Jonathan Kellerman, a clinical psychologist turned mystery writer wrote the following about BPD. It is a well written piece about the disorder I wanted to share. Many of you that now Borderline's will relate:
The borderline patient is a therapist's nightmare...because borderlines never really get better. The best you can do is help them coast, whithout getting sucked into their pathology...They're the chronically depressed, the determinedly addictive, the compulsively divorced, living from one emotional disaster to the next. Bed hoppers, stomach pumpers, freeway jumpers, and sad-eyed bench-sitters with arms stitched up like footballs and psychic wounds that can never be sutured. Their egos are as fragile as spun sugar, their psyches irretrievably fragmented, like a jigsaw puzzle with crucial pieces missing. They play roles with alacrity, excel at being anyone but themselves, crave initmacy but repel it when they find it. Some of them gravitate toward stage or screen; others do their acting in more subtle ways.
Borderlines go from therapist to therapist, hoping to find a magic bullet for the crushing feelings of emptiness. They turn to chemical bullets, gobble tranquilizers and antidepressants, alcohol and cocaine. Embrace gurus and heaven-hucksters, any charismatic creep promising a quick fix of the pain. And they end up taking temporary vacations in psychiatric wards and prison cells, emerge looking good, raising everyone's hopes. Until the next letdown, real or imagined, the next excursion into self damage.
What they don't do is change.
