Non Borderlines In Search of Intimacy with Borderlines| Article Index |
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| Non Borderlines In Search of Intimacy with Borderlines |
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Can a Loved One of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder - a Non Borderline - create a bond with someone with borderline
personality?
Borderlines have trouble bonding or attaching to a partner without feeling as if their psychological existence is threatened. Unless those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are successfully treated and successfully address the core wound of abandonment that is so central to BPD, intimacy is just too stressful and causes those with BPD to fragment, regress, act out, cling to others in ways that promote the re-living of the abandonment most feared and that also support ruptured toxic relational styles - and all-too-often abusive behaviour - not healthy intimacy.
Borderlines are unable to congruently bond or attach to a partner in healthy ways because they were unable to successfully master the separation-individuation phase of development in early childhood.
Borderlines wreak so much chaos, drama, havoc, and often abuse
, in relationships. When they try to relate to someone intimately the stress creates the rise of a myriad of false self defenses that push others away. Most with BPD have not learned how to regulate or modulate what are dysregulated emotions associated with the flux of distance and closeness that is part of healthier relationships.
According to N. Gregory Hamilton, M.D., in his book, Self and Others – Object Relations Theory In Practice, "Struggles between closeness and autonomy gradually subside as rapprochement resolves. The child finds an optimal distance. The intensity and duration of temper tantrums decrease. Emotions become more modulated, and a new emotional repertoire emerges."
Closeness, for the borderline, brings with it the terror of annihilation or engulfment – the re-experiencing of the loss of authentic self. Whereas distance is experienced as either pending re-abandonment or threatened abandonment.
Often this propels borderline rage which is at the heart of the borderline need to punish and seek revenge or to wish to annihilate the significant other in his or her life, as a means of defending against the loss of self through other.
It is important to note that there is a common thread of rage in those with Borderline Personality Disorder. Some people with BPD rage outright and their anger is made known and obvious. Others with BPD are known as quiet borderlines who may well not express their anger outwardly. Quiet borderlines tend to internalize their anger, often experience a significant amount of depression
and withdraw often into an aloofness or a punishing silent treatment when they are angry.
Whether someone with Borderline Personality Disorder is an quiet acting-in borderline or a more classic and more easily recognized raging acting-out borderline the rage that results from the core wound of abandonment each in his or her own style finds ways through their own presentation and manifestation of elaborate patterns of defense mechanisms to evade any consistent, congruent, or age-appropriate intimacy.
Borderlines need to find their way to the kind of therapy that will make it possible for them to learn how to relate in ways that aren't abusive, self-defeating, and sometimes even criminal. They need to be helped to heal their abandonment trauma so they can emotionally and psychologically mature.
Some borderlines can do some terrible things and cause untold pain and chaos in their own lives and the lives of those who care about them. Though everyone with BPD is responsible for his or her own behaviour, most deeply regret not only their own pain, but the pain they cause others.
It is not correct to assume that due to the way in which many with BPD treat others, that they have no conscience or remorse or compassion. They can act in ways that are totally opposite to this when triggered to regressed wounded and dissociative past experience, however. This often creates confusion for those in relationship with borderlines.
A.J. Mahari lives in Ontario, Canada. She is an author, speaker, life coach, bpd/mental health coach, and self improvement coach. She has been described by many as an insightful and astute student of life’s ups and downs. She is not, for the record, a mental health professional. A.J. writes all that she writes from her own life experience. Therefore she asks that you keep that in mind as you read her writing – her Ebooks or listen to her Audio Programs or work with her as a your Life Coach.
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