January 17, 2023 • 26 mins
Dr. Lynn Varela discusses the signs and symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Join her in this foundational episode as she covers the basics of BPD.
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(00:25):
Hello, this is Dr.
Lynn Varela.
I'm a licensed mental health counselorand have a PhD in psychology.
I have specialized in treatingpeople with BPD, which is
borderline personality disorderand complex PTSD for over a decade.
The criteria for somebody to bediagnosed with BPD is multiple, and
we will discuss 'em in this sessiontoday so that you or anybody that
(00:49):
you know that may be struggling with.
Can know where they are andif they need to seek out help.
First.
People at BPD tend to have abandonmentissues that started in childhood cuz
either they were physically and oremotionally abandoned by their parents.
What that means is that one or bothparents left their lives physically
and were not there to raise them.
(01:11):
And emotionally it was that they werephysically there, but they did not
meet the emotional needs of the child.
So there was no hugs, therewas no real interactions.
You didn't feel good enough,you didn't feel loved by them.
Yeah, maybe they gave you everythingyou needed economically, so they, you
know, you had a nice house, you hadnice clothes, you went to a nice school.
(01:32):
There was food on the table, but therewas no connection with the parents.
And most people will say,oh, that's not a big deal.
But actually emotional abandonment isthe one that can do the most harm to a
lot of the people that I have worked.
There is a genetic and environmentalcomponent to the development of BPD.
(01:53):
So if you see the child asa fertile ground, the things
that'll happen in the environment.
Will plant the seed.
But if you don't have that fertileground, which is the genetic component
of it all, then even if you try toplant the seed, nothing will happen.
So people will tell me that they werevery sensitive as children, they can feel.
(02:16):
The environment and people's emotionsmore than other people could.
And so that's like the fertile ground.
Now again, you can have that fertileground, but if no seed is planted, you
have a healthy environment, a lovingenvironment, then BPD will never develop.
You go.
You need both componentsto be able to have.
P p d grow and flourish.
(02:38):
Another part is the unstable relationship.
The I love you, I hate you.
The, you're great today and tomorrow.
You're nothing, Timmy.
It's, it's very ups and downsand, and it leads to push pulls.
. And, and a lot of times it's aself-fulfilling prophecy because again,
the unstable relationships are that way.
(02:59):
Because if I'm convinced that you're goingto leave me, because it's not a matter of
if you're gonna leave me, it's a matterof when you're gonna leave me in their
minds, then I'm constantly pushing youaway because, well, you're gonna leave
me, so I might as well just get rid ofyou and control when you're gonna leave.
But then I, I don't want you to leave.
So come here, come here, come here.
And what happens?
(03:21):
That with time.
People get tired of this push and pull andthey go, ah, this isn't gonna work for me.
I am gonna leave.
And the person with BPDtakes that as, aha, I see.
I knew it was gonna happen,so now you finally did it.
But they don't even realizethat they created the whole
situation by the push pull.
They didn't mean for it to happen.
(03:42):
But again, if we believe somethingwill happen that is inevitable, then
we will act as if it's going to happen.
, and unfortunately, nine timesoutta 10 it will happen.
It'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The next one is an unclear sense of self.
It's what I call being a chameleon.
(04:02):
It's a, it's a protectiveway defense mechanism.
Also if you're trying tosurvive your childhood.
. And through your teen years, when otherpeople are figuring out what they like,
what they don't, you're trying to survive,you're trying to get through h and every
day you're not figuring out who you are.
You don't have the time to sit thereand go, oh yeah, I like lasagna
(04:25):
and this is why I like lasagna.
You just, whatever I I,I'm gonna eat and move on.
I'm not gonna think beyond that.
And the chameleon part of that isvery much the survival mechanism.
It's that I'll blend in, I'll fit.
However you present, I'll presentequally so that I look like
I belong to your group, andtherefore you're not gonna hurt me.
(04:48):
You're not gonna do anythingto me because like a chameleon,
I mix into the environment andsometimes you might not even see me.
, and so I'm safe.
The thing is that a lot of these defensemechanisms that were created to protect
the person actually works againstthem because if you blend in, that's
great, but if you don't know who youare, well then others can define you.
(05:10):
Others can tell you who you are.
Others can control you becauseif you're chameleon, you're
probably also people pleasing.
And so a lot of times that end.
With you being around the wrongpeople and then they using you,
abusing you, and defining you, whichleads to the next thing, which is
that we can become self-destructive.
(05:31):
If we're with the wrong peopleor we feel that we're not good
enough, we're triggered, we mightget impulsive and, and, and there's
so many ways to self-destruct.
There's drinking, there's using drugs,there's driving while intoxicated,
there's not coming to work becausewe will, my friends aren't going.
We all.
(05:52):
Drunk last night, so I'm not gonna go.
And you go a couple, you don't,you do that a couple times before
you know it, you've lost your job.
There's just a myriad of ways toself-destruct and you probably know
at least one if you, if you recognizeeverything that I'm saying, you
probably already know how you doit, and at least one way or another,
the core of BPD in my experience is.
(06:19):
It's very much shame.
