Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder

by Rachel Reiland

I felt my body go numb. My legs, arms, and head were weightless. Floating. It was the same way I felt when Daddy pulled off his belt and snapped it. Anticipation of worse things to come—things I had brought on myself because I was different.

“You probably find this hard to accept,” he continued, reading my thoughts once again. “But it's the truth. It's genuine. It's called unconditional acceptance, the kind of unconditional acceptance and love that every child deserves, that every child needs to make her whole. The kind you never got from your own parents.”

oh!

“You need to remember,” he said, “that what you just experienced are memories. Of the past. They feel very shameful to you, but they weren't shameful at all. The only people who deserve to feel some shame are your parents for making you feel that way. You're an adult now; they can't hurt you like that anymore.

Adopting the hatred of femininity from my father, I'd viewed my mother this way as well. Granted, she could be nurturing at times, and sometimes I could feel great love for her. But I could not recall having ever respected her. I'd seen her as everything negative Dad claimed was inherent in being female. And I'd vowed to be nothing at all like her.

I began to wonder if any feelings or beliefs I had were genuine or if everything was an illusion.

Nearly each day I would write for hours, reflecting and analyzing even further. I would often stay up until one or two in the morning preparing for therapy by reading psychoanalytic books and becoming well-versed in its terminology.

“Black-and-white thinking” was based on absolute extremes—natural in very young children but unsettling in adult relationships. I saw people as either good or evil. When they were “good,” I vaulted them to the top of a pedestal. They could do no wrong, and I loved them with all of my being. When they were “bad,” they became objects of scorn and revenge.

In relationships with those closest to me, the “good” and “bad” assessments could alternate wildly, sometimes from one hour to the next. The unrealistic expectations of perfection that came with the good-guy pedestal were destined to be unfulfilled, which led to disappointment and a sense of betrayal.

“Projection” occurred when I assumed my thoughts were their thoughts, my motivations their motivations. If I angrily accused Dr. Padgett of hating me and wishing I'd just “snap out of it,” it was because I hated myself and wished I could snap out of it. I was most likely to project my deepest fears and feelings of self-hatred because they were simply too disturbing to acknowledge within myself.

When a person close to me fell off the good-guy pedestal, my initial reaction (through the clouded eyes of my impossible expectations) was rage and betrayal.

If I could grasp all the terminology and processes, I could intellectually conquer my problems. Thinking came easily to me. But it also kept me at an emotional distance. It was as if I were watching a play, discussing the plot, finding the meaning, but forgetting that I was the central character, and that it was real.

“Think of your buried fears and irrational feelings as being like those little roly-poly bugs,” he said. “You know, the ones that crawl around under rocks. When you turn a rock over and expose them to light, they quickly form a little hard-shell ball. When the threat of exposure is gone, they quickly run under the closest rock.

The other part is so desperately afraid that she'll do nearly anything to avoid the scrutiny. So she finds more rocks the bugs can hide under. The rock of rage. The rock of I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anything. The ‘fuck you, Dr. Padgett, I hate you’ rock. The rock of suicidal ideation. And now the latest one, the rock of anorexia. This isn't a separate illness, Rachel; it's just one more rock to hide under, one more place to avoid facing the same feelings.”

“But one day, Rachel, there won't be any rocks left. One day we'll turn over the last rock. With no place left to hide, the bugs, the feelings, will scamper away for good. And you'll experience a life you've never believed you could have.

It was like being in a struggle for survival against a murderous foe, except I was the one who was fighting for survival and I was also the murderer within.

“I can't stop anyone, Rachel,” he answered. “Only you can. You say you want to stop, but a part of you doesn't want to stop. There is no ‘her.’ There's only you. And you are the only one who can control what you're doing. I can't help you. You have to help yourself.”

“I'm not your father, Rachel. What you just said is what you wished you could have done to him when he was abusing you. You wished you could have attacked him back or killed him to stop him.”

“If I had been your father, you wouldn't have had to be afraid like that. I wouldn't have laid a finger on you to harm you. Most good parents, most good fathers would never dream of harming their children. Your father was physically strong, maybe, but as a man, he was terribly weak. He couldn't control his emotions, so, instead, he took it out on a little girl like you: too small and too young to defend herself.”

oh god

“Who is taking over?” he asked gently, as if to a child. “The other one. The mean one. The one that always says the terrible things and gets me in trouble. That part of me.

When gripped by fear, the abusive tough-acting persona would come to fend off the threat and reduce the feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. When she was overwhelmed by the need to be close to someone, the pleading, begging little girl emerged. In many situations, the adult sensibilities and rationality were present, and thus the personalities would be somewhat integrated and subdued. But in times of intense feelings, one of the other two personas would step in, overwhelming me.

But the dissociation set the stage for a fierce internal conflict as the two inner-child personae, like oil and water, battled each other. One clearly female; one clearly male. It was the legacy of abuse, of trying to please both a father and a mother who despised femininity.

As much as he took pains to remind me that I could never be a child again, I fervently wished I could. The distinction between fantasy and reality was one I desperately didn't want to make.

That one took me aback. It was the first time he had censored my speech and called it “acting out.” I felt the cold slap of having stepped over the line. I could feel my face flush, and I was silent.

“I call you a child when you act like one. You have to decide if I care or not. If you can't believe it by what I've done, then whatever I say or don't say isn't going to make a difference.

