If you have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) you've likely
experienced rage. For a great many with BPD this rage is an
outward rage. It is taken out and or directed at those who get
closest to you. Although it is difficult (to varying degrees)
for most with BPD to get close (and stay close) to others the
degree to which the borderline feels close is the issue. Whether
or not a relationship is close matters not. If a borderline
perceives you as close, often the duality then becomes the
push-pull of wanting to feel safe with the closeness and feeling
an ever-present (or rather cyclical) acceptance of "other" and
of the relationship coinciding with bouts of rage. (feeling unsafe
with anyone close, feeling exposed if known, feeling too
damaged to ever be understood, valued and respected.)
Where does the rage come from? (I've read so many ask, on
an email list I run for borderlines) Many with BPD are just
as surprised and shocked at their raging behaviour as are
their friends, partners, and relatives.
In my experience,
in healing from BPD....I found that my rage at the world, at
those around me, at anyone who dared to care or tried to get or
stay close was born out of my own pain. Yes a profoundly deep pain. A
pain that had its roots in "original wounds" (John Bradshaw).
An intra-psychic pain that only I could reach, undo, work through
and heal. (In therapy)
What happened many times for me in
trying to be close to others was an immediate and deep-seated
projection/transference onto them by me in which they would
become a parent figure and then (most of this was subconscious
at the time, in the past) they would represent to me all of my
past loss. So, in being close I would be waiting for the rejection and abandonment
and neglect and abuse--all of which I received as a young child.
It is this fundamental dissociative experience that leaves both
the borderline and those who care about them in the line of fire.
The waiting for the abuse or rejection/abandonment to replay
itself is a testament to the existence of a BPD reality in
which the larger picture or reality is not consistently known,
perceived, held or understood. If it were possible to think
beyond the cognitive distortions (which it is through therapy)
at the time, the borderline would not be so convinced that
a person close to them, in the here and now, was at any moment,
going to repeat the rejection/abandonment (etc) of the past.
If you have BPD you live in a world within a world.
This in and of itself can be the root of much rage and pain as well.
Borderlines grow up learning to think "distorted thoughts".
Without re-training your way of thinking, and feeling your
actions, namely raging, and acting out continue to replay
themselves. The actions of a child continue to play out, no
matter how old you are because until those thought patterns
are changed you are thinking like you did as a child.
When BPD rage occurs it can be lightening fast and to anyone
on the "outside" make little to no sense at all for what is
happening in that time and place. For the borderline however,
they are re-experiencing (due to triggers) their past. This
is the major reason why most borderlines are also extremely
controlling of those around them and their environment. It is
an effort to control themselves. Since they do not have any
clear individuated boundaries: they don't know where they end
and others begin, the control that they try to exert far exceeds
what the average person would need to do in any given situation.
The average person, with boundaries, knowing the difference
between self and other needs only to control themselves.
BPD rage, appears to be about control, on the surface. It isn't
really. If there is anything that is trying to be controlled
through this rage it is that the borderline is trying so
desperately to not feel "old" pain (or original pain) on top
of what is usually a fair amount of pain in the here and now
as well. Though they may often be dissociated from both the
present and the past's pain. It is the reality of not having
a sense of who one is that also enables so much of the
"continuity" of time to be endlessly disrupted in the mind
of a borderline. Rage is born of lostness so deep that one
feels perpetually like a helpless child. (again no matter
what actual age they may be)
At the root of the rage is the anger. At the root of the anger
is the hurt and the pain, the devastation at what they had
to endure in the past. Most borderlines (up to some point
in therapy and healing) remain very unaware of this.
For me, working this through has changed my life. It has always
seemed very cruel to me though that in order to work through
much of the borderline rage I had to endure not only the rage,
and the source of that rage inside of myself but also the anger,
hurt, and fear that not only the rage produced in me, but also
that I already felt anyway. There is also a tremendous amount
of shame connected to any behaviour that is rage-related or
that is generated by the rages.
When a borderline rages they hurt.
They hurt more than words can say. They hurt more than they often know.
