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Borderlines are incapable of intimacy which leaves loved ones and family members – non borderlines -experiencing borderline push-pull which can be crazy-making. By the very nature of BPD, borderlines as the result of their defense mechanisms of splitting, projection, and narcissism, can’t help but push-pull. When those with untreated Borderline Personality Disorder try to get close to someone – attain emotional intimacy – they immediately fear engulfment so they push away or push the non borderline away.

On the other hand, or relatively quickly and perhaps within the same interaction, the slightest moving out or distance taken by someone upon whom they feel dependant sends the borderline flying back to pulling for more that very closeness they just had to repel. Until and unless a borderline gets adequate treatment and begins to change and recover from BPD (to some extent) he or she is simply not capable of consistent, congruent, age-appropriate emotional intimacy. Something that many non borderlines continue to remain in denial about and hope against hope about.

Can You Rescue a Borderline?
Splitting in Borderline Personality
Facing The Facts on The Other Side of Borderline Personality Disorder

Read More …

© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.

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A.J. Mahari has a new ebook available now called, Punishment and Revenge In Borderline Personality Disorder – The Unmastered Talionic Impulse In BPD – What Loved Ones Need To Know. This ebook includes 5 chapters and 161 pages of illuminating information offered through Mahari’s inside out awareness of the various aspects and issues that make up the foundation of the manifestation of the punishment and revenge that many borderlines seek against their loved ones.

“In this in depth ebook, A.J. Mahari masterfully explains how and why those with Borderline Personality Disorder punish others and seek revenge on those closest to them. Mahari gives the loved ones of those with BPD an inside out understanding of punishment and revenge in BPD.” – Joan Van Vork, M.S.W.

This ebook also features:

• 7 Illusions That Guide the Borderline False Self to punish others
• The Karpman Drama Triangle and Cycles of BPD punishment
• The Child/Victim Archetypes & BPD Punishment and Revenge
• 20 Foundational Keys of The Talionic Impulse For Revenge in BPD
• Freud’s Myth of the Primal Horde as relates to BPD Punishment
• The 15 most common elements in Borderline Punishment Cycle
• How Borderlines Punish – 7 Common Questions
• Why Borderlines Punish – 7 Common Questions 

For anyone with Borderline Personality Disorder, this ebook may also be helpful for you. However, you need to know that  you can cope well with reading a lot that could be triggering. There is a lot that many with BPD can learn from the insight that A.J. Mahari shares about her own journey from being a person with BPD who had unmastered and unregulated talionic impulses to someone who learned in her recovery that it was much more important to lay down the struggle for power in the face of powerlessness. Mahari also learned, as she talks about in this ebook, that to recover from BPD one has to make a conscious choice to want something – something very precious – way more then they want or need to be or feel right.

Who is your loved one with Borderline Personality Disorder -really? Does he or she sometimes act kind or caring and then on a dime, out of nowhere, either rage or disengage, detach, and give you the silent treatment? Does he or she emotionally and verbally punish you with verbal abuse? Does your loved one have a very low frustration tolerance for any frustrated want or need? Does your borderline loved one have to be right? Is he or she incapable of being disagreed with?

It is very common for those who are non-personality disordered to be very confused by this alternating punishment/revenge/rage/anger/silent treatment and then “okayness” or calmness and relative civility. It leaves loved ones exhausted, feeling lost to themselves often, frustrated, hurt, and in some cases feeling like maybe they are losing their minds. Many wonder if the person in their lives with BPD is actually two or more people because the attitudes and behavior displayed in the all-bad side of the splitting cycle are so mean, cruel, often abusive, and so unlike who they thought their loved one was or who they still hope the loved one really is.

Is it his or her way or the highway? Is it his or her way or cycles of punishment and revenge? Do you feel like you are walking on eggshells? Do you feel damned if you do and damned if you don’t, confused if all goes well and confused when it all goes to hell in a handbasket in a heartbeat?

If you can relate to these questions this is a must-read ebook for you. Mahari’s latest ebook will give you the understanding of how and why your loved one with Borderline Personality Disorder can be so punishing off and on again and how and why he or she may well seek revenge against you for slights, invalidations, and the like that you have little to no idea the origin of or reasons for.

