BPD: The Loneliest Inner Child?
Everyone has an inner child. Do those diagnosed with
BPD have the loneliest inner children? Often those
with BPD abandon and re-abandon their aching and
terrified inner children over and over again which
in large part is the reason for so much of what is
dubbed "borderline behaviour". I urge borderlines to
make the choice to get to know and to free their
inner children. It is a vital part of healing.
"But sometimes I am like the tree
that stands over a grave, a leafy tree
full grown who has lived out that particular
dream which the dead boy around whom its
roots are pressing lost through his sad
moods and poems." -- Rainer Maria Rilke
"The child wants simple things. It
wants to be listened to. It wants to be
loved .... It may not even know the words,
but it wants its rights protected
and its self-respect unviolated. It needs
you to be there." -- Ron Kutrz
We all have an inner-child. In fact some people
feel as if they have many inner-children (this is
not to say that one has Multiple Personality Disorder
at all by the way) Each of these inner children,
according to Cathryn L. Taylor, M.A., M.F.C.C, in
her book, "The Inner Child Workbook: What to do
with your past when it just won't go away", we
have many inner children, one child for each developmental
stage. An inner child for infancy, one for toddlerhood,
one for middle childhood, and so on.
Taylor writes in her book; "Who are the children
within? They are the voices inside you that carry the
feelings you were unable to express as a child. They
carry your fear, anger, shame, and despair. They also
carry your excitement, joy, happiness, and love, but
many of us have had to deny those feelings as well. Whether
you were ignored, belittled, or abused, you learned very
early that it was not SAFE to FEEL. You learned that to FEEL
meant to be vulnerable adn to be vulnerable meant that you
might not survive. Because you wanted to survive, you
learned not to FEEL."
The Inner Child Explained
Taylor writes in her book, "The Inner Child Workbook", "Change often begins with the child because a
child embodies the process of change. In his anthology
"Reclaiming the Inner Child", editor Jeremiah
Abrams says that the 'inner child is the carrier of
our personal stories, the vehicle for our memories of
both the actual child and an idealized child from the
past. It is the truly alive quality of being
within us. It is the soul, our experiencer throughout
the cycles of life. It is the sufferer. And it is the
bearer of renewal through rebirth, appearing in our
lives whenever we detach and open to change."
"It is no wonder that we return to the child to
find the solution to the reduction of emotional pain.
... now, as you seek change in yourselves, you once
again return to the child. But this time you return
to the child within."
According to Charles Whitfield, author of "Healing
the Child Within", the concept of the inner child
has been around for over two thousand years. Carl Jung
called it the divine child, Emmett Fox called it
the wonder child. Psychotherapists Alice Miller
and Donald Winnicott refer to the inner child as the
true self
In Borderline Personality Disorder, (BPD) we see
evidenced through common behaviour associated with this
personality disorder much of the inner child coming
through the adult. There is often a painful dissociation
between the two. Those with BPD also have a very difficult
time even contemplating being vulnerable and the result
is that they end up denying their inner child over and
over again to the point where they actually take on the
role of their past abusers or a caretaker who could not
meet their developmental needs and continually re-abuse
themselves. Much of this self-abuse is aimed at avoidance
of the actual pain that sits under (often subconsciously)
their experienced symptomology or pathology, the BPD itself.
Continuing to ignore this little aspect of you and all
the pain and terror that sits inside of him/her will make
change and healing virtually impossible.
I cannot remember a more threatening thing, in therapy,
then when I was confronted by a therapist who decided that
I'd better learn about the reality of this child within.
It was in private therapy, one on one, this therapist would
not even let me talk, at all! She would hush me every time
I tried to talk, and that was often. She would insist instead
that I draw pictures. I was not amused, to say the least.
Try as I might to not go there, I ended up going there. The
results were very powerful and looking back those
extremely frustrating (at the time) therapy sessions were
pivatol in my healing journey because it was in and through
those pictures that my inner child finally began to feel
safe enough to emerge, to make herself "known" to me.
It was also through inner child work that I was able,
some 13 years ago to stop cutting and self-abusing myself
in other ways as well. There is such power in welcoming
in this little girl or boy that so needs you to parent and
re-parent him/her now. Believe, me, I know it can be scary,
but the rewards far outweigh staying stuck with the terror
of resistance.
Anyone who was not able, for whatever reason, to have
their developmental needs met in each stage of personal
development will benefit from inner child work. However,
I believe that borderlines specifically can benefit even
more than the average because there is so much about BPD
that is so self-abusive, self-punishing, re-shaming and
so forth. Finding your way to your inner child and
acknowledging that vulnerability is the way to truly begin
to heal. This very same feared vulnerability, by the way,
does become a cherished strength down the road. It does
not remain this terrifying place in which one just
continues to berrate oneself for daring to feel something.