“Ah, that's where you're wrong,” he responded. “For the moment, when they are right in the middle of an emotion, they mean it with all of their being. When they say they hate Mommy, they absolutely mean it—the same black-and-white thinking you do sometimes. That same inability to feel intense anger and intense love at the same time. That cookie or crystal vase is as important to them at the moment as anything—a job, a home, a marriage—could ever be to an adult.

“So you buried those feelings. You had to out of sheer survival. And, in the meantime, a part of you never grew out of that phase—a part buried out of fear and self-preservation that has never left you.

Because you've grown up in many ways, you have a much greater command of language than you had back then. So the words you say can be quite hurtful to people who don't understand that they come from the child within and not from the adult. This can destroy relationships.

“Your rages might irritate me sometimes. But they don't make me angry. They don't make me want to leave you any more than my own toddlers' tantrums made me want to desert them. This isn't a normal adult relationship with adult expectations. It's a unique one where you're safe to express your childlike emotions and not be judged or reprimanded. It's safe here for you.”

“Sad, maybe, but not pathetic. In fact, quite courageous in that you're willing to look inside yourself and face what's there. Anything you've managed to do in your life has been like climbing a mountain with a two-hundred-pound weight on your back. How could I not respect that?

“One of the saddest facts isn't that there is still a child within you but that you're so ashamed of that child. What's even sadder is that you have always been ashamed of that child, even when you were one. You can accept the childlike nature of your own children, but you can't accept it in yourself. Someday you will, Rachel. Someday you will.”

Death seemed preferable to a life like this.

“Maybe you would have lived. Maybe you'd live to be eighty years old. But what kind of quality of life would you have? You'd just be enduring life instead of enjoying it.”

UGH

You want to know how you really got by, really survived this far?” I nodded. “You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth.

Your parents weren't all hate or all abuse. There were tender moments, whether or not you choose to remember them now. There were those moments, however brief, when you felt safe. You felt loved, and you savored every minute of it and held it closest to your heart. And as you grew up, you sought love anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They are what sustained you.”

But no words, no simple solution would suddenly bring the walls crashing down and allow me to become instantly trusting and open. One more stone, however, had been cleared away, letting in one more tiny glimmer of light to sustain me and keep me on the journey.

It had referred to confronting buried, fearful issues in therapy as “temporary anxiety.” Temporary anxiety? More like a living nightmare.

Former pleasures meant nothing to me anymore. Life was a series of tasks to be endured, and even the simplest ones were painfully arduous. It took everything I could muster to cook a meal, wash the dishes, or do the laundry.

“Haven't you ever heard the biblical saying ‘impure thoughts are as impure deeds’?” “I have, but I don't buy it. Haven't you ever heard the one about ‘actions speak louder than words’?”

On the drive home I speculated on Dr. Padgett's notion that feelings had no moral consequence—only the actions taken in the throes of them. It contradicted my Catholic upbringing.

Why had I never confessed those thoughts? Was I too ashamed to utter them aloud? Or was I afraid of committing an even greater sin, that of confessing a sin that I knew I would repeatedly commit again, thus making a sacrilegious farce of the sacrament?

Now no ground was solid. I questioned everything. The more deeply I probed the issues, it seemed, the more deeply conflicted I became, the hazier and increasingly elusive the answers seemed to be. In one year everything I thought I believed had been challenged. And I began to wonder if I could ever believe anything again.

One of the things that struck me as most frustrating about therapy was that nothing ever seemed to progress sequentially.

Nearly every intense session ended with Dr. Padgett's closing words: “We can pick up on this next session.” Yet, more often than not, that same issue might not be picked up for weeks or even months as we devoted the next session to something else entirely.

“Well, it's not, okay? Forget I said it. I didn't say a goddamned thing. All right? It doesn't mean shit.” A battle of the inner children. The adult me was barely present and astonished to witness my behavior.

“You let the child take over,” he repeated, still a firm edge in his voice. “You can't do that. It's important to get in touch with the child within you, but it's just as important that you maintain a sense of perspective. Otherwise you're not exploring your feelings; you are literally immersing yourself in them, getting lost in them. It's dangerous to do that.”

The characteristics of the fragmented inner child were becoming more clearly defined. Like a portrait of diametric opposites. In my writings I named the two of them. When I was in the throes of spinning conflict, I would script playlike dialogue where the pair would vent their feelings and confront each other, the adult me as a moderator. Like much of what I wrote, I was careful to hide it in the bottom of my sock drawer. If anyone else saw these thoughts, they would think I was unequivocally insane.

As always, it boiled down to the same questions: If things had been different, who would I be? Beneath all the facades and distortions and faulty coping mechanisms, who was I?

“They didn't care as much as you thought they did. They didn't love you as much as you thought they did. In many, many ways you raised yourself, Rachel.” “And fucked up my life!” I nearly screamed. “I could've been anything in the world. But I took the easiest route I could.

“it's natural to regret some of your mistakes. But it's pointless to destroy yourself with them because you honestly, sincerely couldn't help them. You raised yourself, and you didn't do a perfect job. But you should never have had to do it in the first place. It's time to forgive yourself, Rachel. Your life is ahead of you. You can get what you need here, what you've always needed, and you can go on to have the peace of mind you never believed possible. This is your second chance. This is what counts from now on.”

As I mourned the loss of my childhood and what I thought it had been, I felt anguish over all the opportunities I'd missed.