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I could say that somehow the switch was flipped on the railroad tracks I was happily cruising along on yesterday as I wrote my reply to Question #5 that my daughter sent me for our book.  Today I am off on another track, and so far my efforts to STOP my thinking in ‘this direction’ have proved not only ineffective, but have rather escalated my thinking in a direction that is not about what I am writing for the book!

The book is about MY STORY, not my mother’s!  And yet here I am pondering Borderline Personality Disorder itself — again.  So, I guess there is more I need to say on the subject right now and I might as well get on with it!

My current line of thinking is a combination of considerations both about my mother’s mind and about the comment made yesterday by a Borderline mother on a recent post about ‘parenting correctly.  Of course the tie-in for all of this is that my mother wasn’t parented correctly, she sure didn’t parent me correctly — ad infinitum as we think about the transmission of the unresolved trauma through the generations of all of us who have contact with BPD.

Today I am thinking (because this appeared on the National Institute of Mental Health’s webpage about BPD) that under no circumstances do I consider it accurate to use the term ’emotional dysregulation’ in any way that limits it to BPD.  Emotional dysregulation is what happens IN ANY EARLY ENVIRONMENT OF UNSAFE AND INSECURE INFANT-CAREGIVER INTERACTION.  This term simply describes body-brain changes that happen to a little one who suffers insecurely in these patterns of interaction.  It in NO way is specific to BPD.

Any anxiety disorder, bi-polar disorder, all of the ‘personality disorders’, schizophrenia, ADHS, autism — you name it!  All of these INCLUDE emotional dysregulation.

So, this being said I want to also mention that if Dr. Martin Teicher and his Harvard research group are correct in their assessment that early trauma can so change the development of a little one’s body-brain that they end up as an ‘evolutionarily altered’ individual, then what I just wrote in comment and post about Borderline parents (as well as all of us who parent even though we were altered through trauma in our beginnings) needs to be said much more clearly:

Evolutionarily altered means to me that the benefits that our species has reaped through our evolution into less troubled and troubling times simply did not exist for us.  All of the ‘more highly evolved’ abilities that come to a body-brain that is raised from birth with the best or near the best safe and secure attachment conditions was not given to us.

Because I also believe as I’ve said that the greatest creative gifts in our human gene pool are directly tied to the highest risks for troubles if things go wrong in our earliest life, there is an important connection here.

Only in very modern ‘evolved’ times have humans even attempted to raise offspring alone — in dual parent let alone as single parent families.  Old times, those ‘evolutionarily altered’ times as nature designed us ALWAYS meant that people lived collectively and they raised offspring collectively.

For those of us who were trauma altered it is therefore part-and-parcel of our resulting ‘conditions’ that we ALSO need collective help to raise our children.

Whether or not our society wants to accept these realities, the solution to Borderline parenting MIGHT be that those people never have offspring due to their inability to ‘parent correctly’ because their physiology of body-nervous system-brain-mind-self has been altered to a ‘more primitive’ condition in response to a ‘more primitive’ early environment.

The OTHER solution is NOT that these BPD parents have their children ‘removed’ from them as our society currently practices.  It is ALSO not to leave the BPD parents to parent alone — because they do not physiologically have the ability to do so without passing trauma onto their kids – no matter how they wish not to.

The OTHER solution is to find ways to offer at risk, including BPD parents, a way to access the kinds of collective parenting environments that raised up our species in the first place.

Just because a solution to a problem might not be easy or popular does not mean it isn’t possible.  If a nation considers its children to be just that — its children — creative ways CAN be found to resolve critically important problems that affect the future generations.

In my scenario, then, an emotionally escalating ‘dysregulated’ parent could simply walk away and take care of their self while someone else at that critical juncture in time takes care of the offspring.  Not only that, but what a trauma-altered development person needs, BPD or not, is to carefully tended at the same time.  This is social interaction.  This is social life-support toward healing.

Emotionally dysregulated people (including PTSD) will NEVER be able to process anxiety/stress/distress stimulation in ordinary ways.  It’s not hard to imagine all the complications FOR THE ADULT that enter into this picture.  But being able to down-regulate emotional response, intensity, duration and appropriateness didn’t come to ANYONE just because they are a wonderful person.  Those abilities were built into someone who has them in their body in safe and secure interactions within their caregiving environment by someone — or this person would not have them at all either.

If say a BPD parent could walk away and leave care periodically with the collective and go take care of their needs — including their needs for creativity and expression — this has nothing to do with loving one’s children or not!  NOTHING!

