Developing BPD: Part I – Who Am I?

The first criterion: Unclear and/or unstable shifting self-image/identity

Children are natural explorers. They are constantly asking questions, being curious, and wanting to know everything about everything. It’s how they learn, about their world, about themselves, and about others around them. How else can a child learn anything about anything without doing some exploring and asking some questions?

And as children, that natural curiosity should be encouraged by our parents or caregivers. We are supposed to be encouraged to be ourselves and discover the world. And in the midst of that process of discovering, we also discover ourselves, and at least, the beginning of who we might be.

We learn a lot from our parents/caregivers, whether it’s good or bad. We learn how to respond to emotions and physical sensations by mirroring what others (usually our parents) did. We see how they respond when something goes wrong. We see how they respond when something goes right. We see how they respond when someone yells or is angry with them. We see how they respond when a crisis comes up. We see how they respond when someone offers affection, or how they give affection to others. We see how they respond when they take care of something. We see how they respond when they don’t take care of something. And we learn.

We learn A LOT.

And meshed into that learning, who we are starts to emerge. Sometimes who we are is aligned with what we are learning, and sometimes it isn’t. And if who we are is counter to what we are learning then what do we do? Confusion sets in, and we don’t know what to do next.

For example, let’s say we are a child walking down the street one day with our parent or caregiver, and we trip and fall and scrape our knee. We start to cry and get upset. We seek comfort and concern for our scare of falling down and the pain of scraping our knee.

But, what if what we get is, our parent or caregiver gets angry with us, and yells at us, calling us clumsy, or telling us that we should be more careful, or even calling us names like stupid? What if the comfort we seek is not there? What if the soothing we seek are instead insults and being dismissed?

And so we learn.

We learn that falling is not something that brings affection or kindness. We learn that falling means we will be yelled at and we will be called names. We learn that getting hurt does not result in care or affection or even kindness. We will not be cared for. We will not be comforted. We will not be helped.

And so we have learned.

And every time it happens, we learn.

Every time we are not soothed, we learn. Every time we are not comforted, we learn. Every time we are dismissed we learn. Every time we are insulted, we learn.

Like I said, we learn A LOT.

But then, the learning continues… because what about when we see another person fall? And our response to that person is different from what we’ve learned? Uh oh. Our response, from deep inside, feels different than what mommy’s was. We don’t want to yell at another. We don’t want to call the person who fell any insults or names. We want to help them. We want to comfort them. We want to ask if they are okay.

Can that be right?

As children we don’t have the capacity yet to know that this concerned person is really who we are. We don’t have the capacity to know that our feelings are valid and that how we respond is who we are. That we don’t have to be the way mommy and daddy are. That maybe their response is the one that is hurtful and harmful. We don’t know that they are just people, responding based on their own identity as well.

So we stop, and we wonder… am I wrong?

How we are feeling is counter to what we learned. And our parents or caregivers are the teachers, so they know more than we do, don’t they? Maybe who we are is wrong? If that’s not how mommy responds then I must be doing it wrong.

And when what we are taught – for any number of things in life – is counter to how we feel about it, then we start to question all of it. If mommy and daddy respond to this differently, or they handle that differently than how I feel to respond, then what do I do? I don’t know that I can be myself. I don’t even really know who myself is yet. I don’t know that my feelings matter. I don’t know that being different is okay. I don’t know that there is another way. I don’t know that there are many other ways than the one our parents have shown us. And it’s not like I can ask.

If, as children, we even had the capacity to ask, would we? What would we say? “Hey mom, I want to help this person who fell. That’s different than how you were responding, is that okay? Can I go ahead and be different than you are?”

As children, would we ever think to question the powers that be? I certainly wouldn’t have. And even if I had thought to question, there’s no way in hell I would have because that would probably get me slapped.

Another reason to keep quiet.

Maybe who I am is wrong? If mommy does it this way, or responds this way, and she knows everything, then I must be wrong.

And let’s say one day you did respond differently, and you helped someone who fell, what if your parent or caregiver responds negatively to that? They yell at you for offering help. You don’t know how to help. You’re too stupid to help. You’re too young to know anything. What is wrong with you? And so on…

Now what? We tried to follow our hearts and look where it got us? We tried to be ourselves and look where it got us? Look what it taught us.

Lesson: Don’t help other people. Don’t be kind. Don’t concern yourself with others. Don’t be compassionate. Don’t think for yourself. Don’t follow your heart. Your feelings don’t matter. What you did was wrong. Who you are is wrong… Pick one.

Children’s thinking is not that complex yet, so we will black and white the situation. We don’t know any different. We don’t know there are myriad reasons for why we respond differently than someone else does. Even if that someone else is mommy or daddy.