Like Brene Brown says, the feelingof not being good enough, and this is
why self-destruction is such a thingand, and self-harm is such a thing for
people with BPD because high levelsof shame can lead in my experience
with a lot of clients to self-hatred,or at least at the very least.
(06:45):
Self dislike.
You can't possibly be tellingyourself every single day, obviously,
at a subconscious level, cuzmost people are not even aware of
how much they shame themselves.
But you cannot constantly be tellingyourself or feeling that you're not good
enough, that you're not smart enough,that you're not skinny enough, that
you're not successful enough that you'renot pretty enough and love yourself.
(07:05):
You can't possibly putthose two things together.
And so hence why people of BPD.
Have such high levels of self-destruction.
And self-harming.
Now, let me be clear.
Not everybody self-harms, andthere's a lot of different ways of
self-harming because the one that'smostly associated with BPD is cutting,
(07:27):
but a lot of clients do not, or theywill have done it during their teen
years, which by the way, you cannot bediagnosed until after the age of 18.
You can show signs of BPD before 18.
We call them budding border.
, but they cannot be officiallydiagnosed until the age of 18.
(07:48):
But I've had a lot of clients that duringtheir teen years, They did cut, but as
they grew and they became older, they grewout of, of cutting and maybe they started
sleeping around, didn't use protection.
They were drinking and drivingwere burning themselves.
They were engaging and eating disordersthat are very self-harming cuz some of
(08:11):
them can be life-threatening actually.
And that takes us to another thingthat people with BPD struggle.
A lot, which is suicidal ideations.
And in my experience, there's beentwo types of suicidal ideations
that people with BBD strugglewith, which is passive and active.
(08:32):
Passive means that I'm not reallygonna do anything to in my life, but.
If my car happens to go over thebridge and I die as a result, I'm
not gonna, I'm not gonna stop it.
You know?
Now active is that I am activelydoing something to end my life and
(08:53):
there's a marriot ways of doing that.
And I'm not really going togo into details because Right.
The obvious reasons don'twanna give anybody any ideas.
The reason people, In my personalexperience working with people
who have BPD the reason they havesuicidal ideations is because
(09:14):
living with B BPD is not easy.
Living with the ups and downs,feeling not good enough, basically
being miserable all the time is notcompatible with wanting to live life.
It's really.
I don't see an end to this emotionalpain that I feel all the time.
(09:36):
I just want it to end, and the onlyway I can see it ending quickly without
me having to really do anything beyondthis action of taking my life is to die.
I, I don't have the energyto do anything else.
(09:58):
I don't see the pointof trying anything else.
I've tried and tried and tried in life,and people have proof to me that it's
not gonna get better no matter what I do.
So I'm just gonna take this, this exit,I'm just gonna end it all, and whatever's
on the other side is on the other side.
I really don't care.
So it's not.
(10:19):
It's not about, oh, I want attention orany of these other things that people tend
to think about BPD or people with BPD.
It's about the emotional pain.
And when we go into emotions,that's the next, the next criteria.
It's poor emotional regulation.
It's the ups and downs, whichfor, in my experience, has really.
(10:40):
People with BPD, it'sanxiety and depression.
Somebody will tell me, well, my wholelife I've struggled with anxiety
and depression, and you, you keeptalking, you keep getting information.
You come to realize that anxiety andthe depression is really borderline
with the anxieties being the highs.
When I overthink and I revmyself up, I go into anxiety
and the depression's being the.
(11:01):
Which usually are environmentallycontingent, which all that means is that
there's something in the environmentthat's causing the ups and downs.
And the downs are usually triggeredby the threat or the actual occurrence
of a rejection or abandonment.
It sends the person into aspiral, usually shame related.
(11:21):
The other thing is they havea lot of chronic emptiness,
and if you are like, what?
What does that mean?
What does chronic emptiness mean?
It's, it's like looking into the void thatsucking all encompassing, nothingness.
It.
For some people it's like avacuum in, in their chest.
(11:43):
It's, it's a very uncomfortableskin crawling feeling.
It's almost some have described aswhen I'm alone, I cease to exist.
I disappear because as a chameleon,If I don't have others around
me to validate me, to see me,to define me, I have nothing.
(12:06):
I'm, I'm numb.
And even though I'm physicallyhere, I feel like I'm already gone.
That goes into the whole part ofpeople with BPD because they don't
know who they are and they don'tknow how to validate themselves.
They need others to validate them.
It's good we all from time to time,like the validation of others.
(12:29):
I mean, social media is literallycreated to get validation from
others to say, Hey, here's my life.
Please like it.
And when people like it and theysupport it and they're giving you back
positive feedback, that's amazing.
It feels amazing.
And validation is notnecessarily a bad thing.
We all need it from time to time.
(12:50):
But if you cannot validate yourselfand you need others to be able to
validate you, to tell you that youare pretty enough, that you are good
enough, that you're, that, that thatfood you made is good enough, it tastes
great and these people are not healthypeople, they're not supportive people,
then there's gonna be times thatthey're gonna send you into spirals.
Well, really you're gonna wearthat dress , you're a little
(13:13):
on the chunky side, aren't you?
Girly can send somebody into aneating disorder spiral where they
starved themselves or they do otherforms of eating disorders that
really harms them and hurts them.
