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Archive for the ‘BPD and Identity’ Category
Footsteps of the Past Obstruct The Here and Now
As a Life Coach, BPD Coach and Mental Health Coach, A.J. Mahari talks with clients every day who are in the on-going experience of having their footsteps from the past obstruct their here-and-now in ways that mean unidentified and unreached goals and dreams. Footsteps from the past do not have to continue to obstruct your here-and-now. Mahari knows first-hand that the first step in creating a here-and-now unfolding authenticity in your life journey – to reach your promise and potential and unleash your passion – is to awaken to the awareness that you are looking back more than you are living now and more than you can look ahead with any confidence.
The more you live with, in, from, and through unresolved past issues in your life, the more you are and will remain disconnected from who the Self in you really is today – from who you really are. Footsteps of unresolved emotions from the past cast a long shadow that effects people knowing who they really are and negatively impacts relationships.
Footsteps from the past obstruct, if not utterly obliterate the here-and-now. What is experienced repeatedly in the lives of those carrying the unresolved and unrelenting painful and negative experience of childhood (or parts of childhood) is the experience of a young and wounded child – not the experience of an emotionally mature adult.
How can you see where you are, let alone where you might be going, or want to go, if you are looking back. Back at the trail of footsteps that was a journey already taken? How can you know who you are when you are essentially still who you were?
If you are still living through unresolved childhood psychological and emotional woundedness you cannot fully experience the here-and-now as it is actually unfolding because you will be triggered back to re-experiencing what you have not yet worked through, accepted, and/or resolved.
To read the rest of this article (free) please visit Dialectic Magazine
Hope For Recovery From Borderline Personality Disorder
There is so much hope for recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Author, BPD Coach and Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, talks about the reality of this hope for recovery from BPD in her latest audio Hope for Recovery From BPD in which she also shares some her experience in her own recovery from BPD 14 years ago.
The Hope for Recovery From BPD truly exists in each and every person who has BPD. To get on the road to recovery one must take the journey From False Self To Authentic Self. It is within your lost authentic self that you can and will find both hope and recovery. When you have BPD getting on the road to finding recovery does mean that you must make series of choices that will make this journey possible in your life.
You can empower yourself toward recovery by learning to change your thoughts and to cope with the triggers that are the gateways to recovery. Triggers that will present you with numerous learning and growth opportunities each and every time you experience the emotional dysregulation associated with them.
Each person with Borderline Personality Disorder, in his or her quest to find and reclaim his or her Lost Self can learn to Find Hope From The Polarized Reality Of BPD - a hope that is a cornerstone of recovery. It can feel as though it is impossible to create the kind of change required to recover. But do not let how you feel fool you into thinking that everything you feel is what really is. It isn’t.
So much of what those with BPD feel is ascribed to being what they think. Learning to differentiate between what you think and what you feel will help you to learn to make new and healthier choices on your way toward building emotional competence.
© A.J. Mahari, September 23, 2009
Lost Self In Borderline Personality Disorder – Need and Search For Identity
People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder do not have a sense of known self or a stable sense of identity. In both a video below and on youtube and an in depth audio program available for purchase at, phoenixrisingpublications.ca, Author and Mental Health Coach and Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, talks about the lost self in BPD and the need and search for the lost self and for identity. Mahari talks about what it means and what it feels like to not know who you are and how that can effect your life and keep those with BPD stuck in the suffering and victimization of past abandonment trauma. Mahari knows because years ago, when she had BPD, she did not know who she was either. In her recovery from BPD 14 years ago Mahari did find her lost authentic self and her identity.
- 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 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
At the center of BPD is the core wound of abandonment – an abandonment wound so traumatic that it causes what Melanie Klein referred to as the "psychological death of the otherwise burgeoning authentic self"
This "psychological death" that anyone diagnosed with BPD experiences causes such overwhelming pain at such a very young age in childhood that there is no way to cope with it. This pain then is effectively also abandoned which coupled with the loss of self creates the need for the rise of the borderline false self that in many ways is at the center of the on-going impact of the core wound of abandonment.
