Mentalization Therapy Conclusion

In concluding this segment on mentalization therapy, I want to quote something from Bateman and Fonagy that describes fairly accurately the experience of someone suffering with BPD:

"If someone was causing you pain or simply tormenting you, perhaps not everyday for the whole day, parts of a day, or for days and weeks on end; You could, if you were brave or desperate enough, defend yourself, by perhaps attacking (and eliminating) your persecutor.

But what if this thing you hate, was inhabiting your head? You can’t exactly say please leave my body, you can’t do anything to get it to just pack up and leave because technically, physically that isn’t possible.

You can say fuck you. I hate you. You can self-harm with the hugest force your body can withstand, with all you can muster.

You can do that. You can be very very angry and show them who’s boss, you won’t stand for it, you won’t take it lying down. You want to be heard, you want to say right, you think you can hurt me? I’ll show you, I’ll show you how much I can hurt you!

But you and this thing, you are inhabiting one body. You attack this thing; you attack yourself. You don’t have a choice though. That’s a sacrifice you make over and over.

Eventually, you realise the only way to get rid of this thing, once and for all is getting rid of yourself. What choice do you really have?

No doctor can specify the problem. No medication can fix the problem that can’t be specified. You fail to understand yourself. You can’t explain to your family and docs, they can’t help you because you do not talk.

You doubt yourself : Do I even have a problem?  People in real life often treat you like you don’t have a real problem. They talk to you stupidly, you complain that they don’t understand, you look a fool.

Perhaps that is why you don’t talk to them anymore. Maybe you don’t have a problem anyway. You are a child, quite possibly you are just making this up for some attention, finding an excuse for why you can’t stay in college or get a job. Maybe you don’t have an excuse, you are just a stubborn little child.

From what everyone tells you perhaps that is true. You have doubt. You are willing to listen to someone else.

For now that is the only reason why you are not, at this moment, trying to do it. [kill oneself]."

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I imagine a patient of theirs wrote the above, or perhaps it is a composite of what their patients have told them.  In any case, with a few slight variations, this is how I've felt all my life.

Except in my case, I often intellectualized and externalized the problem.  Even though I knew there was something wrong inside me, I often blamed things and people in my environment.  And my response was to leave, to run.

I would tear up/cut up the fabric of the life I had created and watch it bleed out.  I would start over again, some place new.

I destroyed myself and my life, over and over again.

To be continued...