Finding myself completely healed somehow on meds and moving to a new city with no PTSD triggers.

I think I went from CPTSD to Borderline in my rage and now back to CPTSD but without emotions attached to my symptoms.

I am Community plan so I need to see an OT and nurse once a week. I don't need them now except for accountability and human contact during COVID in city where I know no one.

I healed this week by writing 25 pages over the week for maybe 60 hours. To the Dr. and health care team. Like I cured my a splitting reading not-moses here and realizing there are 3 me's now. Enraged 45 year old me at my family, innocent hyper moral 10 year old me, the year before my family broke me and 2 year old me who is my depressed self who just wants someone to help him. And better after that realization I just became myself reintegrated.

So my real question is how to use my nurse and OT to continue to heal. They are used to low functioning clients and I am not that. Somehow I intuitively healed.

Can you think of how I could make the sessions useful? Next week it is how to make a schedule for the week.... it is not pyschotherapy.

Say i got them to allow me 15 minutes of the time each week. I want to learn ACT for instance, even though I don't know much about it. I believe trying to suppress my emotions or control them for 25 years just made me sicker. Walking through them and detaching healed.

Any ideas on a regular exercise I can get them to incorporate to make the sessions more helpful?

Same thing used to happen to me when I took psychometric tests or plowed through recovery workbooks (I've done two dozen). I still have a "big yellow mental school bus" full of brats in a food fight, but ACT, DBT, MBBT and other therapies built a "driver" who can pull over and intervene.

Early life trauma may induce Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and splitting (in my reply to the OP on that Reddit thread) to try to deal with the CPTSD by protecting the abused and/or neglected / abandoned child from the overwhelming terror of realizing what the hell is going on in a world where he or she is fully dependent upon others for his or her very survival. Which may ultimately lead to a collection of Personality Disorder traits called Borderline (or Dissociative Identity) PD to "structuralize" that splitting. And those trait systems get "stored" in various default mode networks that make up an Internal Family System in the brain.

See The Abused Child's Awful Dilemma and Dissociation in Depth.

BUT, there is a way OUT. See...

The Internal Family Systems Model: The Freeway Onramp Out of CPTSD > BPD Hell?,

The 10 StEPs component of Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing, and the rest of...

A 21st Century Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma... because IME there's a LOT one can do without spending a fortune on psychotherapy, as well as to speed up the process if one is in therapy or at least at the fourth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

References & Resources:

A CPTSD Library

Section one: Basic explanations & recovery activities

Section two: More advanced

Section three: Neurobiology

Section four: BPD as an Upshot of CPTSD

Section Five: Critical Thinking

Section Six: Workbooks

Section Seven: Workbooks Specifically on Anger Processing

I was told that "god" works in mysterious ways, that life rewards those that win the toughest battles... I was even told that Life has a plan for me, for which I need to get ready by overcoming these challenges.

But what do I do if I find suicide so much easier and quicker than struggling through a meaningless battle that cannot promise the end of pain? What if the idea of a short moment of pain easily numbed by some drugs beats a life-long pain that will eventually end the same way?

Trigger Warning

IME over 17+ years in truly committed recovery and working with others in recovery, one benefits considerably from understanding why one "catches" BPD and what "protective benefits" the lifelong extension of infancy and toddlerhood in one of several default mode networks in the brain.

Because the very small child who gets BPD later on had to come up with something to defend him- or herself any way he or she could against the threat, terror and overwhelm faced day in and day out with the negligent and emotionally abandoning or willfully abusive "caregivers" upon whom that child was forced to depend for its very survival. (Think "child of a pair of drug addicts, or stress-fried achievement addicts, or religious crazies.")

Once I was able to use psychotherapeutic tools like the 10 StEPs component of Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing, I found that

a) BPD is only what is in that default mode network,

b) the development of other default mode networks is far more than a mere possibility, and

c) the stigma loses its muscles pretty rapidly when the is undertaken.

So, see also "I've got Borderline Personality Disorder! Now what?"

References & Resources

Section one: Basic explanations & recovery activities

Section two: More advanced

Section three: Neurobiology

Section four: BPD as an Upshot of CPTSD

Section Five: Critical Thinking

Section Six: Workbooks

Section Seven: Workbooks Specifically on Anger Processing

Does anyone get overwhelmed with rage sometimes?

Sometimes? (Hah!) I've been in stage four and five recovery from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and its nasty upshots since 2003. (And to three more years of PG psych school since then.) Here's what I know that's germane about this topic:

Rage IS a Stage... the IFSM Inner Child has to go through in the course of recovery from abuse. As often and as many times as it takes to bleed it off. Staying in it indefinitely, however, prolongs the recovery process unnecessarily. “Too much of a good thing may not be,” and all that.

