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It seems to me that if what ‘experts’ are referring to in the description of Borderline Personality Disorder is related to what I wrote in this post and what is written in its comments
+AFTER EFFECTS OF MY CHILDHOOD: NOBODY SHOULD KNOW WHAT THIS FEELS LIKE
then it would be far more helpful to all concerned to talk about what is really happening UNDERNEATH what might appear on the surface to be ‘a fear of abandonment’.
Humans are absolutely born with needs for safe and secure attachment. In fact, ALL mammals are born with these needs. Our entire physiological makeup is designed to run best when these needs are met birth to age one primarily because it is during the stages of development during that time that all the physical chemicals in the body along with the building of our primary social and emotional right brain gets put together, told how to operate and are built into us in the first place (including essential messages from our earliest environment that tell our genetic material how to manifest itself in our lifetime).
Our attachment needs are PRIMARY. If earliest attachments SUCK then what we need to build our body-brain RIGHT in the first place is simply missing. It is completely natural that neglect and abuse changes how we develop. In my case, as I describe in that post, I was left without the capacity PHYSIOLOGICALLY to feel what it feels like to be loved.
It’s not a far stretch for me to understand that my Borderline Mother was built the same way. This means that her unmet safe and secure attachment needs were unmet, and then ended up building her body-brain so that they would NEVER truly be met — just as my body-brain was built that way.
We might as well ‘call a spade a spade’ and fool nobody, especially our self.
My mother’s Borderline condition prevented her from being able to KNOW the truth about how trauma changed her as it built her. She lacked the self-reflective ability because of her Borderline condition from being able to clearly recognize what she felt or did not feel about anything.
As I wrote yesterday about my mother in a section of the book I am working on:
My mother was TERRIBLE with money causing problems for her family that I am sure were as directly caused by her early trauma-formed brain changes as were all her other problems including her inability to reason, plan for the future, learn from past mistakes, consider consequences of her actions, care about the impact her behavior had on anyone else, or even to be able to remember her own self in her own life – one decision past the next one.
She listened to no one, took responsibility for nothing, truly cared about nobody and to my knowledge was incapable of learning anything throughout her entire adult life. I give all the credit for this discredit to the early traumas of her life that changed the physiological patterning of her development especially in the first year of her life and after that time period, through her fifth year of her life. All of her traumas were directly connected to flaws in her earliest caregiving environment that FIRST created within her a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder that then combined with her genetic potential to land her squarely in the midst of Borderlineville.
I was not robbed of the capacity to recognize what is wrong with me. My mother was. But when it comes to the so-called Borderline ‘fear of abandonment’ I think we need to name this for what it really is: The inability to FEEL loved by someone else — no matter how many others truly DO love us and try their best to get us to KNOW this. If we can’t FEEL what if feels like to be loved, the set-up for disaster is this: We so desperately NEED to feel love we will do anything in our power to at least keep our HOPE alive that someday we WILL be able to feel it — if only. If only WHAT?
If only we had not been so neglected, deprived, maltreated, traumatized and abused PRIMARILY birth to age one — that the wiring in our body-brain that is required to process on a feeling level this information of FEELING WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE LOVED — could not be built into us in the beginning of our life as it SHOULD HAVE BEEN — during our most rapid and most critical stages of development.
Not having this wiring does not create Borderline Personality Disorder.
It happens to everyone who was severely abused as an infant who did not have some other primary caregiver to attach to safely and securely.
That this condition shows up in BPD is significant because it IMMEDIATELY signals that serious trouble was present birth to age two – if not from conception. This is, I believe, the foundation of all TRUE ‘fear of abandonment’. It is a logical and natural physiological consequence of early relationship trauma.
Survivors of this kind of earliest caregiver trauma have essentially had this ability AMPUTATED from them! In their physiological BODY!! Call it what it is, folks! A criminally caused permanent condition that is a direct result of INFANT ABUSE!
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Stop the Storm 
The last therapy I did was schema therapy. It was done by someone who studied it and she had her PHD. I liked the idea because it was cognitive therapy including the effects of your past. I went for about nine months. I have to say…and I have said this before..after all the drudging up the pain in detail, crying my eyes out..I kept asking her”when am I going to start to feel better?” You know It never came and I found I was getting more upset, more sad and that it was not helping me. That was what I thought would be the most helpful therapy.
I sure haven’t had much time — or taken time — to ponder what kind of ‘therapy’ I would think helpful ’cause I know it’s not available to me anyway — and most likely doesn’t even exist yet and probably won’t for some time into the future (I think about 50 years).
If we lived in a culture that created and supported what we need to heal — that same culture would not be allowing neglect and maltreatment of infants and children in the first place!
I do believe that our body has vast powers for healing in the RIGHT situations and conditions (those that are lacking). What I need for healing would exist in a ‘dream world’, in a far more human and perfect world, a world, I suppose, peopled not by humans at all but probably with angels!!
All I know is to try and get the facts straight! About what happened to me in the first place and how that trauma changed my physical development — as this blog describes.
Most of what truly makes sense in regard to our healing I believe we will learn from one another as we go out there in this wonderful web-world we now have access to and look for the facts ourselves — and then individually and collectively discuss what all of this means to us and how we apply what we are learning every moment of our lives!
“Power to the people” I think this is called. Empowerment. There may be a day when I take time to think more about all of this, but now isn’t that time!! Working in ‘therapy’ and feeling worse than one did before they started it — well — SUCKS!!
thanks Linda, the same back to you. sometimes I just sit quietly and wonder, “what did I go through this all for? What is the purpose for it all? How did i survive that then get up and go to school and function?