The fact is that nature NEVER intended people to parent children alone – and I am talking about far more than just extended family connections as we think of them today.  If BPD or some other trauma-altered development condition exists in a parent, it came from the environment that raised them — and it is very possible that the ‘disorder’ in the connected-extended family is NOT HEALTHY.

The collective needs to be a healthy one.  True, given the parameters of the culture we live in I can’t envision how this COULD actually work, but that does not mean that this isn’t the best solution possible.

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Our species essentially owns all of our stories, especially ones about trauma because if the trauma has not been resolved, it needs to be.  If it has not been resolved then more people are needed to get this job done!!  The importance of capturing stories in words — Here is a reply I just wrote to a comment on my post: +IN THE WORDS OF A BORDERLINE CHILD: MY MOTHER’S STORIES

When I wrote in the last piece I posted that I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that I ended up with her writings, even her childhood stories that survived for 70 years, I mean that I believe something like ‘divine destiny’ made sure all of this would happen exactly the way that it did so that in the end – if I can do my part of the job correctly – something good and important can come of all the suffering that happened in the past — my mother’s losses and mine included.

These patterns as they tumble down the generations are much, much bigger than the individuals that suffer under the burden of trauma. I believe that when we drop the perspective of individual ‘egos’ what we have left is a presentation on a much bigger level of what humans truly need to form a healthy, happy body-brain in the first place along with how the absence of what we need (along with abuse and neglect added on top) leads directly to the kind of suffering I knew, you knew, your mother knew, my mother knew……

Borderline Personality Disorder remains a mystery on most of its profound levels. The collection of my mother’s writings combined with what I know might be able to provide important links between the suffering grownups pass to their children and how those suffering children ‘handle it’ through trauma altered development that changes them.

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I have written about this before, and here is another opportunity to say this again: The road to healing trauma lies in giving words to its patterns. These patterns exist in the words of ALL the stories we know — those of our parents, of their parents, of our own, and of our children.

People, PLEASE consider writing down every single story you can find and that you can remember!!!!! There is no need to worry about whether or not the story is ‘true’ or whether or not you remember it accurately.

I DO WISH that I had ‘known then what I know now’ when I listened to my mother tell the stories from her childhood, but I remember the bulk of them — and every single one of them is a link in the chain of trauma and abuse that was passed to her and onto me and to my siblings.

Ongoing unresolved trauma that interferes with the ability to parent offspring through safe and secure attachment — and that interferes with our own ability to have safe and secure attachment with our own self and with the world we live in — happens because the INFORMATION contained in traumatic experience has not been processed, valued, understood or ‘made whole’. This making-whole happens when information contained in a traumatic experience comes to make sense IN A BIG WAY so that the species as a whole LEARNS SOMETHING NEW and critically important so that life can continue and these kinds of traumas can (1) be absolutely prevented and avoided in the future, or (2) brand new coping skills can be learned to deal with a future repeat of the trauma ASAP and completely effectively.

The nature of trauma is that it represents A CHALLENGE both to the individual who experiences but more importantly — if we can look at the bigger picture outside the range of individual ‘ego’ — to the survival of our entire species. If we assume that survival is not the only interest of nature, but that survival with ever increasing well-being IS ALSO important, then we can begin to understand that NONE OF WHAT WE KNOW of trauma – past, present, or how it might reappear in the future – is insignificant.

It then becomes each of our job not only to heal from our own individual traumas but also to understand how and why they got in our way in the first place! How THIS happened is that the people around us, most importantly those who caregive the youngest infants and children, were not able to do this job for their own trauma. Because it is the nature of this unresolved trauma NOT TO GO AWAY until someone, somewhere, somehow LEARNS WHAT TRAUMA HAS TO TEACH US, we HAVE to learn from it.

I absolutely consider the existence of my mother’s writings to be a GIFT not only to me but also as I can make them available to serious students of not only trauma itself, but also of unresolved trauma.

When I think about my mother’s earliest writings — even today as I prepare in a few moments to go back to the book-writing — I understand that in its most simple, simple, simple format ALL OF LIFE is about what developmental neuroscientist Dr. Allan N. Schore names as RUPTURE AND REPAIR.

Because these patterns form the basis of mother-infant brain-building interactions from the beginning of life — most especially as they occur on the emotional communication level in the interactions between mother-infant — it is these patterns that build the foundation of the brain and the body. Either there is rupture without repair which builds the ability to regulate emotions (emotional regulation) into the earliest forming right social-emotional brain OR there is rupture without repair WITHOUT adequate repair that builds emotional dysregulation into the body-brain instead.

Unresolved trauma is ABOUT RUPTURE WITHOUT ADEQUATE REPAIR. Learning from trauma is about repairing these ruptures.