And so, It just doesn't benefit themand actually makes you completely
(13:34):
powerless to other people because nowthey have control over whether you
feel good enough about yourself or not.
And you know, obviously thishas been discussed a lot
about how social media has a.
Has a positive, positive side,but it also has a very dark side.
Now, the other thing that peoplewith BPD struggle with, and again,
(13:56):
all these criteria doesn't meanthat you're gonna meet all of them.
It doesn't mean that you're gonna meetsome of them, everybody's different.
It's just how it affects you and yourlife and your ability to function.
But the next one is dissociation.
People with BPD tend to dissociate becausetheir emotions are going up and down and
(14:18):
they hit a 10 and they're overwhelmedby that emotion, and so they shut down.
Basically, that's what dissociationis, is your brain shutting down.
Obviously, you're still functioning,you're still walking around, you're
still doing whatever you need todo, but you're an autopilot and so.
(14:40):
, a lot of the information is not going.
The way I know if somebody's probablydissociating a lot is if they come in and
they describe what I call Swiss cheesebrain, which means that there's a lot
of gaps in the memory that people aregoing throughout their day and they can't
remember a lot of things, and most people.
Out there that don't have a personalitydisorder, have had moments of
(15:00):
dissociation, but for them it's usuallyabout you know, I had a thousand things in
my head at the end of the day after work,I drove home and I got home and I can't
remember how I got there because I wasthinking about all these different things.
And it can be very scary.
But most people again, okay,I just got home from work.
(15:21):
I'm tired.
They take a shower, they goto bed, they wake up the next.
and they're not dissociated peopleat BPD because they, the, the root of
the emotional regulation issue is thatbecause I was surviving, I couldn't
sit there and feel my feelings.
Cuz feeling your feelings is vulnerable.
And for people who are trying to survive,they feel it's a weakness because it
(15:44):
takes up energy, it takes up time.
I need to process that stuff.
I don't have that time.
I just push it down, pushit down, push it down.
And if you've been pushingdown your emotions, your whole.
you never learned how to regulate them.
You know, because you cannotregulate what you cannot see or feel.
And so the way to deal with it andkeep pushing it down was to dissociate.
(16:07):
, which worked for a while and for manypeople, like until they came to me, it
was working fantastically until it wasn't.
All of a sudden now they have i b s andthey have migraines or they have high
blood pressure or they have a myriad ofof health issues and they're like, I don't
understand why I can't control my anger.
It's just.
From zero to a hundred in two seconds.
(16:29):
And you know, I, I just, you know,I feel my feelings so much more
intensely than everybody else.
And I say to you, that is your reality.
That is true.
But the reason that is true is becauseyou never learned how to feel your
feelings, how to sit in your body.
Because your body warns you ofyour emotions before you have
(16:52):
cognitively caught on, thatyou are feeling your feelings.
So let's say today something happened,it triggered your emotions, but
because you just automatically shutit down before you even cognitively
were aware that you had shutted down.
You didn't notice that you gottriggered, but three days later
(17:13):
you have your coffee spill.
You lose your ever-loving mind,and you're like, oh my God, I,
I just cannot control myself.
I don't understandwhat's going on with me.
And it's like, no, youcan control yourself.
You just have to learn how.
To be able to regulate your emotions,but that starts with feeling your
feelings so that when that that eventfirst happened, you'd notice in your
(17:34):
body like, Hmm, something's off.
What's going on?
And you can.
Go outside and try to look atwhat, hey, what's, let me look
at what's going on with me.
Why am I feeling this in my body?
What is it that I'mfeeling in my body first?
Because, you know, it could be thatyou're just hungry, but then it also
could be that you're triggered andmaybe you're feeling some shame and.
(17:57):
You if you can catch that earlyon, when an emotion is like a
two, it's way easier to be able toregulate it than if you're at a 10.
When you're at 10.
You're just writing that out and just hopethat you don't push somebody in the face.
But if you can catch it at atwo, you can calm down, you
can think it through, you can.
You can use your coping skills andfind a solution if there is one, and if
(18:20):
not, be able to walk away knowing thatthere's nothing but to radically accept.
People and things are what theyare, and you cannot control them.
You can only control you, butif you don't know what you're
feeling, you can control you.
The next thing is that I want you guys toall understand that BPD is on a spectrum
(18:43):
and and can come with other diagnosises.
What this means is that, Not everybody'sgonna present the same, and people have
different severity and how they present.
So how you present is gonna bedifferent than how somebody else
presents and how females present isdifferent than how males present.
(19:04):
The other thing I wanna discussis that there is a lot of
stigma around BPD because.
I really consider it to bebecause of ignorance, be it in
the field or not in the field.
You know, therapists or non therapists.
There's a lot of misinformationabout BPD and the people who struggle
with it and they're manipulativethat there's no way to overcome it.
(19:28):
And actually in my experience,my personal experience BPD is the
only personality disorder thatyou can recover from There is.
Set of coping skills that are madejust for people at BPD is called
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy,DBT, and it is very effective now.
Anybody recovering fromanything, be it PTSD.
(19:52):
A, you know, any other disorder, notjust BPD really does depend on the
person's willingness to do the work,to to, to go through all the change.
