Living today, in the past, is not living today. Living today means having first worked through all that still binds you to your past. Each person with BPD must first peel back the layers of triggered emotions and cognitively distorted thoughts. Each step of this painful but rewarding process involves taking risks and making new choices.

If you always do what you have done you will continue to re-experience what you've known so far in life. New choices must be made. With each new choice tried there are issues around the newness of those choices. It takes time for new choices to feel natural. It also takes time to build up some self-confidence in your ability to continue to make the new choices and to follow them through. Learn to believe in yourself one step at a time. Self-trust can only be built up by doing. Each new choice that you make is a success regardless of its outcome.

Along with new choices there must come new ways of thinking. It is so important to look in between the extremes of black and white thinking. Keep seeking to find the middle in all things and it will serve you well.

Having BPD robs people (and those who live with, love and or care for them) of the ability to live their lives comfortably in the present. You have an entire life waiting for you to choose it. Choose it. Dare to risk. One step at a time you will discover that you can learn to cope and learn to function in new ways and situations. Your really are competent. You just need to acquire some of the emotional tools that you may not have had a chance to acquire in your formative years.

Don't choose to continue to choose a life that you cannot live. You are not meant to merely survive and to have to fight your way through endless pain and agony to do so. You deserve to thrive. You deserve to be happy. Living the life that you were meant to live can become a reality as you continue to heal from BPD.

BPD reflects the rigidity with which many borderlines approach life. Recovery is about learning how to think differently, to re-frame your thoughts and to try new things so that you can learn to differentiate between your past and your here and now.

A life lived in the past or overly connected to the past is painful. It is a life that is not being actively lived in a purposeful way. Borderline Personality Disorder is a formidable challenge that stands between those diagnosed with it and the life that they were otherwise meant to live.

Reach for and choose that life by finding your authenticity. Shed your past. Grieve your pain. Let go of old patterned ways of responding. If you are open to learning, you will learn. Maybe it's time to stop protecting so hard that you can't truly live your life in the here and now.

© Ms. A.J. Mahari - June 11, 2001.