Vol. 381, September 29, 2016 – Turning Tragedy, Trauma and Tension into Adventure, Ease and Calm

For many years I have had many challenges to overcome myself. I am not going to bore you with all the details, however I will tell you some of the things that I have learned along the way, so that if you are feeling challenged in some way today, you can see how it can serve to bring you to a much better place, even a place of authority in your chosen field.

I was speaking to my webman one day last year when he told me exactly why it is that he feels that I am as good as I am at helping others to clear their traumas as I am, because you know, he could NEVER do what I did, ever! Really,! That is what he said, and yet, knowing him the way I know him, over the past decade plus, I know that  he has helped many people to deal with some of the hardest of tragedies for decades at a time. So, maybe he was just reflecting his learning onto me without realizing it. And, yes I did indeed bring this understanding to his mind as we spoke that day.

He told me that it was because I have had to deal with so many issues all through my life – from not speaking at all till a speech therapist was employed to teach me at the age of 5, to the 14 years I suffered with both bipolar 2 (non-psychotic type luckily for me) and bronchial asthma (that the doctor had no idea in how to treat, none of the medications he prescribed worked any longer, to the meningioma tumor (thankfully benign) on the covering of my brain which required 6 weeks of treatment at a cancer center. And, that doesn’t include all the drama and trauma that has played out in my family of origin throughout my life – issues that having a deeper understanding of mental health then my four sisters, I was called on to help deal with, repeatedly during my adulthood.

So what were the blessings from all of these challenges?

1. When one has to deal with their own lack of judgment as occurs when one is healing from a serious mental illness, judgment of others seemingly bizarre behavior is better understood for what it is – a defense mechanism that was created to keep that person safe from some deeper emotional issue that needed to be dealt with in the way a person without the ability to reason, rationalize or judge another could. People with mental illness are stuck at an emotional age consistent with the chronological age they were traumatized to such a degree that they had to develop their illness as a coping mechanism to survive. Yes, it is true that some of these illnesses can be handed down from one generation to another as occurred with the bipolar I experienced. However, there needs to be a traumatizing event to set the latent illness into action.
2. If one is feeling physically awful more often then not, compassion for others who feel ill would be a natural outcome of dealing with one’s own misery. I was speaking with a gentleman yesterday. He is now retired and volunteering at a local hospital. Why? Because he was born with a congenital heart ailment spending many nights in the hospital all through his youth. He is healthy now with a pace maker keeping his heart beats regularly timed. He told me that when he was younger he vowed that when he was healthy enough, he would give back to the community at the hospital, as the volunteers did to help him feel better during his youth.
3. There are inherent learnings to be gained for each and every situation that one overcomes. Those learnings can be shared with others who are going through a similar thing currently. I never held back about what I was going through with most of the challenges that I was going through them. As a result many people around me knew of my difficulties at the time. Those who stayed around saw my overcoming many of them. When they had similar circumstances later on, who do you think they looked to for advise and emotional support to help get them through it? It feels great to be able to truly help someone going through the difficulties that life throws at us. At this point, because I work with people in highly charged emotional situations, I would prefer to have friends and family who have their own lives together – it’s the best way to balance my work with my personal life. However, there are those times when a close friend needs a loving and knowledgable resource, and I am called on to be there. And, that is my definition of a “true friend” anyway. Anyone can be there for you when everything is going along fine. It is the few who will be there and fewer who know how to help you when you are in a difficult situation.
4. Being able to detect the manipulators and cheats from someone who is truly being “real.” This is an excellent skill to have given that so many people are out there to get whatever they can from others. Some people just love to hear themselves whining to get the sympathy of others (not understanding the difference between sympathy and empathy). Some people just want to swindle others.The tide is turning as seen in the business of doing business where people are much more open to collaboration now then being in competition as was the norm several years ago. But it’s still out there and one needs to be aware – never paranoid, just cautiously optimistic when entering any sort of new relationships.
5. Using your most hard won knowledge to help others in a professional manner. I always felt called to the work that I do – meaning that whether or not a viable income was to be found, I could never “not” do this work. There is something much bigger then me working through me to allow my clients to get the great results they receive regardless of the complexity of their cases and regardless of what the conventional world of medicine and mental health have to say about it. Our minds are the most powerful instrument that we have, and it is our job to learn how to harness it’s power in the manner in which the ancients understood. Technology has it place, and it will NEVER take over from the powers of true thoughtfulness, inventiveness, and the innovation of the human mind.

So, there you go, 5 ways to turn you tragedies, traumas and tensions into adventure, ease and calm, if, and only if, you are willing to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to overcome your challenges, finding the wonderful wisdom from having done so, and then sharing it with whomever can benefit. 

Photo by Christiaan Tonnis

Vol. 380, September 22, 2016 – Borderline Personality Disorder or “BPD” as it is Commonly Known: What Exactly is It & How Do You Deal with It?

Of all the too frequently uttered phrases in the world of mental illness is “borderline personality disorder.” The only problem is that it is a “throw away diagnosis,” too often given, because of the way in which the mental health experts use it to categorize women in particular, that they don’t know how to treat.

It is believed that between 1 to 6% of the population have this illness. My mother is one that I know very intimately. She has always been fairly open about her diagnosis, because one of the symptoms of this particular class of people is their inability to recognize personal boundaries in any way.

I am going to give you 10 signs that the person that you may be dealing with (or perhaps your self) has borderline personality disorder. These are the one group of clients with whom I have to stay totally centered on them, with them being put off if I share metaphors of growth and healing from anyone else’s experience, especially my own. The reason for this is that they feel their own boundaries have been over ridden in such cases.