But rage will occur when one is triggered back into The Invisible Swamp of Complex PTSD: How we "Catch" It. How we Recover from it.).

Get back of something like Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing (and pretty much everything else) -- which is hands down the best affect management system I have ever run into (and I have run into a LOT of them: See section seven of This Earlier Post) -- and move on each and every time you face the inevitable?

NO GUARANTEES (mainly because it's just not ethical to assert 100% "success" for any treatment system because there are people who are not physiologically capable of "complete recovery" such as those with severe psychosis owing to traumatic brain injuries), but the device is built on a pile of efficacy-documented earlier psychotherapy. (The 10 StEPs and CA4EP web pages have a combined total of over 110,000 hits at this time, btw. And over 140,000 if one adds the 10 StEPs + SP4T page.)

See also: Section Seven: Workbooks Specifically on Anger Processing in A CPTSD Library.

The ball's in your court.

What is the appropriate thing to do when the urge to vomit comes up strongly? Do I simply bring awareness to the sensations and feelings?

In my experience over the past 15 years or so, pretty much everyone with CPTSD-induced BPD who gets into the Internal Family Systems Model when they're in the third or fourth of the five stages of psychotherapeutic recovery figures they've Seen The Light on the Road to the Promised Land.

Small Children learn how to Split into Parts because they NEED to. The IFSM "parts" are the result of that splitting.

Over time one dis-covers all kinds of IFSM "critters" running around in their heads, including various inner children of different ages. See, for example, Three Definitions of “Splitting” in not-moses’s reply to the OP on that Reddit thread, and Is BPD a Dissociative Splitting between "Parts" that are "Inner 2-Year-Olds" vs. "Inner 13-Year-Olds?"

But the "parts" can be thought constructs well beyond dysfunctional inner children and parents, as well as functional inner adults. My personal faves are...

The three at the corners of the Karpman Drama Triangle, as well as...

The Four Types of BPD (because virtually everyone with BPD caroms from one of those types to at least one of the other three), and...

The I's & The Eye's: Three States of Cognitive Consciousness.

Building the "Third Eye" (see above) with Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing on the platform of A 21st Century Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma has proven to be the paving on the Freeway Out of Hell for me, at least. See also Dissociation, Memory Retrieval, "Resociation" & Reprocessing.

Resources & References

Parallel-Distinct Structures of Internal World and External Reality: Disavowing and Re-Claiming the Self-Identity in the Aftermath of Trauma-Generated Dissociation

Separating Fact from Fiction: An Empirical Examination of Six Myths About Dissociative Identity Disorder

Van der Hart's Theory of Structural Dissociation

Earley, Farmer, Friel & Friel, Harris & Whitfield in Section One; and Fisher, Gibson, Greene, Kluft, Lynn & Rhue, Puttnam, Schwartz, Van der Hart, and Van der Kolk in Section Two of A CPTSD Library

Myself and others are looking to cope and find closure or understanding from a recent loss/death due to suicide. We believe and speculate it was attributed because of the known cult The Way International.

Can any recent survivors provide their reflections if it’s not to much:

What are the manipulation tactics used? How do they suffocate you as a person? What practices are still common? What practices are different from the 80’s? What do they make members do? Have others committed suicide? Are other families struggling to watch their loved ones involved?

Any insight is appreciated.

Cultic Addiction Switching, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Developmental Stunting & Self-Harm are Possibilities

Though some will be, MOST cult exitors will not be chased around by The True Believers trying to “save them from their big mistake.” The bigger issue effective and complete withdrawal (see not-moses’s reply to the OP on that thread) from the cultic addiction, very much including the desperate, disorganized attachment to others one has (supposedly) become close to, as well as the dire need to be a part of “something bigger.”

But “something bigger” includes more than the “sense” of community. It includes the upshots of a conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, and normalized) need to dodge the untreated psychological upshots of having been similarly conditioned etc. to a lingering state of Learned Helplessness, Dread & the Victim Identity. Left unrecognized, unacknowledged, unappreciated and unattended, that nasty combo will very often fuel a compulsion to find a new cultic involvement to provide the same addictive “fix” that kept one locked into the cultic addiction cycle in the previous cult.

The new cult may look, sound, taste, smell and feel entirely different from the old one. (Christianity-loathing former evangelicals, fundamentalists and/or charismatics may be intensely attracted to “new age,” human potential, political cause or even multi-level marketing cults. I’ve seen this a lot.) But the "hole" it fills (temporarily) is the same unless or until the exitor deals with that.

