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.

 

 

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Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) can be reduced to a series of inter-connected and, at times, elaborate defenses that serve to promote dissociation or fragmentation and denial – living in fragments of the past superimposed upon the here and now in and through the borderline false self that makes getting to one’s true essence and lost authentic self like walking backwards through a maze. Getting real is what is needed in order to create the kind of change required to find and stay on the road to recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder

A.J. Mahari’s Life Coaching Services

• General Life Coaching
• Emotional Mastery Coaching
• Coaching for those with Borderline Personality Disorder or Loved Ones
• Mental Health Coaching
• Codependence/Toxic Relationship Coaching

 

Denial, dissociation, and defense mechanisms, generally, all serve to keep the person with BPD out of his or her pain. A pain that only increases the more it is denied. Continuing to seek relief from the denied and dissociated from abandoned pain of his or her past keeps the borderline stuck in the active throes of distorted perception in which he or she is feels like a perpetual victim.

In his book, The Angry Heart, Joseph Santoro, Ph.D., talking about what he calls “Dead Ends” writes:

“There are other motives that you need to become aware of. Though not as deep as revenge, they can still keep you trapped in the Borderline Zone for a very long time. The motives are pleasing others, seeking out sympathy, and defeating others. They cause dead-end behavior. Dead-end behavior, as the name implies, keeps you trapped in the Borderline Zone. On the surface such behavior may seem quite appropriate, but over time it becomes apparent that it is not.”

“Dead-end behaviors include blaming yourself, somatic distractions, fabricating stories about your life, pretending to dissociate, merging with your environment, becoming a rebel without a clue and playing mind games with professionals…”

“Typically, people trapped in the Borderline Zone subconsciously use these behaviors to get their needs met or to avoid facing their pain.”

In my past experience with BPD, before I recovered 15 years ago, fragmentation and/or denial, kept me stuck for a lot of years in my life. I was not able to move beyond the “dead-end behavior” that Santoro outlines in his book, The Angry Heart. Change and recovery can only come about after understanding. Understanding cannot be achieved until one stops old self-defeating behaviour. I learned this first-hand and absolutely the hard way in my own recovery from BPD.

Walking backwards through the maze of Borderline Personality Disorder serves to increase what is often, already, unbearable pain and angst. Why do so many with BPD end up continuing to punish themselves this way?

A great deal of the punishment or increased pain and trauma stems from not facing the abandoned pain that is there to begin with. This pain and reality is then compounded by all the efforts made to escape it instead of face it, deal with it, feel it and heal it.

The journey from false self to authentic self that is the required journey in order to create and solidify the change, healing and recovery from BPD that involves the re-parenting of the lost authentic self. It is also a chosen journey of self-discovery. It is the erasing of past-tapes that play over and over again in one’s head. This journey to health requires honesty and a willingness to put aside self-loathing long enough to begin to embrace the lost self that exists under the shame , blame, rage, pain that is the legacy of abandonment, desolation, alienation, isolation and elaborate maze of self-defeating borderline defense mechanisms.

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• 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

 

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Borderlines cannot change and recover unless they are willing to feel the pain of their unmet needs and lack of healthy, defined, authentic self. A self that must grow to be consistent and able to withstand the triggers and all that pulls one to revert back to old ways of thinking and behaving that re-create the emotional dysregulation that has its roots in the core wound of abandonment.

If you want to change and to recover you need to get real. While this has become a ‘Dr. Philism’ in our culture of late, it is an absolute necessity in this process. Nothing short of seeking to get real and coming to know what that even means will aid in a borderline getting on the road to recovery.

Life, if you have BPD, doesn’t have to be a maze. You don’t have to continue to walk through it or stumble through it backwards. I realize that while in the active throes of BPD, or as Santoro refers to it, “the borderline zone” the pain, dissociation (fragmentation) and desire to escape it all continues to feed this personality disorder in a way that just keeps increasing your pain and your experience of the Borderline World. A world that is distinctly parallel to the world that others experience. It is this parallel reality of the Borderline World and the Non Borderline World that will continue to see efforts to maintain relationships fail. 

