infants lack something known as object permanence. what this means is that they do not have the ability to understand that something still exists when it is out of their line of vision. this is why they like peek-a-boo, because to them you really do disappear when you cover your face with your hands. now, individuals with borderline personality disorder experience emotional impermanence, which follows the same basic idea that if someone is not actively at that moment validating you and paying attention to you, then they don’t care about you.
in the same way that when an infant cries when it drops its security blanket, assuming it has disappeared forever, people with bpd feel panicked when they cannot feel or have tangible proof that a person still cares. they may assume that because you aren’t paying attention to them or saying you love them in that moment, the reassuring things you’ve said and feelings you’ve displayed previously have disappeared permanently.
this stems from our fear of abandonment. every move made is analyzed, our brain constantly asking ‘is this a sign that they’re going to leave? they haven’t answered in three minutes, are they never going to answer again? is there someone better? do they hate me?’ and the progression of thoughts spirals downward rapidly. our brains are something like a paranoid sherlock holmes. everything is a clue leading to abandonment.
this makes it EXTREMELY difficult for people with bpd to maintain relationships. no matter what lengths you go to reassure us, there’s almost always a small part that the minute it’s over feels like it didn’t happen, or it wasn’t genuine. it’s not to say that your efforts aren’t appreciated!! of course they are. but it’s hard for us to cling to them as reminders after the fact.
and reassurance can be a double edged sword. there’s comfort in being reminded, but then we may also fear that we manipulated you into reassuring us, or that you didn’t mean it and only said it because you knew we wanted to hear it, or you felt you had to.
emotional impermanence is a longtime struggle, and as real as it feels to us, we often do understand that our fears are irrational. our emotional impermanence and insecurity generally have an internal loci of focus. that is to say, it’s based on ourselves and our cognitions, not you or your actions. and with saying that it’s internally based, not externally, it can be difficult to understand how we can already have forgotten you love us, or already believe your feelings toward us have radically shifted in the 5 minutes since you expressed appreciation.
as difficult as it may be to understand though, and as irrational as it may be, these feelings are very very real to us. work with us, listen to us, reassure us when you’re able to. for most people, emotional permanence, to at least some degree, is a given. to us, it can feel like a myth.
amandla
andulkaphoto
ellievsbear
titsay
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
snowghoul
