Borderline Personality Disorder Inside Out

Borderline Personality Disorder In Men – The Myth of High/Low Functioning in BPD – BPD is not a Brain Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder may still be diagnosed more in women than men. What does this mean? It is unlikely that fewer men have Borderline Personality Disorder. It is likely that the numbers aren’t as skewed as many believe, or as stereotypes and stigma forward. There is a bias among most who diagnosed mental illness. Many men who may in fact have BPD can end up being diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) instead. I have many clients who are men with Borderline Personality Disorder. What is often over-looked is that young children have needs. Needs that must be addressed sufficiently in order for psychologically and spiritually healthy emotional development regardless of gender.

I also think it is high time that we seriously start to do away with labels like “high functioning borderline” and “low functioning borderline”. The internet is replete with what is actually the very inaccurate and not at all meaningful labels everywhere, of late, it seems. Ask yourself, what do these sub-labels, if you will, actually mean? How do they help anyone? These labels have their origin with an author who is not a mental health professional. These labels have not been introduced by responsible mental health professionals.

The label of Borderline Personality Disorder, in fact, of “personality disorder” of any kind has long been debated by those in the anti-psychiatry movement which is made up largely of people who now, in growing numbers, oppose what is known as biopsychiatry and the erroneous forwarding of mental illness generally, and Borderline Personality Disorder, specifically, as “brain disease” or “brain disorders”.  There is no independent, reliable, scientifically proven or known “brain disease” for mental illness at all. Studies that are put out by media, some professionals and then quoted by some book authors are not proven and are largely funded by pharmaceutical companies looking to make money off of and by disempowering the mentally ill.

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• The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
• From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Child
• BPD and Abandonment
• Finding Hope From the Polarized Reality of BPD
• Preparing For Recovery From BPD
• Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
• Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder

 

       Audio Programs © A.J. Mahari

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Whether you are a man or a woman diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, the reality is that you are not character flawed. You are not broken beyond repair, and, you cannot be cured or find recovery by taking dangerous psychiatric medications. Biopsychiatry’s forwarding of these dangerous medications as treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder disempowers those with BPD – male and female.

As a BPD and Mental Health Coach, and as someone who recovered from BPD 15 years ago, I know that medications are not the answer. No one is held prisioner to BPD by his or her brain – no one! I recovered and I was not on psychiatric medication. At best there is a combination of some neurobiological issues and environment – early childhood experiences and perception that set the stage for the arrested psychological, emotional, and spiritual development of those who go on to be diagnosed with BPD. The brain and the mind are not one in the same.

There are many ways to learn how to empower yourself. Take back your own power to find healing, recovery, and wellness. This is what I help my BPD and mental health coaching clients do each and every day. Be careful what you believe. If you think that because the pharmaceutical companies, mainly in the United States, foward the notion of what is really pseudo science, not proven science at all, that BPD is a “brain thing” please do some more research. Please listen to three professionals that I’ve interviewed on my Psyche Whisperer Radio Show Dr. Niall McLaren, M.D., Dr. John Breeding, Ph.D. and Dr. Dan L. Edmunds founder of the International Center for Humane Psychiatry.

Many people that I coach who have Borderline Personality Disorder, just like the many clients I coach who are loved ones of someone with BPD or partners or ex-partners of someone with BPD, the challenges for all have more in common than more that is wholly different. The challenges of those diagnosed with BPD, male or female, do not include having a “brain disorder” or “brain disease”. People who forward this inaccurate information do so to cash in on the disempowering of human beings who look to them for help. Educate yourself about this.

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
• Non Borderlines – You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• A.J.’s Audio Program The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
• A.J.’s Audio Programs For Borderlines and Non Borderlines

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Life Coaches, BPD and Mental Health Coaches, forwarding the agenda of biopsychiatry are not doing so to truly serve you. You risk being disempowered by these people, whether they are well-meaning or not. In my life coaching practice and philosophy the focus in on empowering the client, and not on forwarding the agenda of any mental health professional or association. Life coaching, BPD and Mental Health Coaching, in my philososphy and practice is not about the methods and means employed by mental health professionals and has nothing to do with the agenda and money-making machine of psychiatry today – most of which ascribes to biopsychiatry.

