Quotes About Borderline

The English language has such terms as: dawn, dusk, first light, daybreak, twilight, crepuscule and evenfall. Yet, not one of these terms outlines an absolute demarcation point between dark and light.

It's very easy to diagnose a borderline. They screw you over, rip you off, commit whatever transgression, and then they blame you for it.

Some children of borderlines secretly wish that their mother would die, not because they hate her, but because living with her seems impossible.

When enraged, some divorced borderlines may deprive their children of contact with their father either to punish him or the children.

Children of borderlines may tune out by dissociating and disconnecting from their environment. They cannot feel embarrassed, humiliated, ridiculed, or hurt if they are no longer in their own bodies. Unfortunately, the sensation of depersonalization or dissociation makes them feel crazy.

To stave off the panic associated with the absence of a primary object, borderline patients frequently will impulsively engage in behaviors that numb the panic and establish contact with and control over some new object.

Emotional intensity, impulsivity, unpredictability, and fear of abandonment are symptoms observable primarily by those who have an intimate relationship with the borderline.

Casual acquaintances, co-workers, or neighbors are less likely to witness the borderline's sudden shifts in mood, self-destructive behavior, paranoid distortions, and obsessive ruminations.

Unbearable pain that is expressed and acknowledged becomes bearable. But borderlines received no such responses in their childhood. Therefore, they are stuck in the past, trying to elicit what they needed as a child—validation of their unbearable pain.

Borderlines have negative thoughts because they have negative feelings about themselves and others. Memory difficulties, difficulty focusing attention, confused and disorganized thinking, the inability to reason logically, morbid introspection, and intrusively negative thoughts are common

Although she can function extraordinarily well in other roles, mothering is the single most daunting task for the borderline female.

Although borderline mothers may love their children as much as other mothers, their deficits in cognitive functioning and emotional regulation create behaviors that undo their love. Borderline mothers have difficulty loving their children patiently and consistently. Their love does not endure misunderstandings or disagreements. They can be jealous, rude, irritable, resentful, arrogant, and unforgiving. Healthy love is based on trust and is the essence of emotional security.

Witch mothers possess a laser-like ability to detect areas of vulnerability in others. Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, the borderline Witch has "a keen sense of smell" for human weakness. Witch mothers know what to say to hurt or scare their children, and use humiliation and degradation to punish them.

The borderline's children are preoccupied with what researchers call "risk assessment"—with determining the nature of their mother's state of mind from one moment to the next. It is an unconscious and involuntary process, like breathing. They do not realize they are doing it.

Emotionally stable parents share their children's joy and quiet their fear. But caretaking roles are reversed for children of borderlines whose mothers are chronically upset. Children repress their fear in order to calm their mother. Situations that should frighten children may not because they have learned not to feel.

Borderline mothers who threaten or attempt suicide keep their children emotionally trapped, and their children may suffer from extreme anxiety even as adults.

All these attempts to impose order and fairness on a naturally random and unfair universe endorse the borderline's futile struggle to choose only black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. But the world is neither intrinsically fair nor exact; it is composed of subtleties that require less simplistic approaches. A healthy civilization can accept the uncomfortable ambiguities. Attempts to eradicate or ignore uncertainty tend only to encourage a borderline society.

But a highly competitive or unstructured job, or a highly critical supervisor, can trigger the intense, uncontrolled anger and the hypersensitivity to rejection to which the borderline is susceptible. The rage can permeate the workplace and literally destroy a career.

For the borderline, much of life is a relentless emotional roller coaster with no apparent destination. For those living with, loving, or treating the borderline, the trip can seem just as wild, hopeless, and frustrating.

A borderline suffers a kind of "emotional hemophilia"; she lacks the clotting mechanism needed to moderate her spurts of feeling. Prick the delicate "skin" of a borderline and she will emotionally bleed to death. Sustained periods of contentment are foreign to the borderline.

Mood changes come swiftly, explosively, carrying the borderline from the heights of joy to the depths of depression. Filled with anger one hour, calm the next, he often has little inkling about why he was driven to such wrath. Afterward, the inability to understand the origins of the episode brings on more self-hate and depression.

Central to the borderline syndrome is the lack of a core sense of identity. When describing themselves, borderlines typically paint a confused or contradictory self-portrait, in contrast to other patients who generally have a much clearer sense of who they are.

The world of a borderline, like that of a child, is split into heroes and villains. A child emotionally, the borderline cannot tolerate human inconsistencies and ambiguities; he cannot reconcile another's good and bad qualities into a constant, coherent understanding of that person. At any particular moment, one is either "good" or "evil"; there is no in-between, no gray area. Nuances and shadings are grasped with great difficulty, if at all. Lovers

For example, a patient may demonstrate characteristics that lead to diagnoses of both borderline personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.