Borderline Personality and Self-Hate

Borderlines may seem to all and to themselves to hate themselves when really it is the absence of known self that is most hated. It is the loss of self and identity along with the dominant presence of the borderline false self that is the foundation of this inner-directed hatred in those with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Borderlines are well known for self-hate. The irony is they often don't know who they really are. The question is who is this self-hate really directed at? Working through this self-hate is the only way to find your true self and to stop living such a life of pain and angst.

Most people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) struggle with what many would define as self-hate. I know from my past experiences that the "self" I thought I hated was really more my father manifested in me than it was my real authentic self as such. While I hated myself I did not know my authentic self. I was hating my father when I hated myself. Why? Because I had taken on his cognitively distorted thoughts, and I had taken on his view of the world and sadly I even took on his propensity for violence and trying to control others instead of myself, while I was in throes of BPD. I identified so strongly with my father, with whom I had a love-hate relationship, and the co-dependence was so strong, we were so enmeshed, that I had lost any real sense of my own identity. So, when I was hating my "self" I was really hating my father. Coming to realize that I had become so much like my main abuser was a very hurtful and anger-producing reality for me. It was in my quest to find my authentic self that I was slowly able to separate out the difference between my father and my "self". In doing this I was able to change a tremendous amount of the unwanted thoughts/feelings and behaviour that had for so long been a part of my life.

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• 3 Non Borderline Ebooks
• 6 Non Borderline Ebooks
• 3 Core Wound of Abandonment in BPD Series of Ebooks
• Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder The Lost Self The Impact of The Core Wound of Abandonment Ebook 1
• Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder The Rock and a Hard Place in BPD The Impact of The Core Wound of Abandonment Ebook 2

Ebooks © A.J. Mahari

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The "self" that most borderlines hate is really not who they are. It is an over-identification with who they think they are based upon having taken over the role of their past abusers or of those who neglected them and/or could not/did not meet their needs as young children. It is a fleeting sense of self that is shrouded in shame

So I submit to you right now that if you are borderline and you are self-harming, for example, you are acting out the abuser role with yourself. Ask yourself why. Do you really want to hurt yourself anymore than you already hurt? Do you think that adding to your pain will help you in anyway decrease your pain? It won't it will just add to the mountain of pain and abandonment that you will have to work through when you are ready to stop self-harming and make a change to walk toward not only identify who you really are but also toward liking, valuing and eventually loving yourself.

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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

Audio Programs © A.J. Mahari

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You are worthy of love. You deserve to be loved. Just because someone in your past couldn't love you or someone in your present can't love you, does not mean that you have to hate yourself. You cannot truly hate who you really are. What you hate is the lack of "self" that you live with. What you hate is the void of identity that eats away at you. What you hate is being or feeling like a shell of a person. What you hate is the emptiness that you feel. What you hate is the isolated-disconnectedness that you feel. What you hate is feeling like a victim and feeling (or being) unable to meet your own needs. What you hate is feeling like a fake so much of the time. What you hate is the un-ending, constant pain of living your life apart from your real self. If you find yourself really hating certain qualities in others and things about others and you react strongly to these characteristics (they anger you) in them ask yourself how much like the persona that you have created in place of a real identity is the same or similar for you. How many of those characteristics that you "hate" in others are present in your "false-self"? How many of those very characteristics go against the nature of your authentic self?

Self-hate is often projected out on to others. It is also the root of the false-sense of entitlement you feel when you are self-absorbed and selfish often just trying to meet your needs through others as opposed to truly liking or being interested in them. It is not difficult to rationalize your reactions to others when you don't know who you are or what you feel and value. It is also this reality that will leave others scurring away from you as fast as they can. Your self-hate has its roots in your past. Why keep applying it to everyone in your here and now? Can you see how self-defeating that is? It is literally self-defeating in that you will never be able to get to know your true self if you keep acting out the baggage of your false-self.

The day I realized that my "self" hate had all to do with hating my father was the day that I, for the first time, was aware that there was another me, a real me, trapped inside, dying to get out. The real me that was dying to get out was the part of me that at times felt literally like she was dying or like she wanted to die and was also the part of me that developed an excessive fear of death. Each step I took toward this real self, felt so powerfully painful that it felt like it would kill me. The anxiety and fear were tremendous, but the journey to my real self did not kill me.