Read more and purchase A.J.'s Audio Program
Lost Self In BPD – Need and Search For Identity
A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who specializes in working with people who are searching for ways to improve themselves, the quality of their lives with BPD or who are loved ones of those with BPD. A.J. has 6 years experience as a Life Coach and has coached hundreds of clients from all over the world.
Borderline Personality Disorder – Recovery and The Question: Who am I?
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At the heart of the process of recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder is the need to find one’s lost self – an authentic self that has been lost to the core wound of abandonment in BPD. BPD recovery requires first asking the question, Who am I? Secondly, it requires finding the answer to that question.
How does one with BPD answer the question: Who I am? The
way to finding yourself is through your emotions. Much to the dismay of
Descartes, who said, “I think, therefore I am.” who one is, when one
has been diagnosed with BPD has far more to do with what one feels than it does with what one thinks.
Thinking
is very important but in the throes of BPD much of one’s thinking is
cognitively distorted. Borderline thinking is also often so
intellectual as to totally block out one’s emotions. There is a
polarized split between what is thought about and what is felt. For
those with
Borderline Personality Disorder,
there is a lack of conscious awareness of what is actually thought
before what is actually felt. Being more aware of what is felt leaves
those with BPD misperceiving their experience as being the result of
feelings versus thoughts that create feelings.
In order to find
yourself and a
stable sense of
identity
you must find a balance between your thinking and your feeling. You
must learn to think and to feel in between the black and the white of
borderline reality – a reality that is often steeped in negativity. A
negativity that can block any sense of hope. Those with BPD, in the
quest of the lost self need to actively and consciously seek to find hope from the polarized negativity of BPD
Who you are is so tied to what you have experienced and to how what you experienced left you feeling (thinking) about yourself.
Who you are
is also very tied (until you unwind it and heal it) to what others said
to you or about you. If you were constantly criticized or put down then
you likely have developed a sense of yourself as an incompetent person
who is not “good enough”.
I am a mental health and life coach and as such I can and do help many with Borderline Personality Disorder acquire a clearer and more focused understanding of what it takes and means to recover from BPD. I help others to gain more awareness of their own recovery processes as well.
To
reclaim our individual identities and to build a strong foundation upon which our personhood and
identity is defined and understood we must be able to answer the following consistently:
- What do I value? What are my values?
- Am
I telling and living the truth? Telling lies will only serve to further
see you lose yourself. Deceit and manipulation are defense mechanisms
but they also make it impossible for you to
know who you “really” are. They are the tools of the false self. - If I am lying or misrepresenting the truth why am I doing this?
- What do I like about myself? What don’t I like about myself? Why?
- Have
I cleared my head and my heart of any and all “old tapes”? Am I
thinking for myself and trying to define myself based upon my own quest
for this understanding of self or am I still seeking to define myself
based upon how others have defined me in the past? - How do
I feel about myself? Do I like myself? Can I accept myself? If you do
not accept and like and learn to love yourself you will not be able to
like, accept and love others from any
stable sense of self because you will still be looking to them to define you. - Have
I felt and dealt with my pain? Have I grieved for my losses and
disappointments? Am I willing to work them through and let them go? If
you are holding onto past hurts and pains, injustices, abuse, tapes,
etc you are keeping yourself invested in being who others wanted or
needed you to be. Often this means that you are choosing to remain
enmeshed in others as opposed to truly getting to know
who you are. - How
do I want to represent myself? How do I want others to see me and
experience me? Do I need to continue to perpetuate my old hurts and
neglect or abuse by turning others against me so that I can continue to
hide from myself? - Are you willing to face
your pain? Until we do the work, our pain will encompass who we
“really” are. You cannot access your true self until you walk through
the pain and learn to release it in healthy ways. - Why do I stay
invested in hurting myself? Do I not hurt enough? This is the point at
which you need to start to listen to that “inner-child” aspect of
yourself and integrate his/her hurts into your NOW consciousness. You
cannot heal and get to know your self by holding your pain outside of
your “self”. - Do you feel that you are worthy of being
respected, loved and cared for or about? If you cannot feel this way
about yourself than truly neither can anyone else. - Am I ready
to take personal responsibility? Am I ready to be held accountable for
my actions and my words? Are you ready to live your truth in the here
and now and let go of the past? - Am I ready to acknowledge that
whether or not I get better will largely be up to me? I have the
ability and the responsibility to make choices and decisions. This is
part of what being me really means in life. - Am I ready to lay
down the maladaptive defenses that only serve to keep me separated from
my self? Are you ready to learn new and healthier ways to cope and to
relate to self and others? - Do I want to get and be well? Or am
I still more invested in the secondary gains of remaining sick. Do I
really want to know myself and take responsibility for myself or do I
want to continue to live through others and to hurt myself in what is
an absence of acknowledging who “I” am.
