Painful wounds of childhood can result in defense mechanisms such as unhealthy fluctuation of emotions. If one has trouble controlling their emotions, this can have a negative effect on one’s quality of life and relationships. Borderline Personality Disorder is a case of emotional dysregulation. Characterized by mood swings, drastic behavior, and insecurity, it can cause profound chaos in one’s life and relationships.
You Are Not Alone
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1.4% of Americans have Borderline Personality Disorder. It is relatively uncommon, occurring in about 4 and a half million people in the U.S. If you or someone you know suffer from this disorder, know you are not alone and things do get better.
Here are the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder listed by the DSM-5:
- Efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
- Intense bouts of anger, depression, or anxiety that may last only hours or, at most, a few days. These may be associated with episodes of impulsive aggression, self-injury, and drug or alcohol abuse.
- Distortions in thoughts and sense of self can lead to frequent changes in long-term goals, career plans, jobs, friendships, identity, and values. Sometimes people with BPD view themselves as fundamentally bad or unworthy. They may feel bored, empty, or unfairly misunderstood or mistreated, and they have little idea who they are.
- Recurrent suicidal behavior.
- Transient, stress-related paranoid thinking, or dissociation (“losing touch” with reality).
Unattached
Many different factors can cause Borderline Personality Disorder, but there is a common childhood wound among many of those diagnosed with BPD. Elements Behavioral Health reported that “some estimate a 75 percent rate of childhood sexual abuse in BPD patients,” and that “childhood sexual abuse is associated with attachment avoidance.” Attachment avoidance is when someone prefers to keep people at arm’s length and/or has tremendous insecurity in their relationships. This stems from wounds inflicted on them by their primary caregiver or a traumatic experience that occurred early in their life. In an attempt to shield themselves from getting hurt again, they are skeptical of people who try to get close to them and often push people away.
Isolating themselves, they create a Double Dungeon of Darkness: darkness from within and darkness from without. Their inner demons chip away at their psyche and they distrust people who could potentially help them. It is difficult to live happily with so much negativity, but it is not hopeless. If any of the symptoms above seem familiar to you, it may be wise to seek help from a psychological health professional.
From a Mind Map Perspective
During childhood, we are in a hostage situation. This means we have no control over how we are treated by our caregivers during part 1 of our life, so the psychological outcomes based on how we were treated as children are completely out of our hands. There are 5 common childhood wounds we can experience that can wreak havoc on our psyche: neglect, smothering, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and verbal abuse. If we experience one or more of these wounds in the years of our lives that are so essential for development, it distorts our sense of self early on. With this new, cracked lens of self-perception, we form negative core beliefs about ourselves in a mad dash to make sense of what has happened to us such as “I am worthless” or “everyone will leave me.” Our thoughts become encoded with these false beliefs, and soon enough they infect every part of our lives.
These beliefs are not based in reality, but pieces of fiction created by the hurting mind of a child. In an attempt to protect oneself from the chaos within, we put up defense mechanisms that can take many forms. In the case of Borderline Personality Disorder, constant mood fluctuations, life changes, and/or dissociation from reality “protect” the sufferer from the pain going on inside of them and allows them to avoid getting hurt by someone else. The brain turns to emotional dysregulation to avoid the pain of the past. However, these defenses do not protect anyone. Instead they cause the sufferer to sometimes have trouble connecting with and trusting others, not have a steady life, and often dislike themselves. All of these problems can come together and explode in a breakdown or the sufferer can seek help and have a breakthrough.
In order to paradigm shift into a healthy, happy life, the sufferer must search their past to find the initial wound, see how it has infected their life, and dismantle the subsequent negative core beliefs. Once they are free of the core beliefs plaguing their lives, they can form healthy, positive relationships. Through the love and support from those interconnections, one can truly find happiness.
