Inside My Borderline Mind

I was fifteen when this picture was taken, I can remember wondering what was wrong with me as I stared out the window. Thirty years later, having finally figured it out, I am looking at my life with a fresh lens. I understand that my thinking, my perception, the way I process the world around me, is through the lens of my fear, namely, rejection and abandonment. A few months ago, a friend watched my animals when I was away in exchange for coaching and healing sessions. One night I called to check on the animals, and a water bug crawled across the room. She started screaming and jumped off the phone. When I asked her recently if she wanted to watch the animals again, her response was “Possibly. What’s the bug situation?” I immediately felt rejected and ashamed. As though my house was beneath her. I went into borderline mode, thinking I would never be her friend again. And then, I sat with it, using the tools my new therapist taught me. What is coming up underneath the anger? Fear. Fear of losing this friend because I wasn’t good enough. My house wasn’t good enough. I sat with it. And felt it. And as I did, I felt the anger soften. I felt the clarity begin to come in. 

I didn’t text my friend. I didn’t call her. I just sat with it. I didn’t act. I didn’t react. And then I started thinking about all of the ways she has supported me over the last three years since we met and became friends, especially during the last year, as my marriage began to crumble beneath the weight of the facade we had created. She had been loyal, deviated, and we had a beautiful relationship where we could speak truth to each other and call each other out on our bullshit. A rare gift that I’ve never had in a relationship. We challenged each other to grow. And then, like the pulling back of a curtain at the end of a yellow brick road, I saw my borderline behavior as the puppeteer, and I cut the strings. My friend wasn’t rejecting me. She wasn’t judging me. She had a bug phobia. It had nothing to do with me. 

Later, when I got a chance to talk to her about it, she told me that the thought of sleeping at my house with the possibility of a bug coming in while she was sleeping terrified her. I shared with her the process I had worked through, and she reiterated that it had nothing to do with me. I shared that it was the first time I had been able to work through a situation like this with a friend without terminating the relationship, how grateful I felt to have her friendship and be able to work through this with her. It felt like I was finally building the skills I needed to reclaim agency over my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As the borderline begins to lose its grip, the hope I feel for the next half of my life feels like a precious pearl that is still forming. Not quite ready for the spotlight of the sun, but nonetheless being polished for the day when it is ready to come out of its shell. 

There are some traits I have noticed in the clients and women that I have known which I suspect are borderline. I’d like to share them now in hopes that you can recognize it and, rather than weaponize it, use it as a tool to protect yourself and your loved ones, but also have compassion for their struggle. I have noticed that borderline women tend to be extremely neat. They will clean excessively. You will go to their home, and the place is spotless. The reason is because they have a need for order. When their environment is chaotic, it triggers the chaos inside them. When you go to the house of a borderline mom, there are no toys laying around, no messy crayons on the table. If there are toys, they are neatly put away in labeled drawers. In fact, depending on how severe their condition is, there may be no evidence that children live in the home. I have a history of being particular about my home and getting angry when it becomes too cluttered. I am working on it now, trying to strike a balance between the reality of raising young children and my need for neatness and order. This looks like teaching the children that they need to put their toys away after playing with them, but being okay with them scattered all over the floor when they are playing. 

I’ve also noticed that they tend to dye their hair different colors, and often. They will also change their hairstyles often. This is because they do not have a solid self of identity. They are always experimenting with different versions of themselves. They are true chameleons, playing the part that best fits the person, place, and scenario they find themselves in. When I was in my twenties, when I would say the borderline was at its worst, I went from dark plum to platinum blonde and everything in between. As my sense of self has become less fragmented and more cohesive, I’ve stopped feeling the need to change my look. These days I tend to stick to golden/strawberry blonde. 

The high functioning ones will usually be very good at their job. This is because it is something they can usually exert more control over than their personal life. My supervisor pointed something out to me recently. “I wonder if you’re putting so much energy into your work because it is something you can control? Like if you can get caught up at work, and everything is “perfect,” it makes up for the dissolution of your marriage?” She was spot on. The next day, I flexed in the afternoon and took the boys to a zipline park. We had a wonderful time, and I came back feeling restored, refreshed, and connected to them and myself. It reminded me of what I can control in my personal life: How I show up for my children. More than showing up in my work, this is what matters most. 

And of course, they will have a short fuse, especially when they feel abandoned or rejected. Last fall I had to submit a video to illustrate a clinical skill with one of my clients. The training team reviewed it, and I didn’t pass. They also had some things to say about how I conducted myself with clients. I kept it together during the call, but then afterwards, I called one of my colleagues and rage cried to her. It felt like a complete repudiation of who I was, not only as a clinician, but as a person. I was in a shame spiral, and I was sinking down. My colleague got it, and she talked me off of the ledge. I will always be grateful to her for her compassion, empathy, wisdom, and leadership. Looking back, I see that my entire concept of self was wrapped up in that checkoff, in the concept of myself as a good clinician. My identity was so fragile that one bad review sent me reeling. Over a year into my clinical career now, I know that I still have so much to learn, but I also have some solid skills. It’s not that I’m good or bad. The black and white thinking is beginning to give way to gray. There are things that I need to work on, but there are things I'm really good at too. 

That brings me to black and white thinking. Borderlines will tend to have extreme, polarizing views. Someone is either “all good” or “all bad.” Their “object relations” abilities are distorted. To put it in its simplest terms, think about the game of “Peek a boo” with a baby. A baby has not yet developed the concept of permanency. When their eyes are covered, that person ceases to exist. For someone with borderline, they will split people, at first projecting all of their unmet needs and desires onto them, known as “idealization,” and then, when the person inevitably has a flaw, as all humans do, they will cast them out as “all bad,” known as “devaluation.” And then they will “discard” that person, projecting their shame onto the person, throwing the friendship away to avoid having to confront the feelings of shame the unwitting person triggered through their own humanness. This is what I used to do when I felt rejected by friends. My friend with the bug phobia is the first time I was able to reflect enough to work through my distorted thinking and see her as both a great friend and someone who has her own issues that have nothing to do with me. Rather than projecting my shame onto her and throwing her away, I salvaged the relationship and found that I could face the shame spiral and ride it out, knowing it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with my distorted thinking. It brought us even closer, and we were both able to celebrate this victory.

I was twelve when I split myself. There was the “bad girl” whose journal entry prompted the teacher to contact child protective services. My cry for help was discounted, and I was labeled a liar and “troubled.” So I buried the “bad girl” and became what everyone wanted. I split myself into pieces, portraying myself as whatever made those around me happy. And now, with truth as the invisible glue, those pieces are coming back together. Soon, they will form a unified whole. With therapy. And a lot of help from my friends. 

*Please note: Anyone Jess writes about has been consulted beforehand and given the opportunity to review the material as well as suggest changes before the newsletter is sent out. Both Jess’s husband and her friend are mental health advocates who have spoken publicly about their own struggles and are willing to share in hopes that it will give others hope for healing.