- 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
To
find your authentic “self” and to build a stable sense of identity you must act
always from a place of integrity. You must make an informed choice to
step onto the path of truth and to walk that path no matter how much it
hurts. It is very difficult at first. It, like anything else, does get
easier over time.
Borderline Personality Disorder has stolen your identity. If you want to reclaim yourself — and to know who you are
– then you must make the choice to face your pain and to do the work.
It means changing how you think, how you feel, and how you act. It
means dedicating yourself to truth, honesty, integrity, personal
responsibility, and to learning to cope with being the vulnerable,
hurting soul that you are. No more bravado. No more games. To answer
the question: Who Am I? — a borderline must give up the games, the
lies, the manipulations, the focus on “other”, the giving away personal
power and personal responsibility to “other” and the secondary gains of
the learned helplessness of BPD and of being needy and must look inside
where your true self awaits the arrival of your love, devotion, and
support.
Having
Borderline Personality Disorder does not have to be a life sentence. It
means (among other things) that you have not fully developed your
identity. It means that you have been alienated from yourself, most
often, by what has happened to you and or how you have perceived and
interpreted what has happened to you in your life thus far. You are
free, you really are free, to write a new life-script — one that
enables you to find the answers the question: Who Am I?
As
you answer that question, you will be healing from Borderline
Personality Disorder. Refuse to abandon yourself any longer. Instead
learn to be there for yourself. You really can and will find you when
you want to badly enough.
Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder is possible. It is as possible for you as it was for me. In spite of the fact that recovery is still not defined clearly by professionals, if you have BPD, hopefully you can continue to add to your understanding of what recovery from BPD is, what it looks and feels like and how you can quantify your own progress from what I, and others who have recovered, share about our experiences.
I am a mental health and life coach and as such I can and do help many with Borderline Personality Disorder acquire a clearer and more focused understanding of what it takes and means to recover from BPD. I help others to gain more awareness of their own recovery processes as well.
I
recovered from BPD over 14 years ago now. I know who I am. I know what
I like and what I don’t like. I take care of myself. I meet my own
needs. I do not look to “others” to do this for me or to define me
anymore. Yes, in all truth, the journey to my own identity was been
very painful. It has also been equally, if not more so, rewarding. You
can take this journey that is the journey From False Self To Authentic Self on the journey that is your living your way to answering the question: Who Am I?
Dare
to define yourself. Be courageous. Your life, your happiness, and a such a
wonderful sense of peace await your authentic-self-discovery. It is a most
worthwhile journey. Make the choice or the decision today, if you
haven’t already, to walk the path to the discovery and awareness of your
true identity — your authentic self — keep walking down the road to the YOU that you WANT to
be.
© Ms. A.J. Mahari – April 2, 2000 – with additions February 16, 2009 – All rights reserved.
A.J. Mahari is a Mental Health Coach who,among other things, specializes in working with those with Borderline Personality Disorder and/or their partners, relatives,
or friends. A.J. has 6 years experience as a Life Coach as well and works with clients from all over the world.
Borderline Personality Disorder – The Lost Self
If you have Borderline Personality Disorder there is a question that you need to learn to live in order to find its answer – an answer that can be realized in the process of recovery and a question that must be lived in order for you to find the road to recovery.
If you love or care about someone with BPD and you are trying to understand more about what drives the way that borderlines relate and often act you will benefit from understanding more about the lost self in BPD.
