Having been raised by parents with borderline personality disorder, this subject strikes a cord with me. Many of you might have family members or friends who suffer from this disease without knowing it, but it’s important to find out because by doing so, you gain a better understanding not only of them, but of yourself as well. When I found out my parents were borderline, resentments of the past faded and were replaced by compassion, it’s hard to be a person with tis disease.

Here are some of the signs:

• Extreme reactions—including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions—to abandonment, whether real or perceived
• A pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often veering from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
• Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self, which can result in sudden changes in feelings, opinions, values, or plans and goals for the future (such as school or career choices)
• Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
• Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting
• Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
• Chronic feelings of emptiness and/or boredom
• Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
• Having stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality.
• Seemingly mundane events may trigger symptoms. For example, people with borderline personality disorder may feel angry and distressed over minor separations—such as vacations, business trips, or sudden changes of plans—from people to whom they feel close. Studies show that people with this disorder may see anger in an emotionally neutral face⁵ and have a stronger reaction to words with negative meanings than people who do not have the disorder.⁶

Here’s what Erik has to say:

Me: What’s the spiritual basis of borderline personality disorder? These people have real abandonment issues, and they also throw the baby out with the bath water meaning if you do one little thing wrong, they think you’re horrible. They no longer remember the good. You go from hero to zero.

Erik: It’s a form of alienation. The contract is of saying, “Please misunderstand me so that I can understand myself better.”

Me: Hmm!

Erik: It’s almost like you’re forcing yourself to be on a one-man team. It gets misunderstood because others think they don’t know how to be on a team or they’re being punished for who they are, and it’s not that. It’s really just meant for them to be—it’s not really “alone” like in the sense of, “Nobody loves me. I’m all by myself.” It’s not the aloneness that implies abandonment.

Me: It’s more about the independent need to search for their own identity.

Erik: Yes. When you come across these people, you know in a past they were the extreme opposite where they’ve been a complete leach to an idea or a person, and they surrendered who they were: their ideas, their words, their thoughts. It’s one extreme to the next. All of the mental illnesses don’t have to be played out for the entire lifetime if they’re willing to learn why it’s there for them, even if it’s a physical or chemical issue. We know how to correct these, but people won’t put it on the market.

Me: Yeah, that’d probably sink the pharmaceutical companies.

Erik: Yes. You can’t patent what nature gives you for free. The meat of the banana is the life you’re living now, and the strips around it are congruent lives. There are some lives that don’t need to but up against us, parallel to us, because they’re not supporting the same lessons. They conflict, so you can peel those lives away from you and still have a wonderful connection to other lives.

Me: I guess past life regression would work for that.

Erik: Hypnotic regression. Remember all lives are happening at once.

My bad.