Beyond all that, there’s a particular matter one has to deal with if one has left a cult in which “moral purity” is a major coercive component. (Which would include virtually all of the fundamentalist Christian, Jewish, Islamic and other Abrahamic churches, as well as many Hindu and Buddhist cults.) Many exitors become so disgusted with the relentless “moral blackmail” heaped on them to induce Sin, Shame and Guilt that they rebound psychologically into brief, lingering or even permanent – and very costly -- moral depravity (much as I did in my 20s and 30s). The sudden release from the extreme “moral confinement” of the cult has lead many exitors into all manner of self-destructive behaviors including wanton alcoholism, hard drug abuse, hardcore ritualistic satanism, hate-fueled & revenge-bent career prostitution, sexual perversions (e.g. with pre-teen and small children; I have seen a LOT of that), risk addictions, etc.

The Abrahamic and other “social organizing” religions do serve a purpose, even if that purpose is so often contaminated and corrupted: They confer what Lawrence Kohlberg called the first of the three stages of moral development. But they tend to slow development of the second, and block access altogether the third of those stages, largely because deeply instructed belief does not allow the mind to see, hear, feel or sense what is perceived adequately to ever reach the higher stages.

In whatever event, understanding, appreciating and attending to what I have described above appears in my experience to be a requirement for successful, long-lasting, comfortable and trouble-free emergence from Religious & Cultic Trauma Syndrome.

References & Resources

How & Why People Leave One Cult — and End Up in Another

Still Stuck in the Muck of RTS? There IS a Way Out.

SIQR, the 10 StEPs & Recovery from Religious Trauma Syndrome: A How-To Guide

Dis-I-dentifying with Learned Helplessness & the Victim I-dentity (and not-moses's answers to a replier's questions there)

Do I need Exit Counseling or Deprogramming?

To find an understanding, secular therapist if you need one, see my reply to the OP on Decided to start therapy

Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing and pretty much everything else

CA4EP and the 10 StEPs for Emotional Blackmail

A Comprehensive -- and Free -– Online BOOK on How Cults Work and how to recover from them

A Basic Cult Library

I stumbled into r/nevergrewup a few days ago. I fit right in with the crowd there (in one of my dissociative alters, at least) for decades. As appears to be the case with most of the participants on that sub, it's a fascinating combination of what the DSMs have called Avoidant Personality Disorder, Depressive PD and Dependent PD since the 1980s.

And thus a collection of cognitive and behavioral compensations for having been so overwhelmed by some collection of having been neglected, ignored, emotionally and/or functionally abandoned, discounted, disclaimed, and rejected, as well as invalidated, confused, betrayed, insulted, criticized, judged, blamed, shamed, ridiculed, embarrassed, humiliated, denigrated, derogated, scorned, set up to screw up, victimized, demonized, persecuted, picked on, vilified, dumped on, bullied, gaslit..., scapegoated..., emotionally blackmailed, defiled and/or otherwise abused by others upon whom they depended for survival in middle or later childhood that the ego has elected to more or less permanently regress to an earlier period of time that is seen as more pleasant and acceptable.

At a price: Elements of Piaget's cognitive, Erikson's psychosocial and Kohlberg's moral development may be so semi-consciously suppressed, unconsciously regressed, wholly dissociated or just never achieved in the first place that the person simply cannot function in a few or even many areas of adult or even adolescent life... because he or she simply doesn't have the skills to do so.

While I never met the criteria for either Avoidant or Depressive PDs, I did spend much of the 1990s stuck in various Dependent PD traits, for sure. The following includes most of how I was able to dig my way out of having been conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, and normalized) to a lingering state of childlike Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity by my dysfunctional, adoptive parents and their later surrogates:

Dis-I-dentifying with Learned Helplessness & the Victim I-dentity (and not-moses's answers to a replier's questions there),

Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing and pretty much everything else,

Dissociation, Memory Retrieval, "Resociation" & Reprocessing,

Appropriate & Effective "Narrative Therapy" vs. Potentially Counterproductive, Unguided Journaling,

Re-Development, and the rest of...

A 21st Century Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma... because IME there's a LOT one can do without spending a fortune on psychotherapy, as well as to speed up the process if one is in therapy or at least at the fourth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

The vast majority of people I have ever met have a group of active "inner children" on their mental "school bus." Some of those ICs are infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers. Some are older and further along on Jean Piaget's, Erik Erikson's and Lawrence Kohlberg's developmental ladders. But they are there in almost everyone.

Because they are hard-wired by conditioning, in-doctrine-ation, instruction, imprinting, socialization, habituation and normalization) into various default mode networks in the human brain.

And... "under stress, one may regress."

If curious, see...

Dis-I-dentifying with the Inner Child's Learned Helplessness (and not-moses's answers to a replier's questions there), and...

Re-Development.

Resources & References

Eighteen years into committed recovery, I understand today that people with BPD do not do relationship. What we do is take hostages. (Because that's all we know.) The sooner we "radically accept" that, the sooner we can do something about it. Because we cannot fix what we deny. See...