Given the “special handling” they require and because hypnosis is really not the best method to use with these folks, I do my best to not bring BPD people into my practice.

1. They have notoriously unstable relationships with people. They will put one specific person, up on the pedestal and the moment that person makes a mistake that the BPD person feels, “hurts” them in anyway, they now become a focus on “hatred.” This creates very intense relationships that few mortals can or want to deal with.
2. One of the most important factors in BPD’s life is their fear of abandonment. They will do anything to make sure that a person will stick by them, and not always in a healthy manner. Emotional manipulation in the name of the game. These people are highly intelligent, however with the emotional damage happening while they were 0 – 3 years old, due to being abused or neglected – they have the emotions of a very young person. What that means is if they don’t get what they want when they want it they will go into screaming and crying fest to get you to do as they desire. It isn’t uncommon for them to plainly state “If you don’t do what I want, I will kill myself.” This can be very dangerous, because there are indeed times when they really mean that they are going to kill themselves – but as the boy who cried wolf so many times, when the true pain is being felt, it is very difficult to discern from the manipulations by most observers.
3. Because they are so young emotionally speaking, they will do compulsive acts without a thought of the consequences including car crashes, risky sex and substance abuse.
4. They think about suicide a lot. These are very unhappy people, full of rage and self-hatred. When attempting self-harm or speaking about it they are expressing these feelings of anger toward themselves and trying to feel normal.
5. Again, because the damage happened so early in BPDs lives, they have a very unstable sense of self. They will often speak of being lost or empty inside.
6. Feeling so empty inside they may have a shopping addiction or a food addiction to help them temporarily feel full. Of course that only last for a few hours at most, with them sliding back into that empty feeling inside till the next time they try to fill that  “hole in their soul.”
7. Paranoid thoughts and zoning out so it feels like the person with BPD isn’t there. Sometimes they don’t believe that things aren’t true.
8. Intense anger many times over trivial matters moving them to act out by hitting, punching, kicking or pulling hair.
9. BPD people have labile mood swings, where they can be happy one moment, then something triggers them, and all of a sudden they are screaming and throwing things at others. They can go from feeling intense anxiety to anger in a millisecond. Then into a deep depression. Their emotional states can last from a few minutes to a few days.
10. They can be very happy to know the secret of where their practitioner lives. I had one client who was very happy to tell me that he found out where I lived. Living with my mother I knew that years before, she had found out where one of her psychologist lived. She drove into Manhattan, and hour away to find his home. She was so proud of herself, and yet, she hated driving in the city. This is an example of how far a BPD may go to find out a “secret.” My response to my client when told he me that he knew where I lived was simply to congratulate him on that piece of knowledge, and then I went on to the next activity of the day. The best way to deal with anything of this sort is to “normalize” it.

I have found that the easiest way to deal with a person with BPD is first to let them know that I am not going to abandon them, because if they feel like they are being ignored they will indeed act out. I had one client who was thrown out of three mental health practices. Her way of getting back was to put smiley stickers all over one of her psychologist’s cars, with another she played with the magnets of who was “in” and who was “out” of the office on the board of one practice confusing everyone, and with the last one, she stood outside another’s practice forcing the practitioner to acknowledge her.

When speaking to these folks, you give short easy to understand statements, almost as if you were speaking to a three year old giving one step-at-a-time directions. It helps them to fully understand and be able to implement what you are requesting them to do while dealing with their emotions or behaviors. And, that is the other thing, it is always stated as a request, or they will feel threatened and act out accordingly.

BPD people are very difficult to treat because though they are very intelligent, they have a very difficult time implementing the ideas into their lives. They understand what they are to do. However, being able to do it is a constant challenge for them.

For your own sanity, do your best to spend small amounts of time with anyone who may share the symptoms outlined in this posting, no more then a couple hours at a time if you feel psychically drained being with them.

If you do have BPD, the best thing that you can do is to find a practitioner that specializes in treating BPDs, because they have the patience and understanding along with the tools and techniques to best help you.

The client that I was speaking of earlier was a wonderful mother according to her husband of over 25 years when she came to see me. She was terribly depressed most of the time, and had a glass of wine from the time she awakened till she went to sleep at night – her “IV of sanity” as she put it to me. She wanted to stop her drinking which is why she came in to see me, but it was something that was beyond my ability to help her with. What she did receive though was unconditional love from me, and very clear boundaries regarding “appropriate” and “inappropriate” behavior. She never tried to kill herself again as far as I know. She also learned from her husband during one of our sessions, how he admired her great mothering, telling her that her work in the home with their four accomplished and happy grown children, was infinitely more important than any of the work he did to bring in the income necessary to take care of their family.

So, there are some people who are capable of living and loving BPDs. I believe my father was one of those people. Because though my mother acted out quite often, he stayed by her. They did many things together and also had their own interests which they did with others. Growing up with her could be challenging at times. One of her psychologist let us know that by the time we were 2 years old we had outgrown her emotionally.

However, this is another thing that is interesting about these folks. Though they may have little insight into themselves, they have great insights and understandings into others at times. I found this to be true with all the BPD’s that I have worked with over the years, as well as my mother. So, please don’t discount their ability to be helpful during those times when they are feeling good and are fun to be around. I gained many insights from my mother that were shockingly on target, as well as from my previous clients who all had the very great challenges of dealing with an illness that none of them requested, yet had to learn how to deal with to the best of their ability.

Photo by Christiaan Tonnis