The current nine criteria, in no particular order, are as follows:
- Unclear and/or unstable shifting self-image/identity.
- Unstable interpersonal relationships; marked by patterns of alternating between idolization and devaluation of others.
- Mood swings that can elevate to feelings of euphoria rather than happiness and despair rather than sadness.
- Chronic impulsive and self-destructive behaviours (not including suicidal tendencies or self-harm as indicated as its own criterion) including, but not limited to: spending, sex, reckless driving or stunts, binge eating.
- Intense fear of rejection and/or abandonment, whether real or perceived.
- Recurrent or patterns of self-harm, suicidal ideation and suicidal tendencies.
- Explosive anger.
- Feelings of emptiness.
- Loss of touch with reality; patterns of dissociation.
The second criterion: Unstable interpersonal relationships; marked by patterns of alternating between idolization and devaluation of others.
This one is a lot to unpack because our experience with relationships start from the moment we are born, throughout infancy into childhood and puberty, and everything we learn about ourselves and others during this time will be the foundation of all our relationships from there onward.
Even if that foundation is built on shaky ground.
Our mothers, or caregivers, interact and engage with us, starts from the moment we are born. But what kind of interactions are they? Do they hold us? Do they snuggle us? Are they affectionate around us? Are they affectionate to us? Are they detached from us? Why are they detached from us? Do they not want to be attached to us? Are they struggling with post-partum depression, or perhaps another disorder or illness, making connection and attachment challenging?
There are countless factors that would come into play whether our mothers and fathers, or caregivers, would not connect or attach with us as newborns.
And if they aren’t attached, does that detachment and disconnection continue? For how long? Do they ever attach or connect with us? Or is the lack of connection only further perpetuated?
What about our fathers? Are they in the picture? Do they hold us? Do they snuggle us? Are they affectionate around us? Are they affectionate to us?
As we move through the stages of infancy, what happens? Are we having our needs met? What do we experience? Are we comforted? Are we neglected? Are we abused? Are we shown care and affection? Are we deprived of care and affection?
As we move from infancy, we learn of our own awareness and then the awareness of others.
When we cry, how are we treated? Do our parents comfort us? Do they come to our cribs with a smiling, engaging face? Do they frown at us? Do they come to us withdrawn and frowning or angry? Are they upset with us for crying and needing something?
If the typical response we receive when we cry, regardless of what we are crying for, is not one of engagement, care and affection, we learn pretty quickly that our experience is not going to be a positive one.
As infants, of course, we won’t be able to regulate this right away. But we will learn. We will learn how long to cry for, when to cry, and if we cry at all. Even when our needs are dire, for food or shelter, we will quickly learn when to ask for that need to be met. Whether we cry for our food, cry to be changed, cry to be held, and it will be as we grow out of infancy that we start to manage how we handle having our needs met, or not.
As we become aware of a person, typically our parents, outside of ourselves, is when we start to learn affect regulation, and mirroring what our parents are doing, or not doing.
If as toddlers, our parents still come to us in our crib or bed, and they come to us withdrawn, or upset, or mean, or they don’t come at all, we aren’t just learning anymore. Now we are reinforcing. We’re adapting, in whatever way is safest, to ignore our needs, suppress them, deny them.
And so the foundation is laid. The pattern is set.
Our own engagement with others and in response to ourselves is outlined in doing what is safest. We are now adapted to simply survive. It’s mostly a gradual process, until the day we just get it. We don’t know how we got it, we don’t understand what we are doing, we just know we need to somehow survive, and we will do that in whatever way keeps us safe until the next day.
And what of our environment? How are things around us? What happens around us? Is it an environment of care and kindness? Or are we surrounded by fighting and yelling? Are we surrounded by light or are we surrounded by dark?
Do we see our parents interact with each other kindly? Do we have any siblings? How are they treated by our parents? Are our siblings treated kindly? If other family members or friends come around, how do our parents behave then? Are they kind to anyone?
