BPD Coach, A.J. Mahari, in an excerpt from a workshop she gave to a group of her BPD clients, addresses the importance of the inner child in recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. For people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder integrating this wounded part of self is central to recovery.

Many people who have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder are not aware that much of the emotional pain that is so pervasive in their lives has its roots in the core wound of abandonment. An abandonment wound or intra-psychic injury that is suffered by the inner child part of self..

This part of self, the inner child, is then dissociated from as the defense mechanisms that are the hallmark of BPD and that are necessary for emotional and psychological survival cause a separation from what was the burgeoning authentic self and the false self that rises up in its absence.

In the audio program, From False Self To Authentic Self in BPD – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Child A.J. Mahari explores the reality of the false self in Borderline Personality Disorder and the healing reality of the connection to one’s inner child. In much more detail and providing even more insight, Mahari describes why it is so important to get in touch with his or her inner child and his or her abandoned pain and how that is central to recovery.

© A.J. Mahari, May 21, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Life Coach and BPD Coach A.J. Mahari, in an excerpt from a workshop about Psychosocial skills, talks about how and why these skills are important for people with Borderline Personality Disorder. The reality that learning psychosocial skills is part of recovery from BPD. Mahari also talks about the main obstacle blocking the learning of these psychosocial skills when someone has Borderline Personality Disorder.

The term psychosocial refers to your psychological development in and interaction with a social environment. The term psychosocial was first commonly used by psychologist Erik Erikson in his 8 stages of social development and his life-stages of development in which he notes that development continues throughout the course of one’s life.

Difficulties that occur in one’s psychosocial functioning can be referred to as “psychosocial dysfunction that refers to the lack of development or atrophy of the psychosocial self. These difficulties can arise from other dysfunctions that may be physical, emotional, or cognitive in origin.

 Psychosocial skills allow us to age-appropriately interact with, perceive, and relate to others in situationally-appropriate ways within reasonable boundaries.

Psychosocial skills include:

• your ability to appropriately experience, display, and perceive emotional states in ways that are in balance with your age and stage of life
• being able to relate to events and the environment, or any changes in the environment, in and from flexible balanced emotional experience – emotional experience that is modulated and regulated from the inside out
• involve communication skills – including listening skills
• ability to cooperatively and consistently interact and function within an age-appropriate and socially meaningful context
• implementing and learning skills in ways that support recovery – engaging your personal journey that involves developing hope, a secure base and sense of self, supportive relationships, empowerment, social inclusion, self soothing and general coping skills, along with purpose and  meaning.

• 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
• Purchase all 5 Core Wound of Abandonment in BPD Ebooks or 3 Non Borderline Ebooks packaged together with audio.

Healthy and balanced psychosocial skills require a stable sense of self – knowing and trusting a self with boundaries and a healthy differentiation between that self and others. Psychosocial skills aim to nuture emotional health, balance, maturity, emotional and self mastery along with self-efficacy.

Self

Recovery of a durable sense of self - a known self - your authentic self - the self that is lost to the arrested psychological development experienced by people who end up being diagnosed with BPD is at the center of developing an emotional and cognitive balance that lends itself to mental health. Those with BPD need to learn how to nurturing personal psychological space that allows room for developing understanding and a broad sense of self, interests, and values. This process of recovery and the learning, practice, and incorporaton of psychosocial skills education for those with BPD is usually greatly facilitated by experiences of interpersonal acceptance, mutuality, and a sense of social belonging which can be challenging in the face of the typical barrage of overt and covert negative messages that come from the broader social context and stigma about mental illness, generally, and Borderline Personality Disorder, specifically.

Empowerment and Inclusion

Empowerment and self-determination are important to recovery. For those with BPD what is especially important, after finding one’s authentic self is learning how to have self control – how to regulate your own emotions. This involves developing confidence in your newly-found self and learning to trust your decision making and help-seeking. Achieving social inclusion means coming to terms with the stigma and prejudice that exists about mental illness and its misunderstood differences. Stigma and prejudice that those with mental illness internalize in ways that are then turned against the self in what can be self-criticism and a lack of patience with self. Empowering yourself also involves learning and practicing psychosocial skills.

Coping strategies

The development of personal coping strategies such as emotion regulation and boundaries are central elements to learning to cope more effectively. Developing coping and problem solving skills to manage individual traits and emotional challenges involves you actively becoming engaged in learning to recognize and identify key stress points and possible crisis points – being mindful and aware in radically accepting ways that will enhance your awareness and  understanderstanding of your own needs and assist you in developing personal ways of responding and coping.

