THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MASKS OF BPD

By A.J. Mahari http://www.borderlinepersonality.ca/bordertruthbehindmasks.htm

NOTE: I want to clearly state that BPD is real and so it the pain and suffering of those diagnosed with it. When I talk about lies and deceit in this article I am not discounting the reality of the pain, angst and turmoil of BPD. I am referring to the struggle for self and the challenge of letting go of the lies that we learn to tell to protect ourselves in order to find identity.

When one has just been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and or when one has not yet achieved a certain amount of recovery - the truth about who you really are is often dissociated or fragmented from your authentic self. Your authentic self is buried under the pain, the fear, and has been left behind at the developmental stage at which you were last able to be, for the most part, yourself.

For many borderlines that separation from self occurs at a relatively young age when, emotionally there is too much pain, abandonment, abuse experienced to hold onto to one's real self without losing those upon which one is dependant for their safety, security, and other basic needs. Here's where the borderline puts on the first mask of false self.

Whatever danger to one's psyche exists or has been perceived by the borderline causes them to put on a mask of defense mechanisms in order to survive the turmoil. Mask number two.

To further survive the annihilation of 'self' the borderline than puts on mask number three - denial and or dissociation.

Mask number four is borderline behaviour designed to protect at all costs and usually motivated by triggered dissociative fragments of past-reality that are played out again and again through each new situation that unfolds in the life of the borderline. Unable to distinguish their familiar feelings from different experiences borderlines react in extremely patterned ways to all eventualities. They react either in extremes and vacillate between push and pull, closeness and distance in an effort to undo what has been done to them.

The masks of the borderline are walls that block him/her from him/herself as much as they block others from him/herself. These walls are built with pain and despair. They are added to with depression and unmet needs.

Those very walls block the borderline from his/her truth. Being blocked from one's personal truth -- and authentic self without knowing this consciously leads many borderlines to add to the other masks the mask of deceit.

The mask of deceit is worn for protection. The truth was too painful to deal with in the past. The truth caused the loss of authentic self to false self. The false self perpetuates this within one's psyche with illogical thoughts and beliefs. These thoughts and beliefs are very child-like. They don't have to make sense to the borderline for him/her to adhere to them anyway.

What starts out as deceit for protection often leads to outright lying to live. Lacking one's true 'self' one then lacks the truth of who they are. This lack of truth can be seen in many borderlines actions. While there is truth to their plight and to their pain it is often expressed through untruths so as to protect it.

It is this very untruthful expression of dissociated and or fragmented reality that can make helping a borderline so difficult. They come to believe their own lies. They lie to protect. They lie to be heard. They lie to build the kind of drama that they think cannot be ignored in the same way as they perceive their "real" pain and issues have long-since been ignored.

The lies and untruths of the borderline mask their real pain and their real torment. The difference between what is untruth or truth gets lost in the borderline struggle for validation.

Sadly, it is easier for many to hear, see and believe the pretend, or the faked -- because for whatever reason they go on dismissing the reality behind BPD in the first place.

In my experience the world was so eager to accept the predominant mask of my fake face. It was just as eager to reject my true face, masked though it was. Behind each mask lived a legacy of pain. Behind each mask lived the loss of my self. Behind each mask lived a facade that led to another and another. It was a maze of untruth that housed my authenticity within it. No one wanted to look there. Or, if they did, I would quickly dawn yet another mask to ensure that they fell short of their targeted goal -- whatever that might truly have been because for years I was terrified at the mere notion of "looking there", looking within... behind all of the masks that harbored, at their very core, the unprotected face of my true-identity.

It took years to unravel what was real and what wasn't real for me. It was my need to deny and to dissociate from a very painful childhood in order to continue to hold mommy and daddy out as all good -- lest they be all bad -- that led me to invert reality. I suppose this was a choice. I don't remember consciously making it, however.

Looking back I realize that it was at the age of nine that a part of me knew that my reality needed to be suppressed in order for me to go on. Thus, the birth of this ruling false self that would be BPD in me. It would take me 35 years to conquer that false self and to find my authentic self.