Punishment and Revenge In Borderline Personality Disorder – The Unmastered Talionic Impulse In BPD – What Loved Ones Need To Know. This ebook will play an important role, not only in your understanding borderline punishment and revenge but also it will be a catalyst for you to seek the change that you need in yourself to reclaim your own emotional peace and to free yourself from the confusion that drives so much pain and suffering for the loved ones of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder.

© Phoenix Rising Publications and A.J. Mahari, November 28, 2009 – All rights reserved.

Power and control struggles are at the heart of much of the relating of those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The underpinnings of BPD are firmly established in dysfunctional and polarized distorted and magical thinking that, in relationships, results in power and control struggles with others.

Often these power and control struggles do not take place on a conscious level. They are rather the by-product of the loss and dissociation from true self that leads those with BPD to feel helpless, powerless, and hopeless – essentially lost and often very angry about that too.

The reason that so many with BPD feel the need to struggle for power and control stems from what is essentially their trying to live for or through others. The lack of known self drives the kind of projection (the attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others) that blurs the boundaries between where a known self would end and others begin. Without personal boundaries those with BPD often end up feeling helpless when they relate to others because essentially they ascribe everything about how they feel and what they think as taking place in others. (And often what they feel and/or how they may judge others those with BPD then believe that others are judging them.

• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
• Non Borderlines – You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• A.J.'s Audio Program The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
• A.J.'s Audio Programs For Borderlines
• A.J.'s Audio Programs For Non Borderlines

It is this very process of projection that leads to untold feelings of helplessness and varying degrees of experienced regression that leaves many with BPD feeling (on a conscious of sub-conscious level) as if everything in their environment is somehow connected to them. This is the futile defense of narcissism that raises its head when the Borderline without personal boundaries feels literally like they have no emotional skin separating them from others and the world.

What is meant by Power and Control Struggles?

Power, in a paradoxical and healthy environment and personality, is best described as the ability or capacity to perform, behave, or act effectively and appropriately.

The misuse of power that is often seen in those with BPD is usually the borderline over-compensating for feeling powerless or helpless and/or hopeless.

When one feels powerless one then feels that others have power over him or her. This is a distortion which often has its roots in unmet childhood needs generally and an invalidating environment specifically. (Or an environment in which one that is then later diagnosed with BPD experienced and/or perceived invalidation.)

Power that is exercised in a maladaptive and defensive presentation as seen in BPD often results in abuse and punishment, manipulation of others and the environment to try to re-assert a sense of safety and personal control. Personal control can often only be felt to have been regained when one (with BPD) intimidates or exercises control and/or power over another. This is often seen, for example, in the dance of “get away closer” wherein the Borderline struggles with a desire for closeness and intimacy while feeling annihilated by it at the same time.

This personal control is lacking and that is what causes the borderline to react in ways that are transgressing boundaries and age-appropriate behaviour and causing him or her to overtly or covertly control those around them and the environment.

Power and control struggles of many with BPD are reenactments of very young childhood attempts to individuate that for most with BPD failed (or they didn’t feel, perceive or understand this sense of development) leaving behind enmeshed styles of relating.

Audio Programs For Those With BPD and Loved Ones © A.J. Mahari

• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• 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
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder

Control is really about regulation. Emotional regulation, personal regulation, thought regulation and the ability to be centered and grounded within one’s self. For many with BPD, in the absence of a known authentic self they project most, if not all, of what should be their inner-reality onto those around them. Therefore, when they feel out of control it is others in the environment and/or the environment upon which they exercise the kind of intimidating, invalidating, self-absorbed and often abusive dominance that they need in order to feel that they have protected themselves. What they are actually protecting themselves from in the here and now is the past and is also their own inability to regulate themselves internally.

