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March 4, 2020
Unable to tolerate paradox, borderlines are walking paradoxes, human catch-22s.
reassurance. A borderline woman, lacking in self-esteem, may perceive her physical attractiveness as her only asset and may require confirmation of her worth by engaging in frequent sexual encounters. Such involvements avoid the pain of being alone and create artificial relationships she can totally control. Feeling desired can instill a sense of identity. When self-punishment becomes a prominent part of the psychodynamics, humiliation and masochistic perversions may enter the relationships. From this perspective, it is logical to speculate that many prostitutes and pornographic actors and
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As many as 70 percent of BPD patients attempt suicide, and the rate of completed suicide approaches 10 percent, almost a thousand times the rate seen in the general population. In the high-risk group of adolescents and young adults (ages fifteen to twenty-nine), BPD was diagnosed in a third of suicide cases. Hopelessness, impulsive aggressiveness, major depression, concurrent drug use, and a history of childhood abuse increase the risk. Although anxiety symptoms are often associated with suicide in other illnesses, borderlines who exhibit significant anxiousness are actually less likely to
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Fears of abandonment in the borderline can even be measured in the brain. One study utilized PET scanning to demonstrate that women with BPD experienced alterations of blood flow in certain areas of the brain when exposed to memories of abandonment.23 Particularly when they are alone, borderlines may lose the sensation of existing, of feeling real. Rather than embracing Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” principle of existence, they live by a philosophy closer to “Others act upon me, therefore I am.”
In relationships, these internal feelings are dramatically translated into intense, shifting, manipulative couplings. The borderline often makes unrealistic demands of others, appearing to observers as spoiled. Manipulativeness is manifested through physical complaints and hypochondriasis, expressions of weakness and helplessness, provocative actions, and masochistic behaviors. Suicidal threats or gestures are often used to obtain attention and rescue. The borderline may use seduction as a manipulative strategy, even with someone known to be inappropriate and inaccessible, such as a therapist
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repeatedly up the hill, needing to prove herself over and over again. Self-esteem is only attained through impressing others, so pleasing others becomes critical to loving herself.
punish, yet he carefully conceals the evidence of his tribulation. Though
It has been observed that borderlines often have borderline mothers, who, in turn, have borderline mothers. This hereditary predisposition to BPD prompts a number of questions, such as: How do borderline traits develop? How are they passed down through families? Are they, indeed, passed down at all?
In many cases the broken parent-child relationship takes the more severe form of early parental loss or prolonged, traumatic separation, or both. As with Dixie, many borderlines have an absent or psychologically disturbed father. Primary mother figures (who may sometimes be the father) tend to be erratic and depressed and have significant psychopathology themselves, often BPD.
“I have a terror of her knowing anything about my feelings, or convictions, or way of life. If she knew, they would be damaged; violated; no longer mine.”6
