Thoughts on Borderline Personality Disorder, Trauma and EMDR

In my experience as a therapist, I have noticed that some clients who show symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder or carry this diagnosis seem to identify with a belief that they deserve to live with the distressing effects of their trauma and have a hard time imagining a life where they aren't affected by it on a daily basis.

I would like to remind anyone suffering with this that you are not what happened to you. The PTSD and after effects of trauma are like pain from a cut on your hand. You are not the pain or the cut, and it wasn't your fault you got cut! With proper treatment, the wound will heal and the pain will stop because the body has this wonderful ability to heal itself.

I have noticed that often what happens is the effects of PTSD get to be too much to handle causing overwhelm and the tendency to act out on loved ones without the language to say "I'm hurting and I need to connect with you but I don't know how, and I don't believe I deserve it."

In my work with BPD clients, I've found that the challenge arises when therapists or professionals are offering to heal or take away the suffering, but the BPD client will push back or sabotage this help because their identity is tied to suffering, so if the suffering is taken away they believe they will be taken away too. Perhaps there also is a belief that bad things will happen to you if you try to get your needs met.

This tells us that trauma is calling the shots. Trauma  loves to lie and make us believe that the same result is going to happen each time because it already did once. But the reality is that it's very very unlikely that the exact same thing will happen in nature twice. And even if it did, the memory of the trauma isn't going to be able to help you navigate that situation differently, all trauma/PTSD does is scare you to make you believe you are still in danger. When a memory is processed and no longer holds any disturbance, our bodies won't resort to using our hind brain to deal with the issue any longer. We will be able to use our full prefrontal cortex to assess and work through the situation safely.

Clients who suffer from BPD want what we all want, they want to be seen, understood, listened to, and shown that they matter. It is our job as professionals to gently guide our clients away from identifying with the chains of their trauma and to instead instill hope and encourage focusing on their unique goals and intentions for the future.