How did I do that? Well, the short answer is by getting HONEST. There is no room in the recovery from BPD for the lies, the pretending the faking, exaggerating forms of defense mechanisms. I had spent a lifetime behind so many masks. Peeling them away one at a time for years, only changed my "game". It didn't succeed in revealing the "real me" to anyone until I found the courage and the strength to seek out this "real me" from the inside out first.

I think some therapists I had saw this redeemable true "me" long before I did. I had no idea that I was living in such a dissociated fragmented falseness. My pain was real. My abuse was real. My childhood nightmare was real. I had pushed all of that down inside so deep that my reality became what I made it. I made it be about sprained knees, sprained wrists, cuts, bruises, seizures, anger - rage, physical intimidation, fighting, smashing glass --- anything, anything physical, so that I wouldn't have to dig deep down inside of my psyche and my soul and experience the terror of that little girl (inside of me) ever again.

But, that's what it took to heal. It took me getting real - looking at the real issues and not covering them up with misrepresentations of my pain anymore. I had to face that all of my physical symptoms, pain and injuries (real and faked) were masks for the real pain that lay deep within me - the emotional pain that a very traumatic childhood had left me with and scarred by.

I believe that one's authentic self is there under all of the masks, the denial and the defence mechanisms and the games, waiting to be found. Until a borderline can find this sense of authentic self the false-self (which only perpetuates BPD) rules. Your false-self will only serve to increase your pain and terror at every turn. The agony, the angst, the depression, the mood swings, the illogical thoughts and feelings that predicate the world of "borderline behaviour" will persist if you insist on trying to hide behind the masks of untruth.

To recover from BPD you must get real and very honest with yourself and with those who are trying to help you. This means trying new things and believing that you can be okay -- survive new a very painful experiences, like learning to be alone and learning to stop abandoning and re-abandoning yourself -- or like taking care of yourself as opposed to collapsing to be rescued by others.

The borderline must re-build his/her ego from the inside out. Borderlines must be willing to deal with the truth and nothing but the truth in order to get well. They must step out from behind some of the most creative and intelligent masks of deceit, self-protection, drama, chaos, anger and the like in order to re-experience the pain that they have been hiding from.

It is the re-experiencing of this pain in a new way, as an adult, and not as a child, that enables healing to take place. Each borderline must reclaim both his/her truth and pain in order to learn that the "monster" that they are running from is not out there but is inside of them. The "monster" of BPD lies within the psyche of each and every borderline. The "monster" is the repressed pain and trauma of the borderline and it is NOT the person with Borderline Personality Disorder.

The truth is that getting honest and staying honestly authentic can and will tame that "monster" inside. You need to safely let your pain out. It is your pain that is fuelling your anger, your rage, your depression, your acting in and or your acting out. Your pain is keeping you away from the most precious person in the world -- your REAL self.

Just as I, and others have, you can walk through your pain with the help of a competent therapist and reclaim your truth, your "authentic self" and your real face. Peel off the masks. The world awaits the expression of your true face. Face yourself in the mirror and let the truth of that expression set you free.

RESCUE ME? (A borderline mantra)

By A.J. Mahari http://www.borderlinepersonality.ca/borderrescueme.htm

So often the demand of the person with Borderline Personality Disorder is - RESCUE ME! Borderlines are seeking the rescue in the here and now that they required in the past. More often than not borderlines seeking to be rescued will manipulate through acting out behavior or through recapitulating past traumatic events, in the here and now. This is a dissociative phenomenon.

In many ways borderlines are very intelligent and capable people - competent. Then suddenly, they are seemingly helpless and in need of rescue. Often the understanding of what is behind the differences in presentation is as much a mystery to the borderline as it is to those around him/her.

Manipulating to be rescued speaks also to the relational style of those with BPD. They will relate like "top dog" one minute and like a total "under dog" the next. There is little to no in between.

The borderline world is made up of polar opposites, of the black and the white. Therefore the borderline is either better than you, stronger than you, above you, or he/she is less than you, weaker than you, beneath you, in his/her perceptions.