That is why I think it is important for those of us who did make it to here and now to write books (like yours, and hopefully in the future, mine) PEOPLE NEED TO SEE IT/FEEL IT!! I pray that when my body has turned to ash and my soul is no longer on this plane of existence that there will be such a greater of awareness of what is really going on . All the acting out of society has it’s roots from ages 0-18..and the way our brains perceive those years.
Hold on tight, Linda. You are on quite a ride..
thanks, and yes a ride indeed! So far, this is third day I am finding everything I can think of to avoid the book writing! Break – OK – BUT!!!!!
It’s an act of good will – of will power, dedication, hope for future of others I do this work — on my OWN? Nadda!! xoxox
You said, in response to my previous question:
“But I know I could heal if I could be loved ENOUGH in the RIGHT way as if I am NOW a newborn
Humans at this stage of our evolution are not currently willing to (in my opinion) know this — or do this for one another.”
Do you know of any research that would support this? Today I read online about schema therapy (www.schematherapy.com) Are you familiar with this?
No, not familiar but just did a google search with http://www.schematherapy.com — does not look at all like what I am talking about. I am talking about love involving exactly (of course minus the diapers and bottles, etc.) the same exact love a newborn needs — including tactile, touch, effects of soothing, loving sound and voices, absolute safety and security in an absolute caring and loving interaction environment, including everything described in this article by Dr. Schore
Click to access SchoreIMHJAttachment.pdf
which is exactly what infant abuse survivors missed!!
and a whole lot more but NOTHING to do with — ‘intellectual theory’ of any kind.
Am tired now so all for tonight, but thanks for stopping by and asking questions! Maybe post back here what you think of this schema therapy if you get a chance to research it……. Linda – alchemy now
What do you mean by:
“I do not have access to what I need to heal this — this current culture, even the world, is not set up to truly value this kind of healing
I cannot do it on my own. This kind of healing HAS to happen with another person.”
I can fully identify with your blog and the comment above. I also experienced severe abuse in childhood, mostly from my deranged father and my ‘I don’t know what to do about it so I will put my head in the sand’ mother.
Maybe because I am working so hard toward the book — it is time for me to get to my own bedrock about some things, state what I believe (knowing I continually change while living) – and quit pussy-footing around
What I mean in essence is that as far as I know, can tell or imagine
the only possibility for doing the ‘BRAIN and BODY corrective surgery’ that MIGHT have the hope of healing the inability to feel what it feels like to be loved
can ONLY happen if a person — at ANY age — gets loved by someone as if they are a beautiful, innocent, pure, precious and perfect INFANT
THAT level of pure love, of love that is the essence of MOTHERING no matter who is doing the care for an infant — I suspect can allow the body and the brain to REWIRE itself in critically important ways so that this feeling could be felt
There is damage to nerves in body and brain during early infant trauma that CANNOT BE altered, changed, healed or repaired once certain Critical Periods of development are past.
But human physiology has powers to repair itself in OTHER ways throughout the lifespan. Too complex to go into the neurological and physiological (including the genetic – epigenetic) factors involved — and the experts need to do this for us lay people
But I know I could heal if I could be loved ENOUGH in the RIGHT way as if I am NOW a newborn
Humans at this stage of our evolution are not currently willing to (in my opinion) know this — or do this for one another.
Hi Linda:
I experience this all the time. I want so desperately to accept , take in, and feel love . I do on a superficial level.
on a deeper level, i can’t feel it to take it in, it just feels like an exercise when people say it to me. There is a numbness.
My husband told me the other day, “my heart breaks for you every day” and “you are such a good person, you did not deserve anything that happened to you, it was awful”. I just found myself looking at him..so he said to me “did you hear what I said? Did you know I feel that way? ” so i sat there for a minute and a couple tears rolled slowly down my cheeks. I replied “no, I did not really know that.” i think I felt his pain, more than I felt that his pain was for me.
For me that was progress. painfully slow progress. But i reached something, somewhere, and it was a part that never feels the love truly.
It shouldn’t be that hard now, should it? !!!
You are so right. As much as in therapy I would like to believe my actions and beliefs come from the abuse I suffered from ages 8-16, being raped constantly and terrorized with violence and threats to kill me every day.
THE true source of this comes from my infant abuse and my mothers crazy psychotic world that she lived in, and put upon me….. burning me as an infant, not allowing me to ever cry ,and her sexual abuse piled on top, It changed me forever.
I like you, Linda, continue to trudge forward, to heal, to seek hope. that is the survivor in us, in all of us. Some days I do it way more gracefully than others.
Nothing can change the fact I did not have a mother. I had a terrorist and sadist who took her place. then her flip side, when she would dress me up like a doll, and parade me around. I have done years and years of work on myself, and accomplished many wonderful things both professionally and in my personal relationships. I still have trouble taking in the LOVE.
Blessings to you and a big hug…keep writing!!
Another part of what I don’t say about ‘all of this’: I believe healing is completely possible for most of us on the neurological level related to attachment and the body-brain wiring that is required for us to feel the feeling of being loved.
HOWEVER — I do not believe that enough of us have access to the kind of ‘truth in therapy’ that is necessary for this to happen
Therapy of course does NOT have to happen in a ‘professional’ setting — as you well know with your partnership
I do not have access to what I need to heal this — this current culture, even the world, is not set up to truly value this kind of healing
I cannot do it on my own. This kind of healing HAS to happen with another person.
Such sick sick sick sick people you had in your infant-childhood!! So sick, and such evil treatment beyond belief — but it HAPPENED to you!
But, again, it is the earliest experiences that set in motion the end result of what you and I both share in common! I believe this inability to ‘to feel the feeling of being loved’ HAS TO BE NAMED – bless you, your mate, your life, his life!!!!! Linda – alchemynow