A.J. Mahari’s Life Coaching Services

• General Life Coaching
• Emotional Mastery Coaching
• Coaching for those with Borderline Personality Disorder or Loved Ones
• Mental Health Coaching
• Codependence/Toxic Relationship Coaching

 

When you are borderline, or in the “Borderline Zone”, life unfolds in a way that consistently meets with your cognitively distorted understanding of what is going on around you. Your rigid black and white thinking, your adherence to cognitively-distorted thoughts that drive situationally-inappropriate emotions that result from your triggered emotional dysregulation continue to define your world and your experience of it. A rigid world of polar opposites that is in direct paradox from that of the world that those who do not have BPD experience and understand. To bridge that gap, borderlines must do the very difficult work of getting beyond the defense mechanisms that are actually keeping them from meeting the needs that they so long to have met and need to meet themselves.

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• 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

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Our pasts and our genetics (to some extent or another) play key roles in the reality that becomes the borderline script. If you have BPD, this is what you are so familiar with. Even though you know that adhering to this borderline script hurts you way more than it helps you. Your tremendous fear of everything otherwise unknown, untried, new and/or different compels you to re-enact that which is familiar to you. This is the on-going impact of the unresolved core wound of abandonment. This happens because you are in such dire need of feeling safe and even tormenting familiarity seems to give you the illusion it can provide that safety. A safety that has essentially, for the borderline, ironically become The Comfort of Pain.

Getting real, stepping out of the maze, deciding to take the journey from false self to authentic self as opposed to living through the borderline false self means facing your abandoned pain. It means letting go of the dysfunctional defense mechanisms that you’ve clung to now for so long. It means learning to take responsibility for yourself and your actions in ways that prepare you for recovery from BPD. Letting go can be very fear-producing. This getting real and letting go is best done in therapy with a trusted therapist and in a safe environment.

If each person with BPD doesn’t learn to let go of the dysfunctional behaviour and thoughts that support this personality disorder and stop investing in choosing them over and over again they cannot free themselves from the repeating pattern of the core wound of abandonment and the false self failure, loss, ever-increasing pain, lostness, and disconnectedness.

Feeling like a failure, or just plain failing, in life, at work, at home, in relationships, along with feeling lost, disconnected, isolated, alienated and so forth, only serves to strengthen your inability to take personal responsibility and increase your pain. This leads you to then feel more fragmented, deny even more and try harder through increased acting out and/or other forms of dysfunctional behaviour to meet all the unmet needs that you have. This is a self-defeating circle of cause and effect.

A.J. Mahari’s Life Coaching Services

• General Life Coaching
• Emotional Mastery Coaching
• Coaching for those with Borderline Personality Disorder or Loved Ones
• Mental Health Coaching
• Codependence/Toxic Relationship Coaching

 

To break this cycle you need to stop looking at those around you as the problem. Stop believing that others are always hurting you, victimizing you or out to get you and realize that you are responsible for your own lot in life now. Educate yourself about both the core wound of abandonment and the on-going impact of the core wound of abandonment. You will also benefit from learning as much as you can about the reality of abandonment that is so central to Borderline Personality Disorder and the shame of that abandonment – shame that can keep you stuck and trapped in the active and painful throes of BPD.

Take an inventory of your behaviour. Think about how you treat yourself and how you treat others. If you are self-harming and/or self-abusive then you can’t be anything but abusive with others. When borderlines act in ways that others don’t understand and ways that violate the boundaries and safety of others, distance, which is often experienced and/or perceived as abandonment just sets the whole cycle in motion to play out yet again and again. If you want to change what you experience, you need to change what you experience from yourself and what others experience from you. You need to choose to create change from the inside out. Change does not happen from the outside in. Change can be created when you take personal responsibility for it, choose it, follow through on what you need to learn to be able to support it. Change is created from the inside out.

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• 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
  

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Change, healing and recovery, along with emotional freedom from this most distressing and painful personality disorder awaits your decision to get real and to take personal responsibility. You have the ability to make new choices. To get new results you must make new choices. To understand you must be willing to look beyond all that you have believed up to this point in your life. You must be willing to reach out and to trust that what others are saying, as foreign as it seems to you, has value and worth and can make sense on the other side of your denial and dissociation. It will all make sense when you rid yourself of the stock piles of rage, hurt, and the vulnerability of your past and begin to forge a strong sense of self and identity in the here and now.