This control can be insidious. Often is it is presented with the kind of manipulative skill that leaves those around the borderline feeling like they are crazy and confused as to what is actually happening between them and the person with BPD. This can be the case when, for example, someone with BPD self-harms and/or engages in or acts out parasuicide or suicidal ideation or desire which are often a cry for help, attention, and a way of controlling what they feel. (And often those around them whether they realize this or not.) In the long run these types of dominating, controlling behaviour that externalizes the internal chaos of the Borderline on to those around him/her are very distancing to others. Unchecked “get away closer” usually, at some point, will result in the loss of others around one that is experienced and re-experienced as abandonment by those with BPD.

In order for relating to be healthy each person has to be honest and taking responsibility for his/her behaviour, feelings, and issues.

Philip Kavanaugh, is quoted by James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy, Pg 84, as saying, “The need for control and the addiction quest for dominance is a universal quest aimed at avoiding the inner- void.”

• 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

While this inner-void is likely to some degree felt by all humans who are alive, it is the intensity and unwavering experience and acting out of this experience by those with BPD that make their style of power and control struggles like an addiction onto themselves and so devastatingly divisive, defeating and often abusive.

This inner-void is prominent in most with BPD. (until they receive enough therapy to begin to invest in getting to know who they really are versus just protecting all that they are not.

Those with active BPD are enmeshed. Enmeshed with their pasts. Enmeshed with family of origin issues. Enmeshed with trauma. Enmeshed with all that results when people born with a proclivity toward being very sensitive meets with (what seems like or is) an invalidating environment and/or unregulated emotions projected onto others and for which many with BPD abandon all responsibility.

For many with BPD this void, this lack of a known authentic self, coupled with unresolved abandonment trauma leaves borderlines often reacting in highly sensitive and instense ways. Borderlines often feel the Shame of Abandonment that creates dysregulated emotions that stress them to the point where their first reaction to so many things relationally is rage. Rage is often seen as an abusive effort to control, and while there is this facet to it, borderline rage is much more complicated than that. It is often a protective reaction to thwarted needs, feeling or being rejected, abandoned, or invalidated. It is an emotionally immature response to unresolved abandonment trauma from the past that causes emotional dysregulation in the here and now. This emotional dysregulation fuels the narcissistic and protective borderline false self as it feels out of control and as a result exercises (often) abusive control in an attempt to overcompensate for vulnerability often not realized consciously by those with BPD and for which the borderline lacks the inter-personal skills to cope with.

Those with BPD are enmeshed with others because they lack any known sense of self. This enmeshment is often seen in the projection that those with BPD inflict upon themselves and others. They are essentially so enmeshed with their polarized thoughts, unmet needs, unresolved emotional conflicts that stem from the core wound of abandonment that they can’t see you (other) for who you actually are – as someone separate from them – because they have to see you for who they think they are, or more classically, for who their mother or father was (or abuser was).

Both those diagnosed with BPD and anyone in or who has been in a relationship with them will greatly benefit from gaining as much understanding of
BPD and the Impact of the Core Wound of Abandonment so that they can gain much needed insight and awareness into the power struggles that covertly or overtly are a part of this relational dynamic.

Borderlines (again until they do considerable healing work in therapy) have not individuated. They do not have much, if any, working understanding of the true self within that needs to mature past the point where emotional development was arrested for whatever reasons.

Philip Kavanaugh is quoted by James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy, Pg 84, “Individuation begins when we look inside ourselves for answers when we stop blaming others for our feelings and begin relating to our emotions and intuitions as our teachers”.

In order for anyone diagnosed with BPD to individuate it is essential that he or she learn to take personal responsibility for how they feel, how they think, what works and doesn’t work in his/her life. This process of individuation is a huge part of the maturation beyond arrested emotional development. The kind of arrested emotional development one has experienced and subsequently been stuck in the self-defeating cycle of perpetually.

Healing and recovery from power and control issues demand that those with BPD not only individuate but also take responsibility for choices made. No matter what happens to us in our lives or what needs are or aren’t met, whether or not we are abused and so forth, each one of us has to choose to stop investing in the blaming of others (or blaming ourselves for things we couldn’t control as children) and the continuing to invest in being a victim of our pasts, our parents, our lives, and/or our life circumstances.

• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
• Non Borderlines – You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• A.J.'s Audio Program The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
• A.J.'s Audio Programs For Borderlines or Non Borderlines
• A.J.'s Audio Programs For Non Borderlines

Power and control struggles are no longer necessary when one actively assumes responsibility for him/herself. What emerges then with an individuated known true self is an open non-polarized thinking person who makes an active choice to mature, to heal, to recover, to learn and grow – to be open as opposed to the polarized Borderline choice to remain closed and protective seeing and experiencing everything and everyone as threatening. It is these perceptions that cause those with BPD to remain entangled and enmeshed in the power and control struggles that are essentially the roots of normal development throughout childhood to individuate and create and support one’s own true identity.

Power and control struggles and the manipulation and deceit that accompany them will give way to limits and boundaries, goals, known beliefs, ethics, values and choices. This can only happen when those with BPD make the choice to invest in recovery rather than continuing to invest in staying lost, enmeshed, and protective of what is a very self-absorbed and annihilated place and way to be.

Polarized thinking keeps the need for power and control struggles alive also. Learning to think in rational, pragmatic age-appropriate ways that make paradoxical thinking and living possible will extinguish the need to try to have control over anyone but yourself or to try to take power from anyone else.

Power and control struggles are only made necessary in the absence of age-appropriate maturation that is a direct result of the arrested emotional development of those who are diagnosed with BPD. Choice is everything. Choosing to recover must be an active choice to stop engaging in self-absorbed, self-protective regressed behaviour that does not and cannot serve one in adulthood. Power and control struggles are made necessary by the absence of true self and by a lack of boundaries, limits, goals and age-appropriate honest assertion of one’s needs and desires.

© Ms. A.J. Mahari, June 20, 2005 – with an addition July 3, 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.

“I hate you, don’t leave me” is a borderline mantra. It is a theme driven by a lack of known
true self and primitive fear and anxiety generated by profound intrapsychic wounds in early developmental
years by those later diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This dance or dynamic of pathological
regressed relating on the part of those with BPD is the root cause of so much pain for those with BPD and
those who love and care about them in relationships. It is a central causative reality as to why so many
relationships fail. Those who are non-borderline in relationships with those with BPD need to understand
why they are hated one minute and loved and/or needed the next minute.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) profoundly inhibits those diagnosed with it from bonding in healthy ways that can then lead to productive relating in any and
all forms/types of relationships.

It isn’t really possible to bond with others in healthy ways when one does not know who they are and is not bonded to one’s own true self.

Most with BPD struggle with intense and very unstable relationships. All-too-often relationships just don’t work for them or those who love and care about them. There is a tremendous amount of pain that those in these relationships experience on both sides of the Borderline Personality Disorder fence.

Why is it the case that more relationships than not with and for those with BPD do not work out or last?

Put simply, it’s that Borderline Dance of “I hate you, don’t leave me.” This dynamic dance is set in motion when the person diagnosed with BPD tries to be close to someone. It kicks in for most when they are in a relationship in which attempts at intimacy are made.

In order to be able to be truly intimate and not threatened and/or triggered by it one has to be able to tolerate distance. Many with BPD are unable to tolerate average healthy distance that is necessary in healthy relationships. Rather they experience this distance as rejection and/or abandonment. The intense feelings that these feelings of rejection and/or abandonment fuel is the impetus that causes those with BPD to feel a desperate need to defend against the very one they love and partly want to be close to. This distances the borderline’s partner in often abusive ways and leave the borderline feeling rejected and/or abandoned again. It is a very self-defeating circle to be stuck in.

For most with BPD, until they find themselves and reclaim true self and personhood in therapy, intimacy and being close to anyone is far too threatening. While they may really want to be close they fear it with as much, if not more, intensity, and end up defending against it and pushing away what they really want in need with and from the other person. This sets up the borderline to continue to re-experience this upheaval as rejection and/or abandonment which in a cognitively-distorted way then supports the borderline belief that they are not safe in trying to be close and that they need to defend. Thus a virtually unending cycle of self-defeat is perpetuate by many with BPD. This borderline cycle leaves those close to the person with borderline in a double-bind “no win” situation.

Why do those with BPD fear closeness and intimacy?