Cuz it is a lot of work and.
We're basically rewiring your whole brainand you're having to relearn how to live.
(20:13):
And not be in survival mode.
So it's not an easything and it takes time.
Yes.
This is in a six month voyage.
This is sometimes from a yearall the way to four or five
years, depending on the severity.
And really the biggest issueis the internal battle.
The part of you that does wannaget better fighting the part.
(20:34):
Okay with staying where it isbecause there's a part of you that
ha, I call it the system, that itrequires survival mode to function.
It requires you to be in chaos and ina mess to be able to do what it does.
And so it's gonna fight you ontrying to get back into a healthy.
(20:56):
Place where you can justlive and not survive.
Now, I want you to understand thatBPD people with BPD are normal.
And yes, you're probablylooking at me and going, what?
? What do you mean when BPD is normal?
No, it isn't.
Yes, my friend one normal is relative.
It's subjective.
But if you grew up in anenvironment, That was unhealthy.
That's had generations ofpersonality disorder behaviors
(21:20):
or features or full-blown casesof, of personality disorders.
There's just a lot ofdysfunction in your whole family.
You're not gonna walkaway without something.
And so normal is relative.
Cuz I have so many people come tome and say, oh, I just wanna be.
Well, you're already there.
You already are normal.
We just have to find a newnormal that is healthier for you.
(21:43):
Now, a small percentage ofpeople with BPD have no trauma.
I have never met a person.
That has BPD that didn't have trauma,but a lot of studies say that there
is a small percentage of people thatgenetically do develop this without
the trigger from the environment.
I cannot really speak much aboutthis because I have never met them.
(22:04):
I have never treated thesepeople, so I would not be able
to really say anything about it.
The tricky thing about trauma is that.
Most people don't recognize it.
They, they come in and theysay, oh, my childhood was great.
I mean, yeah, I dissociate.
Yeah.
You know, I have some abandonment issues.
I don't have stable relationships.
Don't really have aclear sense of who I am.
(22:26):
I'm impulsive.
I have all these issues.
You know, I have a, a hard timeregulating my emotions, but
you know, it's really not my c.
This boyfriend I dated, or youknow, I got bullied and yeah,
these things probably added to it.
But the tricky thing about trauma isthat it's not always recognizable.
Why?
Because we all think, oh, trauma, yeah,it's getting beaten, it's getting raped.
(22:49):
It's, it's these obvious big things, butnobody really thinks about the emotional
and psychological abuse and that it's beengoing on for generations in your family.
So what is trauma is your normal.
. And so you might not recognize it at all.
It's not until you start reallyprocessing and, and processing
the feelings and everything.
(23:09):
Like I've had clients that come in andthey're like first generation immigrants
and their parents had to work really hard.
So they had to take careof all their siblings.
They had to cook, they had to clean,you know, and the person will be
like, yeah, you know, my parentsdid the best that they could.
Yeah, I had to take care of mysiblings and I had to do all these
things and I rarely ever saw them,but you know, it was okay, you know,
(23:31):
I was just helping and we all pitchedin and we did what we had to do.
That's not trauma.
And yes, truth be told, theparents didn't purposely try to.
To traumatize you because again,I'm not here to vilify the parents
and blame them for everything.
A lot of parents do mean well, theyreally did do the best that they could,
and yours may have done the best thatthey could and they still hurt you.
(23:54):
And so the work in therapy is not tovilify your parents and make them the
bad guys, but it's still acknowledgehow you know them, purifying you In
the example that I provided which is.
Felt they had to do to be ableto survive, to make money so that
you guys could continue, you know,having a house, clothes, food,
shelter, all these good things.
(24:15):
They did these things with the bestof intentions, but it hurt you and
it, it could, it for my clients.
It led to the, the making ofBPD of a personality disorder.
And so we have to acknowledge that and.
What the child felt because yes,as an adult we can say, well,
(24:35):
our parents meant the best.
And they, they had todo what they had to do.
And so you can minimize and justifyand understand, but the child that
went through it did not understand, andthat's the, the part of you that you
need to be able to access in therapyand be able to allow that child to feel
the feelings and express those, thosethoughts that they couldn't when they were
(24:57):
a child because they'd get in trouble.
because without that acknowledgement,without that processing, without that
ability to feel those feelings, Ipersonally do not believe you can fully
heal because that's required to do so.
And so I hope that this, this hashelped you guys to understand this.
(25:19):
This little small synopsis has helpedyou guys to understand what is BPD.
You know you can get help if it's thatyou feel that this applies to you, or
maybe you can support those around youor that person around you that does have
these symptoms, because now you betterunderstand that they're not the villain
in the movie and they're not bad people.
(25:41):
It's just that they survive traumaand these different mechanisms,
defense mechanisms, survivalmechanisms, and just day-to-day.
Ways of being is how theygot through the trauma, and
there's nothing wrong with that.
It's just, you know, now that we'reout of the trauma and we don't
need to survive anymore, we cannow move on to healthier ways of
(26:05):
living, thinking, coping, and doing.
And there is hope.
I see it every day throughoutthe over 10 years I've been
working with people at BPD.
So it can be done and.
