Abandonment & BPD

"Abandonment is a cumulative wound. It contains all of the disappointment, disconnection, rejection, heartache, self-doubt, self-frustration, and shame we’ve ever felt since childhood. Feeling rejected and cast off can thrust us into an emotional time warp, unleashing a torrent of emotion that seems all out of proportion to the actual event. These primal feelings form the basis of the molten lava that spews from the rock bottom of our emotional core to the freshly opened wound, volcanically consuming us in their power to entirely interrupt our lives, at least during the initial stages.

In borderline personality disorder (BPD), it takes a lesser event to trigger an equally painful emotional response, through no fault of the person suffering from this syndrome of emotional dysregulation. This hyper-reactivity is also a cornerstone of PTSD of Abandonment (a category which offers overlapping, alternative etiology and terminology). Borderline reactions are not voluntary, yet the sufferer wears guilt and shame for their emotional excessiveness. Those who’ve been through a painful breakup can truly appreciate the pain a Borderline must feel on a chronic basis.

Borderline is a disease of the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain, the part of the brain responsible for the Fight Flee Freeze response. In the Borderline the amygdala is set on overdrive, in a perpetual state of emergency, creating chronic hyper-vigilance and emotional hijacking."