Click on the link below and scroll down to the episode entitled The Lost Self in BPD
Listen To This Podcast
- 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
The Struggle for Identity in Borderline Personality Disorder
The third trait listed as one of the 9 defining traits of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in the DSM-IV is:
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable
self-image or sense of self; or sense of long-term goals;
or career choices, types of friends desired or values
preferred.
It is not possible to maintain any consistent, let alone stable, sense of self-image or sense of self when one has lost his or herself to the core wound of abandonment that is so central in BPD.
Melanie Klein, who was a psychoanalyst, and a leading innovator in theorizing object relations theory, after whom one of the major schools within psychoanalysis is named – Kleinian psychoanalysis, said of the abandonment trauma of those who experience ruptured or insecure attachment that it is the experience of "the psychological death of the burgeoning authentic self"
The Legacy of Abandonment in Borderline Personality is such that with this death of the authentic self that Klein describes those who are diagnosed with BPD do not have a known sense of self. What the DSM-IV trait describes as, a "persistently unstable sense of self", is an understatement. For those with BPD the sense of a self comes from the projection onto and projective identification and enmeshment with "object other". Object other, in object relations theory, represents mother. Mother is, in infancy, for each and every one of us, initially, our sense of self, our "self" and extension of self and a mirror that gives self its meaning and experience of being an entity of its own.
However, in the here and now, a borderline will experience the search for his or her own identity and self – the longing for, as Bradshaw puts it, "the original face", for mother, also described as "one's first true love in life" – with whom insecure attachment takes place at best or outright relational rupture at worst – in and through others. One becomes an "object other" to a person with BPD when that borderline somewhat feels, to one degree or another, close, connected, or partially attached which is often an experience of enmeshment. Borderlines live through others in efforts to escape the pain and anxiety of not having a self, a container for their emotions, from which to emotionally and psychologically experience life.
The Lost Self that robs those with BPD of an identity is an on-going impact of the core wound of abandonment. It is at the heart of the shame of abandonment. It keeps borderline rage – the rage of the false self in between the borderline and the insight and awareness that he or she needs to get in touch with in order to prepare for and get on the road to recovery. A recovery that can and will mean authentic self reclamation and the finding of and establishing of a stable sense of identity.
How is a person with BPD supposed to know how to successfully relate in healthy ways with and to others when he or she does not know who he or she is? When the borderline is not able to relate to self because he or she does not have a self – a known self to relate to or from?
If you have Borderline Personality Disorder and would like to explore and learn more about the lost self and the lack of identity and its consequences and meaning in your life now please visit A.J. Mahari's BPD Message Forum where there is a new topic area BPD and Identity
The borderline struggle for identity is the journey From False Self to Authentic Self. It is a journey that does not even begin until those who have BPD are able to acknowledge the need for professional help and are able to see that they are personally responsible for what the state of their lives really are. Borderlines need to be able to recognize in conscious and aware ways just what the dynamic of their suffering really is. It is a schema of suffering born out of The Abandoned Pain of BPD. Pain that was experienced (most often initially) before the age of two. Pain that is re-lived over and over unless and until it is resolved.
The identity of those who have Borderline Personality Disorder, those in the active throes of BPD, as I call it, has been lost to abandonment trauma (Masterson) from the loss of self that gives rise to the borderline false self which is really just a fragmented part of the damaged and wounded psyche of the lost authentic self. It is a primitive and protective fragment of self that is steeped in the rage of a loss dissociated from and denied and the narcissism of the arrest in emotional development at the heart of so much of what Borderline Personality Disorder really is.
Without really being consciously aware of it most with BPD are living in and from this false self. A pseudo self that exists only to express in what are known as repetition compulsions a loss that sits outside of the borderline's conscious awareness and a loss that has left them without the self that they were meant to be and know and live from.
It takes having a self, and then a connection to that self, to be able to form an identity that can be authentic. Borderline Personality Disorder exists in the space of that evacuated authentic self. – where it would have otherwise been. It rises up from the ashes of the core wound of abandonment and it is the very definition, in so many ways, of a brokenness that is this loss of self and along with one's identity.
Without a sense of self and of one's identity that is understood within a framework of object constancy a person, a borderline, cannot be expected to know what they want, what they need, who they are, what their goals are, what kind of job or career they'd like, who they want as friends, or who they would like to love because his or her sense of being is only known through the "object other" of the day, so to speak. It is that fragile. It is extremely painful.