I hope this has helped, and Isee you guys in this episode.
(26:26):
Bye.
Hello, this is Dr.
Lynn Varela.
I'm a licensed mental health counselorand have a PhD in psychology.
I have specialized in treatingpeople with BPD, which is
borderline personality disorderand complex PTSD for over a decade.
The criteria for somebody to bediagnosed with BPD is multiple, and
we will discuss 'em in this sessiontoday so that you or anybody that
(00:49):
you know that may be struggling with.
Can know where they are andif they need to seek out help.
First.
People at BPD tend to have abandonmentissues that started in childhood cuz
either they were physically and oremotionally abandoned by their parents.
What that means is that one or bothparents left their lives physically
and were not there to raise them.
(01:11):
And emotionally it was that they werephysically there, but they did not
meet the emotional needs of the child.
So there was no hugs, therewas no real interactions.
You didn't feel good enough,you didn't feel loved by them.
Yeah, maybe they gave you everythingyou needed economically, so they, you
know, you had a nice house, you hadnice clothes, you went to a nice school.
(01:32):
There was food on the table, but therewas no connection with the parents.
And most people will say,oh, that's not a big deal.
But actually emotional abandonment isthe one that can do the most harm to a
lot of the people that I have worked.
There is a genetic and environmentalcomponent to the development of BPD.
(01:53):
So if you see the child asa fertile ground, the things
that'll happen in the environment.
Will plant the seed.
But if you don't have that fertileground, which is the genetic component
of it all, then even if you try toplant the seed, nothing will happen.
So people will tell me that they werevery sensitive as children, they can feel.
(02:16):
The environment and people's emotionsmore than other people could.
And so that's like the fertile ground.
Now again, you can have that fertileground, but if no seed is planted, you
have a healthy environment, a lovingenvironment, then BPD will never develop.
You go.
You need both componentsto be able to have.
P p d grow and flourish.
(02:38):
Another part is the unstable relationship.
The I love you, I hate you.
The, you're great today and tomorrow.
You're nothing, Timmy.
It's, it's very ups and downsand, and it leads to push pulls.
. And, and a lot of times it's aself-fulfilling prophecy because again,
the unstable relationships are that way.
(02:59):
Because if I'm convinced that you're goingto leave me, because it's not a matter of
if you're gonna leave me, it's a matterof when you're gonna leave me in their
minds, then I'm constantly pushing youaway because, well, you're gonna leave
me, so I might as well just get rid ofyou and control when you're gonna leave.
But then I, I don't want you to leave.
So come here, come here, come here.
And what happens?
(03:21):
That with time.
People get tired of this push and pull andthey go, ah, this isn't gonna work for me.
I am gonna leave.
And the person with BPDtakes that as, aha, I see.
I knew it was gonna happen,so now you finally did it.
But they don't even realizethat they created the whole
situation by the push pull.
They didn't mean for it to happen.
(03:42):
But again, if we believe somethingwill happen that is inevitable, then
we will act as if it's going to happen.
, and unfortunately, nine timesoutta 10 it will happen.
It'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The next one is an unclear sense of self.
It's what I call being a chameleon.
(04:02):
It's a, it's a protectiveway defense mechanism.
Also if you're trying tosurvive your childhood.
. And through your teen years, when otherpeople are figuring out what they like,
what they don't, you're trying to survive,you're trying to get through h and every
day you're not figuring out who you are.
You don't have the time to sit thereand go, oh yeah, I like lasagna
(04:25):
and this is why I like lasagna.
You just, whatever I I,I'm gonna eat and move on.
I'm not gonna think beyond that.
And the chameleon part of that isvery much the survival mechanism.
It's that I'll blend in, I'll fit.
However you present, I'll presentequally so that I look like
I belong to your group, andtherefore you're not gonna hurt me.
(04:48):
You're not gonna do anythingto me because like a chameleon,
I mix into the environment andsometimes you might not even see me.
, and so I'm safe.
The thing is that a lot of these defensemechanisms that were created to protect
the person actually works againstthem because if you blend in, that's
great, but if you don't know who youare, well then others can define you.
(05:10):
Others can tell you who you are.
Others can control you becauseif you're chameleon, you're
probably also people pleasing.
And so a lot of times that end.
With you being around the wrongpeople and then they using you,
abusing you, and defining you, whichleads to the next thing, which is
that we can become self-destructive.
(05:31):
If we're with the wrong peopleor we feel that we're not good
enough, we're triggered, we mightget impulsive and, and, and there's
so many ways to self-destruct.
There's drinking, there's using drugs,there's driving while intoxicated,
there's not coming to work becausewe will, my friends aren't going.
We all.
(05:52):
Drunk last night, so I'm not gonna go.
And you go a couple, you don't,you do that a couple times before
you know it, you've lost your job.
There's just a myriad of ways toself-destruct and you probably know
at least one if you, if you recognizeeverything that I'm saying, you
probably already know how you doit, and at least one way or another,
the core of BPD in my experience is.
(06:19):
It's very much shame.
Like Brene Brown says, the feelingof not being good enough, and this is
why self-destruction is such a thingand, and self-harm is such a thing for
people with BPD because high levelsof shame can lead in my experience
with a lot of clients to self-hatred,or at least at the very least.
