Not MMS, but I found this fascinating information

[Guest guest]

It's not about physical health, but about emotional health.

http://www.owndoc.com/

Mental Health

»

Borderline personality disorder: Cause and Therapy

Borderline personality disorder

(BPD) is an environmentally acquired disorder. It's nurture, not nature, that

causes it.

BPD is the worst manifestation of post traumatic stress syndrome: Borderliners

have received less love during childhood than the absolute minimum required to

avoid serious, permanent brain damage.

Borderliners are people with unhealed third degree burns to their emotional

system.

This means that a borderliner is in a constant state of emotional suffering of

varying intensity. This suffering is so great and the societal and personal

consequences of their peculiar character are so severe, that about one in ten

borderliners eventually commits suicide.

The emotional pain suffered by a bordeliner is such that they may be willing to

exchange their predicament with a terminal cancer patient, as long as they would

be emotionally " whole " .

In essence, the self-aware borderliner can't imagine a greater pain. Sadly, the

borderliner, even when given genuine affection, usually feels uncomfortable with

it or experiences it as insincere.

BPD improves with age

Borderliners' wide spectrum of problems can't be blamed on bad genes, narcissism

or carelessness. They often don't finish an education, hold a job or stay in a

relationship – and there is nothing they can do about it.

The borderliner's psyche is that of an emotionally shell-shocked person.

If you were to throw a firecracker at the heels of a person with a war trauma,

he'll take cover, initially, while you'd better beat a hasty retreat or

experience his fury. No matter how often you tell a person with BPD to " just

forget about the past, chill out and start enjoying life " – this won't work.

A borderliner's efforts to ignore the problem, apply himself and be like a

normal person remain fruitless, because the borderliner is not just in a " state

of mind " .

We can make the analogy that it is more a hardware problem, than a software

problem.

As a child, the emotional processing part of the borderliners' brain did not

develop properly. Some parts were undeveloped and certain coping- and defense

mechanisms became overdeveloped. It is impossible to fully rewire those neuronal

pathways, but things can in fact be done to slowly revert some of the damage.

And borderliners mellow with age as well.

BPD is extremely difficult to treat because the abberant neural pathways were

formed in early childhood and reinforced for years afterward, in the child's

most sensitive formative period. These abnormalities are real and visible in

brain scans – both of brain stucture and activity. We can't really speak of

abnormalities for they likely are sanity- and even life-preserving coping

mechanisms that have proven beneficial to the borderliner as the target of

abuse. To the pre-borderline child, the environment appears chronically

life-threatening and there is no help available (on the contrary) from the

family. These survival mechanisms cope with the abuse either actively

(agressive-defensive behavior) or passively (social withdrawal and emotional

coping strategies such as the creation of a fantasy world in which the

borderliner is a loved and respected hero). In the borderliner, some important

emotional neuronal pathways have never formed, such as feeling comfortable when

given affection, and the ability to express their own desire for closeness.

Whereas schizoids and psychopaths are usually content with their personality

disorders and in fact consider " normals " to be impaired by their emotions or

concience, borderliners are constantly aware of their " strangeness " . They are

unhappy misfits. They are hypersensitive, badly control their emotions and may

have feelings of inferiority. And if you'd ask a borderliner: " What makes you

happy " , they'd likely say: " Nothing, really " . Most borderliners don't have the

ability to be truly happy, not even for a short while.

Essentially, BPD is what happens to a person when you spend years mentally and

physically torturing them from early childhood. The torture consists at least in

withholding all physical and verbal expressions of love, and often it there is

the active component of telling the child that he is hated and worthless. Broken

promises, emotional neglect and verbal abuse.

Often, threats are made of various types, such as to harm or kill the child or

expel it from the house. Borderliners often were regularly beaten or even

sexually abused and generally have been treated without a modicum of emotional

support or even a basic respect for them as a human being with feelings.

The most irreparable damage, the most vicious torture of all is the near-total

absence of parental closeness.

Instead there is rude verbal and physical rejection of the infant, resulting in

the absence of any kind of bonding.

This leaves severe, permanent scars and is perhaps the main cause of BPD. A

classic example of the background and behavior of a person with BPD is here

.. Many ignorant comments by armchair psychologists, blaming the victim, assuming

it's all a trivially solved attitude problem of a selfish and lazy narcissist,

instead of severe brain damage caused by years of extreme child abuse.

