Dear lil.lily:

You added yesterday that your former therapist diagnosed you a year ago “with BPD traits”- my comment: this means to me that she did not diagnose you with the disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder, BPD) because although you fit some of what is required to make this diagnosis, you didn’t fit all the requirements for this diagnosis. This makes sense to me because after reading your 14 threads yesterday, I didn’t see evidence that you suffer from BPD.  I will keep in mind that you suffer from traits of the disorder, but not from all the necessary traits that are required to make the diagnosis.

About your childhood, you shared that when you were 5 or 6, your parents separated and your mother moved to the U.S. to work, leaving you behind with your aunt until you were 9. My comment on this piece of information is that a young child being left by her mother for three or four years- without being provided with a lot of emotional support to substitute for the mother being gone- would severely traumatize any child.

You wrote about this traumatic happening in your young life: “I didn’t know till recently, a year ago that it made an impact in my life”. A year ago (2019), at 27 or 28,  you had no idea that you were impacted by the separation from your mother. It will take time and work for you to become more and more aware of the undeniable fact that you were indeed impacted, and in what ways you were impacted.

Your father has been living in a different country and has not been part of your life. On the other hand, you were reunited with your mother at 9 years old (?), but “mom worked a lot… I was left alone, met a lot of friends, was very social… my family was always apart or working”.

You wrote: “So my BDP manifests every time I get triggered (abandoned, betrayal, feeling uncared) the black and white thinking. I would always ask myself ‘Why would they do that?… There is this empty feeling that comes back and forth”- I assume it was a typo and you meant BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), not BDP-

– this quote suggests to me that as a child, having been left behind by your mother, and your father being out of your life, at five or six, all the way to nine- you felt abandoned, betrayed and uncared for; you felt a chronic painful emptiness: a chronic unsatisfied need to be reunited with your mother, to be cared for.

The child that you were asked herself again and again: why did they leave me behind, why would they do that to me???

And when you were re-united with your mother, the chronic emptiness remained because she worked a lot and therefore.. you were still left behind, alone. Being “very social” as a child and onward did not fill in that chronic emptiness.

You mentioned a more recent event involving your mother: “a verbal fight in the car with my mother. I jumped out of the car because she kept telling me to just ‘get over it'”- maybe, just maybe this was her attitude when you reunited with her at 9: just get over the last 3-4 years and act like those years (years that feel like an eternity in a young child’s experience) never happened.

I will now read my summary from yesterday, incorporating what you shared most recently into parts of the summary and continue to add my comments:

In your first thread, March-April 2014, you were 22. At the time you were not aware that having been left behind by your mother for what seemed like eternity had any effect on your mind and heart. You viewed yourself as very outgoing and friendly. It is now clear to me that this outgoing and friendly girl/ woman is chronically empty: you are friendly, having a normal, healthy need to connect to other people, but your overly active social efforts have been fueled by the fear of being alone, and feeling so dreadfully empty and lonely, by you wanting to not feel that dreadful, chronic emptiness.

Regarding the Dutch man you were involved with, you “never had this feeling with anyone.. It was very intimate”- you did not feel that emptiness with him temporarily.

You felt strongly that Amsterdam was your home.. because San Diego, living with or around your mother- was/ is not home; it is not where you feel connected, safe and warm.

In August 2014- Sept 2014,  still unaware that having been left behind by your mother, for what felt like eternity, had any effect on your mind and heart, you shared that you’ve been anxious and depressed, “I wake up and feel like crap”- when we have crappy childhoods, as adults-we keep experiencing the same crappy emotional experience. Biochemically, this happens as a result of the brain secreting the same chemicals as it did in childhood, having formed a chemical habit that produces these crappy feelings.

You asked at the time: “Why do I feel this way when I know my life is good, and I have everything that most people do not have?”- my answer today is that you feel this way because your life was not good when you were a child, that when you were a child you did not have a mother to love you and make you feel cared for, safe and connected. Your brain operates now in the ways it was formed during those formative years of childhood.

You shared: “I feel incredibly lonely.. want more of life.. where my life doesn’t feel mundane.. such a routine.. feeling so robotic in this routine life”- a human is a social animal, without adequate connections with others, we don’t feel humans; we feel robotic, like a machine. It is the connecting with others that makes us alive. It is the same with other social animals.

A month later, in Oct 2014, still 22, you shared that you are “always over thinking.. ahead of myself”- that’s you rushing ahead of that chronic emptiness, afraid of feeling it, not wanting to feel it, eager to feel something else.