(06:45):
Self dislike.
You can't possibly be tellingyourself every single day, obviously,
at a subconscious level, cuzmost people are not even aware of
how much they shame themselves.
But you cannot constantly be tellingyourself or feeling that you're not good
enough, that you're not smart enough,that you're not skinny enough, that
you're not successful enough that you'renot pretty enough and love yourself.
(07:05):
You can't possibly putthose two things together.
And so hence why people of BPD.
Have such high levels of self-destruction.
And self-harming.
Now, let me be clear.
Not everybody self-harms, andthere's a lot of different ways of
self-harming because the one that'smostly associated with BPD is cutting,
(07:27):
but a lot of clients do not, or theywill have done it during their teen
years, which by the way, you cannot bediagnosed until after the age of 18.
You can show signs of BPD before 18.
We call them budding border.
, but they cannot be officiallydiagnosed until the age of 18.
(07:48):
But I've had a lot of clients that duringtheir teen years, They did cut, but as
they grew and they became older, they grewout of, of cutting and maybe they started
sleeping around, didn't use protection.
They were drinking and drivingwere burning themselves.
They were engaging and eating disordersthat are very self-harming cuz some of
(08:11):
them can be life-threatening actually.
And that takes us to another thingthat people with BPD struggle.
A lot, which is suicidal ideations.
And in my experience, there's beentwo types of suicidal ideations
that people with BBD strugglewith, which is passive and active.
(08:32):
Passive means that I'm not reallygonna do anything to in my life, but.
If my car happens to go over thebridge and I die as a result, I'm
not gonna, I'm not gonna stop it.
You know?
Now active is that I am activelydoing something to end my life and
(08:53):
there's a marriot ways of doing that.
And I'm not really going togo into details because Right.
The obvious reasons don'twanna give anybody any ideas.
The reason people, In my personalexperience working with people
who have BPD the reason they havesuicidal ideations is because
(09:14):
living with B BPD is not easy.
Living with the ups and downs,feeling not good enough, basically
being miserable all the time is notcompatible with wanting to live life.
It's really.
I don't see an end to this emotionalpain that I feel all the time.
(09:36):
I just want it to end, and the onlyway I can see it ending quickly without
me having to really do anything beyondthis action of taking my life is to die.
I, I don't have the energyto do anything else.
(09:58):
I don't see the pointof trying anything else.
I've tried and tried and tried in life,and people have proof to me that it's
not gonna get better no matter what I do.
So I'm just gonna take this, this exit,I'm just gonna end it all, and whatever's
on the other side is on the other side.
I really don't care.
So it's not.
(10:19):
It's not about, oh, I want attention orany of these other things that people tend
to think about BPD or people with BPD.
It's about the emotional pain.
And when we go into emotions,that's the next, the next criteria.
It's poor emotional regulation.
It's the ups and downs, whichfor, in my experience, has really.
(10:40):
People with BPD, it'sanxiety and depression.
Somebody will tell me, well, my wholelife I've struggled with anxiety
and depression, and you, you keeptalking, you keep getting information.
You come to realize that anxiety andthe depression is really borderline
with the anxieties being the highs.
When I overthink and I revmyself up, I go into anxiety
and the depression's being the.
(11:01):
Which usually are environmentallycontingent, which all that means is that
there's something in the environmentthat's causing the ups and downs.
And the downs are usually triggeredby the threat or the actual occurrence
of a rejection or abandonment.
It sends the person into aspiral, usually shame related.
(11:21):
The other thing is they havea lot of chronic emptiness,
and if you are like, what?
What does that mean?
What does chronic emptiness mean?
It's, it's like looking into the void thatsucking all encompassing, nothingness.
It.
For some people it's like avacuum in, in their chest.
(11:43):
It's, it's a very uncomfortableskin crawling feeling.
It's almost some have described aswhen I'm alone, I cease to exist.
I disappear because as a chameleon,If I don't have others around
me to validate me, to see me,to define me, I have nothing.
(12:06):
I'm, I'm numb.
And even though I'm physicallyhere, I feel like I'm already gone.
That goes into the whole part ofpeople with BPD because they don't
know who they are and they don'tknow how to validate themselves.
They need others to validate them.
It's good we all from time to time,like the validation of others.
(12:29):
I mean, social media is literallycreated to get validation from
others to say, Hey, here's my life.
Please like it.
And when people like it and theysupport it and they're giving you back
positive feedback, that's amazing.
It feels amazing.
And validation is notnecessarily a bad thing.
We all need it from time to time.
(12:50):
But if you cannot validate yourselfand you need others to be able to
validate you, to tell you that youare pretty enough, that you are good
enough, that you're, that, that thatfood you made is good enough, it tastes
great and these people are not healthypeople, they're not supportive people,
then there's gonna be times thatthey're gonna send you into spirals.
Well, really you're gonna wearthat dress , you're a little
(13:13):
on the chunky side, aren't you?
Girly can send somebody into aneating disorder spiral where they
starved themselves or they do otherforms of eating disorders that
really harms them and hurts them.