Ironically, the overwhelming underlying cause for such a childhood is

personality disorders in their parents. An example would be a passive father who

for some reason (drug addiction, illness, disability) doesn't participate in the

childrearing an overbearing, highly controlling mother with Aspergers syndrome.

Some parents treat the child as an annoying object they are stuck with, a

frustrating entity with unfortunately a mind of its own. This sometimes

rebellious, attention-craving little person should be turned into an obedient

drone who follows strict schedules and procedures, robbing it of everything that

makes it a person.

Privacy is denied.

Myriads of rules and restrictions are imposed and punishments inflicted at the

slightest infraction.

Any form of affection is withheld.

Physical contact is taboo, except when it can't be avoided, and then it is done

with coarse indifference or annoyed hostility.

Emotional closeness is zero.

The child will feel under permanent threat and constant surveillance. It comes

to realize it has no rights, only duties. It is denied its basic humanity. There

is no refuge. No alternative ways of receiving or expressing affection are

available.

The infant grows up a feral child.

Concerning matters to do with love, to ward off insanity, coping mechanisms

develop. The borderliner withdraws in solitary hobbies and lying becomes second

nature, such as not to provoke anger in people with power over him. Petty theft

such as shoplifting occurs as a surrogate for " receiving something nice " . The

child retracts into fantasy world of its own making in which it is the center of

positive attention, admired and respected by all. Terrible nightmares are

common, such as dreams in which the child is chased and killed by a parent.

Borderliners need love and want to give it, too

Borderliners are misunderstood. Some call them " emotional vampires " , a

bottomless pit for love, a one-way street, unable to reciprocate on affection,

using people for temporary relief and discarding them as used bubble gum. The

borderline person comes across that way due to a total lack of love throughout

their entire childhood.

It should not come as a surprise that borderliners have one gigantic need: The

need to feel loved. No person has a greater need for genuine affection than the

borderliner. A borderliner needs love like a person with scurvy needs vitamin C.

And they desperately want to give themselves to those they feel affection for –

but they often have great difficulty doing so.

Borderliners are so emotionally insecure that it is easy to hurt them. And

because they have never experienced the safety of the knowledge of being loved,

they'll " split " you one way or the other: They will immediately and often

permanently reclassify you from " friendly " to " hostile " , and a small perceived

slight can terminate a relationship before it had a chance to come to fruition.

This oversensitive black-and-white thinking may make borderliners look " needy " ,

but that would be oversimplification. Their sense of belonging in the

relationship need regular reinforcement in the form of tenderly expressed

physical affection and a genuine interest in, and respect of their persona. If

that condition is fulfilled, they can become loyal partners, even when things

aren't always perfect. in the relationship.

Borderliners do very badly with people who make careless hurtful remarks or who

are unable to regularly express affection. A borderliner's fragile sense of

acceptance easily becomes a feeling of being a tolerated burden. He will never

again want to be an undesirable element and thus will crudely cancel a

relationship in which he is hurt once too often.

Self-treating Borderline Personality Disorder

There are ways in which the borderliner can undo a little of the damage

inflicted to him.

The best thing a borderliner can do to partially heal himself is to be around

people who give him the feeling of being loved and accepted.

The more a borderliner experiences affection, the more often he is treated

kindly, the more self esteem and confidence is built up. The fragile self is

slowly bolstered and it becomes possible to see people as more colorful entities

than merely black and white, good or bad, loving or indifferent.

Such a therapy is very hard to attain. I know someone – a classical case of

Borderline Personality – who was seriously contemplating suicide. During a long

phone conversation I suggested him to go on a long holiday instead. He ended up

quitting his job, selling most of his belongings and embarking on a long journey

of working his way around the world.

Originally an office worker, he held various more glamorous jobs such as

windsurfing instructor and he had many flings and short relationships. This way,

he learned that he could be a desirable, respected, loved person. He was

significantly " deprogrammed " after years of living that way. His partners

initially suffered the consequences of dealing with an emotional invalid, but

his travels eventually boosted his self confidence and made relatively stable

love relationships possible for him.

The likelihood of accelerated improvement is increased when the borderliner

understands what it is that ails him. But they are damaged goods and they always

will be.