The inherent struggle for an autonomy that terrifies the borderline (subconsciously they often become their own worst enemies--their own abusers once removed from their actual past abusers --therefore they do not trust their own autonomy and personal power any more than that of their abusers) sees many a borderline attempt to take personal responsibility only to turn on a dime, dump it and ask someone else to take it, hold it and deal with it. This is part of seeking to be rescued not only from the past but also from themselves. Add to this that most borderlines (in the early stages of recovery) do not know who they are. This is another scary part of why they are so willing to abdicate to you or anyone else that will take control. But, the second you take control the borderline will balk at that and attempt to win control back. If they get it back they'll hate that too and throw it back at you.

Borderlines seek to be rescued because emotionally they are still very young. They may intellectually have the where-with-all of an adult but not emotionally.

A big part of shirking one's own personal responsibility and "collapsing" to be rescued is motivated by the borderline's inability to hold (deal with and cope with) his/her own feelings, and emotions. Feelings and emotions often give rise to a panic that leaves a borderline feeling very unsafe and unsure and increases his/her overall need to be taken care of.

A borderline will only crave to be rescued until you are seen to pass the rescuing test. Once you commit yourself to engaging this aspect of borderline drama you will find that what you are met with is anger or rage at the prospect that somehow you know better than the borderline does.

In the arena of a borderline seeking to be rescued anyone else in that person's life will be walking ever so gently on the most maddening eggshells at this point.

If one continues to be manipulated into providing rescue for a borderline not only will that person be confused, hurt and no doubt angry (sooner or later) but the borderline once again gets to side step what is most needed in order to attain some recovery.....the accepting of personal responsibility.

Easy for me to say right now.... not easy for a borderline to read but if you have a borderline in your life the best thing you can do (in the long run) for both yourself and your borderline is NOT engage in any rescuing activity/behavior. This too, of course will be met with rage. You will get rage no matter what you do until the borderline learns to feel what hurts so badly.

If you are borderline and you don't know how to be alone, or how to feel your own feelings or meet your own needs you are likely engaging somewhere in your life in demanding rescue from others. Clearly, you need to know that this behavior will almost always result in the alienation of that person from you. (sooner or later). Seeking to be rescued is not the answer. You do not need rescue anymore. If you are borderline, what you need is to find yourself and to take care of yourself by yourself.

If you are Borderline and you seek rescue you are not being honest with yourself or with anyone else. Lack of honesty is another thing that drives people away.

WHY CAN'T I GET CLOSE AND STAY CLOSE TO ANYONE?

By A.J. Mahari http://www.borderlinepersonality.ca/borderstayclose.htm

Why can't a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)get close and stay close to anyone? You many think that there are many complicated reasons for this. NO! There is one very simple 'sounding' reason. The reason is simple for me to identify in hindsight after having wrestled with it more times than I could count. However, the reason why most people with BPD can't get close or stay close to anyone is not as simple to change as it is to identify.

In order to be close, one must also know how to be distant. Closeness, at times, requires distance at other times. In other words, in order to be successfully intimate one must know how to be alone.

Most people with BPD cannot tolerate being alone, for long, if at all. Though there may be many speculated reasons as to what is behind the fear of being alone my experience has taught me that the fear of being alone truly arises from the very basic fact that up until a certain point of healing, most borderlines, really, DO NOT KNOW WHO THEY ARE. So, in effect, who are they going to be alone with? For me, in the past, being alone was like being "in the past"; being alone was also like being in the company of all of my past abusers. Why? Because I did not have any sense of who I was. Therefore, I did not feel safe, alone, by myself. I felt needy and scared and like a little kid. I was living in the past. In my past being alone meant I was going to be hurt and or abused by someone older, bigger, stronger, and more powerful.

In my experience one must first learn to heal the wounds of the past. As you begin to get a sense of who *you* are in the here and now, and truly differentiate that from the past then one can learn how to be safe. When you have learned how to be and how to feel safe on your own, by yourself, and alone, then you will come to experience being with others in very new and different ways.