And so, It just doesn't benefit themand actually makes you completely
(13:34):
powerless to other people because nowthey have control over whether you
feel good enough about yourself or not.
And you know, obviously thishas been discussed a lot
about how social media has a.
Has a positive, positive side,but it also has a very dark side.
Now, the other thing that peoplewith BPD struggle with, and again,
(13:56):
all these criteria doesn't meanthat you're gonna meet all of them.
It doesn't mean that you're gonna meetsome of them, everybody's different.
It's just how it affects you and yourlife and your ability to function.
But the next one is dissociation.
People with BPD tend to dissociate becausetheir emotions are going up and down and
(14:18):
they hit a 10 and they're overwhelmedby that emotion, and so they shut down.
Basically, that's what dissociationis, is your brain shutting down.
Obviously, you're still functioning,you're still walking around, you're
still doing whatever you need todo, but you're an autopilot and so.
(14:40):
, a lot of the information is not going.
The way I know if somebody's probablydissociating a lot is if they come in and
they describe what I call Swiss cheesebrain, which means that there's a lot
of gaps in the memory that people aregoing throughout their day and they can't
remember a lot of things, and most people.
Out there that don't have a personalitydisorder, have had moments of
(15:00):
dissociation, but for them it's usuallyabout you know, I had a thousand things in
my head at the end of the day after work,I drove home and I got home and I can't
remember how I got there because I wasthinking about all these different things.
And it can be very scary.
But most people again, okay,I just got home from work.
(15:21):
I'm tired.
They take a shower, they goto bed, they wake up the next.
and they're not dissociated peopleat BPD because they, the, the root of
the emotional regulation issue is thatbecause I was surviving, I couldn't
sit there and feel my feelings.
Cuz feeling your feelings is vulnerable.
And for people who are trying to survive,they feel it's a weakness because it
(15:44):
takes up energy, it takes up time.
I need to process that stuff.
I don't have that time.
I just push it down, pushit down, push it down.
And if you've been pushingdown your emotions, your whole.
you never learned how to regulate them.
You know, because you cannotregulate what you cannot see or feel.
And so the way to deal with it andkeep pushing it down was to dissociate.
(16:07):
, which worked for a while and for manypeople, like until they came to me, it
was working fantastically until it wasn't.
All of a sudden now they have i b s andthey have migraines or they have high
blood pressure or they have a myriad ofof health issues and they're like, I don't
understand why I can't control my anger.
It's just.
From zero to a hundred in two seconds.
(16:29):
And you know, I, I just, you know,I feel my feelings so much more
intensely than everybody else.
And I say to you, that is your reality.
That is true.
But the reason that is true is becauseyou never learned how to feel your
feelings, how to sit in your body.
Because your body warns you ofyour emotions before you have
(16:52):
cognitively caught on, thatyou are feeling your feelings.
So let's say today something happened,it triggered your emotions, but
because you just automatically shutit down before you even cognitively
were aware that you had shutted down.
You didn't notice that you gottriggered, but three days later
(17:13):
you have your coffee spill.
You lose your ever-loving mind,and you're like, oh my God, I,
I just cannot control myself.
I don't understandwhat's going on with me.
And it's like, no, youcan control yourself.
You just have to learn how.
To be able to regulate your emotions,but that starts with feeling your
feelings so that when that that eventfirst happened, you'd notice in your
(17:34):
body like, Hmm, something's off.
What's going on?
And you can.
Go outside and try to look atwhat, hey, what's, let me look
at what's going on with me.
Why am I feeling this in my body?
What is it that I'mfeeling in my body first?
Because, you know, it could be thatyou're just hungry, but then it also
could be that you're triggered andmaybe you're feeling some shame and.
(17:57):
You if you can catch that earlyon, when an emotion is like a
two, it's way easier to be able toregulate it than if you're at a 10.
When you're at 10.
You're just writing that out and just hopethat you don't push somebody in the face.
But if you can catch it at atwo, you can calm down, you
can think it through, you can.
You can use your coping skills andfind a solution if there is one, and if
(18:20):
not, be able to walk away knowing thatthere's nothing but to radically accept.
People and things are what theyare, and you cannot control them.
You can only control you, butif you don't know what you're
feeling, you can control you.
The next thing is that I want you guys toall understand that BPD is on a spectrum
(18:43):
and and can come with other diagnosises.
What this means is that, Not everybody'sgonna present the same, and people have
different severity and how they present.
So how you present is gonna bedifferent than how somebody else
presents and how females present isdifferent than how males present.
(19:04):
The other thing I wanna discussis that there is a lot of
stigma around BPD because.
I really consider it to bebecause of ignorance, be it in
the field or not in the field.
You know, therapists or non therapists.
There's a lot of misinformationabout BPD and the people who struggle
with it and they're manipulativethat there's no way to overcome it.
(19:28):
And actually in my experience,my personal experience BPD is the
only personality disorder thatyou can recover from There is.
Set of coping skills that are madejust for people at BPD is called
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy,DBT, and it is very effective now.
Anybody recovering fromanything, be it PTSD.
(19:52):
A, you know, any other disorder, notjust BPD really does depend on the
person's willingness to do the work,to to, to go through all the change.
Cuz it is a lot of work and.
