The Truth Behind The Masks of BPD



A look at the reality of healing from BPD. Recovery can only take place when a borderline is prepared to deal in truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The truth is often walled in and hidden behind the many masks of BPD.


NOTE: I want to clearly state that BPD is real and so it the pain and suffering of those diagnosed with it. When I talk about lies and deceit in this article I am not discounting the reality of the pain, angst and turmoil of BPD. I am referring to the struggle for self and the challenge of letting go of the lies that we learn to tell to protect ourselves in order to find identity.


When one has just been disagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and or when one has not yet achieved a certain amount of recovery -- the truth about who you really are is often dissociated or fragmented from your authentic self. Your authentic self is buried under the pain, the fear, and has been left behind at the developmental stage at which you were last able to be, for the most part, yourself.

For many borderlines that separation from self occurs at a relatively young age when, emotionally there is too much pain, abandonment, abuse experienced to hold onto to one's real self without losing those upon which one is dependant for their safety, security, and other basic needs. Here's where the borderline puts on the first mask of false self.

Whatever danger to one's psyche exists or has been perceived by the borderline causes them to put on a mask of defense mechanisms in order to survive the turmoil. Mask number two.

To further survive the annihilation of self the borderline than puts on mask number three - denial and or dissociation.

Mask number four is borderline behaviour designed to protect at all costs and ususally motivated by triggered dissociative fragments of past-reality that are played out again and again through each new situation that unfolds in the life of the borderline. Unable to distinguish their familiar feelings from different experiences borderlines react in extremely patterned ways to all eventualities. They react either in extremes and vacillate between push and pull, close ness and distance in an effort to undo what has been done to them.

The masks of the borderline are walls that block him/her from him/herself as much as they block others from him/herself. These walls are built with pain and dispair. They are added to with depression and unmet needs.

Those very walls block the borderline from his/her truth. Being blocked from one's personal truth -- and authentic self without knowing this consciously leads many borderlines to add to the other masks the mask of deceit.

The mask of deceit is worn for protection. The truth was too painful to deal with in the past. The truth caused the loss of authenitic self to false self. The false self perpetuates this within one's psyche with illogical thoughts and beliefs. These thoughts and beliefs are very child-like. They don't have to make sense to the borderline for him/her to adhere to them anyway.

What starts out as deceit for protection often leads to outright lying to live. Lacking one's true self one then lacks the truth of who they are.

This lack of truth can be seen in many borderlines actions. While there is truth to their plight and to their pain it is often expressed through untruths so as to protect it.

It is this very untruthful expression of dissociated and or fragmented reality that can make helping a borderline so difficult. They come to believe their own lies. They lie to protect. They lie to be heard. They lie to build the kind of drama that they think cannot be ignored in the same way as they perceive their "real" pain and issues have long-since been ignored.

The lies and untruths of the borderline mask their real pain and their real torment. The difference between what is untruth or truth gets lost in the borderline struggle for validation.

Sadly, it is easier for many to hear, see and believe the pretend, or the faked -- because for whatever reason they go on dismissing the reality behind BPD in the first place.

In my experience the world was so eager to accept the predominant mask of my fake face. It was just as eager to reject my true face, masked though it was. Behind each mask lived a legacy of pain. Behind each mask lived the loss of my self. Behind each mask lived a facade that led to another and another. It was a maze of untruth that housed my authenticity within it. No one wanted to look there. Or, if they did, I would quickly dawn yet another mask to ensure that they fell short of their targeted goal -- whatever that might truly have been because for years I was terrified at the mere notion of "looking there", looking within... behind all of the masks that harboured, at their very core, the unprotected face of my true-identity.

It took years to unravel what was real and what wasn't real for me. It was my need to deny and to dissociate from a very painful childhood in order to continue to hold mommy and daddy out as all good -- lest they be all bad -- that led me to invert reality. I suppose this was a choice. I don't remember consciously making it, however.

Looking back I realize that it was at the age of nine that a part of me knew that my reality needed to be surpressed in order for me to go on. Thus, the birth of this ruling false self that would be BPD in me. It would take me 35 years to conquer that false self and to find my authentic self.

How did I do that? Well, the short answer is by getting HONEST. There is no room in the recovery from BPD for the lies, the pretending the faking, exaggerating forms of defense mechanisms. I had spent a lifetime behind so many masks. Peeling them away one at a time for years, only changed my "game". It didn't succeed in revealing the "real me" to anyone until I found the courage and the strength to seek out this "real me" from the inside out first.

I think some therapists I had saw this redeemable true "me" long before I did. I had no idea that I was living in such a dissociated fragmented falseness. My pain was real. My abuse was real. My childhood nightmare was real. I had pushed all of that down inside so deep that my reality became what I made it. I made it be about sprained knees, sprained wrists, cuts, bruises, seizures, anger - rage, physical intimidation, fighting, smashing glass --- anything, anything physical, so that I wouldn't have to dig deep down inside of my psyche and my soul and experience the terror of that little girl (inside of me) ever again.

But, that's what it took to heal. It took me getting real - looking at the real issues and not covering them up with misrepresentations of my pain anymore. I had to face that all of my physical symptoms, pain and injuries (real and faked) were masks for the real pain that lay deep within me - the emotional pain that a very traumatic childhood had left me with and scarred by.

I believe that one's authentic self is there under all of the masks, the denial and the defence mechanisms and the games, waiting to be found. Until a borderline can find this sense of authentic self the false-self (which only perpetuates BPD) rules. Your false-self will only serve to increase your pain and terror at every turn. The agony, the angst, the depression, the mood swings, the illogical thoughts and feelings that predicate the world of "borderline behaviour" will persist if you insist on trying to hide behind the masks of untruth.

To recover from BPD you must get real and very honest with yourself and with those who are trying to help you. This means trying new things and believing that you can be okay -- survive new a very painful experiences, like learning to be alone and learning to stop abandoning and re-abandoning yourself -- or like taking care of yourself as opposed to collapsing to be rescued by others.

The borderline must re-build his/her ego from the inside out. Borderlines must be willing to deal with the truth and nothing but the truth in order to get well. They must step out from behind some of the most creative and intelligent masks of deceit, self-protection, drama, chaos, anger and the like in order to re-experience the pain that they have been hiding from.

It is the re-experiencing of this pain in a new way, as an adult, and not as a child, that enables healing to take place. Each borderline must reclaim both his/her truth and pain in order to learn that the "monster" that they are running from is not out there but is inside of them. The "monster" of BPD lies within the psyche of each and every borderline. The "monster" is the repressed pain and trauma of the borderline and it is NOT the person with Borderline Personality Disorder.

The truth is that getting honest and staying honestly authentic can and will tame that "monster" inside. You need to safely let your pain out. It is your pain that is fuelling your anger, your rage, your depression, your acting in and or your acting out. Your pain is keeping you away from the most precious person in the world -- your REAL self.

Just as I, and others have, you can walk through your pain with the help of a competent therapist and reclaim your truth, your "authentic self" and your real face. Peel off the masks. The world awaits the expression of your true face. Face yourself in the mirror and let the truth of that expression set you free.


© Ms. A.J. Mahari - September 3, 2000



as of January 5, 2002