Men with Borderline Personality Disorder, like their female counterparts also diagnosed with Borderline Personality are individuals who often have successful careers but great difficulty in interpersonal relationships. There are many ways of being in this world and the black and white definitions that so many use to denote mental illness from mental health are also faulty and self-serving.

There are different levels of functioning in both genders and for many with BPD their are more obstacles to succeeding in work as well as interpersonal relating. There is nothing about this, however, that need be or that can even scientifically (in any proven way) be ascribed to the biology of your brain. Choose to empower yourself and educate yourself about the role of the money-making machine known as Big Pharma and the funding of studies that are being misrepresented as proven science and all of which conclude that men or women with BPD should be medicated and often heavily medicated with dangerous drugs that they don’t give you full disclosure about. It is these drugs that cause chemical imbalances in the brain, not the diagnosis or presense of the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder in your life.

Whether you are male of female recovery is possible. That recovery will hinge upon you educating yourself and freeing yourself from the misinformation of organizations like Nami in the United States who are over 56% funded by Big Pharma. Big Pharma and psychiatric drugs mean big money for many mental health organizations – claiming to advocate for those they claim to serve. Big pharma means big money for many psychiatrists who practice from the model of biopsychiatry.

Some say there are positives to having Borderline Personality Disorder. I don’t agree. I think that people who are diagnosed with BPD, again whether male or female, have many positive qualities, talents, and passions, not everything about you needs to be attributed, one way or another, to Borderline Personality Disorder. In fact, I would challenge you to re-think how much you relate most things in your life good or bad as having some relation to what it means to have been diagnosed with BPD.

And, I’ll add, are people with BPD really “too sensitive”? I don’t think so. I think that sensitivity is an individual thing. So is temperament. Psychiatry with the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder labels you, stigmatizes you, de-humanizes and pathologizes your experience in life, and your feelings and to what end? To convince you that you are so “flawed” and (many still say) beyond help that you need drugs for the rest of your life. NO, you don’t. And that way of treating you is abusive. It is not help. It is not support. It does not contain compassion. It does not recognize you or care at all about who you or what you have experienced in your life.

In my BPD and Mental health Coaching caring about you, having compassion for you, validating your experiences and/or perceptions - your ways of thinking about those experiences, is at the center of the process of the journey of working together to help you to learn skills that will create wellness, enhance the quality of your life and set you squarely on the road to recovery.

© A.J. Mahari, September 26, 2010 – All rights reserved.

Psychiatric Oppression of Biopsychiatry - Interview with Dr. John Breeding Ph.D.

Are you normal? Do the concepts of Mental Health and Mental Illness serve any purpose other than to divide people arbitrarily and cause people shame that alienates them from themselves? Does psychiatry today, and more specifically biopsychiatry even believe that anyone is or can be normal? What is normal? Many argue that biopsychiatry - the direction the psychiatric profession is taking in defining mental illlness as "brain disorder" or "brain disease" and then seeking to treat it with all kinds of medications, many that do way more harm than good, is predicated on labeling almost everyone with something which calls into question just what disordered means.

Dr. John Breeding Ph.D. was my guest on The Psyche Whisperer Radio Show, Wednesday August 4th, live at 3pm EST. You can now listen to the archived interview here. Dr. Breeding talked about, among other things, psychiatric oppression and what mental health consumers really do need to know and think more about when it comes to what mental illness is and how it can be most effectively treated and coped with if it even is what it is thought by so many people to be. What are the implications of biopsychiatry for people given the label and diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder?

LISTEN HERE

© The Psyche Whisperer Radio Show & A.J. Mahari - All rights reserved.

 

Shifting the Paradigm of Borderline Personality

Life Coach, Author, BPD and Mental Health Coach, A.J. Mahari invites you to join her on her newest website, Beyond Borderline Personality with an open mind. There is a lot to be gained from thinking outside of the status quo box that is the “medical” or “biological” model that is a pseudo-science attempt on the part of mainstream psychiatry today, particularly in the United States, to explain a diagnostic category that in and of itself, can be questioned in many ways. Borderline Personality is a flawed stereotypical pathologizing of stigma against too many people, too many women, to what end? What happens when we challenge the status quo?

There is an inherent capacity to empower yourself when you can open your mind to shifting the paradigm of Borderline Personality away from the pseudo-science “medical” model of biopsychiatry to a more postive-psychology based wellness model of achieving balance and find the dialiectic of the middle-path.

 

READ MORE AND WATCH VIDEO

© A.J. Mahari, July 26, 2010 - All rights reserved.

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life - End Negative Thought Patterns

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life - 19 Coaching Exercises To Help You Change Negative Thought Patterns by Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, is a 102 page Ebook chalk full of information and 19 coaching exercises to help you change negative thinking into positive thinking. This Ebook stresses how much you will benefit from focusing postively on the here-and-now so that the decisions you are making today will help you create a positive, successful and productive future. And this Ebook doesn't just tell you that, it provides you with practical exercises that will show you how to create positive change and how to not only stop focusing on the negative, stop worrying, but also stop feeling so stressed and stop ruminating on intrusive, negative, and unwanted thoughts. Not everyone can afford Life Coaching. This Ebook gives you exercises to do that I use with many of my clients and now you too can get this help and at a fraction of the price.

Determination and belief are the starting points for the shift from negative thought patterns to positive thoughts that create success. Learning to lay down defenses and open your mind to new, positive, thoughts can and will help you create needed and wanted change. 

Determination and belief will open you to new opportunities to get to know who you really are and/or more about who you authentically are. Thoughts are energy. Your energy effects all areas of your life.

You can quickly and easily learn how to plant the seeds of  positive thoughts and positive energy in your life. How can you do this?

This Ebook is based on exercises that will help you to realize real answers that will help you shift your thoughts and energy from negative to positive by getting you in touch with questions that will teach you more about yourself, what you want and how to get what you want - what your goals are and how to achieve those goals.

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life, will walk you through 19 exercises that will provide you with the steps to realizing real answers and teach you to start asking the right questions. By learning how the mind works, you can understand how to break the cycles that keep you on the outside looking in, instead of where you truly want to be. Learn to ask yourself questions that will shift your energy and help you to achieve your goals. What you feel comes from what you think. Are you aware of thoughts that lead you to feel bad?

By Changing Your Thoughts you can remove any illusions or feelings of what you think is lacking in your own life. You can remove the unnamed need that eats away at you day after day. By Changing Your Thoughts you can walk away from a life that is chaotic, codependent, or constantly needing repairs. You can learn to set boundaries, value yourself, and create healthier and happier relationships. You can re-shape your reality. Shift your focus. Create positive, healthy, and lasting change.

 

READ MORE ...

 

 

© A.J. Mahari, March 27, 2010 - All rights reserved.

Triggers in Borderline Personality Disorder - Gateways To Recovery

Triggers in those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) cause intense emotional dysregulation. Author, BPD and Life Coach, A.J. Mahari sheds a very revealing light on the fact that borderline triggers when faced, instead of avoided, can be gateways to recovery. Borderline triggers are open wounds that seek to help in the healing and recovery process. They can only help you if you let them. They can only help you if you are ready, willing, and able to face the pain that remains unresolved from past abandonment and/or trauma. The very pain that drives the triggered experience of those with BPD.

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• The Abandoned Pain of BPD   © A.J. Mahari
• The Legacy of Abandonment in BPD   © A.J. Mahari
• The Shadows and Echoes of Self - False Self In BPD  © A.J. Mahari
• BPD and Rage   © A.J. Mahari

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When those with BPD are triggered they experience a sudden increase in distress due to dysregulated emotion. Whether or not the person with BPD is in touch with, or aware of, his or her actual feelings, he or she will experience a sharp increase in emotional distress and discomfort. How that distress and discomfort manifests itself can vary for each person diagnosed with BPD. Central to this experience, however, is the desire and feeling of desperate need to get away from this distress and discomfort by whatever means necessary or whatever actions will provide an escape from the triggered dysregulated emotions.

Triggers in BPD - Gateways To Recovery

BPD/LIFE COACHING With A.J. Mahari

• 30 Minute Life Coaching Session
• 50 Minute Life Coaching Session
  
• More Life Coaching Options

In this audio program, A.J. Mahari provides insight into why this escape is destructive beyond the reality that many with BPD seek out self destructive maladaptive ways of coping when they are triggered. Trying to escape the reality of your triggers will only keep you firmly trapped in Borderline Personality Disorder. The more you succeed at escaping the pain of triggered Emotional Dysregulation the more you ensure re-experiencing the same triggers over and over again.

Triggers are not just a borderline experience. What is specific to Borderline Personality Disorder about experiencing triggers, however, is that these triggers produce intense emotional dysregulation, are frequent, and have their roots in the core wound of abandonment and are dissociative in nature.

It is important to note that people who do not have a personality disorder can experience less intense and less frequent emotional triggers that do not cause the kind of split with reality or fragmentation that triggers cause in those with BPD. Why do I mention this? Because many loved ones of those with BPD, non borderlines, can also be experiencing their own triggers - triggers back to unresolved issues from their pasts as well. Sometimes, for some loved ones, the actual manifestation of the borderline's triggered emotions and resulting behaviour can and does trigger the non borderline whether he or she is aware of that or not. If you are a loved one, have you ever thought to yourself that the person with BPD in your life is pulling certain behaviour and/or feelings out of you?

Both those with BPD and their loves ones will benefit from gaining new and increased insight into the healing potential and power of triggers.

A.J. Mahari's Audio Triggers in BPD - Gateways To Recovery that you can read more about that is available at phoenixrisingpublications.ca

© A.J. Mahari, August 8, 2009 - All rights reserved.

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A.J. Mahari is a BPD/Mental Health and Life Coach who, among other things, specializes in working with those with BPD and/or their loved ones. A.J. has 6 years experience as a BPD/Mental Health and Life Coach and has coached hundreds of clients from all over the world.

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Borderline - Non Borderline Common Ground

Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and their family members, relationship partners - non borderlines - have intersecting reality where common ground is encountered. This common ground, however, is not experienced in the same way by the borderline and the non borderline. Thus, even when common ground is recognized, more often than not, it is common ground that stems from facets of unhealthy relating, to varying degrees, that need to be addressed in order for growth, change, healing, and recovery on both sides of Bordeline Personality Disorder.

At first glance, one might assume that it is just the people diagnosed with BPD that need to grow, change, heal, and to recover. This is not the case, however. Most, if not all, non borderlines, who have been in close relationship to someone with BPD (family member, partner or ex-partner) also need to quest after their own understanding, their own disengagement, and their own recovery.

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
• Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

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There are several areas where those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and those who are non borderline or non-personality disordered do meet if you will and find common ground. I will be exploring some of those "meeting places" in up-coming blogs.

The first common ground reality between those with BPD and non borderlines I want to illuminate here is the need for change and the fear of that needed and/or wanted change.

Both those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and those who know and/or love (or have loved them) referred to as non borderlines will find common ground, though in their own individual ways, when it comes to the need for and the fear of change.

Those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and those who are non borderline struggle with mindfully radically accepting the awareness that tries to rise from within. While the defense mechanisms employed against this awareness that tries to make itself known aren't the same, the results can often be similar for both the borderline and the non borderline.

Both those with BPD and those who are non borderline, when they come together in relationships that are often toxic and dysfunctional need to create change in order to take care of themselves, separately, whether the relationships remain intact or not.

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A.J. has an audio program, available now on the subject of CHANGE - Healing and Recovery ($10.99) that will be of benefit to those with BPD and Non Borderlines.

This audio program is an enlightening examination about the ins and outs of change. The reality is that change is a part of all of our lives. It is more challenging for some people than others in various ways. However, the challenge of the newness of any change is often what inhibits our ability to achieve much-desired and/or much-needed change. This is the challenge for anyone, whether they have BPD or not.

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The truth is that much of what each individual needs and wants to know about the questions and the sought after answers desired in his or her own experience in life are really housed deep within each individual. Why is it that, often, these answers seem or actually are so elusive?

Simply put the awareness that you need to tap into that does exist within you is blocked by your efforts to defend against it.

No one really absolutely consciously sets out to defend against their own inner-wisdom. This often happens though. This internal battle, whether you have BPD, or are a non borderline, is powerful for so many reasons. It is powerful because people tend to believe their own illusions.

It is powerful because old habits truly do die hard. Old patterned and habitual ways of relating, for both those with BPD and non borderlines can date back to unresolved issues from childhood.

It is powerful because those with BPD are unaware of their own cognitive distortions. It is powerful for non borderlines because they believe (at least for a time) the stories that they tell themselves about what is unfolding in relationship to those with BPD that are designed to prevent loss. Non borderlines, being human, struggle in many ways with and against loss as well. Many non borderlines find it especially difficult and puzzling really when it comes to the lack of resolution when a relationship isn't working or has to end or has ended with someone with BPD. Non borderlines often block the very change that they most need by over-focusing on the person with BPD. Non borderlines need to address this and can Break Free of The Borderline Maze and find the change that will be their process of healing and recovery.

Those who have BPD often struggle even harder and more profoundly against loss because experiencing any loss re-ignites some awareness of the abandonment trauma and pain that you are so desperately trying to outrun. It is also loss that leaves borderlines so emotionally dysregulated that they often try to control others because they do not know how to control themselves - and they often are not aware enough of the ways in which they tend to psychologically live through "other" due to the absence of a known self.

Recognizing Both The Need To Change and The Fear of Change

The need for change, however you might define that change in your life, whether you have BPD or not, will make itself known to you when you are in pain and when things aren't working either in your life or in your relationship(s).

The fear of change might not be the first thing that you realize about your own experience. There are many human and compelling reasons why people continue to do what they know better than. That is what old habits and patterns are. And old habits and patterns are sometimes all one knows at a given time. That is why they say, when you know better, you will do better.

The need for change is often recognized by a common motivator - pain. Pain can sometimes be expressed as anger or rage before the borderline is in touch with the fact that they are actually in pain. The need for change is often realized when negatives begin to far-outweigh positives. The need for change arises when the borderline fears abandonment and when the non borderline fears the loss of him or herself. The need for change, generally, arises when we are out of balance and when we are not meeting, or not able to meet our own needs.

For the borderline fear of change is a staple of the borderline false self. It is a threat to existence as one knows it or to whatever extent one knows, feels, and/or experiences it. For the borderline fear of change is often an unconscious feeling that lies under the borderline's conscious awareness because change requires both choice and the taking of personal responsibility - two things that many with BPD do not have the emotional maturity or psychological inter-personal skills to cope effectively with.

Change threatens the borderlines polarized ideas about right and wrong and about fair and unfair among many other polarized and distorted beliefs about what should be versus what is and what needs to be.

Non borderlines are often shell-shocked by many of the things that they experience on the other side of BPD and it can take time to come to terms with catching up to what is actually happening. For non borderlines loss can be formidable. Unlike, those with BPD, however, most non borderlines have the coping skills to deal with loss. This notwithstanding, however, non borderlines often fear change and loss because they will then have to look at themselves as well.

The need for change will keep pulling on your psyche and be brought to your attention over and over again, whether you are borderline or non borderline until you start to heed its message and explore what it is that you actually need to address.

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A.J. has an audio program for non borderlines who need to find their own way to change, growth, healing and recovery as the result of having been in a relationship with someone with BPD. Breaking Free of The Borderline Maze Recovery For Non Borderlines

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Recognizing the need for change and the fear you may well have of that change is the gateway toward opening up to the awareness inside of you that seeks to get your attention whether you are someone with BPD or a non borderline who loves (loved) or cares (cared) about someone with BPD.

In my audio program, CHANGE - Healing and Recovery (for those with BPD and/or Non borderlines) I talk about why change is so important. I talk about the significance of self-concept (or lack thereof) in the process of change along with the reality that the foundation of all change is choice. I outline common obstacles to change and the wonderful gifts that we can be blessed with when we enter a process of change and remain dedicated to it in ways that respect and celebrate our own unique needs and personal growth.

A great deal of the work that I do with people who are borderlines or non borderlines that I work with as a life coach revolves around the need to address the paradox of the need for change and the fear of change.

Change Is a Journey and a Process

Change is a journey and a process that can only begin when you make an active choice to pursue it. You can only make an active choice to pursue it when you are aware of what you need and want.

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• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
• Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

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Mindful radical acceptance of what is will slowly, over time, as you practise this skill create the space from which new awareness can arise. It is this new awareness, especially for those with BPD, that will provide an impetus to explore what is behind both the need for change and the fear of what one needs.

There are many obstacles to change. Many of those obstacles are individual ones. The primary obstacles to change are born out of what it is that we actually think and believe. This is true for both those with BPD and for non borderlines.

Emotions are a major obstacle to change. Why? Because they often will lead both the borderline and the non borderline away from rising awareness and lead to reactionary patterned responses that don't create or even leave room for change.

What and how you think, whether you are borderline or non borderline, is also a formidable obstacle to change.

"What you resist, will continue to persist

Begin today by asking yourself questions about what you feel and what is going on in your life that may not be working or meeting your needs. It is only from asking honest questions that one can even begin to understand what exactly one needs to know in order to create change. The answers to the questions that you begin to pose will reveal to you the change that you most need in your life.

For those who have Borderline Personality Disorder there is an inherent cognitive split that must be overcome between the need for change and the fear of change that is the false self protection against change that blocks the awareness so needed to create the change necessary to get on the road to recovery.

If you have BPD you likely fear change because change is a process that has to out the ghosts of your core wound of abandonment. It is a process that will insist upon actively choosing to work to resolve your unresolved abandonment trauma and pain.

If you are a non borderline, you too may have some fear of change. Change brings with it, for all of us, some degree or other of the unknown. Most people prefer the comfort of the known - even when it hurts like hell.

The pain of what is known must be experienced and re-experienced enough times until one, whether borderline or non borderline, gets to the point where the pain of what is out-weighs the pain and fear associated with that unknown, whatever that unknown is to you in your life.

Borderlines and non borderlines, though having much in experience, thought, perception, and emotional experience that is different do have common struggles, each in their own way, when it comes to the need for change and the co-existence of the fear of that most needed change simultaneously. This is the case because underneath the labels and the reality of those labels - personality-disordered or non-personality disordered, borderline, or non borderline is the commonality of being human.

© A.J. Mahari - July 6, 2008

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A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who, among other things, specializes in working with those with BPD and non borderlines. A.J., is a woman who has recovered from BPD, had 2 parents with BPD and had a relationship (6 years after her own recovery) with someone with BPD and has also walked many a mile on the non borderline side of BPD since her recovery. A.J. has 5 years experience as a life coach and has worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world.

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