Purpose and Meaning

Finding purpose comes with getting to know your authentic self. The more you can learn and practice psychosocial skills the more you will be aware of who you authentically are. Developing a sense of meaning is important for sustaining yourself during and after your recovery process.  

People with Borderline Personality Disorder will continue to experience major challenges in learning and being able to incorporate psychoskills in the process of recovery until they can find that lost self inside. It is truly the central most  important aspects of recovery. Once that self starts to become more known progress from that point speeds up, things make more sense and coping is enhanced the stronger one’s sense of self becomes.

© A.J. Mahari, May 12, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Life Coach and BPD Coach, A.J. Mahari, talks about the good news of the pain that is so formidable in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). For most people with BPD there is a profound amount of emotional pain. Pain that isn’t well tolerated. Pain that they do not have the emotional maturity or emotional skills to effectively cope with in healthy ways. Pain is not the negative that most with BPD think it is and experience it as being. It is experienced negatively because it is thought of and perceived as being negative.

Pain is a necessary part of recovery.

• 3 Non Borderline Ebooks
• 5 Core Wound of Abandonment in BPD Series Ebooks
• 6 Non Borderline Ebooks
• 3 Core Wound of Abandonment in BPD Series of Ebooks
• Punishment and Revenge in BPD
• Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life

Ebooks © A.J. Mahari

How you think about your pain will determine how you experience it. In as much as the pain of abandonment is central to BPD, so too is it central to recovery from BPD.

Each step of the way, along the road to recovery, from Borderline Personality Disorder, this pain will increase each and every time anyone with BPD gets close to gaining more awareness and increasing his or her understanding of what he or she needs to heal.

Recovery from BPD isn’t about getting rid of this pain or escaping this pain, it is about learning to effectively cope with this pain and to radically accept this pain. Coming to understand that the pain of BPD can be a catalyst for healing and recovery will help you to shift your perception of it in ways that will help you to shift your experience of your pain.

• 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 For Loved Ones of BPD © A.J. Mahari

The pain of BPD is a gift when you open to it. Understanding your pain, connecting to the source of that pain – the lost authentic self – and learning to accept that pain is central to recovery.

© A.J. Mahari, May 11, 2010 – All rights reserved.

The adult child of a borderline parent or parents also knows the pain of unresolved abandonment. He or she also knows a profound emotional suffering, often on the other side of Borderline Personality Disorder. And, often in a dualistic way, as someone with BPD him or herself, and as someone experiencing the brokenness of trying to relate to someone else with BPD. Not all adult children (who were a child) of a borderline parent develop Borderline Personality Disorder themselves. However, many do. Forgiveness is part of what it takes to actually heal.

• 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 For Loved Ones of BPD © A.J. Mahari

I am an adult child of not one, but two parents, with Borderline Personality Disorder. I learned in my journey of my own recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder (my memoir is coming out in the fall of 2010) that forgiveness is the way forward. That forgiveness is the pathway to emotional peace and freedom. I had worked to hard to free myself from my own experience of having Borderline Personality Disorder to allow myself to remain in the clutches of the emotional pain and suffering that one lives with when one is the adult child of a borderline parent – or parents.

In a video recorded in 2008, A.J. Mahari, talks about her experience as an adult child of two borderline parents and how she knows that forgiveness is necessary for healing and recovery.

• 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

If you want to heal you need to do whatever you can to get the help you may need to actually get on the road to finding this forgiveness. Even in the face of unresolved issues with a borderline parent. Even in the face of a life-time of wanting a meaningful healthy connection with that parent - a connection that you haven’t been able to establish, may still yearn for, but that you need to learn to radically accept is something that you won’t be able to have. Even when there can be no closure with that parent.

It is only through the surrender to that loss that each one of us, as an adult child or a borderline parent or parent(s), can find our own recovery. Holding on or staying involved in the chaos of a borderline parent isn’t going to give you what you long for. It is only going to hurt you more. Trying to get what you’ve never been able to get, emotionally, from your borderline parent, only keeps you stuck in the pain of that most profound unresolved abandonment and loss.

Having a parent with Borderline Personality Disorder often means a legacy of codependence in your life that can mean you may well be or have been in a series of unhealthy relationships in your adulthood – all in a subconscious search for the bond that you long for from your borderline parent. Toxic relationship patterns often have their roots in the pain of your unresolved abandonment The adult child of a borderline parent, whether or not you developed BPD yourself, needs to resolve the pain of that abandonment – of the unmet needs and of the lack of a healthy and meaningful bond.