I believe that it is the very essence of borderline "neediness", and the demandingness that often goes along with that in "close" quarters that precludes a true sense of close intimacy from developing. The borderline often is confronted with a major dilemma here--wanting closeness but fearing it equally as much. In my life I came to understand this dichotomy by going back to what has happened when I was or had "felt" close to anyone in my past. In my past when I had felt close I was hurt, I was sexually abused, shamed and humilated. So, why would I want that again? Until I worked through those issues and matured more emotionally to the point where I wasn't left re-living my past when I was trying to get close to someone, it simply hurt way too much to even try to be close.

Intimacy requires time and space. There is an ebb and flow to closeness. Being close also involves being distant. As human beings we have a natural need for both. They cannot co-exist simultaneously. Often, when two people are in a relationship, for example, one will require some distance at a time when the other wants to feel/be close. It is during times like this that a relationship, or friendship can be made or torn apart. It is the responsibility of each person in a relationship to meet their own individual needs first. It is not the job of any one partner to meet their partner's needs first. Often borderlines demand this. It creates havoc in relationships. It is not healthy. It stems from the borderlines lack of ability to meet their own needs first. A healthy relationship is two whole people coming together and not two halves looking to be one whole.

Intimacy and being close to others requires that you know how to be alone. Intimacy also requires that you meet your own needs. Closeness can only be achieved when each person has the capacity for healthy risk, vulnerability and an open honesty that respects self and other.

Why can't a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) get close and stay close to anyone? Most people with BPD (until they heal many of the traits) are not able to be alone. Being alone, in tandem with taking care of one's own needs is what is required in order to achieve an intimate closeness emotionally with another human being. Being alone, knowing who you are (to some definable degree) and feeling safe with yourself are also prerequisites for healthy, lasting closeness in any relationship.

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: THE AWAKENING

By A.J. Mahari http://www.borderlinepersonality.ca/borderawakening.htm

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) greatly affects not only the lives of those diagnosed with it but also the lives of untold numbers of family and friends. For both the person with BPD and those who are in that person's life there must be an awakening if the pain is to be healed.

Some liken this awakening to an epiphany. A single moment in time that stands out, in unchallenged clarity like no other moment before it in which the person with BPD, and or the non-borderline, in the life of a person with BPD, suddenly understands what has been holding them to the experiences in life that they have lived so far.

It's a time when the realization of choices and the power of self is first discovered. It is a moment in which one finds both relief from pain and a different sort of pain - the pain of personal responsibility. Admitting one's old patterned pain, grieving it and letting it go frees up the space inside for one to come to grasp with this new pain.

The new pain, which is healing energy, is pain in which, possibly for the first time, as the borderline matures, he/she comes to realize how much others have been hurt by him/her. He/she comes to know that he/she is not the only one in life with pain.

This is the beginning of moving out of borderline narcissism. As the borderline begins to define him/herself, he/she is then able to see "other" as clearly separate from that.

This awakening calls each person to step out beyond where they've ever been before. To reach past old thoughts, beliefs and coping mechanisms. To reach past old excuses, patterns of shame and blame and to clearly see both the reality of their suffering and the purpose of it at the same time. This awakening is an understanding of one's suffering and a taking action to culminate the lessons that life holds for you with the end of such suffering.

This awakening is a conscious shift from child to emotionally maturing adult. It is here that one learns the power that lies within the kind of personal responsibility that allows one to stop blaming others. Here is where one crosses the bridge from victim to survivor. You now realize that you are indeed in charge of your own destiny and that you are the one making the choices that will now either bring you pain or peace.

This awakening is the borderline stopping in his/her tracks long enough to find the grey of where they've been, where they are and where they need to go. This grey, in this awakening, is new. It is the first time you peak your head out of that rigid black in white in which everything was someone's else's fault and in which your past continued to be re-lived out in all of your today's.

Here, in this awakening, you -- YOU -- finally come to find yourself. You set out on this new journey to define, understand, clarify and learn to accept, trust and then love this "self" that is the YOU that you have always been meant to be. You will become that you. Follow the wondrous footsteps of your awakening.

