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Pain in the Arms of Joy: Contemplating Life as a Borderline Personality

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Mykel J. Austin

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“Therapists sometimes warn family members not to depend on the person with BPD to validate their self-worth, yet young children have no choice. They can and will do anything to hold onto the good mother (the loving, caring person) who unpredictably turns into the Witch mother (the terrifying, raging beast).”

Child AbuseEmotional AbuseBorderline Personality DisorderBpdAbusive MotherBorderline Mother
Book:Understanding the Borderline Mother
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“The case of a patient with dissociative identity disorder follows: Cindy, a 24-year-old woman, was transferred to the psychiatry service to facilitate community placement. Over the years, she had received many different diagnoses, including schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder. Dissociative identity disorder was her current diagnosis. Cindy had been well until 3 years before admission, when she developed depression, "voices," multiple somatic complaints, periods of amnesia, and wrist cutting. Her family and friends considered her a pathological liar because she would do or say things that she would later deny. Chronic depression and recurrent suicidal behavior led to frequent hospitalizations. Cindy had trials of antipsychotics, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and anxiolytics, all without benefit. Her condition continued to worsen. Cindy was a petite, neatly groomed woman who cooperated well with the treatment team. She reported having nine distinct alters that ranged in age from 2 to 48 years; two were masculine. Cindy’s main concern was her inability to control the switches among her alters, which made her feel out of control. She reported having been sexually abused by her father as a child and described visual hallucinations of him threatening her with a knife. We were unable to confirm the history of sexual abuse but thought it likely, based on what we knew of her chaotic early home life. Nursing staff observed several episodes in which Cindy switched to a troublesome alter. Her voice would change in inflection and tone, becoming childlike as ]oy, an 8-year-old alter, took control. Arrangements were made for individual psychotherapy and Cindy was discharged. At a follow-up 3 years later, Cindy still had many alters but was functioning better, had fewer switches, and lived independently. She continued to see a therapist weekly and hoped to one day integrate her many alters.”

LyingCuttingMental IllnessSuicidalDissociative Identity DisorderHallucinationsMultiple Personality DisorderLiarMentally IllAlter PersonalitiesBipolar DisorderDissociative DisorderBorderline Personality DisorderDissociative AmnesiaMisdiagnosisHearing VoicesSexual Abuse SurvivorSuicide AttemptsCompulsive LiarPathological LyingSomatic Symptoms
Book:Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry, Fourth Edition
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“Ernest Wolf (1988) explains that “merger-hungry” personalities need to control others completely. The borderline Witch’s merger-hungry personality leaves her children feeling devoured, suffocated, oppressed, and imprisoned. Even as adults, her children may dream about prison camps, holocausts, invasions, wars, and natural disasters. They fear for their survival.”

TraumaManipulationChild AbuseBorderline Personality DisorderBpdAbusive MotherBorderline MotherControlling Mother
Book:Understanding the Borderline Mother
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“You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by.”

LoveInspirationalMental IllnessChildhood TraumaBorderline Personality DisorderBpd
Book:Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
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