It is only by radically acccepting that loss and the pain of that loss, facing it, feeling it, grieving it, and letting it go, that the adult child can truly take his or her life back and find emotional peace and freedom.

© A.J. Mahari, May 7, 2010 – All rights reserved.

 Email This Post

Borderline Personality Disorder is a formidale challenge labelled a pathology that essentially means, if you have it, you are a human being who has been wounded and who is emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually out of balance. Finding hope is an act of faith. A surrender. It is radically accepting what is one moment at a time. Trusting that in each moment your perfect speed is just being there. Being in your there as fully present to it as you can be. Life Coach and BPD Coach, A.J. Mahari has a new episode in her BPD Inside Out Podcast to inspire and motivate those with BPD to find hope.

There is so much reason to hope. If you don’t have hope right now then begin to search for it. Dare to desire it. Be open to it. Hope and know that you can find the middle-ground that will bring with it the balance that you need, the paradox of life that is healthier experience. Borderline Personality Disorder can be cured. When you recover from it, you are cured. It’s not magic. It is possible. It takes work and dedication, commitment and taking personal responsibility. It means coping with, facing, and releasing loss and grief in healthy ways. You can do it, I did.

So much of the experience of your life when you have Borderline Personality Disorder is polarized, all-good, or all-bad. You likely feel like you are not okay or something about your life is not okay. What do you feel when I say to you here, you are okay, right where you are, as you are, in this moment, because it is where you are. Perfect speed is just being there.

Like Richard Bach’s main character in the book,  Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you, as someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, need to embrace a desire to learn. To be like Jonathan was, to a degree. To want to learn to fly higher faster and in more elaborate patterns. To accept that you might benefit most from marching to the beat of your own drummer, as Jonathan did. Everythign in moderation, however. The more Jonathan pushed himself to learn how to fly way higher and way faster the more his Elder tried to emphasize to him that, “perfect speed is just being there”.

Sometimes perfect speed is just being there for a difficult triggered and emotionally dysregulated moment, one moment at a time. The more you have hope and the more you radically accept that “okay-ness” of each moment the more you can move to a conscious awareness of how significant it is that you are present to the moment, no matter what the moment unfolds.

You are a person with worth, just because you are. And you are, you exist and matter, even when you may well not know who you really are in a stable-sense-of-known-self way. That’s okay. That’s what is right now for you. Pefect speed is just being there.

Does this mean that you are stuck with BPD forever? Absolutely not! There is a legacy of abandonment in BPD that you need to address in your life and that you will need treatment for and that treatment and your process of learning and understanding can be augmented with working with a life coach like myself as well.

Recovery from BPD is possible. Hope is a key ingredient in the process of that journey. The journey that is one from false self to authentic self. Remember, if you have BPD, even if you are new to this diagnosis, or new to facing it, if you are a BPD beginner so to speak, the mountain that stands in front of you to climb is not really bigger than the mountain the next person has to climb. Life is about climbing the mountains that are the obstacles we face. Mountains always appear more daunting if you think you can’t climb them. There will always be mountains. What conquers mountains is the steady climber who has faith. The climber who has hope. The climber who rather than bemoan the mountain or feel sorry for him/herself just gets on with the business of radically accepting the mountain and who mindfully then envisions a pathway to its peak – a pathway to authentic self. A pathway to a recovery that cannot be understood at the foot of the mountain but that will become more understandable on the journey up that mountain. At the mountain’s peak, each mountain’s peak, in your life is another goal or dream to realize. What is crucial on your mountain climb, as you aim for the goal of recovery, is to become more aware of what and how you are thinking.

Mindful thinking that is radically accepting of what is, is the perfect speed of just being there, present to the unfolding moment for what it is and not with thought invested in what you don’t like about it or what you wish it was instead.

Choose to seek and be open to hope and choose to face your abandoned pain, your  shame and to heal your abandonment wounds one moment at a time. One small step at a time, mindfully, purposefully and safe in the knowledge that perfect speed is just being there, wherever your there is right now.

The perfect speed of just being there, one moment at a time, is often what is perceived as a lack of movement, perhaps even feeling stuck. Stand still. Be stuck. Experience that stuckness. In that moment it too is the perfect speed of just being there.

