 Nothing is more painful than the borderline's avoidance. One day you are her world, her biggest love, her greatest infatuation, the center of her life. No, correct this, you are her life. One day she can't survive without you, not even for a minute. She is all over you, and the next she wants your gun, she hates your guns, she wants to break up, or a divorce, or worse still, she cheats on you, or she becomes aggressive, violent even. These cycles of approach and avoidance constitute intermittent reinforcement, hot and cold, and they are definitely abusive. Clinically speaking, this is an instance of what is known as diaphysis in Adlerian terms, or repetition compulsion in Freudian terms. It's a behavior that is out of control. It is motivated by unconscious dynamic processes. The etiology has harks back to early childhood. In short, in human speak, the borderline cannot help it. But it's corrosive to the body. It's heartbreaking. It's soul-wrenching. It's utterly destructive. How to cope with this? What to say? What to say to the borderline when she is like that? When you see the hate in her eyes, you see her defensive body posture as if you are about to beat her or kill her or something. And before I proceed, I'm using female pronouns for historical reasons. Today, 50% of all diagnosis of borderline personality disorder are granted to men. It's an equal gender distribution. Men are as likely to contract borderline personality disorder as women are. The same with narcissism. My name is Sam Vakny. I'm the author of Malignance of Love, Narcissism Revisited and your great and disheveled professor of psychology here to edify you and educate you on the vagaries and vicissitudes and tinctin abulations look it up of the borderline condition and everyone that is swept into the borderline's black hole and whirlpool because that's what the borderline is, a vortex. And so before I proceed into giving you advice as to what to say to the borderline when she is in this kind of state of mind let me remind you of the three phases. There's a whole video dedicated to this. When the borderline's intimate partner is enmeshed and immersed in her shared fantasy when she allocates to him the function of external regulation his job is to stabilize her dysregulated emotions and her labile moods. At this stage the partner is likely to internalize the borderline's inner turmoil he ends up amplifying it and somehow becoming a part of it he's swept along into her chaotic inner landscape but once the partner gets disenchanted with the borderline she is likely to mirror image his newly gained unperturbed equilibrium by reacting with dysregulation to his perceived indifference and rejection. In short when the partner wakes up to reality and realizes that the borderline is approach avoidant a hopeless case, there's nothing he can do about it these are internal processes, there's nothing the borderline can do about it many many partners become indifferent or less amenable to the borderline's charms and whims more immune and impermeable to her condition. At this point the borderline perceives this as abandonment, as rejection and she reacts with extreme dysregulated emotions. Finally the dyad, the couple, settles into a transactional regulatory valley when the borderline re-idealizes her partner within a new Halcyon fantasy or some borderlines withdraw into a nostalgic state coupled with desperate attempts to hoover erstwhile partners or when the borderline descends into promiscuity a promiscuous world, dervish world of six. So these are the three reactions when the couple, the borderline and her intimate partner settle into some kind of regulatory plateau the borderline reacts in one of three ways she re-idealizes the partner with a new fantasy she revisits her past with erstwhile partners excess and or she becomes exceedingly totally uncontrollably promiscuous So what to do when you are faced with the borderlines incessant and injurious avoidance I suggest to say the following four sentences and only these sentences one, I'm always here for you I'm a rock, I'm a stable presence I'm not going away this is to ass-wage her abandonment anxiety sentence number two, you are and you will always be dear to me this is to provide the equivalent of love holding, we call it a holding environment a containing environment sentence number three, I do place boundaries you are right about this but I place boundaries not only for my own self-protection I place boundaries also in order to be strong enough for both of us these boundaries keep me alive keep me functioning for your own sake as well number four, I will accept and respect any decision you make you want to walk away, you want to divorce you want to break up you want some time to yourself you want separation I will accept and respect any decision you make now these four sentences combined are unlikely to provoke engulfment anxiety in the borderline they are also likely to reduce or ameliorate and mitigate her abandonment anxiety between anxieties that are the fuel in the borderline's engine say these four sentences repeatedly morning, afternoon, evening and nighttime until they sink in the borderline realises that you actually minute you are setting boundaries you are strong you are there but you love her and you are there for her and you will accept and respect any decision she makes remember that the borderline or the borderline personality organisation is the outcome of four inexorable extremely painful internal processes it's