We're basically rewiring your whole brainand you're having to relearn how to live.
(20:13):
And not be in survival mode.
So it's not an easything and it takes time.
Yes.
This is in a six month voyage.
This is sometimes from a yearall the way to four or five
years, depending on the severity.
And really the biggest issueis the internal battle.
The part of you that does wannaget better fighting the part.
(20:34):
Okay with staying where it isbecause there's a part of you that
ha, I call it the system, that itrequires survival mode to function.
It requires you to be in chaos and ina mess to be able to do what it does.
And so it's gonna fight you ontrying to get back into a healthy.
(20:56):
Place where you can justlive and not survive.
Now, I want you to understand thatBPD people with BPD are normal.
And yes, you're probablylooking at me and going, what?
? What do you mean when BPD is normal?
No, it isn't.
Yes, my friend one normal is relative.
It's subjective.
But if you grew up in anenvironment, That was unhealthy.
That's had generations ofpersonality disorder behaviors
(21:20):
or features or full-blown casesof, of personality disorders.
There's just a lot ofdysfunction in your whole family.
You're not gonna walkaway without something.
And so normal is relative.
Cuz I have so many people come tome and say, oh, I just wanna be.
Well, you're already there.
You already are normal.
We just have to find a newnormal that is healthier for you.
(21:43):
Now, a small percentage ofpeople with BPD have no trauma.
I have never met a person.
That has BPD that didn't have trauma,but a lot of studies say that there
is a small percentage of people thatgenetically do develop this without
the trigger from the environment.
I cannot really speak much aboutthis because I have never met them.
(22:04):
I have never treated thesepeople, so I would not be able
to really say anything about it.
The tricky thing about trauma is that.
Most people don't recognize it.
They, they come in and theysay, oh, my childhood was great.
I mean, yeah, I dissociate.
Yeah.
You know, I have some abandonment issues.
I don't have stable relationships.
Don't really have aclear sense of who I am.
(22:26):
I'm impulsive.
I have all these issues.
You know, I have a, a hard timeregulating my emotions, but
you know, it's really not my c.
This boyfriend I dated, or youknow, I got bullied and yeah,
these things probably added to it.
But the tricky thing about trauma isthat it's not always recognizable.
Why?
Because we all think, oh, trauma, yeah,it's getting beaten, it's getting raped.
(22:49):
It's, it's these obvious big things, butnobody really thinks about the emotional
and psychological abuse and that it's beengoing on for generations in your family.
So what is trauma is your normal.
. And so you might not recognize it at all.
It's not until you start reallyprocessing and, and processing
the feelings and everything.
(23:09):
Like I've had clients that come in andthey're like first generation immigrants
and their parents had to work really hard.
So they had to take careof all their siblings.
They had to cook, they had to clean,you know, and the person will be
like, yeah, you know, my parentsdid the best that they could.
Yeah, I had to take care of mysiblings and I had to do all these
things and I rarely ever saw them,but you know, it was okay, you know,
(23:31):
I was just helping and we all pitchedin and we did what we had to do.
That's not trauma.
And yes, truth be told, theparents didn't purposely try to.
To traumatize you because again,I'm not here to vilify the parents
and blame them for everything.
A lot of parents do mean well, theyreally did do the best that they could,
and yours may have done the best thatthey could and they still hurt you.
(23:54):
And so the work in therapy is not tovilify your parents and make them the
bad guys, but it's still acknowledgehow you know them, purifying you In
the example that I provided which is.
Felt they had to do to be ableto survive, to make money so that
you guys could continue, you know,having a house, clothes, food,
shelter, all these good things.
(24:15):
They did these things with the bestof intentions, but it hurt you and
it, it could, it for my clients.
It led to the, the making ofBPD of a personality disorder.
And so we have to acknowledge that and.
What the child felt because yes,as an adult we can say, well,
(24:35):
our parents meant the best.
And they, they had todo what they had to do.
And so you can minimize and justifyand understand, but the child that
went through it did not understand, andthat's the, the part of you that you
need to be able to access in therapyand be able to allow that child to feel
the feelings and express those, thosethoughts that they couldn't when they were
(24:57):
a child because they'd get in trouble.
because without that acknowledgement,without that processing, without that
ability to feel those feelings, Ipersonally do not believe you can fully
heal because that's required to do so.
And so I hope that this, this hashelped you guys to understand this.
(25:19):
This little small synopsis has helpedyou guys to understand what is BPD.
You know you can get help if it's thatyou feel that this applies to you, or
maybe you can support those around youor that person around you that does have
these symptoms, because now you betterunderstand that they're not the villain
in the movie and they're not bad people.
(25:41):
It's just that they survive traumaand these different mechanisms,
defense mechanisms, survivalmechanisms, and just day-to-day.
Ways of being is how theygot through the trauma, and
there's nothing wrong with that.
It's just, you know, now that we'reout of the trauma and we don't
need to survive anymore, we cannow move on to healthier ways of
(26:05):
living, thinking, coping, and doing.
And there is hope.
I see it every day throughoutthe over 10 years I've been
working with people at BPD.
So it can be done and.
I hope this has helped, and Isee you guys in this episode.
(26:26):
Bye.
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