I have been where you are. I had Borderline Personality Disorder. I recovered. You can too. The perfect speed of just being there is empowering when it meets with a willingness to hope. There is always light in the darkness. Just as there is darkness in the light. Perception and what you choose to think create the experience you will have and the feelings that will accompany your experience in life as it unfolds moment to moment.

What you focus on expands. What are you focusing on? If you haven’t yet, focus on hope. Hope is the perfect speed of just being there that can change your life.

Listen to A.J.’s BPD Inside Out Podcast Episode – Hope for BPD – Perfect Speed is Just Being There 

© A.J. Mahari, April 16, 2010 – All rights reserved.

Note: The phrase “perfect speed is just being there” was written by and is quoted from Richard Bach in his book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I highly recommend this book. I found it incredibly inspirational on my first reading of it many years ago and each subsequent reading since. Its message and appeal are  timeless.

BPD a Brain Disorder? Are You Stuck With It?

Is Borderline Personality Disorder really a “brain disorder”? Are you stuck with Borderline Personality Disorder? Life Coach and  BPD Coach, A.J. Mahari, who herself recovered from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) 15 years ago speaks to the question of recovery from BPD in this audio program.

Do you feel like or believe that you can’t get better? That you won’t recover? Do you think BPD is a brain disorder and that means you will always have it? In this audio Life Coach and BPD Coach, A.J. Mahari, who recovered from BPD 15 years ago speaks the these question, “Am I stuck with BPD?” “Is it really possible to recover from BPD? Why don’t professionals describe what recovery is? Why don’t many professionals believe people with BPD can recover?

Borderline Personality Disorder is not only the most stigmatized mental illness, it is also the most pathologized. And it is not just the disorder that is pathologized. People with the disorder are often de-humanized by this pathologizing stigma and the attitude that others don’t want to work with them or that you can’t be helped if you have BPD. This compounds your shame. This can keep you stuck if you let it. Are you aware of what you are thinking? Are you aware of what you actually believe and why this is so important to getting unstuck and moving forward. This and so much more.

READ MORE …

© A.J. Mahari, March 29, 2010 – All rights reserved.

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life – 19 Coaching Exercises To Help You Change Negative Thought Patterns by Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, is a 102 page Ebook chalk full of information and 19 coaching exercises to help you change negative thinking into positive thinking. This Ebook stresses how much you will benefit from focusing postively on the here-and-now so that the decisions you are making today will help you create a positive, successful and productive future. And this Ebook doesn’t just tell you that, it provides you with practical exercises that will show you how to create positive change and how to not only stop focusing on the negative, stop worrying, but also stop feeling so stressed and stop ruminating on intrusive, negative, and unwanted thoughts. Not everyone can afford Life Coaching. This Ebook gives you exercises to do that I use with many of my clients and now you too can get this help and at a fraction of the price.

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life - 19 Coaching Exercises to Tranform Negative Thoughts Into Positive Thoughts

Determination and belief are the starting points for the shift from negative thought patterns to positive thoughts that create success. Learning to lay down defenses and open your mind to new, positive, thoughts can and will help you create needed and wanted change. 

Determination and belief will open you to new opportunities to get to know who you really are and/or more about who you authentically are. Thoughts are energy. Your energy effects all areas of your life.

You can quickly and easily learn how to plant the seeds of  positive thoughts and positive energy in your life. How can you do this?

This Ebook is based on exercises that will help you to realize real answers that will help you shift your thoughts and energy from negative to positive by getting you in touch with questions that will teach you more about yourself, what you want and how to get what you want – what your goals are and how to achieve those goals.

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life, will walk you through 19 exercises that will provide you with the steps to realizing real answers and teach you to start asking the right questions. By learning how the mind works, you can understand how to break the cycles that keep you on the outside looking in, instead of where you truly want to be. Learn to ask yourself questions that will shift your energy and help you to achieve your goals. What you feel comes from what you think. Are you aware of thoughts that lead you to feel bad?

By Changing Your Thoughts you can remove any illusions or feelings of what you think is lacking in your own life. You can remove the unnamed need that eats away at you day after day. By Changing Your Thoughts you can walk away from a life that is chaotic, codependent, or constantly needing repairs. You can learn to set boundaries, value yourself, and create healthier and happier relationships. You can re-shape your reality. Shift your focus. Create positive, healthy, and lasting change.

READ MORE …

© A.J. Mahari, March 27, 2010 – All rights reserved.