The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

by Kiera Van Gelder

Her word for the environment that cultivates our disorder is “invalidating.” She doesn’t use the term “abuse” or even “neglect,” but “invalidation” to describe how a vulnerable child’s inner experiences—thoughts, emotions, sensations, and beliefs—are either disregarded, denied, erratically responded to, punished, or oversimplified by caretakers and nurturers. There is a “nonattunement” of response in the family (or school, or even culture) that ends up aggravating a basic biological vulnerability. According to Dr. Linehan (1993a), invalidating environments put a premium on controlling or hiding negative emotions. Painful experiences are trivialized, and blame is put on the vulnerable person for not meeting the expectations of others and living by their standards.