Your perspective on life comes from the cage you were held captive in.

The borderline Queen experiences what therapists call “oral greediness”. The desperate hunger of the borderline Queen is akin to the behavior of an infant who had gone too long between feelings. Starved, frustrated, and beyond...

Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs.

You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find...

This will sound strange, and yet I’m sure it was the point: it was a bit like being high. That, for me, anyway, had always been the attraction of drugs, to stop the brutal round...

An inner ease spreads inside me. Such is the power of acceptance and understanding from other people, the power of validation

They love without measure those whom they will soon hate without reason.

That was the crux. You. Only you could work on you. Nobody could force you, and if you weren’t ready, then you weren’t ready, and no amount of open-armed encouragement was going to change that.

For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned—and in this case branded with a label no one would...

Cincinatti was where I learned that running away from your problems has a three-month statute of limitations, a lesson I have found repeatedly to be true. Three months is still a first impression — of...

The role of the therapist is to reflect the being/accepting self that was never allowed to be in the borderline.

I’ve grown up with an ethic, call it a part, that insists I hide my pain at all costs. As I talk, I feel this pain leaking out—not just the core symptom of BPD, but...

A crucial element of the real self is its unconditional acceptance of itself.

All the skills from DBT glom together, a mass of acronyms without any meaning. I pull out the DBT books and paw through the pages. Something has to help. Then I find these words: ‘The...

Never give up on someone with a mental illness. When “I” is replaced by “We”, illness becomes wellness.

I’m so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself.

Accepting a psychiatric diagnosis is like a religious conversion. It’s an adjustment in cosmology, with all its accompanying high priests, sacred texts, and stories of religion. And I am, for better or worse, an instant...

But what if you simply don’t have a solid self to return to—if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can’t conceive of “normal” or “healthy” because pain and...

Owing to a poorly defined sense of self, people with BPD rely on others for their feelings of worth and emotional caretaking. So fearful are they of feeling alone that they may act in desperate...

In the life cycle of an intense emotion, if it isn’t acted upon, it eventually peaks and then decreases. But as Dr. Linehan explains, people with BPD have a different physiological experience with this process...

Certainly, it’s important to acknowledge and identify the effects of BPD on your life. It’s equally important to realize that it neither dictates who you are nor fixes your destiny.

Yet I also recognize this: Even if everyone in the world were to accept me and my illness and validate my pain, unless I can abide myself and be compassionate toward my own distress, I...

It’s not about blame or wallowing…you are all molded by so much more than a dysfunctional past, and you must ultimately take responsibility for creating the life you want.

Borderline Personality Disorders” or mentally unbalanced. I attended many of these women, after they were discharged, or were wives of abusers, from xxx Air Force Base, when I was a psychotherapist working in the private...

We need this help from the outside because we don’t know how to to do this for ourselves. We start with a deep deficit—a chasm really—when it comes to understanding and being tolerant of ourselves,...

People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.

The Queen is controlling, the Witch is sadistic, the Hermit is fearful, and the Waif is helpless.And each requires a different approach. Don’t let the Queen get the upper hand; be wary even of accepting...

I need them to be aware and present with me in the midst of the storm, not just tell me what to do.

I couldn’t trust my own emotions. Which emotional reactions were justified, if any? And which ones were tainted by the mental illness of BPD? I found myself fiercely guarding and limiting my emotional reactions, chastising...