realize my own personal responsibility in how I had suffered for so many years. Years of suffering that I had chosen – yes, I had chosen – as unaware of this consciously as I was – still, the fact remains, I had chosen to continue to suffer because it was all that I really knew. It was familiar. It had come to represent, in its absence of safety, the only safety that I had known. I had chosen to suffer because I didn't even know that I could make this sacred choice to face my pain and to get on the road to recovery from BPD.

You see, and if you have BPD, you may know this somewhere inside, you first have to realize, recognize, and take responsibility for the reality that there is something very wrong in your emotional life that likely manifests itself in the way that you relate to your "self" and to others. It really isn't everyone else's fault. It is your responsibility.

Borderline Personality Disorder is not really real in the sense that what it actually is, for the most part, just doesn't have to be. It is, when there is the profound loss of authentic self, largely caused by the core wound of abandonment and its legacy. That's real alright. But what isn't real about it is that it is something other than the unresolved pain that it manifests to protect your from. Borderline Personality is a personality that isn't really real. It isn't really a personality.

Borderline Personality Disorder is the absence of an actual personality due to the loss of authentic self caused largely by the core wound of abandonment

Click on the link below to view my video where I talk about how and why I made the choice to recover from Borderline Personality Disorder.