We don’t think “Oh, maybe, we are being taught wrong?” or “There’s no chance in hell my parents are wrong.” So I am wrong. I must be. There obviously is no other explanation.

Except when who we are is wrong, and we can’t help how we feel, but we aren’t them either. We aren’t mommy and we aren’t daddy. We don’t respond the way they do. We don’t want to. That’s not us.

If we aren’t them? And who we are is wrong? Then who are we?

Enter, unstable identity.

Sadly, it does not take much for a child to learn to internalize their world, and suppress the person they may become in an effort to match our parents or caregivers, and remain in the favour by being like them.

How can you even explore who you really are if right from the start you are taught to counter to that? We are naturally ourselves, whomever we may be. We’re just born the way we are. And what if what we are taught is opposite to that? What if we are taught not to question? What if we are taught not to explore? What if we are taught that how we feel about life so far is all wrong? What if we are taught that how we respond is wrong? Then how do we develop ourselves? How do we learn who we really are? How do we develop who we are? How do we even know who we are let alone develop it?

If we are not encouraged to be ourselves then how do we develop who our self is? If we are insulted or harmed when we are ourselves, then who should we be? What “me” can we be so that we don’t get insulted or harmed? Even if that “me” isn’t really me? And how do you develop something that isn’t in us to start with? How do you develop or nurture something that isn’t yours?

And if, like me, this is how it was from childhood, then developing our identity, whomever that may have been, has almost no chance.

But we need an identity. Everyone has an identity. We want one too. We need one too. It’s who we are. And so we search…

We will spend years searching. Trying on different ones. Not knowing which one of what, we are. Not knowing why this one feels right, but this one doesn’t. Not knowing how to develop it. Not trusting it. Not understanding it.

We will ache to know who we are, but how? We will feel the weight of our past and our trauma with everything we think, everything we feel, and everything we do. Is that who we are?

But then, even that doesn’t feel quite right.

An identity starts by being formed from our beliefs, our values, and then our thoughts and actions are governed from that. But we don’t know what our values are? We know what our parents values are, and they don’t totally mesh with how we feel.

Our thoughts are muddled to the point of believing that who we are is wrong because how we feel so far has differed from our parents, and we have no idea that that is actually okay. Except it’s not allowed let alone encouraged to be different than our parents so where does that leave us?

How do create an identity when we have no idea what our values are? How do we develop our identities when our thoughts and our actions have thus far been counter to how we feel?

It’s all false. It’s all projected. It’s all someone else’s.

When who we are has been suppressed, how do we find ourselves again?

For myself, I can only guess what kind of person I would have been had I been allowed to explore and trust who I was. I believe that there were always some inkling of who I was hanging around, otherwise why would certain things have felt right, and certain things didn’t.

But I wasn’t not given the chance to explore that. I wasn’t given the chance to develop whatever may have been there right from the start.

And that’s not to say that I can’t find an identity now. Because I can. Would it be the person I would have been? Who knows? Probably not. As unfortunate as it is that I wasn’t able to develop my own identity from the start, so too is that that identity is pretty much gone by now.

There will be slivers of her somewhere in there because I think some things have stayed with me despite being suppressed for many years. I think there are some values that I always had. And now, I will just have to find it, bring it back and give it some life.

If, like me, your own identity feels long lost and forgotten, it may be time for you to start creating your own identity now too. One good thing about developing an identity now is that you can be whomever you want to be.

If you want to be a kind, caring, compassionate person, there is still time to bring that to life. If you want to be curious and explorative, there’s time for that too. If you want to be more introverted then you can develop that too. It’s not quite a blank slate, but it’s as close as you’ll ever come to having one.

And it may be painful to discover who you really are now. It will surely take time and practice. Some thing will fit, and some things won’t. Some things will seem good, and some things won’t. Same as if you had learned your identity as a child. Not everything would have been sunshine and rainbows then either.

But finding your own identity is important, no matter who you turn out to be. You deserve to be yourself, no matter who that is. No matter how long you’ve been without an identity of your own, no matter what anyone tried to take from you, NOW is the time to take it back, and mould it to who you want to be.

You have always been entitled to your own identity. And even if it takes a while to find that person, you deserve to know.

Where I started was with Google. I had no idea what even made up an identity, let alone developing one. So I actually typed into Google search, “what makes up an identity?”

I had no idea there would be so many schools of thought on what makes an identity. The gist that I took from what I read is that an identity, to start, is based on your values. It is your values that dictate your behaviour and actions and a lot of times, your thoughts as well – since thought thought often becomes actions and behaviours.