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• 3 Non Borderline Ebooks
• 6 Non Borderline Ebooks
• 3 Core Wound of Abandonment in BPD Series of Ebooks
• Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder The Lost Self The Impact of The Core Wound of Abandonment Ebook 1
• Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder The Rock and a Hard Place in BPD The Impact of The Core Wound of Abandonment Ebook 2

Ebooks © A.J. Mahari

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It is not possible to get the real you without first going through the pain of why you have created more of your identity from someone else than from within. This is usually the result of abuse, neglect, unmet needs, denial and having your feelings repeatedly invalidated. The process to find your real self can be long and difficult. It is a worth-while process though because it will free you from hating the self that you think you are. The self that is really modeled more on someone else from your past.

Healing from BPD, in large part, means maturing emotionally in ways that you were not able to due to unmet needs and or abuse when you were younger. It also involves changing thought patterns which will lead to changes in behaviour and then changes in how you feel which will lead to a re-newed sense of who you really are.

Self-hate is a waste of precious time. Life will pass you by if you stay there. You will not be happy. You will not be fulfilled. Truthfully, if you hate yourself, whatever aspect of identity that means for you, you will not be able to be open and present enough for others to truly love you. Self-hate for many borderlines is not as much about actual hate of "self" as it is about actual hate of not knowing who one's "self" really is.

This self-hate is also a manifestation of borderline focus on the negative. This focus on the negative makes it impossible for you to be be open to newness in your life. Being closed to newness and change means that you cannot grow and that you are much more invested, if not totally invested, in protecting yourself from your past wounds over and over again in what "should" otherwise be your here and now but in what ends up being your past manifested over and over again day in and day out. This negative focus and self-hate are a world unto themselves, a miserable world at that. They will hold you on the outside of the "real" world in which we live and in which many people are able to find contentment with self and some true sense of happiness day to day.

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• The Abandoned Pain of BPD Ebook
• The Legacy of Abandonment in BPD Ebook
• The Shadows and Echoes of Self - False Self In BPD Ebook
• BPD and Rage Ebook
• Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder The Lost Self The Impact of The Core Wound of Abandonment

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For many it seems easier, somehow, to just continue to deny that real "self" life than it is to admit the kind of pain and grief that is caused by the loss of something as precious as your actual, real, "self". Think about all the ways that you perpetuate your false-self through all of your borderline defence mechanisms and behaviour that you know will only push others away from you time and time again. Think about how trapped you feel in your lostness. Then think about how freeing it will be to find yourself and to take responsibility for yourself in a way that makes it next to impossible to keep hating who you really are as you discover this wonderful being more and more. You will begin to shed the protective defence mechanisms and replace with them with a healthy curiosity for life and for growth and change.

In order to get new results and to get on the road to recovery, you need make new choices. And you are responsible for the choices that you make, or refuse to make in your life whether you are aware of this or deny this. The fact is that if you feel stuck, you are choosing to stay stuck in the familiar because your fear of change and pain is greater than your dislike of what is so painfully familiar to you. This tranistional place can very much resemble classic borderline NO-WIN and is therefore very hard to push through. You need to push through it to change your self-hatred for your false self to a burgeoning like of the real self that will begin to emerge with a choice to change. And having been through it I can attest to the fact that it is not a NO-WIN situation at all. It is the most wonderful thing that you can do for your real "self"!

Don't stay stuck in your projected self-hate. Don't use others to try to meet your own needs. Take the first step on the journey to your real self today. Admit that you hurt. Admit that you have Borderline Personality Disorder, if you have received this diagnosis. Admit that you have issues that need your attention. Admit that you would benefit from help and or change. Admit that you want to particpate in life in ways that draw people to you and enable you to meet to your needs instead of in ways that push people away, re-act out your abandonment wounds and make it impossible for you to meet your own needs because you are too busy punishing, self-harming, and trying to kill the you that you don't even know yet.

Most borderlines who are suicidal or struggling with suicidal ideation, and/or who have attempted suicide really want the pain to end and really don't want to die. The way to end the pain is to do the work (in therapy) necessary to find your authentic self which is the way to end your "self" hate and to continue the process of recovery from BPD that will see you find and connect to a known self that you can and will learn to love.

© A.J. Mahari, September 9, 2001 with up-dates November 12, 2009

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