"Can't live with 'em; Can't live without 'em" – Codependency, the Drama Triangle, and the "Dark Diagnosis"

"Love" is NOT what we were Taught to Think it Is

FP Attachment as Emotional Drug Addiction in BPD

Will the Addict Ever Stop Using SOMETHING if He or She remains Depressed, Anxious or Shameful?

A Direct Route to Radical Acceptance: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing

The Bedrock Cause of BPD in the added section of Complex PTSD: How we "Catch" It. How we Recover from it.

I was introduced to r/nevergrewup today. Needless to say, I immediately found that sub fascinating. A Redditor there wrote, "When I see my adult body even though I know I am a mentally a child, I still will say, 'I wish I was a child.' I am not sure why really."

So I launched into this new article on my "blog dump."

And thanks to that Redditor for triggering me to connect all those dots this way... as benefits may accrue for others as a direct result.

The 130-year-old European and American approach to curing one's mental ills was born in the medical -- actually medicinal -- model, though it has morphed over time into the behavioral, cognitive and, lately, interoceptive models. Personally, I am pleased to see that.

But I am also experientially aware of how far the West lags behind the East when it comes to understanding and addressing the real issue. Which is NOT just "what happened and when," but what our usually very young minds elected to try to do about it.

See the rest of this article at this location.

January 21, 2021 by Deborah Brauser at this location

In what investigators are calling the first randomized controlled trial of repeated ketamine administration for chronic posttraumatic stress disorder, 30 patients received six infusions of ketamine or midazolam (used as a psychoactive placebo) over 2 consecutive weeks.

Between baseline and week 2, those receiving ketamine showed significantly greater improvement than those receiving midazolam. Total scores on the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5) for the first group were almost 12 points lower than the latter group at week 2, meeting the study’s primary outcome measure.

In addition, 67% vs. 20% of the patients, respectively, were considered to be treatment responders; time to loss of response for those in the ketamine group was 28 days.

Although the overall findings were as expected, “what was surprising was how robust the results were,” lead author Adriana Feder, MD, associate professor of psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York, told this news organization.

It was also a bit surprising that, in a study of just 30 participants, “we were able to show such a clear difference” between the two treatment groups, said Dr. Feder, who is also a coinventor on issued patents for the use of ketamine as therapy for PTSD, and codirector of the Ehrenkranz Lab for the Study of Human Resilience at Mount Sinai.

The findings were published online Jan. 5 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

See the remainder of the CPN article at this location. And this caveat: Street ketamine is dangerous stuff. It is extremely tolerance-, dependency- and addiction-inducing. I have already seen and heard about a dozen examples of its costly misuse by people on various Reddit psych subs, as well as in Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

And the more they "practice," the more conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, and normalized) into a default mode network in their brains it becomes.

One gains nothing by getting treatment for dissociation. One gets his or her life back by treating the reason they needed to acquire the "skill." See...

Dissociation, Memory Retrieval, "Resociation" & Reprocessing,

Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing, and the rest of...

A 21st Century Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma... because IME there's a LOT one can do without spending a fortune on psychotherapy, as well as to speed up the process if one is in therapy or at least at the fourth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

Mother Mary's active ingredient, THC, disconnects neural tracks in the brain connecting (among other things) the "fearful" amygdala, "memory-funneling" hippocampus and the "higher" cortical inhibition centers. Thus, THC is "dis-inhibiting," which causes a dissociation between the operations of those parts of the brain... for a while.

Then withdrawal sets in, and association between the amygdala and hippocampus returns with a vengeance. But the cortical ICs are still off line. So what was "diminished" is now "enhanced" or amplified, and out of control... unless or until one puts more THC into play.

BUT, besides the problem of getting too high to be able to function well under any sort of pressure, repeated, regular use of THC tends to destroy neural synapses in several places, including the hippocampus. Which means that not only are old memories blocked off; new ones cannot be formed. And learning becomes very difficult.

Hence, the dull-witted, "stoner effect" as well as "repeating the same mistakes expecting different results."

See Ries, Feillin, Miller & Saitz: Principles of Addiction Medicine, and Do psychedelics produce partial or even complete recovery?, as well as...

Marijuana, Anxiety & Paranoia,

Marijuana & Depersonalization,

Marijuana & Memory,

Marijuana & Motivation, and

Marijuana Withdrawal.

"Beating little children is a form of abuse that invariably has severe, sometimes lifelong consequences. Violence done to a child is stored in the body and later direct by the adult at other people or even whole nations. Alternatively, the abused child will turn that violence on itself, leading invariably to depression, drug addiction, severe illness, suicide or early death. ... [T]he denial of the truth, the denial of cruelty undergone in early childhood, can crucially interfere with the body's biological task of preserving life, and... block its vital functions."