For example, I value truth and honesty. Part of this stems from the lies and dishonesty that I grew up with. Honestly, I’m not sure how much I would value truth and honesty if it hadn’t been for my upbringing. So if you find some values stem from your own trauma, that’s okay too.

And because I value truth and honesty, it very much dictates a lot of how I act with myself and with others. It’s very important to me. And I learned that from going through a list of values.

Learning what some of my values are was not an easy undertaking. What are values that I believe in right now? I had no idea. Honestly. I read through the lists of values I found online and through DBT, and couldn’t relate to any of them.

Maybe I didn’t have any values? But that didn’t seem right either.

I had beliefs, like, I believed I was a failure. I believed I was nothing. I believed I was always wrong. I believed that no one cared about me and that that was a deserved place to be.

Last time I checked the list of values didn’t have failure on it. But I knew what I valued in others was honesty. Because of my trauma, I knew what I didn’t want anymore. I didn’t want lies and dishonesty. I didn’t want cruelty and insults. I didn’t want to be dismissed.

So I started there, with what I didn’t want. And the first thing I realized I valued was truth and honesty. That was a success for me because it meant I did have values. At least I had one value.

And if I had one value, I probably had others too, I just needed to uncover them as well.

I posted a list of values at the end of this post if you’re looking for some values of your own.

Take your time with this. Mark whatever feels right for you, and add any that might not be listed. Go over it in the daytime. Go over it at nighttime. Go over it on a weekday. Go over it on a weekend. Go over it when you feel good. Go over it when you feel unwell. Go over it again and again and again, and see what sticks.

Whatever feels like it works for you, then make a note of it. If it’s something you want to aspire to do or be, mark that off too. If something fits one day and it doesn’t fit the next day, then take it off. And even if it seems like nothing jumps out at you the first few times you read the list, that’s okay.

It will take some time and practice to peel back the layers of who you had to become to find who you really are.

This is a great place to start. Learn what you believe in. NOT what trauma has taught you. NOT what BPD tells you. NOT what ED might tell you. NOT what depression tells you. NOT what anxiety tells you.

That is NOT the real you. That is the you that developed from trauma and BPD, among other things. It is who you had to become to survive. As messed up as it is and was, it is NOT the real you.

The real you is underneath that. The real you IS there. We just need to bring it to the front again. We need to give it space to come out again. And we need to nourish it when it is there. Starting with your true values.

What do you believe in? What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of person do you feel attracted to non-romantically or romantically? When all the trauma and BPD are stripped away, what is it that you believe? What kind of morals do you want to have? What do you want your behaviour to be governed by?

Explore whatever you choose. Be curious. Try to explore why you chose the values you did. How can you nurture those values? How can you make those values a priority for you today?

If you’re having trouble getting started, or it seems like there is nothing good about you, maybe ask a trusted friend or loved one for help. Most of the time others see the good in us when we don’t. Ask them what they might choose for you and why.

For myself, I started perusing this list about two years ago, and I am still modifying it. Take your time. Give it space. Explore. Be curious. Do NOW the exploring you weren’t able to do as a child. Explore the world NOW. There is no timeline for this. You’ll find what you need when you need it.

It’s YOUR identity, do what YOU need to do.