What was for you, if you have BPD, an annihilating, crushing, and abandoning wounding vulnerability when you were young and at the mercy of the core wound of abandonment initially, can now be transformed into the strength that vulnerability can also be. Being open to your vulnerability now can and will teach you what you need to know to get on the road to recovery and to prepare you for recovery from BPD.

Denial, dissociation, fragmentation, avoidance, and excuses, along with feeling, poor me will only continue to increase your abandoned pain and your need to escape it at all costs. Healing is about finding the real you and then living with integrity. Avoidance of yourself and your pain will keep you trapped in the parallel world of Borderline Personality Disorder and all its triggered emotional dysregulation. A world that holds you in its grip in such as way as to squeeze the life out of you. What you need to know is that you are truly the master of that world, from the inside out. You are the one whose hands are squeezing now. You are not being squeezed by anyone other than yourself. You really have more power than you might imagine to effect the change that you most need and likely really do want in your life. Dare to go for it. Dare to let a professional help you. Dare to get into treatment for the long haul being determined to stop at nothing short of recovery. The choice really is yours. Choose wisely.

© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.

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The fundamentally foundational epicenter of Borderline Personality Disorder is abandonment. This abandonment experience can be actual or perceived. Abandonment that is perceived is still very real to the person perceiving it. Many people are unaware of the scope and nature of the wide and encompassing spectrum of all that abandonment is. Abandonment can be very obvious or very subtle. Many people with BPD dissociate from what are traumatic and overwhelming feels of abandonment. This means that what author and life coach, A.J. Mahari, refers to as the core wound of abandonment in Borderline Personality Disorder is one that continues to cause a disconnect from identity – the lost self and continues to be the seat of rage in BPD and shame in those with Borderline Personality Disorder.

It is from the heart of this abandonment trauma that people with Borderline Personality Disorder essentially block the very awareness that they need to realize in order to get on and stay on the road to recovery.

Loved ones are very much also effected by the many ways that people with BPD are not able to maintain healthy relationships. Loved ones will also benefit from learning more about abandonment in BPD and how it effects them.

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• The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
• From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Child
• BPD and Abandonment
• Finding Hope From the Polarized Reality of BPD
• Preparing For Recovery From BPD
• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder

      Audio Programs © A.J. Mahari

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In this video, recorded in 2008, A.J. Mahari on abandonment in BPD

Launch in external player

A.J. coaches both those with BPD and loved ones of BPD as a BPD Coach

• The Puzzle and Mystery of Hope on the Other Side of BPD
• Inside The Borderline Mind
• 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 © A.J. Mahari

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© A.J. Mahari, February 15, 2010 – All rights reserved.

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Rigid thought patterns in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are one of the central manifestations of all that Borderline Personality is and means in the lives of those who have been diagnosed with it. Loved ones and family members are often hurt and confused by these rigid thought patterns also. BPD Coach A.J. Mahari identifies three main reasons why people with BPD have such rigid thought patterns. These rigid thought patterns actually trap people in the active throes of BPD until and unless they get professional help to begin to learn how to think beyond the constricted magical thinking of a primitive concept of cause and effect. Primitive concepts of cause and effect that along with rigid thought patterns are at the center of The Legacy of Abandonment in BPD A legacy of abandonment that is the central cause of Rage in BPD. 

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Abandonment in BPD Audio
BPD For Beginners Audio
Emotional Dysregulation in BPD Audio
Finding Hope From the Polarized Thinking in BPD Audio
The Shame of Abandonment in BPD Audio

  Audio Programs  © A.J. Mahari

 

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Rigid thinking, in people who go on to be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, are created by the following key experiences and or perceptions. Experiences and perceptions that form the foundation of core beliefs – the negative core beliefs of borderline cognitivitely distorted thinking that is firmly fixed or set often by  3-7 years of age. 

1) Insecure attachment or failure to bond: For many varied  reasons, people who are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder as they get older, have not experienced a secure attachment or bond with a parent or care-taker. This is also experienced and/or perceived as an abandonment. It leaves the young infant, toddler, or child, feeling unsafe. When one feels unsafe it is a natural reflex to try in whatever way one can to protect oneself from these very overwhelming feelings that one has no tools or skills to cope with at such a young age. When protection – one’s survival mechanism kicks in and one begins to fight feeling abandoned and unsafe development gets severely compromised. We cannot learn and protect at the same time. If one is protecting from a very early age, one cannot be learning all that is necessary to mature in healthy emotional/psychological ways. 