Know that as you awake from this most complex personality disorder, all cannot be gained at once. Each realization, each epiphany, each awakening is a step. A small step forward. Sometimes you will be pulled a step or two or three back -- Don't Panic! This is the process of recovery and healing. One step forward and three steps back to allow you to take your next step forward just that little bit extra forward into the realm of the you that you are becoming. This is a new you. A new place, and a new process. Trust it. Let it unfold. Be patient. You deserve this. It will happen. Give it time.

Make no mistake about it, you cannot experience this awakening until you get honest with yourself and with others. It is here that you must begin to take care of yourself. Nurture yourself. Learn to meet your own needs. Soothe yourself. Let go of trying to meet your needs through others. This is so painful for both you and the others that you know.

This awakening sees you catch your projections and your transference's. Each time you see through one of them you can begin to heal the issue that lies at its core. Remember, it's not about "them", it's about "you". Your issues are yours. Your process is yours. Your pain is yours. Just as the issues of others, the process and pain of others is theirs to bear and to cope with.

This awakening will lead you to an understanding of "self" - authentic self. It will enable you to learn how to erect and protect your own boundaries in ways that are situationally appropriate. You put a buffer between the most precious part of your tender soul and the world. The fact that you lived without this buffer for so long was one of the main reasons you've always been in such unbearable pain. Stop being who "they" wanted you to be, told you that you were, and be the you that you most desire to be. Your pain is born in trying to live up to the depths of the pain of those who abused you and or did not meet you emotional and nurture needs when you were young. Be your own person.

You learn that you truly have nothing to fear but fear itself. You will begin to distinguish between yourself and others. This will increase your tolerance for things in new ways. You will learn that you have nothing to fear from those who disagree with you. Disagreeing with you does not invalidate you. People can agree to disagree with respect. Here you will learn to respect yourself which in turn allows you to respect others. When you respect others they tend to respect you back.

This awakening is a plunge into the world of emotional and social reciprocity. You will learn to share. You will learn give and take. You can come to see yourself as competent and worthy of esteem and love.

The awakening is about you finding you and it is about you deciding who you want to be and then becoming that person. It is about you choosing your own path and walking down it, one step at a time. Journey on for this awakening is but the first mountain peak in an entire range of mountains. Enjoy the journey. Be true to your process.

Journey on and step carefully.

WALLS

By A.J. Mahari http://www.borderlinepersonality.ca/borderwalls.htm

Walls. Emotional walls, physical walls. Walls of anger, walls of rage, walls of fat; walls that are all designed to protect. Protect what? Have you ever got to the point where you wonder this, protect what?

So much of the "Borderline" behavior and "acting out" is all designed to protect by throwing up walls between oneself and others or oneself and one's very own feelings.

It can get very lonely and isolated and depressing within the confines of these walls. Walls that push loved ones away while a child aspect of you screams for their arms around you, screams for nurture. You reject this nurture, you must protect from the closeness and ache ever so much in the rejecting distance that you yourself have created by becoming a slave to the need for the protection of your walls.

For some people these walls are the scars of self-injury, of cutting themselves over and over again in an effort to find some safe comfort, close comfort from a distance. For others, numbing out feelings and anger with food the walls that pin you in are layers and layers of fat, eaten there by your own choice to protect and not to learn.

No matter how many walls you can entrap yourself behind, giving more and more power and time to the pain that you seek to protect yourself from feeling.....the pain is always there, close by, maybe an arms length away, a cut away, a burn away, a drink or drug away or a few twinkies away....there, waiting ever so patiently to be felt, acknowledged and expressed.

If you have built these walls, of behavior, of rage, of injury, of fat, (or of thinness that threatens your life) how can you find your way back to the pain? That pain, being held at bay, on the other side of your walls, is the bridge to your freedom. It is the way to once and for all leave this angst behind.

Borderline Personality Disorder causes those who have it to wall themselves off from what they need and want in ways that recapitulate the past and how they were walled off from that original care-giver with whom no bond was possible.

