Help

There is help to be found for those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). While the main core of this help is best delivered by professional therapists one must be careful when choosing a therapist. This is why I have been offering skilled, knowledgeable, and comprehensive BPD Coaching for those with BPD and their Loved Ones. Recovery and healing on both sides of BPD is very possible. I offer holistic, comprehensive ecletic treatment modalities that encompass aspects of all types of treatment modalities effective in this area for people and I tailor each approach, session, or package of Coaching sessions to each individual client. I find this is crucial and helps my clients in their recovery so much because I am not caught up in one systemic modality over another. Many clients have their own preferences as well as to whether they are being helped by CBT, DBT, Schema Therapy, Mentalization, and with any modality or combination thereof I offer a a rich and effective component of inner child healing and recovery work, central to BPD recovery. Having had BPD - diagnosed at age 19 and recovered fully in 1995 I really do understand. I have formal education behind me as well as life experience, my own recovery process from BPD, and I am very well read. I offer compassionate support, validation and skilled mirroring and reflection that will increase your awareness and teach you what you need to know to recover from BPD.

There are many therapists out there who aren't good choices because they:

• - do not know much about BPD
• - do not understand BPD
• - have not been adequately trained to treat BPD
• - have built up both a prejudice and intolerance for anyone (potential client) with BPD
• - forward and/or believe the stigma associated with BPD and do not believe you can recover

Having said this there are many wonderfully trained and dedicated therapists out there who can help you. You must first be dedicated to the process of therapy. You must want to get help and be willing to be an honest and hard-working participant in your therapy if you want to get better.

Do not stay with a therapist (or begin with a therapist) that you do not feel comfortable with for any reason. It is very important that anyone you seek help from is both knowledgeable and believe in the ability of those with BPD to get better with treatment.

Professional help alone will not be all of the help that you will need to recover. You will also need the help of yourself. What can you do to help yourself?

• consider the value of working with me as your BPD Coach given I have recovered and been helping others for many years now.
• read up on BPD - educate yourself
• be honest with yourself and with therapists/doctors
• journal your experiences
• learn the value of personal insight - develop your own personal awareness by being willing to look at both the positive and negative that you own
• be open to trying new things
• realize that BPD is often a party to many other disorders (often) about which you will also have to educate yourself -- ie - anxiety and panic disorders, depression, sexual abuse issues, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, substance abuse, suicidal ideation/feelings and issues.
• read general self-help books on topics like anger, co-dependency, shame, guilt, sexual abuse, eating disorders, how to relate to others, how to parent yourself, boundaries, assertiveness, grief, self-care, and so forth.

One of the most profound parts of my journey in healing and recovering from BPD centered around the realization that I had a lot more to do with the outcome of my everything in my life than I had ever thought before. When you are borderline, often you feel helpless and victimized. Those feelings are real. However, they are more real, if you will, in your past than they are in your here and now. Borderlines, in the active throes of BPD, lose most, if not all, of their here and now to triggered emotional dysregulation that leaves them re-living painful experiences that continue to be recapitulated due to the unresolved issues of the core wound of abandonment and the on-going consequences and impact of the core wound of abandonment not the least of which is the shame of abandonment. Feeling like you are a victim and/or feeling like you are helpless must not stop you from advocating for yourself, from reading, or from finding a qualified therapist and from making changes to yourself and your own life that benefit you and your mental health. Changes that can promote the choices needed to support recovery. A recovery that can mean an end to chaotic, dramatic, self-destructive cycles, generally, and specifically in your relationships with others.

Borderline Personality Disorder stunts emotional development and maturity. You can help yourself so much just by realizing this and then applying this reality to things in your life that you know you would benefit from changing.

So much of the way in which BPD effects people has to do with how they relate to self and to others. You can help yourself so much by concentrating on getting to know who you really are. Take time alone (even if it is scary and or difficult) and journal, think and feel what you are concerned with. When we see our issues on paper and we begin to feel our feelings so too does the discovery of who we really are begin.

To truly help yourself you have to be willing, at some point, to let the pain in. So much of borderline "behaviour" and cognition (thinking) can be an obstacle to your getting in touch with the pain. BPD is a complex and dynamic pattern of elaborately orchestrated defense mechanisms that when adhered to block you from getting to know who you really are and what you really feel. When you do not know who you are and what you feel you are bound to remain feeling isolated from self and therefore isolated from others. If you cannot be alone with yourself and find some measure of safety and comfort you will more than likely feel alone, even with company and nothing that anyone else does, says or gives you time wise or otherwise will ever be enough.

In order to help themselves borderlines need to learn how to trust, like and care for and about themselves. Though it may sound simple, it is and it isn't. You have to change lifetime patterns of thinking, feeling, believing and behaving. The good news is that you can. You have, whether you realize it or not, chosen the ways that you think, feel, believe and act. You chose them based on your early (and often very painful and devastating) experiences. In order to help yourself, if you are borderline, you need to learn to make new choices . Though it may feel as if something outside of you is controlling you -- it is really YOU that is controlling YOU -- or rather (as is often the case) it is YOU that is abdicating taking control of yourself and of your life.

If you are borderline you do not have to WAIT to be rescued. You can take action to help yourself. The path is a long and winding road, but, the trip is so rewarding. If you haven't already done so, take the first step now that you need to in order to help yourself -- today. You know what you need. Ask yourself how you can provide it for yourself. Asking effective questions will, in time, yield you answers from within.

© Ms. A.J. Mahari February 15, 2000-2016, with additions December 21, 2013 - 2016

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3 Non Borderline Audio Programs Package

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The Shame of Abandonment in BPD

BPD and Abandonment

Inside The Borderline Mind - For Non Borderlines

Audio Program "Preparing For Recovery From BPD" Parts 1 & 2 by A.J. Mahari

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES
• Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

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