a confluence the confluenced outcome of five pathologies coupled with subclinical psychopathy in many cases let's review these dynamics for you to understand better the borderline's avoidance I may remind you that the borderline's avoidance is often coupled with decompensation, the collapse of her defences and acting out behaviours which are essentially psychopathic when she acts out you are not in her mind the partner is not in her mind she is actually out of her mind when she acts out she is no longer herself a psychopathic self state takes over she forgets about her partner out of sight, out of mind introject in constancy so then she acts out now acting out could take any shape any number of behaviours most of these behaviours are reckless acting out could involve, for example, promiscuity sex with strangers, total strangers or relative strangers acting out could involve shopaholism depleting the family's finances and resources it could involve even workaholism it could involve substance abuse and addictions acting out is simply the way the borderline protects herself protects herself from overwhelming emotions and moods that are labile and all-consuming she becomes a heartless psychopath who doesn't care about her partner because he is no longer in her mind and so all this clinical psychopathy and everything else I mentioned are motivated and driven by five processes and these five processes are at the heart of the borderline's avoidance and you need to understand them if you want to cope with an avoidant borderline number one introject or object in constancy as I said, out of sight, out of mind the inability to maintain introjects of significant others the inability to maintain internal representations internal objects, avatars, snapshots of meaningful, significant others the incapacity to trust the permanence of meaningful others in one's life introject or object in constancy provoke abandonment, anxiety or separation and security in clinical terms the second process that motivates avoidant behaviors transitional or comfort objectifying the failure to attach or to bond to bond with or to correct to emotionally invest in other people the borderline is actually attachment impaired she has extreme difficulty to form long-term bonds which are stable corrected emotionally invested in and involve secure attachment because her attachment style is insecure in the extreme so there's a failure to bond to attach, to correct other people become failed projects so the borderline uses other people's bodies for example the way small kids use teddy bears or favorite blackheads she uses other people's bodies and other people's presence and other people's minds and other people's love and emotions she uses other people's as comfort object or transitional objects again small children cuddle with teddy bears they carry with them a favorite blanket wherever they go this is a transitional phase from narcissistic libido investment in oneself as an object of love to other directed libido object relations and the borderline is stuck in the limbo between narcissistic and other libido the third process is identity disturbance identity disturbance is fluctuating between mutually exclusive incompatible beliefs, values behavior patterns, cognitions and emotions mutually exclusive schema going to the absence of a core identity the borderline has no core identity she's not there, there's nobody there exactly like the narcissist it's a black hole it's a void it's an impermanence the borderline is the ratification of absence precisely like the narcissist that's why many scholars don't split hairs between narcissism and borderline they think essentially it's the same condition there's a schizoid core which is essentially empty consequently the borderline's identity who she is, her essence fluctuate widely one day she can be faithful and loyal and decry for example, cheating is an unacceptable behavior then the next day she will cheat one day she can believe in God the next day she could be an atheist the next day she will be A the next day she will be minus A the exact glaring opposite of what she had claimed to be the day before and yes it could fluctuate from day to day this is known as identity disturbance and it has a lot to do with the fourth dynamic process psychodynamic process and that is pervasive dissociation the borderline suffers from bouts of amnesia derealization and depersonalization she feels empty and unreal for example borderlines feel empty and unreal when they are alone they have a very low threshold for tolerating loneliness they also feel unreal they also feel on autopilot and they also feel denuded of any inner content when they're having sex especially acting out sex for example cheating or promiscuity the borderline then upsents herself it's like she's saying I'm observing my body doing this but it's not me I'm not there, I'm not inside depersonalization or this is not real it's like a dream, it's like a nightmare it's going to be over soon derealization or I'd better forget that this had happened these are the borderline's defenses against her own psychopathic misconduct and misbehavior especially during the acting out phase and finally and possibly most importantly the reason for the borderline's avoidant behaviors is the bed object the borderline perceives herself to be unworthy to be deficient somehow, to be sick to be toxic dangerous to others to be unlovable she perceives herself as a bed object these are the voices of the introjects