Emotional Dysregulation in
Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) has at its epicentre the core wound of abandonment that is experienced by those with BPD at very young age and is then compounded as one chronologically ages while one's emotional maturation has been interrupted. It is the unresolved issues of abandonment trauma that is a major cause of emotional dysregulation in BPD.

Borderlines needing to protect from the pain that is housed in the lost authentic self - abandoned pain that has weaved a web of elaborate emotional triggers that emotionally dysregulate those with BPD because they trigger these unresolved issues - suffer what are extreme states of polarized emotions. Emotions that dysregulate the affect and mood states of the borderline so severely, that they make healthy age-appropriate relating next to, if not, impossible.

It is the emotional dysregulation in those with BPD that ruptures attempts to relate and maintain any consistent or lasting intimate connection. It is this emotional dysregulation that also is the root cause of much of the drama, conflict, and chaos that many with BPD continue to perpetuate in their lives and in their relationships. It is also at the root of so much of the polarized negativity of BPD that causes those with BPD to experience so much of life without hope.

BPD has at its core emotional dysregulation. Emotional dysregulation that is experienced by those with BPD as tides of emotions. Tides of emotion that feel like and/or are perceived as if they will last forever.

What a borderline feels in the emotionaly dysregulation of ever-shifting states of affect obliterates all other possible feelings or variances or degrees of feeling.

Emotional dysregulation in Borderline Personality Disorder is at the heart of most, if not all, borderline suffering.

Emotions have functions and uses but most with BPD are so unskilled emotionally (until and unless they get professional help) in coping with their emotions and in managing them that they have habitual and automatic patterns that are self-destructive ways of coping in what are maladaptive and unhealthy ways. These schemas of maladaptive coping mechanisms employed in efforts to escape the distress and/or discomfort of emotion - of the abandoned pain of BPD that is usually dysregulated and that actually only then serves to worsen the degree of dysregulation.

It is the unaddressed emotional dysregulation that often results when those with BPD are triggered back to unresolved abandonment trauma that keeps borderlines stuck in the active throes of BPD and it is their very attempts to avoid and protect against the unresolved pain of abandonment trauma that ruptures relationships and continues to cause them more pain and distress from which they then feel they have to protect themselves. Emotional dysregulation is a repetitive cycle in BPD that effects those with BPD and non borderlines causing pain all the way around.

Both those with BPDand non borderlines will benefit from gaining insight and understanding into BPD itself and also the cycles of borderline emotional dysregulation.

© A.J. Mahari September 27, 2007

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3 Non Borderline Audio Programs Package $42.00

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A.J. Mahari is currently writing a memoir about her life and experience as a person who had two parents with Borderline Personality Disorder, as a person who was diagnosed herself with BPD at the age of 19 and from her perspective as someone who has recovered from BPD. There is a new section on her BPD Blog called The Diary - My Borderline Years where A.J. Mahari shares snipets of experience from her own life that is will give you just a taste of what her memoir will include.

The Shame of Abandonment in BPD

BPD and Abandonment

Inside The Borderline Mind - For Non Borderlines

Audio Program "Preparing For Recovery From BPD" Parts 1 & 2 by A.J. Mahari

Audio Program Rage Addiction in BPD by A.J. Mahari (sold separately or packaged with Mahari's Ebook, "Rage and BPD")

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES
• Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

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