People suffering from borderline states have experienced profound early relational trauma with primary caretakers /parents. They are continuously at odds with a sense of self and the world, unloved and not wanted, deprived or abused. They feel trapped, unable to change from their installed implicit memories and self-image. They have experienced unbearable anxiety, acute ambivalence and confusion interacting with parents, which leads to emerging ego structures disintegrating. Intense arousal has interfered with information processing, such that memories may lack a verbal component, narrative, or explanation. These experiences are not integrated or processed into the Personality but feel very real, powerful and current in interpersonal relationships. Early trauma forms “core” beliefs and values, where conditions were impossible to create a coherent self.
They feel flawed, cursed with a “Basic Fault “at the core of their identity, where the void of emptiness is defended against with rage, hostility or violence. Accompanying the client in the darkest places enables the client to begin to accept the self. The process entails extensive mourning, the loss of idealised images of parents and of what we hope to be, receive, and experience. The client needs to acknowledge the trauma and understand how they reacted and why, and how it has been incorporated within them. The client wishes and fantasises about an ideal conflict-free world with no further possibility of trauma. The client must expand their awareness and capacity to acknowledge and bear their primal bodily response to the trauma.
Borderline Terminology
A disturbed thinking and object relations formation, a preponderance of primary processing, with impaired reflective functioning and mentalisation. A narcissistic core sense of self is defended with primitive defences. Ten main features
- Narcissism – Deficiencies in spontaneous maternal affection, affective malnutrition.
- Psychic Bleeding – complete psychic collapse when an individual encounters pain and trauma.
- Inordinate Hypersensitivity
- Rigid Personality – psychic and bodily rigidity
- Negative Therapeutic Reactions: The patient appears to worsen during therapy.
- Masochism and Self-pity
- Deep organic insecurity and anxiety lead to extreme clinging and dependency.
- Use of Projection – a paranoid experience of a hostile environment
- Difficulties in reality testing – particularly personal relationships
- A rooted feeling of inferiority
Ego pathology and weakness lead to a lack of impulse control and an inability to tolerate anxiety or ambivalence. With little capacity for enjoyment and creative achievement, their parent could not accept the child as an individual, with early attunement disturbance leading to severe primal splitting, disassociation and fragmentation of the self. The ambivalent experience of their mother leads to fragile foundations, as an ideal image of their mother is constructed with rewarding parts only.
A Thinned Skinned Narcissist
Borderline Resistance
The client may prefer to continue to suffer instead of being cured or relieved of their distress due to unconscious guilt and a wish to keep proving their superiority over the analyst (other). With a repetition compulsion, they remain true to their traumatic experiences and the familiar ways of relating, a failed attempt at mastery. Continued attempts to buy into a sphere of omnipotence, trying o control all forms of humiliation, risk and death. They have a strong tendency to regress to a preverbal or pre-Oedipal level, the level of a primal core. They experience interrogation or questioning as an attack, a demand, or an insult, reflecting a lack of consideration or care. There is an alternating difference in intensity between the phenomena of satisfaction and frustration, with no container to hold the tension of opposites. Any feelings and validation matter only if they are willing to gratify the other’s needs and desires. Beyond these personal interests and needs, they feel like they do not exist due to a lack of parental mirroring or attunement.
They use the primal form of splitting the other into a good (gratifying) or an all-bad (frustrating) object, in which bad aspects are projected, so that the idealised object is preserved and kept intact. These manifest as a poor sense of self, an impoverished identity, and a strong dependence on external approval, driven by perceived grandiosity stemming from projected parts—ego weakness. Due to early overwhelm and helplessness, they cannot integrate traumatic experiences into their existence. There is no secure base or attachment to establish an effective cognitive response to the volume of affective and somatic experiences.
They are caught between fleeing from a hostile caregiver, whilst their attachment system motivates them to strive to achieve comforting proximity, “fright without any solution.“ Shifting between rage, hostility, helplessness and compulsive pleasing, caught in the drama triangle without any awareness of roles. A general inhibition of relational needs, where they tend to withdraw from close affective interactions or sacrifice their own needs for the other. They blame others for how they feel, angrily seek to control them, and maintain an idealised image of themselves. Actively avoid and deny further difficult situations; continually cut themselves off from their core experience; and wish for and search for a conflict-free relationship and world.
The Moral Defence – mother is good, blame oneself for badness
The borderline is repeatedly triggered by negative, invalidating, and rejecting experiences of others, which they can’t seem to escape from ( powerless and frozen). Present-day distress and ambiguity are projected onto others, who are continually tested to pick up the pieces and show that they care. The borderline tends to be preoccupied with and to ruminate over potential threats and catastrophes, and nothing can reassure them that such events won’t occur. This can result in obsessional physical and mental activity, which is exhausting, where one becomes dejected, burnt out and feels a failure in their lack of control. They have created defences against the most primitive and appalling terrors of annihilation and disintegration. The individual’s back is against the wall, where they will rage, fight, comply, and submit to continued vigilance to try to prevent re-experiencing these terrors. Reliving these early traumas, including re-experiencing some form of annihilation or death, is often accompanied by the terror of fragmenting, feeling like one is going mad. All of which feels impossible, unbearable and shameful to the client.
Ego Function: Ego-Self Axis
The borderline struggles to form a coherent self-identity, where events can’t be remembered (split off) with a subjective experience of disturbance, fragility, repression and vulnerability. A healthy ego helps one adapt to one’s surroundings, enabling the core self to contain shocks and differences in external reality without fragmenting. They prefer anticipating the worst and preempting negative experiences to reinforce their familiarity. Their self-image is narrow, rigid, and often defensive, with certain aspects overdeveloped, underdeveloped, or disowned (Shadow). They have failed to integrate a traumatic childhood full of shame, pain and humiliation, compounded with rage, envy and hatred towards the perceived aggressor. The child believes they will not survive the fragmenting experience and generates a false persona with extreme defence mechanisms.
A shift is needed to relinquish control and become open to the full breadth of one’s existence and potential. A change to a new “Centre of Gravity “between ego and the self, where the individual can express themselves and be spontaneous and creative in alignment with their life force. A sense of freedom without restraint or compulsion, not constrained by illusion, free to be who one is.
The borderline needs to trust the process of analysis