Closeness and intimacy are feared because lacking a stable sense of true identity those with BPD fear being engulfed which is tantamount for them to being annihilated and seeking to exist. What gets set up in relationships for those with BPD is the re-playing of their past relationships. Past relationships which often were riddled with emotional trauma, mixed messages, and insecurity. The feelings of being engulfed as a child feel annihilating because one is needy and
dependant upon parents or caretakers.

This child-like neediness is re-enacted with those who have BPD in intimate relationships (and sometimes in friendships too) because it is all those with BPD know. They know a fear that is so deeply ingrained in a profound woundedness that is then played out over and over in a repetition compulsion the genesis of which has at its source a deep-seated need to resolve the primitive emotional and developmental conflicts generated in the borderline’s experience of being neglected,
abandoned, rejected and invalidated (real, actual and/or perceived).

This Borderline Dance of “I hate you, don’t leave me” puts an enormous amount of pressure and responsibility upon the friend or non-borderline partner. Many with BPD transfer their personal responsibility onto a partner. More often than not the partner of someone who is in the active throes of BPD (usually untreated)
is seen more often than not as the parent of the borderline in what are constant triggered, fragmented, dissociated ways that the borderline is
experiencing his/her past in most here and now relational moments.

The Borderline Dance of, “I hate you, don’t leave me” is a very painful dynamic for the borderline and the non-borderline partner to be in. It is important to gain awareness and understanding of this in order to seek help and to have an opportunity to change this dynamic before your relationship is lost to it. Professional intervention is necessary to take this unhealthy and painful dynamic and to help the evolution from this dance to healthier ways of relating.

If you have been diagnosed with BPD (and you haven’t already) you need to get professional help to take responsibility for your own behaviour and for any and all pain that you are
causing anyone else as well as yourself. If you continue to believe that it is your partner’s fault or responsibility you will continue to remain stuck
in a very painful dynamic within a relationship that likely isn’t working and won’t or can’t survive as such.

If you are the non-borderline partner and you believe you are in this dynamic and dance of “I hate you, don’t leave me” with your borderline partner it is crucial that you understand you cannot change it or change your borderline partner, you must take care of yourself and hope that your borderline partner will seek professional help. Borderlines can be helped by competent therapists. They must be willing to get this help themselves. If they are not, than as the non-borderline partner in the relationship you really must assess your needs and perhaps get professional assistance yourself to determine what is best for you (and any children involved).

For more on this and many other BPD-related issues please check out the ebooks written by &copy A.J. Mahari about
various aspects of BPD – available now at PhoenixRising Publications

&copy A.J. Mahari Thursday December 22, 2005 – All rights reserved.

Those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) need to become as aware as they can of the fact that BPD not only effects them but that it also profoundly effects their relationship partners, family members, friends, and co-workers. There is a lot of pain associated with BPD for those diagnosed with it and for those on the other side of BPD – non borderlines.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) puts a tremendous strain on even the best or closest relationships. Whether you have a partner – husband or wife, a girlfriend/boyfriend, friends or even a family member with BPD – any or all relationships can be very strained, if not lost, if those who have BPD do not work to heal much of the aspects of how the BPD traits affect them and the ways that they relate to others.

In my experience, when I had BPD, the most profound area of life that was affected by BPD was that of relationships. In my experience with BPD, that was the case right from my relationship to and with myself, to the relationships within my family of origin, friendships and romantic relationships. All were drastically affected by the way in which BPD had manifested itself in me.

For years I really didn’t understand what "relating" was. I didn’t understand what it entailed. This is due not only to having BPD, but also is rooted in my growing up in a dysfunctional family where "relating" truly was an unknown concept. We didn’t relate to each other. We yelled at each other. We raged at each other. I was abused. I became verbally abusive at a very young age. The love in our "home" was toxic love – not healthy love.

Within the confines of that toxic love, growing up, I learned that my feelings were not valid. I learned that what I felt did not matter. I learned that what I thought was not important. I learned that caring was not valued. I was taught that it was wrong to "need" anybody for anything. It was weak to need, weak to want, weak to care, weak to feel. I was weak. I learned that I was weak. To overcompensate for this "weakness" (which I now know was just me being human) I shoved everything in, became dissociated from my emotions, didn’t even know when I was hungry anymore.

• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
• 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.

I was expected to eat (be hungry) whenever my parents got around to wanting to eat. For most of my life I was evolving to learn when I was actually physically hungry as opposed to wanting to eat to be social, or to "feed some other need" (emotional). This is just one of the many ways that my relationship to myself, my knowledge of myself was lost. I also watched my father and his mother (my grandmother) and their non-existent relationships to themselves and their unhealthy relationships with food.

One of the single most important things one must do if one has BPD is to find out who you really are. The loss of core authentic self is so profound that it effects all of a borderline’s efforts to relate. I  learned, rather the hard way, that I could not know anyone, until I first knew myself. I have now recovered from BPD and have found my authentic self. I now know who I am.

As the result of BPD in my life, I lost countless friends, relationships and opportunities to just be me. Why? The major reason across the board was lack of personal responsibility. This meant that I (unbeknownst to myself then) would look to others for my safety and to meet my needs. People cannot do this and be healthy. Life is designed so that a part from taking care of children, adults are supposed to have learned how to take care of themselves. This is just not always possible. (for many reasons)

Most with BPD, especially if untreated, continue to lose relationships and re-experience those losses as further abandonment when really, more often than not, those with BPD, distance others or reject others before they can be rejected or end up feeling abandoned.

Those with BPD do not know how to cope with what healthy age-appropriate, mutual, and reciprocal emotional intimacy requires. Borderlines, usually, without conciously being aware or understanding this, attempt to meet their unmet emotional/psychological needs (unresolved childhood abandonment) through the very people they try to relate to. This is a recipe for toxic, unhealthy (co-dependent) relating that sooner or later sees most relationships rupture.

What about BPD most effects relationships with others?

1)  Not knowing yourself

2)  Not having healthy boundaries/expectations of self or others

3)  Wanting to be close but not knowing how to tolerate it
     (Wanting it but fearing it equally)

4)  Seeking intimacy without being capable of it. This results
     in push/pull behaviour and "get away closer" behaviour

5)  Being real–being honest. It’s difficult to be real and
     honest in any consistent way when you just don’t know who
     you are or what you value, or even believe from minute to
     minute.

6)  Rage-anger-temper tantrums-giving the silent treatment-
    punishing someone for caring about you, or liking/loving   
     you – being cold and uncaring

7)  Control, manipulation, lies, (Both 6 & 7 imply some "entitlement" as if you are somehow
     deserving to get what you cannot give)

  Unrealistic expectations

9)  Not having the capability or desire to meet your own needs

10) Lacking the maturity necessary to have healthy adult
      relationships (physically and or emotionally)

11) Excessive focus on yourself – narcissism – egocentricity
      an need or distorted perception that you are the center
      of the universe.

12) Grandiosity – or poor self-image, putting yourself down
      constantly – poor self-esteem.

• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
• 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.

There are many other factors (so many are so individual) other than those that I have listed. The point is that when one has BPD it is up to each individual to work at these aspects of him/herself and more. It is the only way to learn how to relate in ways that are healthier. It can be painful to be getting older and trying to learn what one "should" have learned as a child. The point, now though, is that each of person with BPD is where he/she is and all that can be done with that reality is to recognize the relational challenges and difficulties that BPD presents you with and learn to take personal responsibility for those challenges.

Other aspects of BPD which make relating so difficult include polarized cognitively distorted thinking, projection (when not aware of it or when you don’t take responsibility for it) and transference. It is essential that you be willing to learn how to "own your stuff".

Another big factor that often ruins relationships is that of cognitively-distorted thinking and the tendency to assume, jump to conclusions and the paranoid ideations and general suspecting nature. After all how can you be expected to trust someone else if you haven’t yet learned to trust yourself? Magical thinking and ideas of reference along with rumination all tend to severely inhibit one’s thought process to the point that someone without a personality disorder can get totally lost trying to relate to what you believe to be "real."

