3 Powerful and Revealing Lessons I Needed to Know

Times change. We are not who we were. We are not threatened by the same things anymore. We do not need the techniques of the past - we need new techniques adapted to surviving and thriving in the present.

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Three books on mental health I’ve read this year and what I’ve taken away from them: 

1. Loving Someone with BPD by Shari Manning
2. Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw
3. Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy by Eric Berne

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1. Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder by Shari Manning 

Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder by Shari Y. Manning, PhD

Despite prejudicial language, this book did have some insights into why BPD sufferers behave the way we do, and what patterns to look for. One thing that stuck with me is that people with BPD start out (in their teens and early twenties) as highly emotional, switching from one emotional state to the next at breakneck speed. They engage in impulsive and reckless behaviour, and it results in a lot of heartbreak, breakdowns and hitting of rock bottom. 

Older people with BPD are then likely to start masking their symptoms. They become numb to emotion and are overtly controlling of their selves in an effort to avoid the negative consequences mentioned. 

This doesn’t mean the symptoms have disappeared. They are repressed and show themselves in smaller, better-hidden ways (like impulsively ordering take out or going on ill-advised shopping sprees). And they are emotionally blank, unable to connect on an emotional level with other people. [This is where I am now.]

(My review, in case you want to check it out.)

2. Homecoming by John Bradshaw

Homecoming by John Bradshaw

Similar to the concept of transactional analysis, but inner child healing focuses on the regressive Child state, which is essentially a repository for every piece of repressed trauma and forgotten childhood dream we ever had. 

From this book I learned I need to relive pain from the past. At the time, being unable to deal with the pain, the event was repressed or dismissed, and coping mechanisms built around it to ensure my continued survival. 

But while coping mechanisms may have helped me get to this point, they are inefficient, and often do a lot of harm along the way while maintaining their initial goal. Times change. We are not who we were. We are not threatened by the same things anymore. We do not need the techniques of the past - we need new techniques adapted to surviving and thriving in the present.

So I have committed to going back and reliving past traumas - for the sake of insight, for the sake of processing them, and for the sake of moving on without being a giant ball of fears held together by luck and spit. (And by committed, I mean at some point. I’ll let my therapist decide when we get there, because I am really dreading this. 😁😝)

3. Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy by Eric Berne

The freedom with which I engaged in emotional recklessness is a thing of the past - I must now hide from myself as I did from my parents in years past.

Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy by Eric Berne

I’m still reading this book, but it talks about the three “Ego-States”: Parent, Adult and Child. The Parent ego state (exteropsyche) tries to govern and rule where it feels the individual is slipping. This ego state is frequently modelled on one’s own parents and/ or parental figures - it’s morals, goals and principles may not actually line up with that of the actual individual. The Parent gives me considerable trouble in the sense that it is where my constant negativity is rooted. 

You will fail. You weren’t going to be able to finish that anyway. Why do you even bother, when nothing you do has had any effect?

I have been trying to combat negative thoughts for a long time with middling success, and I cannot deny that these are words similar to what my parents have said to us over the years growing up. 

Additionally, Berne notes that the Parent state becomes extremely strict and mean to the Child state after severe negative consequences are experienced, so perhaps this is what is responsible for the masking and emotional numbness. The freedom with which I engaged in emotional recklessness is a thing of the past - I must now hide from myself as I did from my parents in years past. 

The Parent’s strictness must be assuaged and its methods changed if I am to focus on Inner Child Healing - I cannot “reclaim and champion” my “Wonder Child” if a part of me is absorbed in recriminations towards the slightest mistake or misstep I make. 

The last state, the Adult state, is the rational and analytical part of the individual. It is probably the one writing this post, filled as it is with analysis and objectivity (and sadly, detachment). 

This is more or less a summary of the insights I’ve gained through therapy and reading over the last few months. I will take some pleasure in the fact that I have learned these things, even if I have been practically paralyzed by depression for most of that time.