Nature does not care that humans can ‘think’ about their life. Nature cares that life continues. Rupture without repair brings death on one level or another. Repairing ruptures brings life.

Write down all the stories you know about anyone close to you who impacted and/or impacts your life. Give those stories form. Give them words. It is healing to do so because what trauma needs to resolve itself is to become processed and integrated and LEARNED FROM. We cannot possibly begin to learn from trauma as human beings if we cannot process the information it gives to us — AND THIS IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT — WITH BOTH SIDES OF OUR BRAIN.

As I write my book now I continue to be amazed that for all the thousands and thousands of words I have written elsewhere about this whole topic RIGHT NOW — because of the focus of my intent — I am coming to new realizations that astound me, and they are coming to me in various ways. But in the end my intention is that all the realizations form themselves into a coherent pattern IN WORDS — yes, that will take the form of a book.

It seems to be outside of my ‘range of vision’ to understand more comprehensively what nature actually intends to accomplish by so profoundly changing the physiological development of a traumatized infant-child’s body-brain development in ways that hamper the processing of trauma-related information. Because that is exactly what happens.

It seems that these changes are meant to ensure physical survival IN THE SHORT TERM long enough to allow for reproduction.  In our culture in this day and age humans survive LONG PAST what nature has intended. We also do not raise our offspring collectively which is what I believe nature has always intended.  (In nature’s design I believe those at ‘most risk’ for difficulties in parenting if there were ANY disruptions in an insufficient earliest environment ALSO have the greatest gifts.  In ‘the old world’ others in the ‘collective group’ would have stepped in to do the parenting, thus leaving these ‘gifted ones’ to do their creative ‘thing’ which in turn offered all kinds of benefits to the ‘collective’.) But putting all this aside for a moment I want to say this about the condition we are individually left with if we are severe early trauma survivors:

Our right brain hemisphere forms first. It is built on emotional and social information gained thru our earliest infant-caregiver interactions. These interactions either build regulation or dysregulation into our brain circuits. These interactions determine how our brain regions interact with one another — and with our developing self. A mother is literally downloading her brain into her infant through the patterns of interactions (safe and secure or not) that she has with her infant. She is feeding the infant her own self.

If the right brain does not get to develop in an ordinary way, the information our BODY feeds to our awareness through our right brain will not be handled normally, either.

Then comes the left brain, which forms more slowly from birth and takes it giant leap in growth after the first year of life. Our left brain, with its organizational abilities, cannot grow to organize right brain chaos if that’s what the infant was fed in the beginning (most simply put). Organizing experience in the form of language is one of the left brain’s major job. This process and the abilities that go with it are changed and disturbed by early experience — both as they affected the FIRST growth of the right brain and also as they affect the growth of the left brain.

The corpus callosum, the region between the two brain hemispheres in the middle of our head sends information back and forth between our left and right brains (and they are like two separate brains with different jobs to do).

This all means most simply that the most important information trauma has to teach human beings is NOT able to be processed PHYSIOLOGICALLY in normal ways for early abuse and trauma survivors. The perhaps cruel and/or crude way trauma information is then processed by our species is that those ‘informed others’ — those who DID not suffer early trauma and have their body-brain changed as a result — can simply read trauma survivors’ ‘reproductive fitness indicators’ with are ‘communication signals’ about the CONDITION OF THE ENVIRONMENT that created survivors in the first place.

Nature is NOT concerned with the egotistic personal individual – not remotely. Survival of the species as a whole is what matters. If survivors want to try to heal, to improve the quality of their own life and achieve increased well-being, then we have a major job to do!! On all levels!! And this is a job that non early abuse survivors WILL NEVER HAVE TO DO because the foundations of their body-brain development are very different from ours.

So it is WE who have to challenge our selves to learn about what happened to us. We have to learn how to LEARN from and about trauma so that we can find ways to understand it and learn from it — which is how trauma is ALWAYS processed and integrated — both individually and collectively.

In our modern world we certainly can and SHOULD be able to enlist the help of those who do have a more ‘ordinary’ body-brain. Those people’s BODIES know things ours do not. So, we end up WATCHING them — and learning — at the same time they are watching us — and learning.

Because humans have evolved the gift of verbal language abilities it is important to use our words as a part of these educational, learning and healing processes. Write down the stories. A WordPress blog is a perfect place to put them to publish privately or publicly.

Write down all the stories for everyone important to you. If you remember hearing them, write down also the context of the ‘hearing’. Like repeated nightmares, repeated stories that come again and again in the same words ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ones.

As we transform trauma stories into written words we are using whatever abilities our trauma-changed body-brain has to process information — and it’s the best exercise for our brain! True, any art form of any kind is good, but I am specifically talking about VERBAL processes here because they take place using very specific channels.