As soon as toddlers are able to learn of other people and an outside environment they are able to learn when to ask to have their needs met. Of course, they are unable to meet their own needs, and still need their parents to survive. And if that experience is that your needs don’t matter or can cause pain from violence and abuse or will result in a spectrum of abandonment from neglect, a toddler will learn faster than you think, to quickly shut down, ignore and dismiss their needs.
They will wait, hungry, soiled, cold, crying, and alone, forming a firm belief that they are a burden. They don’t matter. Their needs don’t matter. Their needs will not be met. Their needs may result in pain and injury. And yet, they still have needs.
So what is a toddler to do?
So far, they have learned that the relationship with their parents is a dysregulated, conditional, painful relationship. With or without violence it is already painful.
If mommy is in a good mood… If daddy had a bad day…
It really doesn’t take much for a young toddler brain to learn. And when this is their whole experience, all day, every day. It sets the tone for how they’re going to have difficult relationships with everyone they know.
How can they do any different when they don’t know any different? How can you have a kind, caring, affectionate relationship if you have no idea what that looks like? Or that it’s even an option?
What are we learning? Do we see our parents handle their own emotions? And how do they handle them? Do they become withdrawn? Do they become violent?
And then what of our emotions? How do they handle those? Do they ignore our emotions? Or shut them down? Do they show us that what we are feeling doesn’t matter, that our experience doesn’t matter?
What we learn here, at a very tender age, is how to handle, or not, our emotions. How to handle, or not, other people and their emotions. If we are shown that other people’s emotions are too much, too hard, or that they don’t matter, that is what we learn. And in turn, it is how we start to treat others as well.
If we see volatile, abusive, dysregulated relationships, including our own, then that is what we learn. And that is what we do. We may not become volatile or abusive ourselves because if our true nature is not to be violent or abusive then we still try to counter what we learn with who we really are, and we will try to find that balance to handle things. But because what we learn was dysregulation, we will most likely, at least, have that.
How do we learn to cope? How do we learn to show affection, or not? How do we learn to be kind, or not? How do we learn how to talk to other people, how to treat other people?
Any relationship that stems from our infancy and developing years will have an impact on us and in turn how we relate to everyone else after that, including ourselves.
Taking into account other aspects of BPD, i.e. unstable identity, unstable dysregulated emotions… etc, how can one be in a relationship if they don’t even know who they are? And I don’t just mean romantic relationships. It could be any relationship, but if you don’t know who you are how do you interact with another?
How do you treat them? How do you want them to treat you? How do you behave?
When you aren’t sure how you’re feeling, or those feelings seem to run the gamut, how do you interact with other people? What if they say something that upsets you? What if they do something harmful? What if they don’t?
You have no idea who you are and your emotions being all over the place is not helping at all. And your experience, so far, has taught you that other people are no help when it comes to regulating emotions.
Relationships are transactional and complex. Relationships require giving and taking. They require commitment and dedication. And you aren’t even sure you have that. How do you give what you don’t have? How do you take what you aren’t sure you need? How do you be there for someone else when you don’t know how? No one has been there for you before, so how are you to know what to do? What not to do?
If they offer you something, how do you take it? How do you accept concern or compassion or kindness when you’ve never seen it before let alone been offered it?
And if your emotions are all over the place, how can you talk to someone else? What if they are in a good mood, and you are not? Have you been taught how to ask for help? No. Have you been taught how to let them know you’re unhappy or in a bad mood? No.
And odds are what you were taught was not to tell anyone anything, especially about how you’re feeling.
If they are in a bad mood, and you are not, how do you handle that? You’ve never given support before, how do you do it? You’ve offered support before, but it was rejected, dismissed, ignored, mocked, you don’t want that again. You have nothing to give then.
