Narcissistic Personality Disorder & Borderline Personality Disorder (I)
Perfect Dance, Imperfect Relationship: Exploring & Healing Diagnoses
Recently, I have been exploring and researching both personality disorders and found it fascinating to watch how their traits play out in relationships. I am presenting two extremes; however, we might be able to find some of those symptoms in ourselves, not to diagnose, but to use it as a compass to guide ourselves towards healing.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) - Abandoned Child.
Humans tend to have inconsistent emotional regulation which manifests as being emotionally unstable. One day, they are feeling as they are on the top of the world, and by the next they cannot find any meaning in life. One day they will love you, the next you will feel disrespected, unappreciated, and dismissed. A relationship with an individual who has BPD often involves drama: yelling, manipulation, aggressive behaviors, insecurities of being left, the list goes on. A person with BPD often looks like a frightened child in the sense of being in shock and experiencing all things in their environment to be a challenge.
An individual with Borderline Personality Disorder can present as having an unstable sense of self with their inner core being very unstable. Diagnosed BPD individuals tend to be sensitive to rejection and are often described feeling neglected and abandoned; their way of relating is very chaotic, caused by a lack of the inner stability and a constant change of emotions. There is also a lot of instability in how BPD individuals perceive themselves: one day they are very positive, trusting that everything will work out, and the next they may sit in feelings of desperation, apathy and lack of energy. Individuals with BPD also lack boundaries, which may lead to attract individuals who have narcissistic traits. Due to lack of self-love and self-acceptance, individuals with BPD very often harm themselves, with examples such as cutting, restriction or excessiveness of food intake, abusing substances (alcohol, drugs), and other risky behaviors that may threaten the overall well-being of the individual.
Where is this all coming from?
While there are many factors that contribute to Borderline Personality Disorder, a risk factor that stands as one of the most influential is abandonment. Although abandonment can be experienced at any age, the most potent and susceptible age to transform an individual’s personality and way of functioning roots from abandonment experienced in childhood.
A disruption in childhood development creates a wound of abandonment usually rooted from a lack of presence from a child’s caregiver; an example of this could be a lack of love and appreciation from a child’s mother or father. When there is not enough verbal or nonverbal love reflected to the child (i.e. lack of verbal appreciation such as “I love you”, “I am so happy you are here”, “I am so happy to see you”), the child does not feel “felt” or “seen”. If there is a lack of energetic bond and attunement, a message of “I am here, not in the body but in the spirit, and I feel you” is not received by the child. As we might already know a child learns by observation. When the child is born, the child is very dependent, it looks for prove of its existence on the outside. A proof that they are loved, accepted, and safe. If those factors are not present, the child begins to feel lost and begins to develop an unhealthy attachment style to those that surround them.
What is needed at an early age?
Generally, affection, [respectful and appropriate] body contact, breast feeding, consistent care-givnig and more need to be present for the first two years of one’s life in order to create healthy attachment style and perceptual development of the world. If there is a traumatic disruption such as being pulled from the home and constantly being displaced (i.e. being in the foster care system, being homeless, being abused), the child will experience feelings of rejection and abandonment. For example, if a child experiences neglect from their mother, they might begin to create their internal-working mode as “Mom is not here, she must not love me”. Therefore, the child develops a certain filter of lack of self-love. Although as adults, humans can think retrospectively and understand their parents’ behaviors, knowing they did the best they could or that it was not entirely in their control, it still inevitably effects the development of self. After this realization, it is vital to create an understanding and compassion for ourselves while being aware of our own symptoms in order to heal them. In our adult life, that filter eventually percolates to the surface the moment we allow ourselves to open and be vulnerable to another person.
That filter in a person with BPD is like an open wound that can often be triggered with the slightest perception of being left. What often follows the wound are expressions of blame, aggression, begging, tantrums, panic, and more. An individual with BPD will often threatens their loved ones with leaving them, which ultimately is them projecting their fear onto others. Individuals with BPD subconsciously show others how they feel inside because they have no space to contain those feelings. Additionally, children who were not planned, or wanted, often develop a profound sense of self-rejection that shows as a lack of confidence not only in their way of being but also in their creativity.
BPD: Relationship Styles
Individuals with BPD tend to have a poor nervous system regulation, creating the inability to embrace and regulate most feelings. The lack of a regulated nervous system is often caused by being raised in an unpredictable, neglected, unhealthy, and traumatic environment. Individuals with BPD often search for a source of regulation external to themselves; in cases of relationships, they tend to seek it in their partners, wanting to feel “whole” with themselves via another. Unfortunately, people with BPD have extreme difficulties with separation and often attract partners who have selfish tendencies and mirror the relationship and intrapersonal dynamic experienced during childhood/adolescence.
People with BDP are often clingy and might prioritize their partner’s goals and needs before their own. They often live accordingly to the values of others and are afraid to live for themselves. They might “shrink” energetically in the further stages of a relationship because, as they “fall in love” the fear of abandonment grows. Very often a person with BPD might control, threaten and be possessive in a relationship, eventually pushing the other person away. Those reactions are often subconscious, based on the lack of clarity in their interpretation of the outside world. On the other hand, because of a lack of boundaries, they allow others to treat them poorly, often by narcissists, whose boundaries are excessive and without empathy.
Self-Awareness -> Self-Actualization -> Healing
After reading this, you might recognize some of these traits within you, but not to worry: this does not define you as an individual, they serve as symptoms of what you were missing as child and what needs to be internally processed and repaired. The healing starts in defining what you were initially missing; it is not about what your parents did and did not do, but how you felt around them. This realization is not for you to blame them, but to guide you toward healing, so you can start slowly integrating those parts of you that look for love and acceptance.
Remember, the emptiness can never be healed from the outside, it can only be transformed from the inside.
Steps to Healing
Those diagnosed with BPD need to be centered with themselves and recognize the patterns that have been influencing and ultimately disrupting their life. Rebuild one’s self by being aware of both healthy and unhealthy behaviours while creating space from indulging in unhealthy behaviors (begging, pleasing, depression, self-pity, victimizing, sex, substance abuse, etc).
A vital part in healing is to learn how to “sit” with the routine negative/heavy emotions felt and expressed. These emotions can be explored through, meditation, therapy, dance …any kind of somatic experience that binds the mental and physical relationship in one’s self.
It is like making a U-turn to feel the fear, anger, sadness, loneliness as an energy in the body. Love it fully. And most importantly, YOU HAVE TO LISTEN to its pain. In this process, you develop self-love and empathy and neurobiologically rewire your brain. Only then you can share those qualities with others.
Closing with a Meditation
The gift of this process is that when you embrace and transform this pain, all your beautiful qualities will come to the surface; vulnerability and strength, love and kindness, creativity and new vision for life. You will come out of hiding and your true self will come naturally as you live more aligned with your deeper truth. Imagine you are walking in nature, the sun and the trees are looking at you with love, at night you can do that with a moon. To receive and feel the moon really seeing you and loving you. You can do that with a mirror, where you look with soft eyes, and allow the eyes in the mirror to look at you with love so you are receiving the gaze, rather than looking at yourself.