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Interesting article:  Borderline Personality Disorder: Brain Differences Related to Disruptions in Cooperation in Relationships 

“Different patterns of brain activity in people with borderline personality disorder were associated with disruptions in the ability to recognize social norms or modify behaviors that likely result in distrust and broken relationships, according to an NIMH-funded study published online in the August 8, 2008 issue of Science.”

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Here is a list of books about Borderline Personality Disorder:

Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder by Rachel Reiland (Sep 1, 2004)

Lost in the Mirror: An Inside Look at Borderline Personality Disorder by Richard A. Moskovitz (Mar 1, 2001)

The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New Tools and Techniques to Stop Walking on Eggshells by Randi Kreger (Sep 15, 2008)

Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger (Jan 2, 2010)

The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide by Alex Chapman and Kim Gratz (Nov 2007)

Sometimes I Act Crazy: Living with Borderline Personality Disorder by Jerold J. Kreisman and Hal Straus (Apr 14, 2006)

Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified: An Essential Guide for Understanding and Living with BPD by Robert O. Friedel, Perry D. Hoffman, Dixianne Penney and Patricia Woodward (Aug 4, 2004)

Borderline Personality Disorder For Dummies by Charles H. Elliott PhD and Laura L. Smith PhD (Jul 27, 2009)

I Hate You–Don’t Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality by Jerold J. Kreisman and Hal Straus (Dec 7, 2010)

Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change by Valerie Porr (Aug 12, 2010)

Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem by Kimberlee Roth, Freda B. Friedman and Randi Kreger (Nov 2003)

How to Spot a Borderline Personality by Joe Navarro (Aug 7, 2010) – Kindle eBook

Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship by Christine Ann Lawson (Jul 1, 2002)

Breaking Free from Boomerang Love: Getting Unhooked from Borderline Personality Disorder Relationships by Lynn Melville (Sep 1, 2004)

Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality by Merri Lisa Johnson (Jun 8, 2010)

Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder: How to Keep Out-of-Control Emotions from Destroying Your Relationship by Shari Y. Manning PhD and Marsha M. Linehan Phd ABPP (Aug 15, 2011)

Borderline Traits: Her Life with Borderline Personality Disorder by Arlene Roberson (Jul 12, 2010)

How to Talk to a Borderline by Joan Lachkar (Nov 18, 2010)

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone With Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder by Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger (Jul 1, 2011)

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, & Distress Tolerance (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood and Jeffrey Brantley (Jul 2007)

Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder by Marsha Linehan (May 14, 1993)

Angry Heart by Joseph Santoro and Ronald Jay Cohen (Oct 1997)

New Hope for People with Borderline Personality Disorder: Your Friendly, Authoritative Guide to the Latest in Traditional and Complementary Solutions by Neil R. Bockian, Nora Elizabeth Villagran and Valerie Porr (Jun 25, 2002)

Borderline Personality Disorder in Adolescents: A Complete Guide to Understanding and Coping When Your Adolescent Has BPD by Blaise A. Aguirre (Nov 1, 2007)

Borderline Personality Disorder: New Reasons for Hope (A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book) by Francis Mark Mondimore and Patrick Kelly (Oct 28, 2011)

Borderline Mom by Georgiana Wright (Dec 21, 2009) – Kindle eBook

Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (The Master Work Series) by Otto F. Kernberg (May 1, 2000)

One Way Ticket To Kansas: Caring About Someone With Borderline Personality Disorder And Finding A Healthy You by Ozzie Tinman (Apr 6, 2005)

Mentalization-based Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Practical Guide by Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy (Nov 2, 2006)

A Primer of Transference Focused Psychotherapy for the Borderline Patient by Frank E. Yeomans (Jul 31, 2002)

The Integrative Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder: Effective, Symptom-Focused Techniques, Simplified for Private Practice by John Preston (Apr 2006)

Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality: Focusing on Object Relations by John F. Clarkin (Jan 15, 2006)

Borderline Personality Disorder: The Latest Assessment and Treatment Strategies by Melanie A. Dean (Feb 1, 2006)

Schema Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder by Arnoud Arntz, Hannie van Genderen and Jolijn Drost (May 26, 2009)

Understanding and Treating Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide for Professionals and Families by Perry D. Hoffman, John G. Gunderson and Johng Gunderson (Feb 2005)

Understanding your Borderline Personality Disorder: A Workbook (The Wiley Series in Psychoeducation?) by Chris Healy (Dec 23, 2008)

Borderline Personality Disorder (Facts) by Roy Krawitz and Wendy Jackson (Apr 7, 2008)

