Quotes About Identity

You can't change a tiger by whitewashing its stripes.

Imagine feeling empty, virtually without a self. Now think about admitting that what little self you can recognize has something wrong with it. To many people with BPD, this is like ceasing to exist—a terrifying feeling for anyone.

There's another key aspect to this splitting: people with BPD also split themselves, often into victim or hero—or into someone capable or someone incompetent.

People with BPD look to others to provide things they find difficult to supply for themselves, such as self-esteem, approval, and a sense of identity. Most of all, they are searching for a nurturing caregiver whose never-ending love and compassion will fill the black hole of emptiness and despair inside them.

Children are especially vulnerable to projective identification because they're still forming their own identities. In fact, on a subconscious level they may feel that they may lose their parent's love if they don't do whatever mom or dad seemingly expects of them—including act badly.

According to MaryBelle Fisher, Ph.D., when a parent has BPD, the normal formation of the child's identity may be derailed. In our interview with Fisher she said, "The child's 'self' becomes a mechanism to regulate the borderline parent rather than an internal, cohesive event.

But who are you? As the child of a parent with BPD and/or other emotional and cognitive difficulties, it may be surprisingly difficult to answer this question. You likely didn't have much mirroring, or validation, when you were young, which babies need in order to know where they stand in the world, that their feelings and observations and perceptions are healthy and normal. Without that early mirroring, it was difficult to see yourself, to know yourself…

Low self-esteem. People with low self-esteem often try to relieve their shame by being good. "Goodness" comes from sacrificing themselves and what they want out of life to make up for their perceived inadequacies. The

Remember, to someone with BPD, making a mistake means being a mistake.)

Back then his usual outfit was too-tight jeans, T-shirts with slogans intended to cause offence like 'So many Christians, so few lions', and cowboy boots.

How does Forrest Gump have sex? What could be more of a revelation about a character than watching them have sex? That says a lot about them, how they touch another person in bed.

Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.

We must be ourselves, we must decide where to go.

Man creates what he is.

It is the expression of the anxiety of meaninglessness and of the attempt to take this anxiety into the courage to be as oneself. (139)

The typical American, after he has lost the foundations of his existence, works for new foundations.

Self-affirmation, for Tillich, is the paradox of "participation in something which transcends the self" (165).

Being human means asking the questions of one's own being and living under the impact of the answers given to this question. And, conversely, being human means receiving answers to the questions of one's own being and asking questions under the impact of the answers.

The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.

Neurosis is the way of avoiding nonbeing by avoiding being

Joy is the emotional expression of the courageous YES to one's own true being.

It would be so good to settle down and become part of somewhere again, instead of constantly passing through

Sometimes I think and other times I am.

My soul is nothing now but the dream dreamt by matter struggling with itself!