Borderline Personality Disordre Quotes

A borderline suffers a kind of emotional hemophilia; [s]he lacks the clotting mechanism needed to moderate [her] spurts of feeling. Stimulate a passion, and the borderline emotionally bleeds to death. ~ Jerold Kreisman, Hal Straus

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 all the years of being blamed or ignored for my condition, and all the years I've blamed others for how I am. It's the pain of being told I was too needy even as could never get the help I needed. ~ Kiera Van Gelder

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. ~ Norah Vincent

In some ways, com­ing to terms with my­self and work­ing to­ward re­cov­ery has been like say­ing "I love you" to some­one but keep­ing a loaded gun hid­den in your back pocket, just in case that per­son pisses you off enough. ~ Kiera Van Gelder

I'm so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself. ~ Kiera Van Gelder

We propose that BPD involves secondary structural dissociation. Consistent with this, Golynkina and Ryle (1999) found that patients with BPD encompassed a dissociative part of the personality that seems to represent an ANP (a coping ANP) and more than one EP (abuser rage, victim rage, passive victim, and zombie). Some patients with BPD have severe dissociative symptoms, and may actually border on DDNOS or DID. Our clinical observations suggest that dissociative parts in BPD patients have less emancipation and elaboration, and less distinct sense of self than in DDNOS or DID. ~ Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis

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

Many MPD patients have spent years in unproductive therapies based on the assumption that they were borderlines. ~ Donald R. Ross

What does borderline personality mean, anyhow? It appears to be a way station between neurosis and psychosis: a fractured but not disassembled psyche. Though to quote my post-Melvin psychiatrist: "It's what they call people whose lifestyles bother them. ~ Susanna Kaysen

This was typical of my parents: in their minds, no one was just an asshole. There was always something wrong with people other than just sucking: they had socialization disorders, or borderline personality syndrome, or whatever. ~ John Green

He may attempt suicide, often not with the intent to die but to feel something, to confirm he is alive. ~ Jerold J. Kreisman

The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: "The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize - too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries. ~ Kate Zambreno

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

Dissociative symptoms - primarily depersonalization and derealization - are elements in other DSM-IV disorders, including schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, and in the neurologic syndrome of temporal lobe epilepsy, also called complex partial seizures. In this latter disorder, there are often florid symptoms of depersonalization and realization, but most amnesia symptoms derive from difficulties with focused attention rather than forgetting previously learned information. ~ James A. Chu

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 of hypercritical thinking, to escape the ravages of an unoccupied mind cannibalizing itself. ~ Norah Vincent

When I got home, I thought about the fact that Einstein supposedly used to stock his wardrobe with the same suits and shoes so he'd never have to think about what he was going to wear. I lack the intellect it takes to solve problems that way. I've advanced nothing in the field of psychology, and my paper on PTSD was given little attention; I wrote that psychological disorders with a genetic link, such as borderline personality disorder, might seem impossible to treat, while PTSD, which is based in trauma that has been experienced, seems easy to tackle, at least to the layperson. The opposite is true. It can be difficult to find the right medication for genetic disorders, but they can be sufficiently treated. Conversely, PTSD never goes away. One might think that our genes are so elementary that we cannot escape them, but our experiences have the ability to do far greater damage. ~ Bryan Way

From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They are not infections, but infarctions; they do not follow from the negativity of what is immunologically foreign, but from an excess of positivity. Therefore, they elude all technologies and techniques that seek to combat what is alien. ~ Byung-Chul Han

My skin is so thin that the innocent words of others burn holes right through me. ~ BPD Pieces Of Me Community

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. ~ Marsha M. Linehan

The man reeks of mental illness. I can taste his pathology... Goes well with my palette. ~ Juditta Salem

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 gifts because it engenders expectations. Don't internalize the Hermit's fears or become limited by them. Don't allow yourself to be alone with the Witch; maintain distance for your own emotional and physical safety. And with the Waif, don't get pulled into her crises and sense of victimization. Pay attention to your own tendencies to want to rescue her, which just feeds the dynamic. ~ Christine Ann Lawson

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 the ability to calm of soothe herself, she grabs, flails, and wails until at last the nipple is planted securely and perhaps too deeply in her mouth. She coughs, gags, chokes, and spits, eyeing the elusive breast like a wolf guarding her food. Similarity, the Queen holds on to what is hers, taking more than she could use, in case it might be taken away prematurely. ~ Christine Ann Lawson

It doesn't occur to me that alcohol might be unhinging me, that drinking at the rate I am can induce depression, impulsive behaviour, and symptoms of bipolar and borderline personality disorder. ~ Koren Zailckas

Parentified children learn to take responsibility for themselves and others early on. They tend to fade into the woodwork and let others take center stage. This extends into adulthood - adult children may put others' needs before their own. They may have difficulty accepting care and attention. ~ Kimberlee Roth

GoodReads: Do people still ask you about your mental health?

Susanna Kaysen: Well, they used to a lot. "Are you still crazy?" was how people put it. And I would say, "Yes, but I'm older, so I'm more used to it." It's familiar. You've been there, you've done that, and it's gone away. I think the fact that you can feel like it's the end of the world and you're going to kill yourself and yet there's some part of you that says "this has happened before." And by the time you get to the point where you can say "this has happened 137 times before," it's better than saying "this has happened four times before." So as you get older, there's a little ironist or cynic or somebody inside you who says, "Yeah, uh-huh. Right, OK, I've heard that, I've heard that. ~ Susanna Kaysen

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, and that's even before we go forth to do battle with the rest of the world. As soon as someone judges, criticizes, dismisses, or ignores, the cycle of pain and reactivity ramps up, compounded by shame, remorse, and rejection. The act of validation, simply saying, 'I can see things from your perspective,' can short-circuit that emotional detour. ~ Kiera Van Gelder

Switching is the term in dissociation theory used to refer to the change of state, or moving from one part or alter to another. Some writers use the word splitting when referring to switching, creating a further confusion. ~ Donald A. Price

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

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 loneliness are all you remember? ~ Kiera Van Gelder

Looking back on the God my friend believed in, he seems a little erratic, not entirely unlike her father - God as borderline personality. ~ Anne Lamott

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

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 will probably always feel alone and neglected by others. ~ Kiera Van Gelder

There weren't as many layers between her and the world as there were with the rest of us. ~ Renée Knight

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

To stave off the panic associated with the absence of a primary object, borderline patients frequently will impulsively engage in behaviors that numb the panic and establish contact with and control over some new object. ~ Christine Ann Lawson

To a large degree, a particular collision of genes and temperament with a suboptimal or hostile environment may explain the development of borderline personality disorder. ~ Dolores Mosquera

Some of our fiercest battles are fought and won in silence. ~ Kianu Starr

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 a city, of other people, of yourself in that place. But there comes a point when you can no longer hide who you are, and the reactions of others become all too familiar ... ~ Stacy Pershall

[Adult children of a BPD parent] may seem old before their time or like an old soul (and probably were that way as children too.) They may easily assume the role of fixer and nurturer. They're the ones friends lean on, the ones to whom people tell their problems. Helping others gives them a sense of purpose and worth. ~ Kimberlee Roth

Even fictional characters sometimes receive unwarranted medical opinions. Doctors have diagnosed Ebenezer Scrooge with OCD, Sherlock Holmes with autism, and Darth Vader with borderline personality disorder. ~ Sam Kean