On Knife’s Edge: A Young Girl’s Journey Through Borderline Personality Disorder by Michelle Karpus (Jul 28, 2010)

Borderline and Beyond, Workbook and Personal Journal, Revised by Laura Paxton (Nov 21, 2001)

Borderline Personality Disorder: A Patient’s Guide to Taking Control by Arthur Freeman and Gina M. Fusco (Nov 1, 2003)

Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide to Evidence-Based Practice by Joel Paris (Mar 25, 2010)

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National Institute of Mental Health webpage on Borderline Personality Disorder

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The following was written today as a sidebar for the book chapter I am working on:  I firmly believe that most serious mental illness genetic combinations are directly tied to the greatest gifts belonging to the gene pool of our species.  Like the brilliance or dowdiness of a peacock’s tail acquired directly in response to the quality of the environment the bird lives in (which includes genetic interactions with this environment), all forms of what we now know as ‘mental illness’ are also reproductive fitness indicators that signal the condition of the EARLIEST environment of a human being as represented by and in the quality of mothering received primarily in the first 33 months of life.

I will always believe that my mother’s sensitivities along with her creative and imaginative giftedness, even as it appears in her childhood writing, put her at extremely high risk for developing a serious mental illness in consequence to the neglect, abuse and trauma that she experienced before the age of six years old.  I also strongly suspect that had her earliest caregiver environment been safe, secure and anything like adequate she would not have developed Borderline Personality Disorder.

I believe that my mother was what some might call a ‘pre-Borderline’ child, but I draw my net much more tightly.  My mother WAS already a Borderline by the time she wrote her stories between the ages of nine and ten.  Interestingly after I had found and transcribed my mother’s childhood stories I asked my sister what she thought of them and if she could detect our mother’s mental illness as being already present when she wrote them.  It might be directly due to the vast differences in our mother’s treatment of each of us that I know my mother’s Borderline condition is represented in her stories while my sister detected nothing unusual about them.  My sister lived in our mother’s white world.  I lived in our mother’s black world.

I therefore challenge readers to consider the following short piece my mother wrote in 1935 at the age of nine.  Believe me, there was already something WRONG with my mother’s brain-mind expressed in this piece.  While the piece is clever there is nothing ordinary about the way my child-mother fixated on the color black.  There is no relationship here between black in a crayon box and the absolute blackness of the universe my mother later created for me:

Once there was a black boy who was picking black berries and putting them in his black bowl for his mother to prepare for his black father to eat for his black berry supper but a big black bare came a long and while the black boy was looking he ate all the black berries from the black berries from the[she repeated this]  black bowl. The black boy soon filled it up again, so the black bear wasn’t satisfied so he took all the black berries on the bush besides in the bowl [the following was added between the lines] then the boy began to cry then the black bears heart was sofftened and he told the black boy that he was sorry the black boy wiped his tears. The black bear then took the black bowl between his teeth and filled it from a nother black berie bush and gave it to the black boy, and the black boy thanked him and went home and his black father had his black berry supper.

Mildred

Even if my mother wrote this in response to a teacher’s assignment to write about the color ‘black’, while this is an innocent piece it is not naïve – and it should have been.  In its simplest form, caught within the tapping rhythm of the words as it is captured at the heart of this piece is a single word that is NOT about the color black:  Mother.  I can feel my mother at the edge of a vortex that might not have been any larger than a seed when this piece was written.  But it is here and it grew and grew and grew until it swallowed up my mother and her life and my childhood.  That vortex circling around ‘the mother’ was the beginning of the matrixes that my mother created – creatively created – in her adult Borderline brain-mind.

This story belongs in the context of the others contained in my mother’s composition book that was preserved for over 70 years before it found its way to me.  I do not take this to be a coincidence, either.  Looking back at the alpha moments of a Borderline’s life in their childhood anyone who knows what they are looking for and looking at would be able to detect, I believe, all the patterns that will in the future become most obvious.  In the end, in the omega moments of a Borderline child’s life will be reflected all the tragic suffering of the Borderline child that once was.

READ THE REST OF MY MOTHER’S STORIES HERE:

*MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD STORIES WITHOUT COMMENTS

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Possibly the most useful service my book can provide is to illustrate what is probably the WORST symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD):  The inability of a BPD mother to adequately and appropriately mother her own offspring.  This #1 symptom can very easily and possibly usually DOES lead to a BPD mother neglecting and/or abusing her children FROM BIRTH.

I realize this might be a controversial conclusion that I will be making in my book, but given the profound damage a severe BPD mother can cause her children including SUFFERING nearly beyond belief these possibilities HAVE to be faced by a society who — by their own blissful ignorance — is harboring these mothers.

