26 Quotes by Jerold J. Kreisman

He may attempt suicide, often not with the intent to die but to feel something, to confirm he is alive.

The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that "loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude." Because the borderline finds solitude so difficult to tolerate, she is trapped in a relentless metaphysical loneliness from which the the only relief comes from of the physical presence of others. So she will often rush to singles bars or with crowded haunts, often with disappointing--or even violent--results.

All is caprice. They love without measure those whom they will soon hate without reason. – Thomas Sydenham, seventeenth-century English physician, on “hystericks,” the equivalent of today’s borderline personality.

Others Act Upon Me, Therefore I Am.

For many borderlines, “out of sight, out of mind” is an excruciatingly real truism. Panic sets in when the borderline is separated from a loved one because the separation feels permanent.

The borderline’s endless quest is to find a perfect caregiver who will be all-giving and omnipresent. The search often leads to partners with complementary pathology: both lack insight into their mutual destructiveness. For.

Also, Empathy should be expressed in a neutral way with minimal personal reference to the speaker’s own feelings. The emphasis here is on the borderline’s painful experience, not the speaker’s. A statement like “I know just how bad you are feeling” invites a mocking rejoinder that, indeed, you do not know, and only aggravates conflict.

The most difficult part of being a borderline personality has been the emptiness, the loneliness, and the intensity of feelings,” she says today. “The extreme behaviors keep me so confused. At times I don’t know what I’m feeling or who I am.

A continual tug-of-war develops between the wish to merge and be taken care of, on the one hand, and the fear of engulfment, on the other. For.