Think about this today, was that your fault? Do you need to go on punishing yourself, adding wall after wall to your arsenal of lonely, aching defence? You were a young and rightfully needy young child. The "original" wall, that so annihilated you, that threatened your very existence so completely, emotionally, if not physically as well....that fractured your ego to one degree or another is not yours. Go back, get in touch with those feelings, from that original wall of wounds. Feel them and express them, safely and (I speak from experience) you can then learn how to set yourself free from the walls that you are still building. You need to let the "original pain" in, let it flood in (with support/ in therapy), then, learn to cry, grieve it, express it, let it flood out....the results will be a new view on much of your life and of others. You can then systematically, slowly, over time begin to dismantle your walls.

These walls may have "originally" rose up from others in your life who hurt you and let you down, but once you reach adulthood, (by chronological age) it is up to you to get there emotionally too. Reclaim yourself. You are "good enough", you are "worthy" you do deserve to know a life outside of all of those BPD walls.

Walls. Emotional walls, physical walls. Walls of anger, walls of rage, walls of fat; walls that are all designed to protect. Protect what? Have you ever got to the point where you wonder this, protect what?

The answer is you are trying, in the "here and now" to constantly protect yourself from the "original" wounds of yesterday....you can't anymore, they have already happened, the cause is now long gone.....Subsequently, however, you've continued to make the choice to re-live and re-live this agony....you don't have to anymore. Stop trying to protect yourself from what has happened and what can be over when you choose for it to be. (Through hard work/therapy).

The walls are your walls. The walls are reactionary. The walls are no longer necessary. Step beyond the illusionary safety of the very walls that are much of the source of your pain today.....the world awaits your arrival....you are that world...you are that world waiting to be born, yet again.

Take the walls down. Those walls are no longer viable. They are not holding out new pain, they are holding in very old pain. Take the walls down.

Written by A.J. Mahari, who recovered from BPD and has written many brilliant articles)

EMOTIONS AND THOUGHTS

Emotion - Sadness or depression

Thoughts that lead to this emotion - Thoughts of loss: a romantic rejection, the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or the failure to achieve an important goal.

Emotion - Guilt or shame

Thoughts that lead to this emotion - You believe that you've hurt someone or that you've failed to live up to your own moral standards. Guilt results from self-condemnation, whereas shame involves the fear that you'll lose face when others find out about what you did.

Emotion - Anger, irritation, annoyance or resentment

Thoughts that lead to this emotion - You feel that someone is treating you unfairly or trying to take advantage of you.

Emotion - Frustration

Thoughts that lead to this emotion - Life falls short of your expectations. You insist that things should be different. It might be your own performance ("I shouldn't have made that mistake"), what someone else does ("He should've been on time!"), or an event (Why does the traffic always slow down when I'm in a hurry?).

Emotion - Anxiety, worry, fear, nervousness or panic

Thoughts that lead to this emotion - You believe you're in danger because you think something bad is about to happen -- "What if my mind goes blank when I give my talk in front of all those people?" "What if the plane crashes?" "What if this chest pain is the start of a heart attack?"

Emotion - Inferiority or inadequacy

Thoughts that lead to this emotion - You compare yourself to others and conclude that you're not as good they are because you're not as talented, attractive, charming, successful, intelligent. "She's really got what it takes. She's so cute. All the men are chasing her. I'm just average. There's nothing special about me."

Emotion - Loneliness

Thoughts that lead to this emotion - You tell yourself that you're bound to feel unhappy because you're alone and you aren't getting enough love and attention from others.

Emotion - Hopelessness or discouragement

Thoughts that lead to this emotion - You feel convinced that your problems will go on forever and that things will never improve. "I'll never get over this depression," or "I just can't lose weight and keep it off," or "I'll never find a good job," or "I'll be alone forever."

THE TEN FORMS OF TWISTED THINKING

1. All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, "I've blown my diet completely." This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream.

2. Overgeneralization - You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as "always" or "never" when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the window of his car. He told himself, "Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!"

3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.

4. Discounting the positive - You reject positive experiences by insisting that they "don't count." If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn't good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positives takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

5. Jumping to conclusions - You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion.

Mind Reading: Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

Fortune-telling: You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, "I'm really going to blow it. What if I flunk?" If you're depressed you may tell yourself, "I'll never get better."

