The World of the Borderline

"Everything looked and sounded unreal.  Nothing was what it is.  That's what I wanted- to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself."

- From "A Long Day's Journey Into the Night" by Eugene O' Neill

Sometimes I feel like a child clad in the armor of an adult and am perplexed at the respect you receive from other adults, expecting them to see through my disguise at any moment, revealing me as the emperor with no clothes.  I feel like you need someone to love and protect you from the outside world.  I desperately seek intimacy, but when someone gets to close to your heart, I RUN.

 I have to remind myself that I am not alone.  Between 15 and 25 percent of all patients seeking psychiatric care are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, and it is by far the most common of all personality disorders.  People described as "borderline" seem more ill than neurotics (who experience severe anxiety secondary to emotional conflict), yet less ill than psychotics (whose detachment from reality makes normal functioning impossible.)  90% of patients with BPD also share at least one other psychiatric diagnosis such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety, or Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I suffer from all of the above.

Inconsistency is the hallmark of BPD.  My moods, thoughts, beliefs and even health are constantly careening from one extreme to the other.  Self-destructive tendencies or suicidal gestures are very common among us- indeed; they are one of the syndrome's defining criteria.  The incidence of documented death by suicide is about 8 to 10% among us.  We suffer from a kind of emotional hemophilia; we lack the clotting mechanism needed to moderate our spurts of feeling.  Stimulate a passion, and I may emotionally bleed to death.

If nothing else, BPD serves to remind us that the line between 'normal' and 'pathological' may sometimes be a very thin one.  Do we all display, to one degree or another, some symptoms of borderline personality? Yes, but not all of us are controlled by the syndrome to the degree that it disrupts or rules our lives.  With its extremes of emotion, thought and behavior, BPD represents some of the best and worst of human character and of our society.  By exploring its depths and boundaries we may be facing up to our ugliest instincts and our highest potentials- and the hard road we must travel in order to get from one point to another.