How do you explain to another that your emotions are all over the place, you don’t even understand it yourself. You see others and they are happy for a happy reason, but your experience is different. You don’t just feel happy, you feel elated. It doesn’t match the others…
You see others sad for a sad reason, but your experience is different. You don’t just feel sad, you feel despair. It doesn’t match the others. It doesn’t match the others at all.
Does that mean there is something wrong with you?
Why are your emotions so different than the others? Why are you never in alignment with other people? There must be something wrong with you then. There has to be. You’re the only one who is all over the place.
You were never taught regulation. You were never taught correlation. You were never taught interaction. Your experience was like your emotions, all over the place.
Your “education” was all over the place, why shouldn’t your emotions be too? At least that’s consistent, if nothing else. It was consistently chaotic. Your relationships? Chaotic. Your emotions? Also chaotic. Makes sense if you think about it.
What else could your relationships do? If you don’t know how to interact with people without being dysregulated, chaotic, uncertain, even abusive or violent, what else can your relationships be, if not the same?
Of course, once you have a child, parents don’t get a chance to pause and sort out their own stuff, if they even want to that is, or start over. They don’t get an opportunity to heal their hurts. There is no break for healing yourself and pausing raising a child. The child is here now and growing and learning and the parent is going to have to try and work it out as best as they can.
Changing interpersonal interactions is tough as hell. Seriously. Even if you want to make those kind of changes in the first place, it is NOT easy. I know, because I’ve been working on it for a few years now.
Realizing that everyone behaves based on their own identities, traumatized or not, is not always easy to realize let alone interact with; not falling into old patterns of not listening, not responding, slamming doors, yelling insults, and shutting down is tough. Just not knowing how to interact can lead to further detachment, disconnection, and solitude.
Relationships are just too hard. They come with so many caveats, and most of them you don’t know or understand. And without even trying you perpetuate your own disconnection.
But it’s not a lost cause. YOU are not a lost cause. Not being taught what you needed in order to have (relatively) stable relationships with yourself and others is a learned experience that can be re-taught and re-learned.
The pathways are well-worn to be sure but that does not mean that new pathways can’t be created. Because they can. It does take work, you are up against a well-ingrained history so it won’t happen overnight. It will take practice. A LOT of practice. At re-wiring and re-learning that which should have been taught to you before.
Learning how to talk to people, how to handle your own emotions, how to handle other people and their emotions is VERY hard work.
The first step is realizing that this isn’t your fault. You are NOT broken. You were never broken. You were misinformed. GREATLY MISINFORMED. You were supposed to be taught differently, and you weren’t. That isn’t your fault.
It might be easy to blame your parents, since they were responsible for teaching you, and if that’s where you are, then that’s where you are. I blamed my own mother for many, many years. I am only now coming to a place of understanding that she had her own trauma, and that’s why she taught me what she did.
Unfortunately I can’t change what happened then, I can change what happens now though. So blame or not, it’s up to me now.
DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) has been instrumental in helping me better manage my emotions, and in turn how I deal with other people. I am still working on the Interpersonal Skills but the emotional regulation has at least given me a running start.
DBT has helped me find less destructive ways of interacting with other people. It has given me a pause. A pause before I act. Thinking before I speak. Taking into account where I am coming from, as well as where the other person might be coming from.
Having an awareness of what my words can do has helped me move from reacting to responding. Taking that pause has made a world of difference because you can’t unsay something you have said. You can’t unhear what you’ve heard. You can’t unknow what you know now.
You can apologize of course but sometimes words can hurt even with apologies. Some things stay with you.
I don’t want to hurt someone I care about. I don’t want to say something that I can’t take back. I know how it feels to be insulted. I know how it feels to have words pierce your heart like a knife. I know how it feels to know something you never wanted to know. And I don’t want to do that to others. Not anymore.
I am still learning how to become more aware of what I say and what I do, and it took me a looooooong time to get to this point.
My hope is that my interpersonal skills will improve the more I learn and re-learn.
Journey From The Borderline 