You were “excited to get away from California and have a new experience” in Wash DC- similar to being excited about Amsterdam and Europe otherwise- wanting to get away from that emptiness with your mother, an emptiness that was within you ever since she left you behind at 5 or 6. But the chronic emptiness persists wherever you go, being relieved only temporarily, at times.

“I am scared to be alone”, you wrote in October 2014. Two months later, Dec 2014, you wrote: “I feel so alone.. I currently live in San Diego.. and I feel so lonely here.. so overwhelmed and alone”- this is how you felt living with/ around your mother, same as you felt from the time she left you behind 16 or 17 years earlier. You asked: “why does it feel so lonely?”- my answer: because that’s how you felt for 16-17 years, and your brain got in the chemical habit of feeling so lonely.

Four months later, in April 2015, you shared that you were living in Wash D.C. and met a man there, clicked immediately, were “very intimate with one another”, and then he broke up with you. A month later, May 2015, you shared that you felt “alone all the time.. not fulfilled.. feel like sh**.. depressed”, even though you “go on dates, and meet people”- you were meeting people but the chronic emptiness did not go away. At times, temporarily you got a break from it, but it’s been within you ever since childhood.

Three months later, in July 2015, you shared that you felt “this dark energy, the dark soul with me”- that’s the chronic emptiness, the chronic loneliness. “the past days I was content, and then I am back to this feeling.. lonely”- the feeling is always there, it’s just that sometimes you get a break from being aware of it.

Five months later, Dec 2015, you described yourself as a “young, creative, outgoing, full of energy, traveler, thriller-seeker” who thinks too much and is “overwhelmed and sleepless”, seeking “too much pleasure.. shows, traveling, sex,  men, drinking, smoking, etc. etc.”- what all this indicates to me is that you being outgoing and very active socially is about escaping that chronic emptiness, not wanting to feel it, seeking thrills so to.. sort of overcome the emptiness, kill it with excitement, newness and thrill.

Two months later, Feb 2016, at about 24, you shared that you interpret a good life to be one where you “live and cherish every moment.. each moment is unique and different”- when stuck in a crappy childhood, a person cannot experience anything for long but that crappy childhood. To experience something new, a person has to heal from that crappy childhood.

You interpreted a good life as one where you learn about yourself, “keep learning.. use knowledge as a tool to understand and be open-minded… understand who I am”- learning about that chronic emptiness, how it came about, will help you in the process of healing from it. Emotional healing and learning about yourself/ understanding who you are are synonymous terms.

About your experience in Wash D.C., you wrote: “there is no.. motion, no warmth. No compassion”= your experience as a child, left behind, it felt robotic, mundane= no motion; it felt cold= no warmth; you felt no compassion from your aunt (?), all alone.

More than four years later, June 2020, at 28, you shared that you live in Chicago, and you shared for the first time that you suffer from BPD (traits).

Six months later, December 2020, you shared that you lashed out at a friend, ruining a friendship yet again, that you have an anxious attachment style that bleeds out whenever you “get too close to someone”.

More of my thoughts and comments: you mentioned emptiness and I repeatedly mentioned chronic emptiness, which is a core characteristic of  BPD. What I mean by  chronic emptiness born in childhood is that in that lack of the most needed experience of being attended to with love and care- a most powerful longing is born, a craving so strong, so lasting. This craving is sometimes quiet but too often it is like a noisy, powerful hurricane, destroying the inside and the outside in its desire to find love, and its anger at not finding it.

Six  months ago, June 2020, you described yourself this way: “I’m just open, approachable, and friendly”- when the storm is quiet, I imagine.

But when you get angry, the storm is on: “My fury started, I couldn’t control it.. I said, ‘I hate him, f** you, etc.. I tried to incite him, try to get a response. He was ignoring me. Until I went out of control, biting, spitting out slurs”. Later, you apologized to him, telling him: “this was not me, the BPD isn’t me”-

– But the anger is yours. Your anger is not a bad emotion, as no emotion is bad. Your anger is valid and it carries a valid message: that you should not have been left behind by your mother, and by your father; that one of them, or both, should have been there for you, attending t you with love and care.

Healing will take attending to your anger with respect, and in so doing, mindfully and on an ongoing basis, containing it so that it does not develop into a destructive hurricane, taking you (and others) by surprise. Learning and practicing assertive skills will be part of this containment.

Healing will also take choosing responsibly who you get involved with. Just because you suffer from your own internal hurricane does not mean that other people, men you meet, do not have their own hurricanes that can destroy you.

Because you believe still (?) that “most of the time, men think of me as a sexual object”, to heal, you will need to see to  it that you do not get involved with a man sexually unless you know that the man values you as a person, as a whole human being;  not as an object.

anita