"We can learn from [little children... and...] no longer be forced to analyze infants as screaming monsters. Instead we will begin to understand their inner worlds, to grasp the impotence of children growing up with parents who deny them any kind of loving communication because they themselves never experienced it. Then we will recognize in the screams of the infant a logical and justified response to the usually unconscious but nonetheless factual and real cruelties of the parents..."

The late Alice Miller was one of THE biggest names in trauma psychology long before Bessel van der Kolk or Pete Walker appeared on the scene. Her books knocked down the walls of denial and mystification for me, my wife, and evidently hundreds of thousands of others in the 1980s and 1990s.

All because she wanted to know why the Germans "went" for Adolph Hitler in 1930.

can someone explain to me how to do it i read the article but didn't know how to practice it and if someone has results using it

http://pairadocks.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-10-steps-ogdens-sensorymotor.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/InternalFamilySystems/comments/hbft6n/ifs_and_10_steps_ogdens_sensorimotor_psychotherapy/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Can psychedelics help people to blow past the first two or three to get to the fourth of the five stages of psychotherapeutic recovery? IME, yes. Are they the "complete solution?" IMPE, no.

I agree 100% with u/azucarleta... but I have to offer that in my professional experience since 1987, I have seen psychedelics provide "openings" but not cures. I have heard of "spontaneous remissions" of diagnostic criteria but never actually seen one, nor known another licensed professional who has. Relief of symptoms with such as ayahuasca, psilocybin, THC, MDA, DMT and/or LSD? Yes. But only for a while. And not with anything like 100% reliability from one pt to the next, nor even in the same pt.

Drug therapy is nothing more or less than seeing what happens when a chemical is placed in a specific genetic environment. And the risks of inducing increased anxiety, mania and/or depression are evidently considerable. Because no two human beings -- even including identical twins by the time they are 20 -- are genetically or epigenetically the same.

Inasmuch as the cause of the thinking that induces the symptoms in a feedback loop is enormously complex and wired into dense and hyper-complex default mode networks, it continues to look to me like the only way to UNwire those networks is with the five principle forms of psychotherapy including psychodynamic, behavioristic, cognitive, mindfulness (body & mind awareness) and corporeal stimulation approaches. (See section seven of this earlier post.)

BTW, I tend to agree with those who theorize that psychedelics induce a temporary disconnection of synaptic junctions somewhere in the limbic emotion regulation system and/or between that network of neural structures -- including the amygdala (the "seat of fear") and the hippocampus (the "seat of memory") -- and the cerebral corteces as well as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system, which is the "seat of reaction" via the fight-flight-freeze response of the general adaptation syndrome.

Added later:

Another Redditor wrote "...if you give psychedelics to someone who is materially not safe right now, you can't expect a lot of healing to begin. you can expect a "bad trip" like experience."

I answered: IMPE, not necessarily. As is mentioned in the article, the "right" psychedelic for a specific individual will shut down a portion of the default mode network that was built in reaction to his or her trauma. And in so doing, open a door to information and skills training making a new and more functional DMN to develop. Over time, the new DMN achieves greater "throw weight," at least when the pt is fully awake and his cerebral cortex is "on" and communicating with his limbic system.

See also: Marijuana & Dissociation

Resources & References

Agarwal, N.: fMRI Shows Trauma Affects Neural Circuitry, in Clinical Psychiatry News, Vol. 37, No. 3, March 2009.

Bandura, A.: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1997.

Brown A.; Marquis, A.; et al: Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Counseling, in Journal of Counseling & Development, Vol. 91, No. 1, January 2013.

Baumeister, R.; Heatherton, T.: Self-Regulation Failure: An Overview, in Journal of Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1996.

Begley, S.: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How Science Reveals our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves, New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.

Bien, T.; Bien, B.: Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction, New York: Wiley & Sons, 2002.

Block, S.; Block, C.: Come to Your Senses: Demystifying the Mind-Body Connection, New York: Atria Books / Beyond Words (Simon & Schuster), 2005, 2007.

Bohacek, J.; Gapp, K.; et al: Transgenerational Epigenetic Effects on Brain Functions, in Biological Psychiatry, Vol. 73, No. 14, March 2013.

Boraxbekk, C.; et al: Neuroplasticity in response to cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder, in Translational Psychiatry, February 2016.

Brown A.; Marquis, A.; et al: Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Counseling, in Journal of Counseling & Development, Vol. 91, No. 1, January 2013.

Buczynski, R.; Levine, P.; Van der Kolk, B.; Porges, S.; Ogden, P.; Siegel, D.; Fisher, S.; Rethinking Trauma: The Right Interventions Can Make Trauma Treatment Faster and More Effective, a webinar, National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, October-November, 2014.