I fully believe that the Trauma Altered Development that a BPD suffered in their own earliest and most important stages of body-brain growth happens to improve a BPD survivor’s chances of survival to childbearing age.  If this is true then there is ONLY ONE WAY to intercept the patterns of neglect and abuse that these same BPD survivors can inflict on the children that nature has enabled them to live long enough to produce.

This ONLY WAY is for the people who surround a BPD mother and her children HAVE to intervene on behalf of the children.  These trauma-caused changes have been included within human DNA potential from our earliest beginnings to ensure survival of a species that needed all the offspring it could produce.  That is obviously NOT still the case, but BPD survivors do continue not only to produce offspring but to also live long enough themselves to torment, torture and traumatize their own children.

Without intervention and treatment I do not believe that the most severely abusive Borderline parents have ANY CONSCIOUS CHOICE not to — on an unconscious and physiologically-programmed level – to be in direct competition for survival resources with these same offspring they have created.  In the ‘olden days’ this simply related to a mother’s ‘natural mammalian right’ to kill offspring within an environment that was so malevolent and deprived that enough resources simply DID NOT exist to support ‘them all’ and ensure survival – mother included.

Of course in today’s world all these physiological survival-of-the-species patterns are worse than obsolete.  They are abominations.  These are the same patterns, I believe, that are at the core of the Medea story I mentioned in my earlier post today where this mother hacked her own children apart with a gigantic butcher knife.  ‘The public’ and the father were given fair warning that this was exactly what Medea was going to do – and they did nothing to prevent the tragedy — not even while the butchering was happening as ‘society’ stood around outside the house listening to the screaming of the babies.  These are the same patterns that operated on the deepest, most hidden levels within my mother’s interactions with me — and within the society that allowed them to happen at all.

If we are a more highly evolved species, then we need to act that way.  Allowing these kinds of mothers to abuse and neglect their offspring IS A SOCIAL PROBLEM and only within this bigger picture will the solution to these problems be found.  Again, neither these BPD mothers nor their offspring can resolve these difficulties alone.  The physiological forces at work are very powerful, very ancient, and very, very dangerous to infants and children.

Previous posts today:

+THE WARNING THAT WILL GO WITH THIS BOOK WHEN IT’S FINISHED

+’BORDERLINE’ – TREATABLE BUT NOT CURABLE – FROM CHILDHOOD

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I want to write a few comments while I am thinking about ‘the pre-Borderline child’ and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) as I come to increasingly identify the operation of the disorder within my severely abusive mother.

First of all I would NEVER agree that the diagnostic ‘name’ for this disorder be changed in any way at the current time of scientific understanding except as follows:  Just as ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’ has been renamed ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’ (DID), I do believe that with BPD it is not ‘personality’ that is the concern but rather profound disturbances with ‘identity’.  (i.e., my mother did not know the difference between herself and her children, especially me — nor did she have the physiological capacity to do so)

While I see no way for BPD to operate without dissociation, these two disorders would currently require separate ‘names’, though I believe that BPD would be more accurately described if it were known as Borderline Identity Disorder (BID).

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Secondly, concerning ‘diagnosis’ of Borderline at any age and a future name-change:  I believe that scientific ability already exists to accurately SEE the Borderline condition by watching the operation of a Borderline brain as it operates in distinctly identifiable ways that are different from the way a normal brain operates while performing specific tasks.

Our current society will have to face significant ‘ethical’ concerns before we are willing to accept this as fact.  Yet I see being able to watch someone’s brain operate during scans so as to ‘diagnose’ conditions is in no way different than the ways scans are currently used to SEE all kinds of other physiological problems.

BPD IS as real a PHYSIOLOGICAL problem as is any other diagnosable disease.  As long as our society denies this fact we will remain in the Dark Ages regarding the actual and factual conditions that we refer to as ‘mental illness’.

“This is not rocket science!”  Given the advances in technology anyone who cares to look can identify BPD by watching the way the brain operates differently than normal while engaged in certain tasks.

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Now, thirdly, I have found absolutely no reason not to believe that the BPD doesn’t exist as a so-called pre-Borderline condition in childhood.  Therefore, accurate diagnosis of this condition can also be made during childhood through brain scans.

If this is the case then the nomenclature of ‘pre-Borderline’ is inaccurate.

Even if this is true, I am still led fourthly to ask myself whether or not I believe that a ‘pre-Borderline’ condition within a child under the age of 12 could be effectively treated.

I have a two-part response — yes and no!