This does not justify the rage in the here and now, nor does it excuse the
abuse. If you are borderline you must come to know that the
way through the rage to the other side of it all is to feel
your feelings in an appropriate way that allows you to grieve
them. It is only through grieving them, through journaling,
crying, talking about them that you can work them through enough
to let them go. This, coupled with cognitive re-training is the
way out of what seems like an endless cycle of rage that you,
as a borderline may well feel happens to you.
It doesn't "happen" to you --NOW-- in the here and now. NO. It happened to
you years ago. You have been recapitulating it from deep within
your subconscious because you have not worked it out. This is
tantamount to choosing it. You play a central and very active
role in your rage it does not just happen. Furthermore, NOBODY
can MAKE YOU DO IT....you are responsible for it.
BPD rage makes victims of us all. It victimizes those who care
about the person with BPD often to the point where they have to
withdraw or pull away to maintain their own sanity and health.
It also re-victimizes the borderline. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits.
The here and now is lost to--then. It is abusive to rage at anyone
for any reason. It is appropriate to express how you feel when you are
being personably responsible for those feelings.
Once we reach the age of adulthood there is no legitimate
reason to stay in the throes of our childhoods. BPD, as
a personality disorder very much has this influence. The
thing that can be so difficult to grasp and that produces a
significant amount of grief when grasped is that we indeed make
the choices that we make. Borderlines were subjected to something as
children in the way they were parented or the environment in which
they lived that set things in motion. However, so much of BPD though
it is an understandable response to trauma remains a "coping" choice.
BPD is a maze of defense mechanisms designed to ensure that we never
have to endure the annihilating pain that so affected us originally when we were
young. The tragedy is that these choices, when exercised beyond
the initial stimuli that caused these reactions are dysfunctional
and are mal-adaptive ways of coping. The tragedy is that so
much more loss is amassed before one can begin to sift through
the damage, the hurt and the pain and the grief that lays so
deeply within the hole in one's soul....if you are raging,
think about this; "On the other side of rage, is loss"
(quoted source not currently known)
Rage seeks to protect.
Within the protection that it offers it is doing (often) irreparable
further damage to your relationships or chances to build relationships.
Your efforts to protect yourself through rage are only further hurting you.
Your efforts to avoid loss and feeling the losses that you've
already suffered are only chalking up more losses for you to
avoid feeling. Loss hurts. Loss must be felt and dealt with.
Loss and the pain of loss is within you. It is yours. It is
not bigger than you. You can feel it, now, and survive it now.
If you don't stop raging you will not stop losing.
You CAN choose to stop raging and start feeling. I won't kid
you, IT HURTS. It hurts a great deal but the worth in healing
all of this pain and grief, hurt and loss is that you will not
have to continue to rage. You can learn to deal with loss, to
hold those feelings, to be safe with those feelings. Being
hurt and or feeling our hurt in the here and now does not have
to mirror our childhood.
Outwardly you choose to rage to mask
the pain that is within you. That pain, that is within you, IS YOURS. It does not
belong to anyone else. No one else deserves to have you throw
your pain at them in rage, ever again.....
Rage is a selfish and immature choice. It is abusive. It is
shaming. It is dissociative and or avoidant behaviour. The
decision, the choice, is yours. Will you continue to rage,
and to throw your responsibility for your pain onto others?
Or will you decide enough is enough and that you want to heal
enough to do the work that can set you and those you love free
from the rages of BPD that leave others feeling that knowing
you is like being held in captivity.
© Ms. A.J. Mahari - May 2, 1999
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER and
RAGE - Storms in the absence of self© A.J. Mahari is an ebook that consists of seven
chapters of detailed examination, understanding, and explanation of Borderline Rage from the
insightful perspective of one who has been there. A.J. provides a roadmap of hope and practical
steps to help the borderline stop the rage and/or stop the self harm and heal the wounds, and
transform his/her life. Those diagnosed with BPD, in a relationship (friend, family member, significant other,
(ex-partner) with someone with BPD, as well as any professional treating someone with BPD will benefit
from the insight A.J. Mahari shares based upon her own recovery from BPD.
Please Click HERE to Purchase A.J.'s ebook
Borderline Personality Disorder
and Rage - Storms in the Absence of Self