Here’s a list (it’s pretty long) to get you started…

Acceptance: to be open to and accepting of myself, others, life, etc
Accomplishment
Acknowledgment
Adventure: to be adventurous; to actively seek, create, or explore novel or stimulating experiences
Art
Assertiveness: to respectfully stand up for my rights and request what I want
Authenticity: to be authentic, genuine, real; to be true to myself
Authority
Autonomy
Balance
Belonging
Beauty: to appreciate, create, nurture, or cultivate beauty in myself, others, the environment, etc.
Caring: to be caring towards myself, others, the environment, etc.
Challenge: to keep challenging myself to grow, learn, improve
Change
Collaboration
Communication
Community
Compassion: to act with kindness towards those who are suffering
Competency
Connection: to engage fully in whatever I am doing, and be fully present with others
Contribution: to contribute, help, assist, or make a positive difference to myself or other
Conformity: to be respectful and obedient of rules and obligations
Cooperation: to be cooperative and collaborative with others
Courage: to be courageous or brave; to persist in the face of fear, threat, or difficulty
Creativity: to be creative or innovative
Culture
Curiosity: to be curious, open-minded and interested; to explore and discover
Directness
Determination
Decisiveness
Diversity
Elegance
Empowerment
Encouragement: to encourage and reward behaviour that I value in myself or others
Equality: to treat others as equal to myself, and vice versa
Excellence
Expertise
Fairness: to be fair to myself or others
Faith
Fame
Family
Flexibility: to adjust and adapt readily to changing circumstances
Focus
Forgiveness: to be forgiving towards myself or others
Freedom: to live freely; to choose how I live and behave, or help others do likewise
Friendship
Fun
Generosity: to be generous, sharing and giving, to myself or others
Gratitude: to be grateful for and appreciative of the positive aspects of myself, others and life
Growth
Happiness
Harmony
Honesty: to be honest, truthful, and sincere with myself and others
Humour: to see and appreciate the humorous side of life
Humility: to be humble or modest; to let my achievements speak for themselves
Independence: to be self-supportive, and choose my own way of doing things
Industry: to be industrious, hard-working, dedicated
Innovation
Intimacy: to open up, reveal, and share myself (as I choose) – emotionally or physically – in my close, personal relationships
Integrity
Justice: to uphold justice and fairness
Kindness: to be kind, compassionate, considerate, nurturing or caring towards myself or others
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Love: to act lovingly or affectionately towards myself or others
Loyalty
Mastery
Meaningful Work
Music
Nature
Nurturing
Open-mindedness: to think things through, see things from other’s point of view, and weigh evidence fairly
Optimism
Order: to be orderly and organized
Patience: to wait calmly for what I want
Participation
Partnership
Peace
Performance
Persistence: to continue resolutely, despite problems or difficulties
Pleasure
Power: to strongly influence or wield authority over others
Privacy
Prestige
Productivity
Quality
Reciprocity: to build relationships in which there is a fair balance of giving and taking
Recognition
Relationships
Reliable
Respect: to be respectful towards myself or others; to be polite, considerate and show positive regard
Responsibility: to be responsible and accountable for my actions
Risk-taking
Safety: to secure, protect, or ensure safety of myself and others
Self-awareness: to be aware of my own thoughts, feelings and actions
Self-care: to look after my health and well-being, and get my needs met
Self-control: to act in accordance with my own ideals
Self-development: to keep growing, advancing or improving in knowledge, skills, character, or life experience
Self-expression
Self-realization
Self-respect
Service
Sexuality: to explore or express my sexuality
Sincerity
Skillfulness: to continually practice and improve my skills, and apply myself fully when using them
Spirituality: to connect with things bigger than myself
Stability
Status
Success
Supportiveness: to be supportive, helpful, encouraging, and available to myself and others
Teamwork
Tradition
Trust:
Trustworthiness: to be trustworthy, to be loyal, faithful, sincere, and reliable
Truth
Variety
Vitality
Wealth
Wisdom

Deep down inside, what is important to you? What do you want your life to stand for? What sort of qualities do you want to cultivate as a person? How do you want to be in your relationships with others?

The Brain Has One Job

Considering all of the things that a brain is capable of, how complex our minds are, it’s hard to believe that when all is said and done, when everything else has been stripped away, the brain only has one job, and that is to survive.

With all of our fanciful thinking, complex problem-solving, and monumentally creative and intricate tasks, and yet the one thing the brain really strives for, all day, every day, for as long as we are alive, is to survive. That’s it. The brain’s job is to get us from one minute to the next.

Keeping us alive is all it needs to do. Getting us through this moment to the next moment. It doesn’t even consider much more than several moments from now, just this one, and maybe the next few, and that’s it.

Thanks to human evolution and the development of our prefrontal cortex, the mind has become bombarded with hundreds and thousands of thoughts, from memories that pop up when we smell something familiar or hear a song from when we were young, to keeping appointments and tasks to be done, to being able to adjust and accommodate as new stuff pops up in our day.

The “extras” of our brains have evolved from the most basic of needs and behaviours like breathing, eating and procreating, to a seemingly infinite number of tasks and possibilities that make the world more industrial, more technological, more complex. And changing, even more, every minute.

Starting with our prefrontal cortex. It is the most recently evolved part of our brain and is responsible for managing tasks, problem-solving, and “executive” thinking. This is also the last part of our brain to come online as we grow up. It develops from all that we learn, or don’t learn, as we grow up.

Then we have our limbic system, otherwise known as the “emotional” brain. It sits behind the prefrontal cortex. The two main parts of the limbic system are the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala’s job is to mostly manage memories as they relate to our emotions. And not trivial ones like how to tie your shoes, but the hardcore memories like when you were bullied in school. It stores, with the help of the hippocampus, what happens to us and how it has shaped how we view the world and ourselves.