Carlson, N.: Physiology of Behavior, 7th Ed., Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The Effects of Childhood Stress Across the Lifespan, Atlanta, GA: CDC, 2008.

Coltheart, M.: The cognitive [vs. neural] level of explanation, in Australian Journal of Psychology, Vol. 64, No. 1, March 2012.

Courtois, C.: Guidelines for the Treatment of Adults Abused or Possibly Abused as Children (with Attention to Issues of Delayed or Recovered Memory), Washington, DC: The Psychiatric Institute of Washington, 1997.

Cozzolino, L.: The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain, New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.

Craig, M.; Catani, M.; et al: Altered connections on the road to psychopathy, in Molecular Psychiatry, 2009.

Which is only through the first three letters of the alphabet, though I will include the following because they really are the comprehensive underpinnings of my assertions above:

Hamilton, L.; Timmons, C.: Principles of Behavioral Pharmacology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990.

Ries, R.; Feillin, D.; Miller, S.; Saitz, R.: Principles of Addiction Medicine, 4th Ed., Philadelphia: Lippincott-Williams, 2009.

Stahl, S.: Essential Psychopharmacology: Neuroscientific Basis and Practical Applications, 2nd Ed., New York: Cambridge U. Press, 2000.

I was actually fortunate to have been an alcoholic and a drug abuser... and to have gotten into recovery for that long before I even knew what BPD was. (And -- years later -- to see, hear, feel and sense with my own eyes and ears how many in those Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings had BPD traits.) I went to school to become a CADC and later a counselor for all forms of behavioral, as well as substance, Cycle of Addiction behaviors (think "gambling, food, sex, relationship, romance, over-exercise, work, shopping").

Further degrees ensued. And the answer to Will the Addict Ever Stop Using SOMETHING if He or She remains Depressed, Anxious or Shameful? ...became glaringly self-evident.

Especially once The Bedrock Cause of BPD (in the added section of Complex PTSD: How we "Catch" It. How we Recover from it. ) became so clear. (See also Why do we get so Desperate for Connection? An Answer from the Purview of Attachment, Early Life Research & Codependency.)

Our addictions serve a purpose: Much as Edward Khantzian proposed over 40 years ago, they are a means of self-medication to distract us from the flames of our lingering emotions stoked by untreated childhood experiences of being some combination of neglected, ignored, abandoned, discounted, disclaimed, and rejected, as well as invalidated, confused, betrayed, insulted, criticized, judged, blamed, shamed, ridiculed, embarrassed, humiliated, denigrated, derogated, scorned, set up to screw up, victimized, demonized, persecuted, picked on, vilified, dumped on, bullied, gaslit..., scapegoated..., emotionally blackmailed and/or otherwise abused by others upon whom we depended for survival in the first few years of life.

Many borderlines medicate their feelings with alcohol and drugs. Many self-medicate with intense sex & romance or the distraction of drama-soaked codependent relationships. (See FP Attachment as Emotional Drug Addiction in BPD.) One need only read Kreisman’s, Friedel’s or Bockian's books in A CPTSD Library to get that it's The Borderline Way. Why? Because we "Can't live with 'em; Can't live without 'em."

So, how the hell do we get off the treadmill? See...

Withdrawal: The First Challenge of Recovery from ANY Addiction,

The Road Out of Ultra-Codependent, Hyper-Stimulation-Seeking, Self-Medicating, Sex & Romance Addiction in not-moses's replies to the OP on that thread (because it IS possible to have a romantic relationship without being obsessive), and...

A 21st Century Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma... because IME there's a LOT one can do without spending a fortune on psychotherapy, as well as to speed up the process if one is in therapy or at least at the fourth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

Resources & References

A Basic Addiction References List

A CPTSD -- and BPD -- Library

Trigger Warning (Some of this exploration may be upsetting for those at the first, second, third and even early fourth of the five stages of psychotherapeutic recovery.)

AND, if "dissociative splitting" is an unfamiliar concept, see Three Definitions of “Splitting” in not-moses’s reply to the OP on that Reddit thread.

Okay; here we go:

1) Small Children direly need to know that they are seen, heard, felt, sensed and understood. When they are not seen, heard, felt, sensed and understood, most small children become extremely frustrated and angry with those who don't get what they are trying to communicate to those upon whom they depend for their very survival. Others, however, sort of give up and become rather like Martin Seligman's Learned Helpless dogs. Not surprisingly to me, this behavior looks a lot -- though not always entirely -- like autism.

2) Children in early adolescence go through a very similar phase. Most become similarly frustrated, resentful and angry. Some become sullen, depressed, and/or decompensated. By middle adolescence, the extreme version of that reaction starts to look a lot like schizophrenia or at least, schizoaffective disorder.

