What is a crisis?
Often many people with BPD (or not) think that
having what feels like more feelings than you
can hold is a crisis. They often also think that
changes in distance between themselves and others
(we all flow in and out, closer and more distant
as there is an ebb and flow to relationships) is
a crisis as well. Anything that seeks to separate
the borderline from cognitive-distorted beliefs
and the accompanying feelings is often experienced
as a crisis.
Most see being in crisis as a negative thing,
an undesirable painful 'out of control thing'.
While there are times when a crisis brings forth
danger, trouble and or the threat of unpleasant
consequences more often than not a crisis is a
chance to make needed change. It is a turning
point.
What we often identify as a crisis is actually
a turning point of opportunity presenting itself
in the course of whatever we are
dealing with. While it can be a painful attack of
a disorder, or a painful living example of coping
skills that one may lack, or an insight about oneself
that brings with it a lion-share of grief, each
turning point is an opportunity to learn, grow,
recover and to heal. Every time you let one of these
opportunities pass you, you are making an active
choice to continue to suffer.
What is a BPD crisis?
In Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) even
just feeling something can constitute a perceived
(or real) crisis of some sort. If one has been
dissociated from feelings for a long time those
feelings are then perceived as being more outside
of oneself than a part of oneself. This can be
very frightening and overwhelming. Not being able
to sit with, hold, work through and come to an
un-distorted place with the thoughts that drive
those feelings (often) leads a borderline to
believe and to feel he/she is in a crisis.
At the heart of each and every borderline crisis
is the pain of the
Core Wound of Abandonment
The challenge here is to learn that the
presentation of a lot of emotion does not have
to be so overpowering. Whether it is overwhelming
or not, however, you can learn ways to cope with
it so that you do not end up feeling and or being
in crisis each time your feelings rise up. It is
the processing, understanding, and integrating of
these very feelings that feel so threatening that
is the way to find your true self and to recover.
Borderlines often are dependant upon others to
mirror to them who they are and what they need and
should do, feel and say. Often borderlines find
themselves in crisis when they somehow threaten
the security of the connection to the people that
they feel they need in their lives to be safe and
okay. Yet, just as often, borderlines feel compelled
to break these connections out of some maladaptive
protective attempts or the simple reality of the
very complex need to sabotage these connections in
order to re-play out past experiences, usually of
abandonment.
There is a co-dependant neediness, often, that
sees many borderlines manipulating to meet
their own needs through others. This is ripe territory
for an inevitable crisis, not to mention a very valuable
one. If you can hold your frustration, anger,
abandonment etc long enough to endure the loss of
any relationship in your life (and borderlines usually
lose quite a few over time) and learn to meet your
needs and soothe yourself then you can begin to turn
your life around from being needy to being much more
healthy. This is an example of how a crisis can be
a very worthwhile challenge that can result in much
positive growth and change.
A well-managed crisis can also bring about a
rather sudden insight that can lead to just as sudden
a recovery over time. When things change quickly as
they often do with new insight into oneself it can
absolutely feel like a crisis of sorts. So much new
information and often some of it that leaves a person
with a lot of grief can feel just as devastating and
difficult as a crisis of negative and isolating or
disconnecting proportions.
What a crisis actually is (more often than
not)
Many a crisis is, in actuality, a shifting and
separating from old beliefs, old patterns of thought
and behaviour, pain that was clung to and in fact
kept you stuck with it often alienating you from
those around you, illusions, delusions, and maladapative
coping skills that no longer work but only serve to
make things more painful in the long run. Simply put
many a perceived crisis is actually learning, discernment,
growth, change, risk, new feelings to hold and work through
as one begins to break free of old lifetime scripts or
patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Borderlines must experience some crisis in order
to heal and to recover. It is not so much the crisis or
the fear, anxiety or pain that are the biggest challenge.
The biggest challenge is how you choose to deal or cope
with all of these feelings, insights and changes.
In the truest meaning of a crisis - a turning point -
each borderline must realize the value of the lostness
of all of the pain and grief and let that teach him/her
how to make new choices. For if you continue to make the
same choices, you will not only continue to go through
the same crisis over and over again, but you will
inevitably get the same results - the same negative,
overwhelming, annihilating borderline thoughts and feelings
that lead you to act in ways that only perpetuate the very
crises you seek relief from in your life.
© A.J. Mahari, October 21, 2001