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• 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 Non Borderlines © A.J. Mahari 

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2) Abandonment – actual or perceived – Many people think abandonment means only physical abandonment, when a parent or care-taker is no longer there. While that can be experienced as abandonment if a parent or care-taker leaves or dies, abandonment is a much more encompassing experience than that. Abandonment can be experienced or perceived when attachment or bonding is not unfolding in firm and secure ways. Abandonment is a reaction to feeling unsafe. It is a terrifying feeling for a young infant, toddler, or child, whose survival depends upon the care of others. In those who go on to be diagnosed with BPD, the most significant abandonment trauma is caused by actual physical abandonment, abuse – which is abandonment, or this lack of bonding because secure attachment and bonding are necessary in order for healthy emotional and psychological development to progress as the child matures through the stages of development. When attachment is not secure and bonding fails or is absent the abandonment felt is so disrupting to child development that what is experienced and set in motion is arrested emotional development. This is why so much of “borderline” behaviour is comparable to the thought patterns (or lack thereof) and the reactions of a very young child. People with BPD have not been able to mature beyond emotional arrests in their development from very early stages of human development. Abandonment is also experienced and/or perceived when a young child’s emotional/psychological and/or physical needs are not met. 

3) Unmet Needs: Unmet emotional, psychological, and developmental needs, for whatever constellation of reasons creates the experience or perception of abandonment. Feeling that a parent or care-giver is not emotionally available creates an invalidating relational experience for the young child whose needs are not being met. The seeds are being planted for negative core beliefs that will form long before one can be consciously aware of them. Defense mechanisms emerge and are employed much more often than are healthy for a young child. Conflicts arise around attachment and relating. When one develops a distrust for the very person that his or her survival depends upon this is an impossible conflict. It is one that sets the stage for “borderline” splitting. The child needs mommy – needs “good mommy” so when mother responds with food or basic needs, mommy is seen as “all-good”. When mommy doesn’t respond to a need of a young child, and it causes pain, fear, and insecurity, the child feels abandonment, needy, scared, helpless, and unsafe creating the perception that mommy is “all-bad” 

 

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• 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

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Rigid thought patterns, based upon beliefs created around experience – negative “feeling” experience - emerge from these formative years and the profound experience and/or perception of abandonment that is so central to the development of Borderline Personality Disorder. Thought patterns that support protection versus learning. Thought patterns that are often over-compensating for feeling so vulnerable, in so much pain, so unsafe, as to feel that one is going to die because everything comes to feel threatening. Thought patterns that are black and white because a young child cannot integrate the inherent conflict of needing someone for survival who is in one way or another (actual or perception-based) hurting him or her and causing him or her to feel first unsafe, and subsequently as he/she gets a bit older – invalidated. 

Rigid thought patterns are actually developed from a very young age. They continue to find validation in the child’s experience and are validated by that experience or perception and are strengthened by it in subconscious ways. There is a tremendous amount of intra-psychic pain associated with insecure or lack of attachment and bonding, abandonment, and unmet needs. The experience of these 3 foundational building blocks of rigid thought patterns is very painful. It is all much more pain than a young child has any way of processing or coping with. 

© A.J. Mahari, February 9, 2010 – 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 

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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.

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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.

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Those with Borderline Personality Disorder tend to blame others for their problems and how they feel. Borderlines as a means of protecting themselves from the unrecognized and/or unconscious pain of the core wound of abandonment project their thoughts and feelings onto others. This makes everything seem to the borderline as if what is coming from or being done by him or her is actually coming from or being said or done by the loved one – the non borderline. Blame is a lack of personal responsibility that keeps people with BPD stuck in the active throes and suffering of Borderline Personality Disorder.

It can be confusing for those with BPD and crazy-making for loved ones of those with BPD. It leads to a relational dynamic that I refer to as the blame game – a game that nobody actually has a chance of winning. A game that hurts all involved in the dynamic of borderline relating that manifests in this borderline blame.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder blame others because they do not know who they themselves are because they lack a stable sense of self or any authentic connection to the lost authentic self that leaves each person with BPD in an often desperate search for his or her identity. People with BPD lose the authentic self to the arrested emotional development caused by abandonment. They live and relate to others through a defensive borderline false self that is at the heart of so much of the turmoil in what develops as a blame game.