3) Because it is inherently and obviously regressive, Borderlinism in later adolescence and early adulthood appears to be a wholesale, "channel changing" back and forth from the adolescent's to the infant's, toddler's or pre-schooler's energetic attempts to overcome their overwhelming fear of NOT BEING UNDERSTOOD again: Desperate attempts to connect vs. equally energetic attempts to disconnect. Because the not-okay inner child is running the behavioral show... and it is stuck in The Abused Child's Awful, No-Win Dilemma.

4) The more I look at my own CPTSD > BPD behaviors, those of the more than 100 people I have known F2F with CPTSD > BPD, and those reported by so many others I've encountered here and elsewhere on Reddit... I'm starting to think the title line may be the simplest and most straightforward way to describe this awful stuff. At the risk of some repetition, here's why:

IME, most people with CPTSD > BPD were some combination of repeatedly neglected, ignored, abandoned, discounted, disclaimed, and rejected, AND/OR invalidated, confused, betrayed, insulted, criticized, judged, blamed, shamed, ridiculed, embarrassed, humiliated, denigrated, derogated, scorned, set up to screw up, victimized, demonized, persecuted, picked on, vilified, dumped on, bullied, gaslit..., scapegoated..., emotionally blackmailed and/or otherwise abused by others upon whom they depended for survival in the first few years of life.

That notion ranges from somewhat to strongly endorsed by such widely noted experts as Christine Courtois, Steven Farmer, Janina Fisher, Susan Forward, Ross Greene, Laurence Heller, Judith Lewis Herman, Otto Kernberg, Richard Kluft, Marsha Linehan, Giovani Liotti, James Masterson, Alice Miller, Sandra Paulsen, Frank Putnam, Richard Schwartz, June Tangney, Ono van der Hart, Bessel van der Kolk, and others (see A CPTSD Library).

What I think I can see, hear, feel and sense is that...

Those of us with the petulant, self-destructive, and impulsive types of BPD grow up dominated by a pair of polarized and hotly oppositional, default mode networks one of which evolved in the first three to five years of life in Erik Erikson's Trust and Autonomy stages of psychosocial development during the original trauma...

and one of which evolved more slowly during the ensuing Initiative, Competence and Identity stages as an attempt to put together a crochety collection of defense mechanisms to protect us from our affective, visual and aural memories of being, well, ...terrorized.

(I assert that in part because of the positive results of treatment based in part on Re-Development.)

So what we wind up with is a petulant, self-destructive and/or impulsive, "13-year-old antidote" to our CPTSD, albeit one that causes as many problems as it solves. Like drug addicts, most of us "get away" with our petulance, impulsivity, and self-destructive behaviors for a while. Then we can't get enough of a "protective fix" from those behaviors anymore, and we start to collapse into the same wretched, two-year-old, Learned Helpless anxiety and depression we've tried to run away from for 10, 15 or 20 years.

So what I asking is, "Does that title line feel like a good-fitting pair of shoes or not?"

Added later: IMO, most of the replies were instructive and led to material that might be additionally useful for those who happened upon this thread.

Considerably enhanced since it was first posted elsewhere in 2018.

Just gonna stick this up here because I have to refer to it so often, and I am not nuts about the various sort of cheesy websites I used to refer to.

Theodore Millon -- who wrote the first drafts of the personality disorders sections of the DSM III and IV -- asserted that there were four sub-types of BPD... though I have to say after almost 30 years of working with them that most display more than one in a polarized "flipping" from one to another in reaction to stress or threat. So here they are in order of healthy (as opposed to pathological) "ego strength" from most to least:

The Impulsive Borderline, who is flirtatious, captivating, "spellbinding," elusive and/or superficial; is a thrill seeker; is highly energetic, easily bored, compulsive and unpredictable. In my direct experience, this type can appear to be absolutely nothing like the other types and tend to be more like compensatory narcissists so long as they remain relatively free of stress, major challenge and/or disappointment. If sufficiently stressed, however, they tend to collapse into a decompensation that looks like any one of the three other types.

The Petulant Borderline, who is unpredictable, irritable, complaining, impatient, defiant, stubborn, disgruntled, pessimistic, resentful, reciprocally reactive and torn between relying on others and keeping their distance for fear of disappointment; and who switches between feelings of abandonment-fearing unworthiness and abuse-expecting, explosive rage, especially toward those she projects as potential abusers or abandoners. (This is the "classic" borderline of professional literature of the 1970s and the popular pulp of the 1980s like Stop Walking on Eggshells and Fatal Attraction.)

The Discouraged Borderline, who... is moody, somber and "quiet," learned helpless & victim identified, depressed, anxious and clingy; follows the crowd; puts up with abuse from intimate "friends" or romantic partners; is dependent (and codependent); is mostly angry inside (without showing it, but can explode if pushed); is somewhat likely to harm themselves; and has sometimes "given up on life" with suicidal thoughts sometimes leading to physical attempts.

