The Buddha and the Borderline Quotes

“I'm so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“We do not deserve to be trapped in hell. It isnt our fault.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“We need this help from the outside because we don't know how to to do this for ourselves. We start with a deep deficit—a chasm really—when it comes to understanding and being tolerant of ourselves, and that's even before we go forth to do battle with the rest of the world. As soon as someone judges, criticizes, dismisses, or ignores, the cycle of pain and reactivity ramps up, compounded by shame, remorse, and rejection. The act of validation, simply saying, 'I can see things from your perspective,' can short-circuit that emotional detour.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“I need them to be aware and present with me in the midst of the storm, not just tell me what to do.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“I've grown up with an ethic, call it a part, that insists I hide my pain at all costs. As I talk, I feel this pain leaking out—not just the core symptom of BPD, but all the years of being blamed or ignored for my condition, and all the years I've blamed others for how I am. It's the pain of being told I was too needy even as could never get the help I needed.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“All you want is love and belonging, and your very existence depends on it. But when you get it, you have no existence except that love; there’s still no you.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“So at family gatherings… I try to stick to the acceptable script. Indeed, I discover that the less I say, the happier everyone seems to be with me. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off as a paraplegic or afflicted by some tragic form of cancer. The invisibility and periodicity of my disorder, along with how often I border on normalcy, allows them to evade my need for their understanding. And because our most enduring family heirloom is avoidance and denial of pain and suffering, I don’t need much prompting to shut myself down in their presence.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“An inner ease spreads inside me. Such is the power of acceptance and understanding from other people, the power of validation”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Connection gives us our life, yet it also threatens to take it from us.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“I’m not interested in Bob Marley telling me to ‘lively up’ myself. The only music that satisfies me is Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor’s voice crying through industrial rhytms. In the August evenings, I lie on my bed with earphones, letting his laments roll through me like unrepentant thunderstorms. I envy the courage that carries his voice into the world. He doesn’t berate himself for pain and anger; he howls. And this delights me, even though I feel ashamed when my own rage comes to the surface. My anger doesn’t signify courage; it’s just more confirmation that I’m bad.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“I’ve read that, for some borderlines, the flip side of abandonment fear is the fear of engulfment. It’s another one of those “screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t” situations. All you want is love and belonging, and your very existence depends on it. But when you get it, you have no existence except that love; there’s still no you.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Accepting a psychiatric diagnosis is like a religious conversion. It's an adjustment in cosmology, with all its accompanying high priests, sacred texts, and stories of religion. And I am, for better or worse, an instant convert.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Ironically, the word “borderline” has become the most perfect expression of my experience— the experience of being in two places at once: disordered and perfect.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“he wants to know what will give me hope again. It’s the first time anyone has asked me that. “If I have hope, I’m only going to get crushed again,” I say tearfully. “If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?” he asks. “Love,” I say without a second’s hesitation. “But that’s the biggest setup of all.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“I may have no emotional skin and come undone at the smallest interpersonal upset, but I’d make a great bullfighter or firefighter—anything that gets my adrenaline going and focuses me on a physical target. The motorcycle is all of that and more. When I’m on the bike, it feels like a door opens in my chest and the world rushes in, pure, fresh, and sparkling with clarity. It forces me to approach fear with total awareness and to pull reason mind into the moment of intense reactions.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Great. I hate you; don’t leave me. That’s exactly what I feel with Bennet most of the time. Though more precisely it’s “I hate you, why don’t you leave your fucking ex-girlfriend?”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“I'm constantly searching for confirmation of his love for me, and each of his gestures and words, no matter how trivial, can either prove or disprove it.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Poisoned by what's inside us and vulnerable to anything outside us”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Here we are, immersed in a sea of shame and self-hatred beyond reason, and on top of that, our illness is considered too shameful to even admit to, and apparently no one else wants to deal with it.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Suicide is like a little cyanide
capsule in my pocket, just in case the enemy comes too close—always there, but only to be used when
facing seemingly insurmountable odds.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“Well, it’s not like I don’t like people; I just find them disturbing and can’t manage their effects on me, positive or negative.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline

“This is the same stuff your parents did to you: ignoring your feelings, not recognizing what you needed, invalidating you. You grew up never being taught how to be honest about what was going on inside you. You also had to pretend.” “So now you have blame them too? It this what therapy does—teaches you to blame and hurt others to make yourself feel better?” “I don’t see why we can’t look at the facts without judging them. No one ever talked about what was really going on in our family. We were always hiding, or ignoring, or punishing when things came to the surface.” “That was years ago! If you can’t let go of the past, then I don’t think you’re making all that much progress. And you can tell your therapist that.” She’s waving frantically at the waiter to give her the check, even though our dinner is only half eaten. “Just go…” she hisses, not looking at me any more, fumbling for her purse. “Just leave.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“grew up in a very invalidating environment,” I declare. “People didn’t take my problems seriously. I was blamed for everything I did. When I got upset, no one taught me how to take care of myself. And you were gone half the time on your trips around the world, and when you were around, you were constantly preoccupied. Even with you there, you weren’t there. I felt entirely alone.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“Then I go on to say that one of the reasons I’m doing so well is because of how much I’ve learned about BPD and DBT, especially the part about Linehan’s biosocial model and how BPD develops through a combination of biological vulnerabilities and an invalidating environment. When I explain what an “invalidating environment” is like, she stops chewing her spring roll.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“And my dirty little secret? I am always on the verge of drowning, no matter how hard I work to keep myself afloat. And the only way I know to stay afloat—to survive—is to find a savior.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“wonder: How much of what I feel as neglect has been fueled by the force of my constant need? How much can any person hold another who is perpetually falling?”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“often feel like I’m regressing. He doesn’t turn the radio down like I ask him to, so I decide that means he doesn’t care about me and I spend the rest of the day strangled and stupefied by the emotions from just this one slight. I’ll”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

“The borderline symptoms are the core element of what Buddhism describes as dukkha (suffering): endless grasping, all-consuming intolerance, and complete ignorance of how our actions keep us trapped in this endless cycle.”
― Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating