Oh what a happy title to be able to write. Hard won, so hard won. So i've been pondering the implications of having BPD in remission on my internal sense of self now compared with back in the day when I lived in an undiagnosed constant BPD haze, a fug of dysphoric mind stuff with attendant on-edge reactivity.
Being so much in the clear atm the difference is as night to day & though im always open to being wrong im feeling very much that what we call our sense of self, in the final analysis, after all the extraneous crap is out of the way will be found to be the simple yet hard won matter of being connected to the subtle compass of our real feeling self. The still small voice they call it although to me its is more a dictionary of subtle feeling in the body.
This is the true self as far as I am concerned & in BPD especially with its dysphoric pall of emotio-sensory discomfort but also Bipolar with so much distraction & loud nervous system dysfunction, it is very very hard to feel/hear, hence the famous disconnect.
The hard won part is simply that much of the trauma body accompanying, likely actually the cause of & main constituent part of severe mental conditions such as I suffer, that layer must be felt unconditionally in order to heal it. This is no small order when, as is often the case, disassociation/depersonalisation tendencies are baked in to most trauma bodies.
The reason ive been pondering this is because I keep hearing folk talk about Personality Disorders & saying well it's your personality what can you do? So this is not my experience at all. I do not relate to the dysphoric, reactionary elements of myself as being an intrinsic part of my personality but rather they are a part of my illness. The complication is when you are living under the pall of a condition for a very long time without identifying it as separate from yourself, which seems to be what a lot of people are doing.
So I mean, you are owning these broken, damaged energies, holding them up as representing you internally when you don't need to, imo, you just need to become aware of the thought forms & urges & observe. I had a non action clause for a long time because I knew my urges were out of whack with who I wanted to be. Non action is easier than better action I found so it was a neutral & a missed gain but better than a loss which might capitulate.
I mean there's a subtle rub here, that broken energy is you, was you & you must reintegrate it into yourself, you must hold it in a maternal level of conscious awareness without resentment to be whole & well but it does not represent you, it represents harm that was done to you. It represents energy that fractured into unconsciousness in order to save the rest of you.
So, can Personality Disorders heal? Absolutely. But first you have to become aware of when your PD is not in charge & when it is & develop the wisdom on a daily to know the difference.
That's my ten pence worth - have at it ;)
