Borderline personality

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Wow. I am feeling very

Wow. I am feeling very stirred up after reading all this. I am not sure if I am borderline or not, but that dream and many other comments really resonate with me. I have had a reoccurring dream about traveling from one place to another with my children usually and desperately trying to keeping track of them and all the stuff. Trying to pack it all in, terrified of leaving something behind. All the pieces of myself. I have brought this in to my therapist before, but for some reason reading this post has given it a deeper meaning. I am trying to confront the clutter (physical) in my life and I have also struggled with compartmentalizing. I used to think of myself as a disco ball: I relfected different aspects of myself, depending on who I was with at the time. It took many years of therapy to feel strong enough and confident enough to trust that I could to relate to people in a more integrated way. I thought people wouldn't like me if I showed my whole self. Now I am okay with that. I am also more comfortable with my dark side, which allows me to be more comfortable with others dark sides. What a process!!

Thank you for inspiring me to look at this dream again.

For a long time I had felt

For a long time I had felt abandonned, empty, unstable, and had no self image. In order to feel safe I saw everything in terms of black or white.Through reading I believed I had symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder. I knew I needed some professional help. 
  I found a therapist who provided me with the stability I never had .(I grew up in an alcoholic home). She advised me that I was on an emotional search for health . In relationship with her, my symptoms manifested, and she provided empathy, compassion and understanding. I felt her strength.  I felt hopeful. Through therapy and counseling the quality of my life has changed in a positive manner. My symptoms are now more in the background. I can find the "gray" areas and I have been able to integrate parts of myself that I "split off" from. I feel a wholeness to my life and have a sense of who I am in the world. There are less periods of time that I have no memory of.
Therapy and counseling for Borderline Personality
Disorder has positively changed my life in ways that I could never have imagined. The benefits of my therapeutic journey continue. I am so grateful.


Thank you for posting on

Thank you for posting on Borderline Personality Disorder, as I have struggled with this also. I carry a lot of sadness for some of my behaviour before I was long into my psychotherapeutic journey back to more health and integration. My search for help took me to a few psychotherapists before I found my present therapist several years ago. If has often been a bumpy journey together. My unconscious acting out with people in my life and with my therapist, required great skill, patience, compassion and risk-taking on her part to help me uncover and feel my darker split-off emotions of envy, jealousy and teror of humiliation. It is hard and humbling work to understand that ALL our feelings are important and that the ability to feel and incorporate these darker ones, instead of splitting off from them, is the only way to integration.Through my work in psychotherapy, I now have a richer more integrated life but the ability to split off is always there. I find this especially so in times of vulnerability and life transitions where it is more difficult to hold in conscious awareness, those feelings of fear, envy anger and to go back and experience the painful memories from which they originated. It is an ongoing and worthwhile challenge.

  I wrote the last post in

 

I wrote the last post in this topic and wanted to add another part of my journey through Borderline Personality Disorder. I have had a recurring dream in the last several years which I only recently brought to my therapist. In the dream, I am packing to go on a long trip home. I have been working in some far off country in each dream. I have only 2 suitcases and way too many clothes. Some of the clothes are dated, like from the 50's, 60"s, 70"s etc but I feel I cannot leave any behind. This part is always the same - huge piles of clothes, 2 suitcases and a sense of panic. Somehow I manage to fit every piece of clothing into the 2 suitcases but the panic continues as I then have to rush to the airport, late, wondering if I will make it to the one plane a week which will take me home. Through many delays and much stress, I always make it onto the airplane and home with all my clothes.

I found it curious that I had never brought this recurring dream into my therapy until recently. In combination with my psychotherapist's wise input and counsel, and where I was in my journey, it started to finally make sense. Part of Borderline Personality Disorder, from my experience, is not just the work of integrating my dark unconscious split off feelings, but also the work of integrating the different compartments my life which had split off as well. I had several compartments for different periods of my life, such as preschool, primary school, high school (we moved a lot), university, work abroad, marriage etc. It also worked in other parts of my life as well, such as parts for play and pleasure, relationships, work and study etc. When I was operating in one compartment of whatever type, it was difficult for me to be aware of the other compartments and how there might be some connection between them. A big part of my work in my therapy has been to understand the different compartments in which I live, identify when I was stuck in one, to the exclusion of the other ones and to work towards integrating the various parts or compartments of my life into a cohesive whole. As the dreams have lessened in frequency over the last few years to where I finally could bring it to therapy and full conscious understanding I can see how I have begun to integrate many of the split off compartments of my life to a much greater degree. I am beginning to get all the parts into those 2 suitcases and bring them "home".

What a beautiful narrative

What a beautiful narrative and Dream!  I am moved by the image of the suitcases - compartmentalizing your life.  I am in the process in my own therapy journey of recognizing how I live many aspects of my life in various compartments, flipping from one to another as the need arises; consciously feeling that this was what was required of me to function within the parametres of my different relationships, even at different moments with the same person.  For example, my professional self versus my personal self; my intellectual self versus my emotional self; my present self versus my past self.  I am learning and struggling to hold the fullness and fluidity of these various aspects of me.  

I am trying to understand that these are dimensions of being that, like a colour spectrum, blend and bleed, showing depth and richness, a complex interdependence of parts that make up a whole.  Rather than blocks (compartments) that stack together creating a form.  In the former the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts, in the latter, its more like the parts make the whole and nothing more.

I am also understanding that these different ways of being also impact my connections with others, or maybe better put, the depth and richness of any of my interactions.  In compartments, my interactions can carry a flatness or a sense that only certain aspects of myself are touched in the relation in that moment.  I never feel fully touched by another, because I am only operating from one aspect of myself - the contact feels incomplete.  Perhaps this was also a method of protection...because if another can only touch part of me in an interaction, then the whole of me cannot be destroyed.  Hmmmm...that just occured to me. The learnings continue....  

I don't know why I haven't

I don't know why I haven't read these posts earlier. I think I find the topic intimidating. I have an image of living on the edge of an abyss. Today - I clicked in and these posts have really opened up a discussion inside of me around my relationships. I am also compartmentalized. I think that I keep myself safe by not giving away too much. When I worked - I was one way, at home another, with different friends and acquaintances, different sides came out. I could never bring these different people together, because the stress of it would overwhelm me. How could I behave? Who would I be?

I don’t believe that I am a whole person with anyone. Even with my own family - I am the "mother". This has affected my relationship with my partner. I can't step out of this role, this compartment even with him. Just exploring this now is making me feel sad.

As the last post described, I have trouble making close friends because there is a flatness in my interactions with other people. I don't bring in the full me. It just feels too risky and dangerous.

This sounds as if I make a conscious decision to be safe – but it isn’t conscious at all. I am recognizing that it happens, but don’t know how to change it. How do I integrate these different blocks – open the doors – not be afraid in the world of people…

I’ve been working hard in my therapy for many years now – and made huge progress in many areas of my life. The fact that I have my own family is due to this work. It feels a little disheartening to find that I still have more work ahead of me. I am trying to be positive. The fact that I can now read these posts, and recognize my compartments is a good start. I know that there has already been some integration because I can clearly see what I am doing. To change my inner world is still going to be a challenge – to bring all of me together. I am feeling the loneliness right now of being in pieces.