The amygdala is where trauma gets stuck, so when your brain continues to respond with fear or anger to a seemingly “irrelevant” situation with an exaggerated response like fight-flight-freeze or collapse, it’s because the amygdala has taken the last or most effective memory it has and has applied the knowledge to the current situation. Even if technically it’s not the same, it could be a minor thing from the past, say a smell or a word, a gesture or a posture, that occurred in the past traumatic memory, and that’s all the brain will recognize and it will take off assuming that this new situation is going to be the same as that past traumatic memory.

It’s kind of narrow-minded (no pun intended) in the way it zeros in on a piece of the memory that was stuck and assumes that it’s happening again. Of course, the amygdala doesn’t know that the same situation is not happening and we don’t need to respond the way we did before.

That’s where the prefrontal cortex would come in, to set us straight and let us know this isn’t the same situation. The PFC would be able to “think” things through and let us know that this “new” experience is not the same as our old experience and that we can get through this. That we can handle this. That we don’t have to revert to our patterned coping methods.

Unfortunately, once the amygdala has triggered our fight-flight-freeze-collapse response, and our autonomic system has taken over, our helpful prefrontal cortex actually comes offline. It literally shuts down. And our amygdala takes the wheel.

This is actually a good thing because it’s the prefrontal cortex that slows us down when we are in a grave or threatening situation. We actually want the amygdala and our autonomic system to take control and get us through the moment.

Where this becomes a problem is when the amygdala doesn’t realize that there actually is no current grave or threatening situation going on, and we want it to stand down for now. But until we can calm our autonomic system, and take the wheel back from the amygdala, we will remain activated in fight-flight-freeze-collapse.

The brain stem, at the base of our brain, is the most primitive part of our brain and is the first to come online, even inter utero. It is responsible for the very basics of what keeps us living; from our heartbeat to our breathing, and our digestive system. It is the brain stem that takes control when we are in a threatening situation, whether real or perceived. Shutting down what systems we don’t need to survive this moment, and ramping up all the ones we do need, like a faster heartbeat and pulse to be able to get us moving, heightening the receptors in our ears to be able to hear the incoming threat. Pumping blood and adrenaline to our muscles for action.

It’s really quite a remarkable system that has been finely tuned for millennia. And whether we like it or not, it is there to save our lives. Every day, all day, without exception.

I personally find it awesome how fast-acting and intuitive the autonomic system is, and without any help from me. I admit that having had it activated and in the varying states of fight-flight-freeze-collapse for decades is not at all fun or awesome. When it’s causing me to have anxiety that leaves me tense and agitated on a consistent basis for weeks and months on end, it’s not awesome at all. It’s tiring as hell.

And if someone had told me, even just a few years ago, that my brain was just trying to survive, even with all the anxiety, I would not have believed them or cared. Ironically, I would have been just trying to survive and get through the day myself. Not realizing that my brain was actually helping me more than I thought, and had been helping me all along.

It’s really quite amazing what the brain can do to ensure that we make it past this moment. Because no matter what we may try, whether it leads to addiction or compulsion, disorders or conditions, the brain is already doing everything it can to get us through. The brain is already on the task even before we realize it.

Having to survive by addiction, compulsion, disorders, and conditions, is not the best way to help the brain along, nor is it good for us long term, but because it got us through the moment, then the brain sees this as a means to an end. We needed to survive and x-y-z got us through, so as far as the brain is concerned, we now have a surviving mechanism. And if need be, we will recall it again if it will keep us alive.

This, of course, leads to the downward spiral, crippling addictions, destructive coping methods, and devastating consequences that can lead to death but remember, our brain isn’t really thinking that far ahead. It’s thinking of this moment, this experience, this right-in-our-face situation, and how to not die from it.

I know it’s not easy to give credit to the brain for how it has gotten us to survive. I know it’s not easy to see that our habits and the way we cope, that our brains are not actually out to “get” us the way we often think it is. I know that it’s not easy to see that the brain is trying to protect us. That it’s actually just trying its best to keep us alive. It can be easy to feel as if we are at war with our brains because they keep bringing us down the same destructive paths, aiming for our survival like all the other times it worked, and we’re paying the consequences for all those choices.

If I could talk to my brain I would suggest maybe finding less destructive and devastating methods for future generations to work on for surviving. And maybe thinking a little long term from time to time.

But for now, for all of us, for better or for worse, our brains are not trying to kill us. They really aren’t. Because they only have one job, and whether we agree with their tactics or not, they keep us alive. The get us through, even if we’re broken and tired and in pain from what it took to get us through, BUT, they got us through. So as far as the brain is concerned, their job, their monumental, will-do-whatever-it-takes-to-save-you-no-matter-how-that-pans-out task to keep us alive for at least one more moment.

Don’t be too hard on your brain. It only knows this one job.