Perspective Through Support

Perspective through support, and education is what I offer my clients with BPD. In an eclectic, holistic, human context, non-judgmental, non-pathologizing, way, I offer compassionate validation, and 15 years + experience of helping clients recover from BPD. I talior each process to each client, using aspects of CBT, DBT, Mentalization, Inner Child work specific to the issues of Borderline Personality, Schema Therapy, and many other modalities that are effective with people seeking to do the work in the process of recovery.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder need to gain insight and perspective often through professional support in order to get on the road to recovery.

Perspective:

Is a specific point of view in understanding or judging things or events that shows them in their true relation to one another. Perspective also involves the ability to see things in true relationship to each other.

If you have Borderline Personality Disorder your perspective can be severely effected. As with any personality disorder your thinking patterns end up being constricted. That is to say that you are not using much of the potential capacity that you have to think. Personality disorders, by their very nature, effect and definition impede people's ability to think clearly, and consistently rationally.

It is not difficult to lost perspective. Or in some cases of very traumatic pasts and childhoods some people do not ever have a chance to develop a "healthy sense of perspective" prior to the damage that is done which then impedes their ability to see things as they are in relation to each other. When someone experiences physical and or emotional trauma in childhood regular cognitive development can be interrupted to the point that one's thought process is severely hampered by black and white, all-or-nothing thinking.

The best way to broaden your perspective is to avail yourself of some support. Often whatever we are going through in our lives leads us to feel as if we are the "only one" going through it or feeling as we feel. Support can widen this narrow perspective of experience.

Support:

To offer support or to support is to give courage, faith, or confidence to; to help or comfort. Support is crucial in ending one's isolation. For many people with Borderline Personality Disorder, other personality disorders, and other forms of mental illness, isolation is a very real problem. Isolation is often the result of a under-developed ability to relate to others. In order to develop one's ability to relate to others one must learn how to relate to self. Support, sometimes in the form of therapy, is often central to this process. As one learns to better relate to self than one can also learn to better relate to others.

Specifically, where Borderline Personality Disorder is concerned, support is very important if an accurate and healthy perspective is to be gained by the person with BPD. The dilemma here, though, often is that the Borderline is not able to relate well to those around him/her. There is a strong tendency to destroy the very connections/relationships/ support lines that the borderline needs.

This is not something that a borderline does on purpose with pre-meditated thought. It happens due to the damage that is the result of the pathology of BPD itself.

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In my capacity as a Life Coach and a person who has recovered from BPD I do offer support to those with BPD who are in therapy or who have had a significant amount of therapy. I am not, however, able to offer support unless the borderline has a fair amount of both insight and awareness and an ability to acknowledge and accept personal responsibility as well as respect boundaries.

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How can a borderline gain perspective?

A borderline can gain perspective, firstly and foremostly, through the most important of all human relationships -- creating a relationship with his or her authentic self. It is only from the perspective of self- knowledge and self-love that one can truly love or esteem, value, and respect others.

>Secondly then, a borderline can gain perspective through the very thing that is hardest for most of them: relating to others -- maintaining relationships. In order to be able to do this, however, the borderline, first may need a fair amount of therapy. Support groups and group therapy can be very valuable ways of teaching borderline's how to relate to others.

Reading is another way in which borderline's can gain perspective. The same is also true for non borderlines - those who care about someone with BPD

The internet offers seemingly endless support. There are countless web sites (more popping up everyday) that offer organized chat and message boards. There are email lists as well. All of these things give borderlines and non-borderlines a chance to talk to each other and to learn from the experiences of others. Just be careful to not lose burgeoning perspective and insight to some of the negativity that others, whether they have BPD or are non borderlines, for a variety of reasons may be stuck in focusing on.

Of course the inherent danger in the seeking of support is then one may neglect learning how to be there for themselves. Support can be eased into dependence if one is not vigilant about that. It is vital that each person not only find support but that they also learn how to be alone and how to be independent. One must learn to be independent before they can learn a what a healthy-interdependence is.

Perspective is the key for anyone who is trying to learn more about BPD and who is seeking an honest understanding of it. If you are borderline you will have to look beyond what you think and or feel and what you perceive your experiences to be to the root cause of what has resulted in the problems that you are experiencing.

If you are a non-borderline you could serve yourself well to stop looking at everything a borderline does as being calculated and planned or on purpose. Much of what borderlines do is impulsive and protective. They, more often than not, are too busy just trying to survive (in albeit counter-productive ways) to have the time or the energy to be just out to get you.

The bottom line for borderlines is that it is through the relating to others and the gaining of support that they can begin to challenge many of what they will come to see as "black and white" constricted misinterpretations of "reality". We see ourselves mirrored back through others. The only thing worse than being borderline and feeling lost is being borderline and isolated. If you are isolated than to some degree you may be lost. In order to find yourself it is necessary to get on the path toward connection and relating. When people relate to others and get involved in things that are not about self first is when they can truly widen their perspective in healthy and beneficial ways.

© Ms. A.J. Mahari February 15, 2000 with additions November 16, 2008

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3 Non Borderline Audio Programs Package $42.00

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

Audio Program Rage Addiction in BPD by A.J. Mahari (sold separately or packaged with Mahari's Ebook, "Rage and BPD")

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES
• Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged togetherwith 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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