I believe in the future it will become very clear that not only can BPD be identified through watching the operation of the brain, and that these same altered brain operation patterns will appear in childhood, but that these alterations CANNOT BE REVERSED.  In other words, once enough of the wrong kinds of experiences have happened conception through (I believe) age seven, the genetic combinations that create these altered brain patterns of operation will have been permanently built into a BPD survivor’s entire body including their brain.

This is no different than the accurate diagnosis of any other life-threatening ‘disease’ in childhood (or in adulthood) that is treatable and manageable although it is not curable.

The distinct benefit of identifying BPD during childhood is that the long-term consequences of these changed patterns can be ameliorated to a large extent.  Especially because all operations of the adult higher cortex are built upon the earliest brain formation platforms, and because the higher cortical areas of the brain do not complete their full maturation until around age 25-30, any EARLIER intervention and treatment of the BPD condition can have (in my opinion) profound positive effects on the further development of the higher cortical abilities.  (See for example:  +MOTHERING WARMTH = SMARTER PEOPLE)

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Once early trauma changes the course of development for a child so that the genetic combinations that lead to BPD have been triggered (for child survivors who HAVE these genes), I do not believe the condition of BPD itself can ever be ‘undone’.  At the same time I believe that BPD can nearly be eliminated from society as a condition through the elimination of infant-child abuse and neglect from our society (including most importantly severe stress and trauma from conception to age 2 — and through age 7).

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This post is about the book my daughter and I are writing that will contain the story of my severely abusive infancy and childhood with a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) mother.  If I were to suggest one single story to read as a precursor to the book I am working on, it would be Medea, an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC.  This story is about (I am certain) a Borderline mother.

I also have no doubt that in the future researchers will confirm that BPD is a condition that happens as early infant-child abuse, trauma, neglect and maltreatment ACTIVATES particular genetic combinations that in the end lead to BPD in adults at the same time these processes of infant-caregiver unsafe and insecure malevolent attachment relationships deeply disturb a suffering child’s development so that a pre-Borderline condition ALWAYS exists during the childhood developmental stages of such a survivor.  This pre-Borderline condition could be identified before the age of 12 if society knew what to look for and what was being looked at.

I am not a ‘professional expert’ but I am a researcher in my own right because I am a survivor of a severely abusive 18-year infancy-childhood with a Borderline mother.

I can only write my story by finding MY story as it exists separately from my mother’s story.  This might seem like a stupid statement to anyone who does not have first-hand experience of being raised by a Borderline mother (or father).  As I explain in my book writing our two stories are so entangled, enmeshed, twisted and at times so fused together that it would be impossible for me to tell the difference between the two stories without the very clear understanding that I have developed over YEARS of research in my adulthood that my mother’s story is a LIE and therefore is EVIL while my story is the TRUTH and therefore is GOOD.

This is NOT a simple intellectually-based process. The ONLY way I can find my own story separate from my mother’s is to FEEL my story inside my own body.

I am blessed in my work to have in my possession many of my mother’s writings that came into my hands after her death in 2002.  I believe her writings exist as a part of what I imagine to be a divinely mandated higher purpose.  How my mother’s words, my words, and my daughter’s words interact and interrelate with each other will be a part of the power of this book once it is completed.

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In the meantime, and on this present day as I prepare myself yet again to dive back into my book-related writing tomorrow morning in my response to Question #5 of the 19 questions my daughter is ‘feeding me’ so that this story can be born, I am thinking about that one most important word:  POWER.

There is true POWER in the truth.  Because my story lies in the TRUTH of what I experienced being raised by a severely disturbed and severely ABUSIVE Borderline mother, if I do my task to the best of my ability there will be the POWER of TRUTH in this book.

I struggle continually within myself about the potential impact this power of truth might well have on those who read this book.  Of course I desire that this impact be ONLY positive, but at the same time I fear that this book MIGHT cause damage.

As I write my story I exclude from my entire consideration the existence of any other audience other than one single person – ME.  As I write, probably for the first time in my life, I am most valuing myself, the one who endured what I describe, the one that NOBODY cared about or paid attention to – let alone listened to – for the duration of time this story covers.

BUT, not ONLY that:  I am realizing that this book might serve in the end an extraordinary purpose.  It might well be THE ONLY book of its kind in existence that survivors of abuse such as mine can feel within their own body the absolute truth of what I am saying because my words will resonate with what these readers know in their own body.

This might simply mean that FINALLY fellow survivors can hand this book to people they know and love and say:  “When I say I had an abusive childhood, this is what I am talking about!  Read this story and you will begin to understand what my reality was and is like.”

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BUT, it is also not my intention in any way to BREAK someone else.  The thought of this happening to any survivor who reads my book scares the bejabbers out of me!