The reality of love in BPD is often enmeshed, toxic, and/or abusive and that is a very painful reality for both those with BPD and those in relationships with them or closest to them.
The struggle for identity for those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder is an on-going one. It is one that sees those with BPD continually alienate the very others that come to delineate their own sense of "self" – their own sense of existing. This is why those with BPD need so intensely and then when those needs cannot be met by others, it is also why borderlines rage, punish and seek revenge. (Watch for my ebook on this subject coming soon to Phoenix Rising Publications in the Ebooks Borderline Category)
Borderlines often feel both dependent and hostile which in most cases
makes for tumultuous interpersonal relationships. They can be very
dependent on those to whom they are close and they can express enormous
anger at those close to them in times of frustration especially when they are triggered into Emotional Dysregulation. Borderlines
have a very low frustration tolerance level which is usually lowered by the stress of just trying to relate to others.
Everything borderline, all borderline manifested behaviour, rage, abuse, neediness, learned helplessness, punishment, revenge, and manipulation, (to name a few) is the evidence of a person struggling to stave off the re-occurring re-living of the core wound of abandonment that as Klein put it, "psychologically killed the burgeoning authentic self". It is evidence of a person with Borderline Personality Disorder trying to feel real, to exist, in the absence of a known self by (unconsciously) trying to live through others.
Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder face a struggle to find the lost authentic self. It is a struggle that plays itself out in relationship to "other" (others) in ways that are often enmeshed and toxic. Without the successful reclamation of the lost authentic self a person with BPD cannot have an identity. Not a stable identity. They cannot know who they really are.
As I have come to understand, years after my own recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, sadly, and rather ironically, to say the least, in many ways, it is often the borderline who is the last person to realize and recognize that he or she doesn't have a self, doesn't know who he or she is and that he or she is in this struggle to find a way to survive this loss of self and to search, in therapy, for the identity that is split off from their consciousness in the fragmented pieces of the lost authentic self.
It is the borderline and his or her lost identity that is the world of hurt from which he or she and all who relate to the borderline get so hurt. The struggle for identity in Borderline Personality Disorder is complicated because this struggle or quest rests solely upon the ability of the borderline to gain insight and awareness into the reality of this loss of self and what it means.
The borderline needs to come to take personal responsibility for what he or she still needs to know and change and find. The borderline needs to be able to see through his or her own projections, splitting, and projective identifications with others. The borderline needs to learn, in therapy, how to peel back the layers of maladaptive defense mechanism – the defense mechanisms of the borderline false self – so that he or she can actually let the help that he/she needs – in.
Finding one's identity from Borderline Personality Disorder is the gateway to recovery. It is difficult and often painful work. It is worth it though. It will, in time and over time, bring with it such relief from suffering and lead to the reclamation of the lost authentic self.
It is the finding of this lost authentic self that will enable the borderline to come to know and have his/her own identity. A place to feel, think, and exist from that is all his or her own. A place to be inside that doesn't require the living through someone else. An emotional reconnection to one's dissociated from inner child is also at the heart of this reclamation of authentic self – the authentic self that holds within him or her, if you have BPD, your identity.
I will be writing more about the lost self and talking about it in up-coming episodes of my BPD Inside Out Audio Podcast so please keep checking back.
© A.J. Mahari, January 4, 2009 – All rights reserved.
Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder – The Lost Self – The Impact of the Core Wound of Abandonment Ebook
This ebook is the first ebook in what will be a series of 3 (there are currently 2 available) explaining, from the inside out, the many layers and various aspects of the impact of what A.J. has termed the "core wound of abandonment" that she identified in her journey of recovery as the wound that is central to what BPD actually is and how and why it persists.
In this newest series of 3 ebooks Mahari shares her insight, from the inside out, as one who has recovered from BPD. She outlines what she has identified as the impact of the core wound of abandonment. This first ebook, The Lost Self in this series provides understanding about how the core wound of abandonment has impacted the lost borderline self and what that really means in terms of how BPD is experienced by those who have it.