6. Magnification - You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. "Should" statements - You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After playing a difficult piece on the piano, a gifted pianist told herself, "I shouldn't have made so many mistakes." This made her feel so disgusted that she quit practicing for several days. "Musts," "oughts" and "have tos" are similar offenders.

"Should statements" that are directed against yourself lead to guilt and frustration. Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general, lead to anger and frustration: "He shouldn't be so stubborn and argumentative!"

Many people try to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if they were delinquents who had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything. "I shouldn't eat that doughnut." This usually doesn't work because all these shoulds and musts make you feel rebellious and you get the urge to do just the opposite. Dr. Albert Ellis has called this " musterbation." I call it the "shouldy" approach to life.

8. Labeling - Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." You might also label yourself "a fool" or "a failure" or "a jerk." Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but "fools," "losers" and "jerks" do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the wrong way, you may tell yourself: "He's an S.O.B." Then you feel that the problem is with that person's "character" or "essence" instead of with their thinking or behavior. You see them as totally bad. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves very little room for constructive communication.

9. Personalization and blame - Personalization comes when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn't entirely under your control. When a woman received a note that her child was having difficulty in school, she told herself, "This shows what a bad mother I am," instead of trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem so that she could be helpful to her child. When another woman's husband beat her, she told herself, "If only I was better in bed, he wouldn't beat me." Personalization leads to guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy.

Some people do the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems and they overlook ways they might be contributing to the problem: "The reason my marriage is so lousy is because my spouse is totally unreasonable." Blame usually doesn't work very well because other people will resent being scapegoated and they will just toss the blame right back in your lap. It's like the game of hot potato--no one wants to get stuck with it.

TEN WAYS TO UNTWIST YOUR THINKING

1. Identify The Distortion: Write down your negative thoughts so you can see which of the ten cognitive distortions you're involved in. This will make it easier to think about the problem in a more positive and realistic way.

2. Examine The Evidence: Instead of assuming that your negative thought is true, examine the actual evidence for it. For example, if you feel that you never do anything right, you could list several things you have done successfully.

3. The Double-Standard Method: Instead of putting yourself down in a harsh, condemning way, talk to yourself in the same compassionate way you would talk to a friend with a similar problem.

4. The Experimental Technique: Do an experiment to test the validity of your negative thought. For example, if during an episode of panic, you become terrified that you're about to die of a heart attack, you could jog or run up and down several flights of stairs. This will prove that your heart is healthy and strong.

5. Thinking In Shades Of Grey: Although this method may sound drab, the effects can be illuminating. Instead of thinking about your problems in all-or-nothing extremes, evaluate things on a scale of 0 to 100. When things don't work out as well as you hoped, think about the experience as a partial success rather than a complete failure. See what you can learn from the situation.

6. The Survey Method: Ask people questions to find out if your thoughts and attitudes are realistic. For example, if you feel that public speaking anxiety is abnormal and shameful, ask several friends if they ever felt nervous before they gave a talk.

7. Define Terms: When you label yourself 'inferior' or 'a fool' or 'a loser,' ask, "What is the definition of 'a fool'?" You will feel better when you realize that there is no such thing as 'a fool' or 'a loser.'

8. The semantic Method: Simply substitute language that is less colorful and emotionally loaded. This method is helpful for 'should statements.' Instead of telling yourself, "I shouldn't have made that mistake," you can say, "It would be better if I hadn't made that mistake."

9. Re-attribution: Instead of automatically assuming that you are "bad" and blaming yourself entirely for a problem, think about the many factors that may have contributed to it. Focus on solving the problem instead of using up all your energy blaming yourself and feeling guilty.

10. Cost-Benefit Analysis: List the advantages and disadvantages of a feeling (like getting angry when your plane is late), a negative thought (like "No matter how hard I try, I always screw up"), or a behavior pattern (like overeating and lying around in bed when you're depressed). You can also use the cost benefit analysis to modify a self-defeating belief such as, "I must always try to be perfect."

From "The Feeling Good Handbook" by David D. Burns, M.D.
Copywrite 1989 by David D. Burns, M.D.

Revised Aug 2002