Post by Admin on Apr 23, 2024 11:59:38 GMT
To understand borderline personality, imagine having no history
psyche.co/ideas/to-understand-borderline-personality-imagine-having-no-history
For people with an unfairly stigmatised mental health condition, and the rest of us, it’s vital to connect past with present
The second time I meet with a new psychotherapy patient is when I take their history. To help them look ahead, I need an understanding of what’s come before. People don’t often talk about their life from birth to the present day, in that order, and giving them the opportunity to do so can be powerful. It can lead to an appreciation of how much adversity has been overcome; a revelation that current troubles were presaged by older, half-forgotten ones; an emergence of defences that have gone unchallenged for who knows how long. But sometimes asking for a history leads a patient to a different, more disturbing realisation: that they don’t have one.
Living without history is a serious condition, though it’s not listed in any diagnostic manuals. What you’ll find instead are misleading descriptions of the condition known as borderline personality disorder (BPD).
BPD is what happens when a person is denied a history. Despite the common notion that the disorder emerges chiefly due to genes or temperament, there is a necessary environmental component. As children, people who go on to develop BPD tend to exist in regular states of invalidation and confusion, often due to chronic abuse or neglect. The instinct to survive – to predict catastrophe at the hands of an unpredictable authority figure, say – takes up the space that might otherwise be devoted to learning who you are. Eventually, BPD binds a person to the present, so that every feeling seems permanent, every thought inescapable. The old wounds remain open even as time passes, and one lacks the words to describe them.
psyche.co/ideas/to-understand-borderline-personality-imagine-having-no-history
For people with an unfairly stigmatised mental health condition, and the rest of us, it’s vital to connect past with present
The second time I meet with a new psychotherapy patient is when I take their history. To help them look ahead, I need an understanding of what’s come before. People don’t often talk about their life from birth to the present day, in that order, and giving them the opportunity to do so can be powerful. It can lead to an appreciation of how much adversity has been overcome; a revelation that current troubles were presaged by older, half-forgotten ones; an emergence of defences that have gone unchallenged for who knows how long. But sometimes asking for a history leads a patient to a different, more disturbing realisation: that they don’t have one.
Living without history is a serious condition, though it’s not listed in any diagnostic manuals. What you’ll find instead are misleading descriptions of the condition known as borderline personality disorder (BPD).
BPD is what happens when a person is denied a history. Despite the common notion that the disorder emerges chiefly due to genes or temperament, there is a necessary environmental component. As children, people who go on to develop BPD tend to exist in regular states of invalidation and confusion, often due to chronic abuse or neglect. The instinct to survive – to predict catastrophe at the hands of an unpredictable authority figure, say – takes up the space that might otherwise be devoted to learning who you are. Eventually, BPD binds a person to the present, so that every feeling seems permanent, every thought inescapable. The old wounds remain open even as time passes, and one lacks the words to describe them.