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• The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
• From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Child
• BPD and Abandonment
• Finding Hope From the Polarized Reality of BPD
• Preparing For Recovery From BPD
• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder

               Audio Programs © A.J. Mahari

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In my journey of recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, (BPD) without realizing it for a great number of years I was constantly blaming others for my problems and for my pain.

It is very typical for someone with BPD to honestly believe, while in the throes of a cognitively distorted thought process that everything they feel is someone else’s fault. So often, a person with BPD will take out their confusion and pain on those who try to care; on those who try to get close and try to stay close. What happens when someone tries to care of to be close for many with BPD is that once a certain line is crossed in closeness or familiarity the other person ceases to be who they are in the reality of the world of the borderline.

Borderline narcissism takes over. What is then experienced from the inside (usually unbeknownst to the borderline) is a very deep and intense transference. What the borderline feels deep inside (often this is a very large amount of pain) is projected out on to the close person (or caring person) who often then becomes a “parent figure” as a transference takes place – the closest loved one.

What this means is that instead of being in the here and now with someone who is trying to care about you and know you, if you have BPD, you somewhat dissociate from the here and now and re-play out an old relationship (usually parent-child dynamic — or a primary relationship in which you did not get your needs met as a child) causing you to lose sight of both who the “other” is and who “you” are. This happens because many with BPD cannot meet their own needs and tend to look for others to do this for them. Needs and wants are often confused and left up to others. Borderlines are easily triggered when needs or wants aren’t met by people in their lives that have come to represent “object other”.

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• The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
• From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Child
• BPD and Abandonment
• Finding Hope From the Polarized Reality of BPD
• Preparing For Recovery From BPD
• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder

                 Audio Programs © A.J. Mahari 

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The scene is then set for the triggered recapitulation of pain.

The borderline demands from the “object other”, who is being experienced as someone from their past. This other person, not knowing what is unfolding has no chance to be able to find the right response, or enough of any response that will please the borderline for long. The person with BPD then does the push-pull, in an effort to gain or maintain control. They feel out of control because they are re-experiencing painful feelings from their pasts. So unmet needs continue to escalate and the borderline gets angry – often to the point of rage, whether that rage is acted in or acted out – and demands more from the other person.

The other person, no doubt is confused, feeling attacked and like they can’t do anything “right” enough begins to pull away, in one form or another. This is the classic repeat of the borderline nightmare of abandonment.

But if you have BPD, and you haven’t worked through this you may not realize that you, yourself are causing your own re-abandonment. The abandonment is perceived abandonment. In reality they are not abandoning you they are taking care of themselves, which every human being has both the right and responsibility to do. 

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            LIFE COACHING With A.J. Mahari

• 30 Minute Life Coaching Session
• 50 Minute Life Coaching Session       
• More Life Coaching Options

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Within the scenario I’ve described above the is the blame game. Person A feels blamed by the borderline. The borderline feels blamed and shamed and let down and abandoned by person A. Person A then feels attacked by the borderline. Person A may attack back. The borderline then feels like a helpless victim which will then precipitate either their further acting out or acting in. Acting out often means rage, punishment, and verbal abuse aimed at the loved one. Acting in by the person with BPD often means an inner-rage often not consciously connected to and punishing the loved one in the form of the silent treatment.

Person A then feels in a no-win situation. The borderline keeps upping the anti, demanding what he/she needs and wants in often less than direct and highly manipulative ways. This upping the anti by those with BPD is experienced as emotional hooks by loved ones. Hooks that Loved Ones need to learn to stop biting. At this point the borderline has regressed to a child-like state wherein, for them, they are the center of the universe. This is their reality. The other person, person A, has no idea now what is going on. Loved ones need to learn how to free themselves from the BPD Maze to break free from what keeps them from living with, among other things, healthier boundaries and find their own healing and recovery.