To read more or purchase this ebook please go to Phoenix Rising Publications
© A.J. Mahari, October 22, 2008 – All rights reserved.
Borderline Loss of Self Equals Rage
Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality (BPD) have experienced the loss of the authentic self. This loss of self creates a void, a vacuum that then is filled by a fragmented and wounded pseudo-false self. This loss of self is largely, if not entirely, the result of the core wound of abandonment and its legacy.
I know what this is like from the inside out. I had BPD. I lived for 33 years of my life without much, if any, sense of self. Did I know that then? No, not at all. What did it feel like though? It was confusing. It was crazy-making for me, even when I had BPD. I believe it is crazy-making for most with BPD. It was, for me, a source of constant angst. An angst I had no words for. An angst that terrified me and could send me into an anxiety-riddled panic in a heartbeat when I felt invalidated, abandoned, or when I was left alone.
Living without a self means that you can’t know what you really want. You can’t know who you are. You can’t possibly really have emotional boundaries because there is no centre or container from which to have any understanding of the walls of an actual self. There is nothing between the borderline and others except this fuzzy frenzy of frantic efforts to not have to feel one’s abandoned pain.
Dissociated from the pain when I was in the active throes of BPD was the cause of my borderline rage. I was in the active throes of a whirlwind of maelstrom proportions – the result of what was actually my rage addiction. Life pissed me off. Most everything made me angry. I experienced that being made angry as being everyone else’s responsibility and/or fault and as having nothing to do with me.
Everything that I was feeling without understanding what I was feeling – so all the angst-filled rage that I was always feeling – felt like it was just happening to me. And what was happening to me, I thought, when I had BPD, it must then follow, must have been happening to me because other people were doing “it” to me.
Consumed in rage the little fragmented piece of me that was hanging on for literal psychological dear life would stir me and trigger me in all aspects of my life – there was not time off – there was no peace – there was no happiness or time to feel okay or safe. When I wasn’t feeling like other people were purposefully trying to hurt me and drive me nuts there was this part of me that just couldn’t leave me alone either.
I felt victimized by everyone and everything. I would later, in the process of recovery, come to realize that I also felt victimized by this very fragmented and wounded part of me that just wouldn’t lay off of me. This part of me would endlessly try to get me (whoever the hell that was then) to pay attention to the pain that I was way too afraid of and not very aware of. For three decades this part of me stayed her determined course and re-played out the past over and over again in attempts to get me to “get it”.
When I was borderline I was consumed with rage because it is rage that is on the other side of loss. Not being able to tolerate that loss is what the protective borderline false self thrives on. It is what gives it its edge - its cruelty – its get-away-closer, I-hate-you, don’t-leave-me, aloof closeness and its no-win emotionally-chaotic stone-cold intimate distance – its ability to hurt others as it hurts. It is what keeps it in the driver’s seat, keeps it alive. It is the need of those with BPD to keep their abandonment trauma at bay at all costs, dissociated from in borderline reality – parallel to reality – though it be re-lived over and over and over again that “protects” them from feeling the very pain that must be felt in order to resolve the petulantly-persistent primal primitive rage.
In my borderline experience it hurt to be close though close always felt very far away and very not good enough. It hurt to be far away because it had this pseudo-allure of a closeness most dysfunctional and severely strange – enmeshed – an angry, hostile, violent raging kind of closeness that knew no bounds and hated itself. A hatred for the lack of its self that was then projected out onto others without any awareness on my part.
On the other side of rage is loss. The only way out is in. What is in the way is the way.
The only way out is to fall into the pain. What is in the way is the pain and feeling and learning to tolerate the pain until it can be resolved is the way to recovery. There are no shortcuts or magic pills. There is no substitute for getting in touch with one’s authentic pain – the pain that will lead to the finding of the lost authentic self.
I no longer rage.
I fell into the pain. I embraced what was in the way – it was the way that I recovered.
© A.J. Mahari July 9, 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.
Join my email list and you will be able to join me in free conference calls and ask me your questions about BPD and BPD Recovery.
Join my email list and you will be able to join me in free conference calls and ask me your questions about BPD and BPD Recovery.
Web Counters as of February 11, 2002