inside her these are the voices of internalized parents for example or teachers or peers so she believes herself to be some kind of venomous emanation she doesn't want to inflict herself on her loved ones she avoids her nearest and dearest because she convinces herself that she's bed for them she's wrong for them she's going to hurt them somehow that's one dynamic but inside the bed object realm inside this kingdom because the bed object is all-encompassing all-pervasive the bed object is everywhere in every corner of the borderline's psyche so it has numerous manifestations whenever something happens anything from a speech act to a sex act the bed object manifests so another another way the bed object affects the borderline's avoidant behaviors is that she is coerced by the bed object to punish herself to degrade and denigrate herself promiscuity for example is the punishment and denigration of an internalized bed object egged on by punitive and sadistic introjects and harsh inner critic the borderline actually tells herself I'm a whore and I should sexually trash myself to punish this whore the whore part is the bed object put together these five dynamics these mutually reinforcing processes resulting on the one hand compulsive attention seeking and acquisition for example sexual conquest and this is to the point of indiscriminate people pleasing so one outcome of these four dynamics five dynamics when they are combined is people pleasing compulsive charming compulsive giving forced altruism sexual promiscuity which is a form of giving attention seeking addiction to attention at any cost never mind how egodystonic it is never mind the shame and the regret and the remorse and the guilt afterwards the attention trumps the need for attention trumps anything and everything so this is one outcome of these five dynamics and the other outcome is actually predatory behaviors psychopathic behaviors involved in acting out the compensatory stage so the borderline may appear sometimes to be nice kind generous loving compassionate caring pleasing to the point of self sacrifice this is also an outcome of these five dynamics and then she switches like in multiple personality disorder like in dissociative identity disorder she switches abruptly into a psychopathic self state where she becomes a predator and dangerous to herself and to others sex is used as a currency with which to purchase a temporary reprieve from this internal inferno but sex is only one form of addiction borderlines develop multiple addictions most notably substance abuse borderlines also develop depression disorders depressive disorders and anxiety disorders because if you have a bad object inside you that keeps informing you that you're corrupt that you're hopeless that you're doomed that you are sick to others that you are poisoned on two legs if you have such a bad object that tells you you're not lovable you should avoid people you should not inflict yourself on others if you have such a bad object that tells you a whore this creates a lot of anxiety and a lot of depression if you keep forgetting things because you dissociate it's very unsettling it could create a lot of anxiety if you have identity disturbance the same if you treat people as objects and you have a problem with object constancy you'll be terrified all the time of abandonment you'll be heartbroken over people disappearing from your life you are not able to maintain an inner internal representation of these people in your mind because of interjecting constancy this is not a life this is an improv an improvisation it's a modern art an abstract you can read anything into it the borderline is a constant pursuit of an internal core an identity and she never makes it she always fails everything I've come across a borderline who compared her thoughts to snowflakes and she's running around with her tongue out trying to capture the snowflakes I thought it was a beautiful metaphor and so this is the borderline's condition state of mind and of course she feels threatened by love if you offer a borderline love and intimacy you're telling her that her bad object is fallacious and lying and she perceives the bad object she perceives her denigrating degrading hateful intrigues as an integral part of who she is and she doesn't realize that these voices are alien to her she thinks it's her voices and so when you confront these voices and say they're wrong you're actually a good person you're a loving person you are capable of love she feels under attack she develops dissonance and she's likely to be subject to engulfment and anxiety and run away from you ironically the more you try to love traditionally and offer her intimacy and be a good and nice partner the more you're pushing her away definitely the fewer boundaries you have the more you're pushing her away she cannot give up on the bad object because if you look inside her she is empty the only thing there is the bad object and you're trying to take it away from her she will never let you she will affirm and prove to you that the bad object is right by behaving badly that's her way of communicating to you you're wrong about you I tricked you it's all a lie I'm actually a very bad person and you are stupid and naive and gullible for having thought otherwise I'm angry at you because you've misled me for a minute into believing that I may be better than I am but I'm looking inward and I'm seeing the bad object and I know the bad object is right because it's the only object I have