The blame game begins right here. The borderline blames the person A for (essentially whatever those close in childhood did to him/her) everything. Usually the borderline cannot see their role in this. (Not until a certain amount of healing has taken place.) Person A blames the borderline. Then both blame the borderline’s past. Others in their lives, jobs, therapists….etc may also be blamed. No one knows how to take responsibility here and usually at this point enmeshment is deep and intense. When any two people get enmeshed everything can seem foggy and unclear. From this clouded haze each party, like a blind bird flying in the wind seeks control in an effort to protect themselves and to try to regain some balance.

For person A in this scenario you cannot “win”. You are going to be blamed because often the borderline has lost total sight of you. (Or will for periods of time) You have become someone from their past that they could not trust.

The key to understanding what becomes the “blame game” is for the person with BPD to want to get better. To want to get better means be ready to face the pain. It is only when you face the pain that you will begin to gain a healthy perspective from which you can then think in less frequently-distorted ways to the point where you will be able to recognize when you are so triggered as to blur your past with someone in your present. The process of recovery from BPD requires that each person with BPD find ways to gain more awareness of what must be learned and radically accepted in order to take personal responsibilty for in his or her life and for the regulation of his or her own triggered dysregulated emotions

Personal responsibility is key here as well. You must take responsibility for your needs, your wants, your pain, your actions and you must learn that there is no excuse for abuse. Blaming anyone else, even someone who abused or hurt you in childhood is not going to help you heal now. It will not help you meet your needs. It will not help you learn how to maintain relationships. It will not help you to find yourself. it will only to continue to support your staying stuck in borderline suffereing due to what amounts to continuing to choose to abandon your pain

Blame is a defense mechanism. The pain is real. The pain feels immediate. It can also feel very overwhelming. If you have BPD and you do not learn to catch the triggers and see the patterns and take responsibility you will continue to drive people who care about you away and do great emotional damage to yourself and to others in the process. Blaming others will only keep you stuck in the active throes of BPD and the suffering that means in your life.

Taking responsibility for yourself and your emotions now is the only way to end the blame game and get on and stay on the road to recovery. To unwind the clues that are no doubt there in your thinking before you get into this pattern over and over again it is important to discuss with your therapist what you feel and think just before you have “blow-ups” with others, or just before you lose your temper, or just before you begin to push and pull or manipulate, control or get physically intimidating and or abusive.

What happened in your past needs to be unwound today. Blaming anyone for the choices that you’ve made as to how to cope with your past up until now is not a healthy choice. It is often a very lonely and isolating choice to make.

It is important to stop blaming anyone or anything else. Look to yourself. Educate yourself as much as you can about what I refer to as the on-going impact of abandonment in the lives of those with BPD. The way you relate to othes and the ways that you experience others are generated from your own past patterns of relational experience. Experience that for those with BPD included the shame of abandonment. When you open up to understanding these patterns and the ways and reasons they trigger so much emotion that is difficult to regulate or cope with you will actively be engaging the process of recovery. When you can understand the blame game you will no longer have to go there. The result will be happier and healthier patterns of relating.

© Ms. A.J. Mahari – June 20, 1999 with changes October 28, 2009 – All rights reserved.

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What, if anything, do the terms “high-functioning” or “low functioning” applied to Borderline Personality Disorder mean? Is the use of the terms “high-functioning” and “low functioning” in Borderline Personality Disorder  found primarily in online support groups for loved ones of those with BPD helpful or actually more misleading? Can loved ones of those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) get beyond this jargon to a deeper and much-needed understanding of what goes on inside the borderline mind and free themselves from the chaos of BPD?

In many areas online loved ones of those with Borderline Personality Disorder – non borderlines – will encounter the challenge of jargon invented in efforts to explain the experience on the other side of BPD. Loved ones need to go beyond this often misleading jargon – jargon that can misinform – to be able to achieve a deeper and more meaningful understanding of their experience of and with the person with BPD in their lives.

Insight into and understanding about the borderline mind in those with Borderline Personality Disorder For Non Borderlines audio program series, The Borderline Mind by A.J. Mahari sheds light on what loved ones need to know to enhance their understanding and coping. Mahari, as only one who has been there can and made it back can, shares her insight and experience as someone who had BPD and recovered to further the understanding of BPD for those who are on the other side of BPD – non borderlines.

Purchase all 3 audios now available in this enlightening and educational series – Inside The Borderline Mind © A.J. Mahari 2008-2009