Life isn't always linear, and neither is love. Sometimes ya back into stuff and it turns out fabulously.
What I mean by this is, I'd never for a moment thought I'd write anything about BPD beyond my first article, BLACKMAILED INTO FATHERHOOD, BORDERLINE WOMEN AND MEN WHO LOVE THEM. That one piece of literature altered the course of my practice and my life.
I was intrigued with the topic of BPD and felt so passionately about it, I literally couldn't stop writing about it for 9 years. This was not planned, nor foreseen. I had no idea all that material would come surging out of me.
The fodder for my 25 articles on Borderlines came directly from people reaching out for help to understand how someone could love them one minute, and leave them the next. So many precise details of what men experienced in their relationship with a Borderline female, were identical to each other.
The same odd behaviors, verbal expressions and disruptive and confusing emotional patterns were conveyed to me hundreds of times by people who resided in different areas all over the globe.
I got to where I'd anticipate what a caller would relate to me, and I could finish their sentences.
Incredibly distinct patterns surfaced repeatedly within all the tragic stories I'd heard over and over again, so transcribing those very intimate and personal recollections wasn't difficult. Each new caller simply reaffirmed what the last one had said.
If you've ever worked a jigsaw puzzle over and over again, you begin to develop a sense of where all the pieces go, and how to assemble it much faster than you did the first time. My learning about Borderline Personality Disorder and exactly how it plays out in romantic relationships, was much like this.
At some point, you realize this disorder is no longer a fascinating mystery to you, but a puzzle you've assembled dozens of times. You feel a sort of omnipotence, because you're gazing down at the same pattern of puzzle pieces that keep infinitely replicating, and your only task at that point, is to help others see it as clearly as You do.
This is how all my articles on Borderline Personality Disorder were constructed without any input or guidance whatsoever, from either college I attended en-route to getting two psych degrees in mid-life. What a pity, I've thought for years since.
I still find it utterly amazing that BPD isn't considered a crucial part of higher learning when someone's academically preparing to enter the field of psychotherapeutic care~ but then, hundreds of psych students would likely go screeching out of their classrooms, having finally recognized these self-destructive, distressing traits in themselves!
Maybe a healthier outcome for people who enter treatment could begin with institutions thinning the herd in this way, so they could turn out wiser, more highly qualified clinicians. Now THAT'S a novel idea, don't ya think?