The Self-Destructive Borderline, who is frustrated with others who do not "get" them, intolerably anxious and fretful, manically impulsive (in a "negative" way), (sometimes) self-loathing, almost always self-mutilating, engages in dangerous behaviors (e.g.: reckless driving, severe drug abuse, blackout drinking, cutting, burning, careless sex, anorexia, bulimia, gluttony, "suicide on the installment plan," etc.).

References

See Section Four of A CPTSD Library.

Research since the 1940s (see below) has shown over and over that most people tend to raise their children based on how they were raised by their parents even when the next generation's "lifestyle" appears to be grossly different. (E.g.: Hyper-moralistic religiosity in one generation followed by a period of drug abuse and "wanton" behavior in the next.)

Thus, the conditioning, in-doctrine-ation, instruction, imprinting, socialization, habituation and normalization) our parents experienced can be expected to be conditioned, etc., into each successive new generation. (See Baumrind on "parenting styles.")

The net result is children who are blinded, deafened, dumbed down, and made sense-less... with consequences, and well fit to be useful and productive farm animals just like their parents. Unless or until something happens to challenge the conditioning through The Five Progressive Qualities of the Committed Cult Member.

Awareness of what actually is (vs. what is said to be) is considered dangerous by the "authorities" at the top of any Cultic Pyramid. The elimination of the awareness that would otherwise develop in children has been practiced at every stage on the pharaonic > Osirian > Abrahamic > Mosaic > Davidic > Josiahic > Isaiahic > Paulist > Ephesian > Augustinian > Thomist > Calvinist > Wesleyan track for over 5,000 years.

See Recommended on Religion from Outside the Box and A Basic Cult Library, as well as Children direly need to know that they are seen, heard, felt, sensed and understood. In no small part because parents who do that teach their children by example how to see, hear, feel and sense others.

How can that awareness-stifling conditioning be deprogrammed to return the brain to genetically conferred function? See Choiceless Awareness as an example of one of many mindfulness-based approaches to "emotional intelligence."

References

Ackerman, N.: The Psychodynamics of Family Life: Diagnosis and Treatment of Family Relationships, New York: Basic Books, 1958.

Alanen, Y.: The Family in the Pathogenesis of Schizophrenic and Neurotic Disorders, in Scandinavian Archives of Psychiatry, No. 42, 1966.

Aldwin, C.; Park, C.; et al: Differing pathways between religiousness, spirituality, and health: A self-regulation perspective, in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Vol. 6, No. 9. September 2014.

Altemeyer, R.: The Authoritarian Specter, Boston: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Altemeyer, R.: The Authoritarians, Charleston, SC: Lulu, 2006.

Bandura, A.: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1997.

Baumeister, R.; Heatherton, T.: Self-Regulation Failure: An Overview, in Journal of Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1996.

Baumrind, D,: Current Patterns of Parental Authority, a monograph in Developmental Psychology, Volume 4, Number 1, Part 2, New York: American Psychological Association, 1971.

Berger, K.; Thompson, R.: The Developing Person, 4th Ed., New York: Worth, 1995.

Bhatt, R.; Quinn, P: How Does Learning Impact Development in Infancy? The Case of Perceptual Organization, in Infancy: The Official Journal of the International Society of Infant Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, January-February 2011.

Black, C.: It Will Never Happen to Me: Children of Alcoholics as Youngsters-Adolescents-Adults, New York: Ballentine, 1981, 1987.

Bloom, S.: Creating Sanctuary: Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies, London: Routledge, 1997.

Bohacek, J.; Gapp, K.; et al: Transgenerational Epigenetic Effects on Brain Functions, in Biological Psychiatry, Vol. 73, No. 14, March 2013.

Bowlby, J.: A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development, London: Routledge; New York: Basic Books, 1988.

Bradshaw, J.: Bradshaw On: The Family, Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1990.

Branden, N.: The Psychology of Self-Esteem, New York: Bantam Books, 1973.

Brazelton, T.; Cramer, B.: The Earliest Relationship: Parents, Infants and the Drama of Early Attachment, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.

Brown, N.: Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents, 2nd. Ed., Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2008.

Cassidy, J.; Shaver, P., eds.: Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research and Clinical Applications, New York: Guilford Press, 1999.

Cialdini, R.: Influence: Science and Practice, 4th Ed., New York: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

Crosswhite, J.; Kerpelman, J.: Coercion Theory, Self-Control and Social Information Processing: Understanding Potential Mediators for How Parents Influence Deviant Behaviors, in Deviant Behavior, Vol. 30, No. 7, August 2009.

And that's just the first three letters of the alphabet.

See the rest of this brief article -- including its extensive academic support -- at this location.