If you have not yet tapped in to your inner child or
inner children you may be aware on some level of very
young screaming pain that there are no words for. This is
your inner child trying to get your attention. Until I
recognized and began to work with my inner child (a process
that goes on even today) I was not able to feel safe at
all anywhere, ever. Welcoming in your inner child will,
over time, teach you ways through which you can learn to
feel safe. You will come to better understand why you haven't
felt safe for so many years. Just imagine a 3 year old, let
loose on one side of an 8 lane highway, as he/she starts to
cross you have to feel utter terror. You would know if you
saw this that you would need to RUN to the aid of
this lost little one. You would know that this 3 year old
does not have the ability to keep him/herself safe around all
of this traffic blowing by. The same can be said of your
inner child, at any age, and if you have BPD, you are
emotionally standing at the side of an 8 lane highway,
which essentially represents your emotions and your need to cross this highway is your need to emotionally mature, to establish your identity, to know who you are
and to grow up. Run to your own aid here, just as you would
to the 3 year old standing at the edge of the 8 lane highway
and about to wonder out into traffic.
Taylor writes in her book, "The Inner Child Workbook",
"The inner child embodies the characteristics of the
innocent part of the self. But as you continue your
internal work, you soon discover that there is more than
one voice crying out for help. These voices represent
different sets of needs that require unique and age-
appropriate responses. Some emerge at a particular age,
others appear carrying certain feelings. But distinct
differences between them do become apparent. That is why
I use the plural -- inner children ... What you do not
master in childhood reappears in your lives as inappropriate
responses to people, places, or things. It is these
inappropriate responses that cause you discomfort. They
are outgrowths of the pain and fear experienced in childhood
when basic needs were not filled. Learning what you need to
learn in each childhood stage [of development] is
contingent upon your needs being met. You need to feel safe
with your caretakers and receive the support necessary to
accomplish the other tasks that accompany each stage of
development ... life does not stop because you are unable
to master these tasks. It continues, and you survive by
developing faulty ways of responding to others and to the
events that take place in your lives.
When you are a child the "faulty" or maladapative behaviours
serve the purpose of keeping you safe (in some measure of
what that means to each of us) and ensure that you continue
to survive albeit without the needs being met that you need
to have met to be healthy. When you get older, as an adult,
you are locked into these behaviours (until you learn to
make new choices and changes). These behaviours then express
your fear of love, your inability to say no, your shame,
your critical thinking in a patterned way that interferes
with your ability to perform (at work or in your career)
and drastically affects your ability to form and to keep
any measure of stable, consistent and congruent relating.
So much of the behaviour that borderlines continue
to cycle through, over and over again, is NOT age-appropriate
or situationally-appropriate. This is one of the key things
about borderline behaviour that often escapes both the
borderline and those around him/her. Whether or not you
yet realize or want to admit this, the behaviour that you
continue to perpetuate that continues to hurt you and cause
you to lose job after job and relationship after relationship
(intimate or friendships) and keeps you effectively alienated
from any sense of your true self, wants, likes, dislikes,
beliefs etc, is a choice. You chose it years ago in the void that was a lack of what you needed in the first place. It will take an active decision on your part, now, in order to you to open up to the kind of change and new choices that WILL make healing from BPD possible.
Just as the title of John Bradshaw's book, "Home Coming:
Reclaming an Championing Your Inner Child" suggests it is
primarily through this inner child work that you can indeed
welcome yourself home to who you really are.
Bradshaw's book begins with the following quote:
"I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my
childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that ... I know
it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about
sense anyway? It is about a child of long ago and far away,
and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting
behind the door of our hearts for something wonderful to
happen." -- Robert Fulghum (In Bradshaw's book)
In his book, Bradshaw gives an example of a man who
did some letter writing to and from his inner child, here
is one such letter:
"Dear Big Richard
Please come and get me
I've been in a closet for forty years, I'm terrified,
I need you.
Little Richard
Getting in touch with your inner child happens in
many different ways for many different people. However,
common ways to do this include journalling. You write
to your inner child with your dominate hand and have
your inner child write back to you with your non-dominate
hand. Drawing pictures can also be a very powerful way
to get in touch with your inner child. For anyone who
wants to begin this journey I would highly recommend
starting with John Bradshaw's book and later on ending
up with Cathryn Taylor's book which has wonderful examples
of ways to get closure with your inner child at each
developmental stage/age when you have done the work and
are ready to then let go.
You can make that something wonderful happen for yourself
when you muster up the courage, and it does take courage,
and the strength to face those inner children inside or
yourself who so need your love, attention and patience. Do
you really want to leave that child or those children in
their isolated pain anymore? I don't think you do. I think
you know that you deserve and want more out of life than
that. Make a choice to help free your inner child and you
will make a decision to free yourself.
"And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-- T.S. Eliot
"The 'child' is all that is abandoned
and exposed and at the same time divinely
powerful; the insignificantly dubious
beginning, and the triumphal end. The
'eternal child' in [humankind] man is an
indescribable experience, an incongruity,
a handicap, and a divine prerogative; an
imponderable that determines the ultimate
worth or worthlessness of a personality."
-- C. G. Jung
© A.J. Mahari, November 18, 2001
as of November 18, 2001
This page was last up-dated on January 14, 2006 and is © 2001-2006 Ms. A.J. Mahari
November 23, 2005 AN EBOOK AVAILABLE NOW: 