Borderline Personality, 42, says, "I am a Child"

 

July 14, 2012

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Women with Borderline Personality Disorder act out like children do, because they are children, says a victim. Their emotional development was arrested in childhood due to loss of a loved one or abuse.

by Rosie
(henrymakow.com)

The main reason I want to tell my story is that people with Borderline Personality Disorder get a bad rap.

I believe that if more people understood things from the Borderline’s perspective, it would make things so much easier for everyone involved.

My dad left before I was old enough to remember him and my mom died a month before my 11 birthday. I recently realized in therapy that I was indeed molested by a caretaker around the age of four.

I knew something had happened with a particular person. But it was not until I explained to my therapist about the sexual things I was doing shortly after that, that my suspicions were confirmed.

She said, the things I was doing was not age appropriate. I remember the very day that I said, my mother would always be there. So when she died, I felt so alone and angry at her for leaving me.

I am 42 years old and still searching for her in anyone who shows me the slightest amount of caring.

There is a famous book about Borderline called, “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me.” This title says a lot. The abuse started while my mother was fighting for her life with cancer. It continued by various people throughout my childhood into young adulthood.

Through my own experience and research, I have learned that the worse thing you can do to a Borderline is leave or even threaten to. They will put up with all sorts of mistreatment as long as you are committed to staying with them. I know in my experience a lot of people have assumed that I did not realize that I was being abused, because I did whatever was necessary to keep that person close.

Many people accuse us of being manipulative. I wish it was that simple. The dread that one feels when someone close is threatening to leave is worse than the thought of death. It’s like that person is your life support machine.

Borderlines are very intelligent. They know exactly what went wrong, that the relationship is beyond repair, and that each of you would be better off without the other. But when a Borderline feels that they have been pushed into survival mode, nothing logical is going to make sense to them.
  
They say that Borderlines overreact to everything. Most of them have experienced some sort of trauma and the way they feel about what has happened makes their reaction seem appropriate, to them.

Once a Borderline feels like she can no longer trust you, that trust is gone forever. All that is left is raw pain that never heals. But they still cannot let go. They may honestly hate you, but they are glued to the “perfect person” you were when they met you.

On top of that, Borderlines will not take time to heal from the last relationship. They have got to be hooked up to that life support again.

All they are doing is collecting pain and bringing it along to the next relationship. Now you can imagine why a relationship with a Borderline  goes bad so quickly and why their anger always seems out of proportion to the situation.

People want to change the phrase Borderline Personality Disorder. They say it does not fit. For me it fits perfectly. I am too screwed up to be considered normal and too intelligent to fit in with the people with severe mental disturbances.

I say, I am bright enough to know how f *cked up I really am. But I have found hope in God. He is an amazing deliverer. Borderlines are usually missing the coping skills and tools that parents teach mostly by example. And their emotional growth is severely compromised.
 
I literally watched each of my ten nieces and nephews outgrow me emotionally. When you are an adult with the emotions of a toddler, the world can be a very scary place to exist.

 But when I go into childlike mode, all my mannerisms are like a child. I even sound like one. People either laugh at me, or get angry.

It is very rare for them to seem unaware or care in spite of it all. Those are the ones that I cling to. I remember once in my thirties, a caretaker angrily told me I was not a child. Without giving it any thought, I responded, Yes I am!!!

In response to Henry’s questions:

To answer your question about why we act out and are sometimes
abusive. Like the love we felt for the first significant one who
abandoned us, we are still acting out the pain. We don’t realize that
what is going on at the time is truly out of proportion to our anger.
But it has triggered something(s) from the past. Before I started
personally working on my anger, I realized that I had been angry about
so much for so long, I could not remember most of it. 

I have been on S.S.I since 2001. At that time, I was only taking an
antidepressant. Now I am taking like 20 different medications. However,
I am still only taking that one psych med, Paxil. My medical history
alone is a book.

As far as a cure, it is as complicated as the disorder
itself. Because it is a “Learned Disorder/Behavior,” there are only
medications to treat the side effects that it causes. Some of the side
effects are, depression, anxiety, P.T.S.D, panic attacks, and so many
others.
 

Men often have BPD also. But they are less likely to seek treatment. Men don’t self injure, they take it out on their love ones and generally end up in jail. Women are more likely to hurt themselves instead of others. If you want to see a good movie staring a man whom I believe had BPD, rent the movie, Antwone Fisher. It is based on a true story. Denzel Washington plays the therapist. A good movie to see about a woman who suffers from it is called, A Thin Line Between Love And Hate. Everyone already knows about and has seen Fatal Attraction, another good one.

Comments for ” Borderline Personality, 42, says, “I am a Child” “

Mike said (July 16, 2012):

My only wife that I have had suffers from BPD.
After 10 years it reared its ugly head.
I didnt know what the hell happened to the girl i knew and fell in love with.
The whole relationship was an utter illusion. what I thought we jad never existed.

When she left me summer of 2009 I was losing my mind. Then a friend suggested i look into BPD and was
given a site called www.bpd411.org

it didnt come up for me today, but it looks like this one
http://www.bpdworld.org/

continues in its footsteps
I ended up writing a shitload of love songs to get over it and her and run away as fast as i could. Hence the song title called
RUN HARD FAST – by the Red Bishop – thats me
http://www.myspace.com/theredbishop

I thank God that my friend help me gather my wits over those first three months of being left alone. I never cried so hard when our marriage died.

She was molested by her sperm donor dad when she was a child. I believe that alot of these personality disorders arise because of child sexual abuse.
My ex was beautiful, today she looks like shit, nothing of her previous Catherine Zeta Jones beauty she had. Now she looks like shes been drinking hard every day.


Jim said (July 16, 2012):

Wow! Rosie, you are an amazing woman! In spite of your challenges you are doing WAY BETTER than most people with BPD. It seems that BPDs rarely seek help or get much better. Your introspection and self awareness has given me a new perspective of a BPDs cognitive process and helps me to have compassion for them. I am glad that you have found peace and solace in a relationship with Christ. I commend you and hold you in the highest regard.

BPD’s seem to live with a very high level of fear, anxiety and hyper-vigilance. Everything is micro-analyzed and subject to intense scrutiny. They also seem to be sexually promiscuous and have serial relationships.

My mother and both of my wives are BPDs. Of the three my second wife was probably the most difficult person to live with. It seemed that it was beyond her ability to admit to any wrong doing. Even when faced with the facts there would be no acknowledgement and no apology. Everything was always my fault. If I was to correct the supposed infraction my efforts were never good enough or I should have done it a different way. She kept moving the target and always left me guessing as to what she wanted me to do to correct the situation.

I remember several times when she was angry for no apparent reason. Once, shortly after arriving at work in the morning a coworker asked me, “How ya doin’?” I replied, “Well, I was doing fine until my wife woke up.”

One time she was angry at me. After a few hours of her huffing and stomping around I finally asked, “OK, what’s wrong?” She replied in a snotty voice, “You should know.” Of course, I hadn’t a clue so I said to her, “Well, you’ve gotta tell me because I can’t hear what you’re thinking.” That started off a whole new firestorm and she never did tell me what the original crime was.

Perhaps Rosie can offer some insight as to why BPDs have such a tough time admitting to anything they may have done wrong and their inability to correct it and apologize. That was perhaps my biggest issue with my wife. It made me feel like I was the crazy one.


Henry Makow is the author of A Long Way to go for a Date. He received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto. He welcomes your feedback and ideas at

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