If survivors like me read this book and FEEL their own truth resonating in response to my own words a state of EMERGENCY can very easily be created because the EMERGENCE of body memory tied to the truth has great and intense POWER.

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I am thinking about what the ‘attachment experts’ say about the inability of someone who had unsafe and insecure earliest infant-caregiver interactions to tell a coherent narrative story of their ENTIRE life – not just of their earliest years.

This blog is full of related information about this fact.  Google search ‘stopthestorm attachment’ and you will see what I mean.

THERE IS A REASON WHY THIS IS SO!

In fact, there really is a NATURAL LAW behind why this is so.

In some power-full ways I am breaking this natural law by FORCING my story into a coherent form.  I WILL TELL MY STORY!

While I can sit here and intellectually believe this is a ‘good thing’, I am not entirely sure it is.  Here I can rely on one thing and one thing only:  FAITH.

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There is a purpose for dissociation.  There is a LIFE preserving reason why heavy-duty traumas can so often end up in the ‘forgotten zone’.  The experience of overwhelming trauma is EXACTLY THAT:  OVERWHELMING.  Natural law and physiological common sense have all kinds of ways to keep human beings alive through overwhelming trauma.  These survival abilities work in combination with one another in very physiologically WISE ways – for a purpose:  To maintain the integrity of the person who survives.

(And yes, I believe everything my mother did to me was in the end about preserving the integrity of her existence.  Without integrity as I am stating the concept, all life falls apart in the disintegration of death.)

This having been said, the only direction I can move in my thinking about myself, my story, this book is to say that I have to believe, trust and have faith in a fact that I do not know is a fact.  I have to have FAITH that it is.

I have to trust and believe that it is NOW time for our culture, for society to begin to raise their awareness about WHAT infant-child abuse IS and what it is LIKE for those who endure it for ALL OF US – those who have endured it and survived right along with those who have not.

What happened to me happened because NOBODY wished to know the truth.  It happened because EVERYBODY believed the lie.

There is incredible POWER in exposing lies, but it is NOT an easy or comfortable experience to recognize lies by being confronted by the truth if doing so CHANGES anyone’s ongoing ‘normal’ experience and understanding.

The intergenerational – no, it’s the INTRAgenerational — transmission of unresolved trauma is NOT going to stop until humans can learn what the trauma has to say.  Reading a story such as mine simply puts people face-to-face not with ME, not with my parents, but with unresolved trauma itself.

As this happens all human compassion and empathy ‘body circuits’ have to come into play.  What is INSIDE of people has to connect to what others experience – even if those others are babies and little tiny innocent people.

This being said, it seems to me that it is our society’s WINDOW OF EMOTIONAL TOLERANCE that needs to grow and expand in this process, not JUST awareness and consciousness of the ‘problem’ of infant-child abuse.   This is an individual and a collective process.

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Until I complete the writing process I am engaged in so that my story is finally told from the beginning to the end as best as I can find that story, I cannot honestly say, “I know what I am talking about.”  I am going back and literally ‘re-membering’ myself IN WORDS as a being entirely separate from my mother.

As I do this I am creating a ‘psychological profile of a criminal mind’ – my mother’s.  I cannot find and tell my own story without at the same time doing the same thing for my father.  But THEIRS IS NOT THE STORY I AM TELLING.  I am telling my own.

I am nearly one-fourth of the way through my writing process.  At this point I am finding that I have to revise some of my thoughts that I have held to be true up to this point.  I thought in the beginning that it would be of use to other survivors to be able to read a ‘template’ of ‘how to tell your incoherent infant-childhood abuse narrative coherently’.

Now I am saying, “DON’T do what I am doing!  It is dangerous.  It is risky.  Not for viewers to try at home!”

NOW, here is the qualifier:  “Don’t do this ALONE!”  In fact, I don’t suggest that ANYONE read this book ALONE!

BEING ALONE is the core experience of early abuse survivorship.  BEING ALONE is what allowed the abuse to happen in the first place, and I mean BEING ALONE without anyone else who cared a single DAMN!

All stories about abuse of any kind are COLLECTIVE stories because we are members of a SOCIAL species whether we like it or not!  The only hope for healing infant-child abuse is to ‘join up with one another in absolute true caring’.

I could NEVER write my story such as I am writing it now without my daughter’s involvement in this process.  She, in turn, is not even going to be able to read what I write without having her own circle of true caring around her (our writing-rules are that she not read a word I am writing until I have answered all 19 questions).

So – this is the point where I can let go of my concerns about the impact and potential consequences of this book.  NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY should read it ALONE without having firmly and clearly in place a circle of truly caring people around them!

It is only the truly caring circle of people who can heal trauma’s ongoing devastating effects.  ONLY!

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