It is essential to learn how to appreciate "The Big Picture" when relating to yourself and or others. It is in the "Big Picture" that reality outside of ourselves and our own thoughts exists and unfolds. Have you ever accused someone of something just based on what you thought? That’s an example of reacting to BPD reality which is often snippet’s of what is actually real….beyond oneself. People do not usually react too well to being accused of things that make no sense to them.

What a borderline may think, seems and feels very real to them. Essentially, however, what a borderline thinks she thinks is actually experienced as what she feels. There is a disconnect between what one thinks and what one feels. What seems and feels very real can shift from moment to moment, depending largely upon how one feels about themselves. This is a challenge for sure. It can be very difficult to hold or wrestle with conflicting feels and thoughts inside of yourself and maintain a consistent outward presentation for others that is a part of that "big picture." It can be done. It takes a lot of practice and hard work. It takes being kind to yourself when you loose track of it in relating to someone else.

In order to have healthier relationships I found that I had to work very hard to eliminate most of the "BPD" presentation from my life so that I did not alienate, confuse, or push others away. So far, I must say that it works. It is possible to slowly get to know others without trying to control or manipulate them. It is much more satisfying to when you come to sense that they like you for who you are. That can be intimidating though because like so many other things in BPD and in relating others one has to be vigilant and not slip back into old sabotaging behaviour.

• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
• 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.

It all comes down to finding yourself, getting to know yourself, (your authentic self) accepting/liking and loving that self. With these things in place, the world as you’ve known it will begin to change. Your relationships will begin to change for the better and much more satisfying. It is important to being open to learning, often the hard way, through trial and error.

Experience is the best teacher around. Therefore it is very important to be cognizant of what hasn’t worked in the past and what does work now. If you continue to make the same choices you will continue to get the same results. The challenge at the heart of BPD, for those with BPD, is coming to increased awareness about the choices that you have been making and choices that it will benefit you to change.

Relating is a process. Learning to change your style of relating takes time. There are no immediate rewards but one of the first "rewards" I experienced was learning to find, then know and then respect my authentic self. It was much more important than how many friends I had. Making friends, if you’ve not always had friends can be particularly stressful. Be patient, work hard, and be kind to yourself.

BPD can be undone, one step at a time. If something that you are doing in relating to others does not work, take it to therapy, you can undo it.

For those who are non borderline and in relationship to someone with BPD it is very important that you learn all you can about BPD so that you can make the choices that are necessary for you to take care of your own mental health and well-being.

© Ms. A.J. Mahari – May 2, 1999 (with additions April 22, 2008)

It is in and through the dynamic of toxic unhealthy relating and relationships that The Personality Disordered and The Non Personality Disordered Interconnect and Suffer

Toxic relationships seem to be pervasive to the point where healthy relationships are in the minority. Toxic relationships are proliferating and have been doing so for the better part of the last few decades.

Toxic relationships are the coming together of adults, who carry wounded children deep inside of them, and who were raised in dysfunctional families that by their very nature are also toxic.

Toxic relationships are battle-grounds mistaken for what is thought of as "love" in which the personality-disordered and the non-personality disordered come together, intersect, interconnect and increase each other’s pain and suffering no matter how hard they try to make things work. (sometimes both parties in a toxic relationship are in fact personality-disordered)

The dynamic is such that it is engulfing and pervasive in its ritualistic patterned familiarity. Each person involved in a toxic relationship is an individual, of course, and yet to the observer of the foundational schemas of these relationships the twists and turns are so predictable that they could well appear as if they’d been scripted and everyone had read the same book kind of thing.

What I think most people don’t realize when they get wrapped up in the painful chaos of these kinds of relationships is that it is the very familiarity of that pain and chaos that paradoxically attracts and repels you, enlivens you and exhausts you, that pulls you in and pushes you out.

For the personality-disordered it is the only way that they know how to relate. For those who do not have personality disorders, but who do, more often than not have codependence issues that are tip of the iceberg of what are deeper unresolved issues from childhood the fit between them and the personality-disorders is a pre-cast psychological mold that merely awaits your jumping right in to it.

And jump people do. There is fit between those who were raised in toxic dysfunctional and abusive homes who do not develop personality disorders and those who are raised in toxic dysfunctional families and do develop and get diagnosed with a personality disorder. After all, what in my last sentence is the essential difference between the personality-disordered and those who get involved in the toxic and often trauma bonded dysfunctional relationships that are more the norm these days?

The only difference in the arena of toxic relating between the personality-disordered and their partners is the personality disorder itself. The backgrounds, the home lives, the unresolved past issues often have many common themes and common manifestations of woundedness in varying degrees.

This is why the dance is such that many people with or without  a personality disorder will go through series of these type of toxic dysfunctional and chaotic relationships.

It is the familiarity that truly breeds the contempt. The contempt that the personality-disordered and the non-personality-disordered develop for each other as each regresses to past unresolved issues "at" each other (which really has all to do with issues that each partner has with a parent and the reality that they are relating to that parent and not even seeing each other) to the point that the past is so prevalent in the present that the "now" gets totally lost. Who each partner is in a toxic relationship is lost to the partner being related to as if he or she was that parent-figure. While this is very central in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder variations to lessor degrees do play out from non-personality-disordered as well. For the non-personality-disordered person involved with someone with BPD they are referred to as non borderlines.

The legacy of toxic relationships starts before we even realize that there is a devastating problem or untold emotional pain and further abuse and psychological woundedness. The legacy of toxic relating is carried from the past by so many people now that what is seen when they meet each other and begin to "fall in love" is really not about "love" it is really about that familiarity to a parent whose "love" one was never able to attain. That’s what the chase is about. That’s why it all feels so compelling and the rush to "love" (really it’s love/hate) is on to get into a relationship (that is really going to be an emotional war).

The other facet of the legacy of toxic relationships, of course, is the damage done and the untold pain suffered in these relationships as adults. If you are in a toxic relationship now, or have been recently, and you are still hurting, angry, or grieving, ask yourself what it was that was so familiar that it hooked you so totally that you ignored your own instincts, your own intellectual reasoning, your own spiritual knowing – what was so compelling?

What is it from your own past that led you to enmesh with someone in a situation in which you simultaneously handed your self over to someone else and threw your self away?

When you find the answer to that question you will discover the true nature of the legacy of toxic relating from your past. You will also discover how and why you made the choices that you did. You will then know better.

When you know better you will do better. Your understanding will have been hard-fought for and you will learn what you need to learn, in time.

The reality for those who are the non-personality-disordered side of toxic relationships is that there is something about your experience in life that led you to make what you now know were self-defeating, self-destructive choices.

The legacy of toxic relationships is all-too-often wrapped up in what becomes a blame game. The dilemma of escape is really what should be of paramount importance. It is only after these kinds of relationships have been ended that each person can go their own way and really get their own healing work done.

The legacy of toxic relationships is one that compounds what is already unresolved pain from your past whether you are aware of this or its roots in your life or not. The reality of this compounded legacy is that as you try to escape the relationship and its pain you seek relief while paradoxically needing to get in touch with the source of your unresolved pain.

The legacy of these relationships is very painful. The legacy of these relationships over and above the pain, the drama, and the endless and equally compelling chaos is the reality of the lessons that you need to seek after by living your questions so that you can find the answers you need to heal what you need to heal so that you can find healthier relationships and so that you can truly come to a reasonable working-definition of what love is versus all that it is not.

The legacy of any and all toxic relating is deep, profound, and can be lasting if it is not actively healed and recovered from. To heal and to recover both the personality-disordered and the non-personality-disordered must look within and stop laying blame with each other.

The legacy of toxic relationships is that the "love" perceived and sought after, wasn’t healthy love at all – it was toxic love. This toxic "love" speaks loudly to the intra-psychic woundedness of the young inner child in both the personality disordered and the non-personality-disordered.

Each must do their own work to heal and recover. Each has issues that while similar are not exactly the same but then when mixed surely make for an intensity that is by its very chaotic and dramatic nature toxic, compelling to the point of all-consuming, and extremely dangerous.

Toxic "love" is abusive and is about control, not healthy love. It is painful. It can become addictive. It erodes the self, of both the non-personality-disordered and to whatever degree, if at all the personality disordered have an intact self, those with personality disorders as well.

© A.J. Mahari