accept responsibility for it, as discussed earlier. You may feel compassion for them, thinking, “But she can’t help it, she’s sick,” or, “He never
learned any better from his parents.” These sentiments are valid. It’s also true that no one asks to have BPD; your parent didn’t choose it and it’s
not easy to live with—imagine always feeling ashamed, that people are out to get you, that everything is unsafe and that the people you love may up and leave you at any time. Imagine feeling very fragile and out of control.
Yet those with BPD or any other set of symptoms that impact their
functioning and their interactions with others can choose to ignore them
or try to manage them. One man likens his mother’s refusal to acknowl-
edge and seek help for her symptoms to that of a diabetic who won’t skip
dessert (or take her insulin). One woman, on an Internet bulletin board,
writes:
Imagine you knew someone who was physically disabled, but if
they worked really hard and went to physical therapy—even
though it was lengthy and painful—they would have a good
chance of leading a fairly normal life. They would probably be
able to walk, run, exercise, play, etc. Now, imagine that person
refused to seek help, and instead sat around complaining all
day. Imagine they blamed everyone around them for their
suffering. Imagine they wanted everyone else to cater to them
and take care of them. How much compassion would you have
then?
I know the nature of BPD makes it difficult to admit
they’re less than perfect and therefore seek treatment. There are,
however, cases of recovered borderlines. It can be done. Our
parents choose not to do it. I feel sad that my mom is suffering,
but I also know she is the only person that can do anything
about it, and she chooses not to. There is nothing I can do, and
I don’t feel responsible. And I won’t allow her to inflict her
suffering on me anymore, either.
If your parent doesn’t own his particular behavior, there’s little hope
for change. According to Kenneth Silk, a professor of psychiatry at the
University of Michigan Medical School and editor of two books on the
neurobiology of personality disorders,
Because treatments are so limited, one of the things [those with
BPD] need is to believe they can cope, that they have skills and
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are empowered. They need to be responsible for what they do.
I’m not saying they’re manipulative or that they don’t have very
real symptoms. But we all have to make decisions about how
we’re going to release tension and what the consequences will
be. These people have a great tendency to justify what we
consider unacceptable behavior and then externalize it and
rationalize it. But if they can’t own some of their behavior, they
can’t change. (2002)
From the perspective of the adult child, the most validating experi-
ence would be for your parent to acknowledge her behavior and its affect
on you, and perhaps even apologize and make changes. It may happen,
though it might occur only partially and over a long period of time, with a parent accepting weaknesses in certain areas but denying or rationalizing others. Whether or to what extent this acknowledgement takes place, you
have to make a choice: continue to hope your parent will own his feelings and actions, which may prove draining and useless. Or accept your parent’s inability to do so at the present time and focus on those things in your life that you can change.
Taking Charge of Yourself
When you’re in pain, it’s very easy to ask yourself who’s to blame, who’s responsible. This is normal, and it allows you to discharge some of your
bad feelings by focusing instead on who’s guilty, why, and how terrible
they were. But when you blame someone for how you feel, you’re also
casting yourself in the role of victim (McKay, Rogers, and McKay 1989).
This means you’ve handed quite a lot of power over to another person. In
effect you’ve put your well-being in the other person’s hands—probably
not a prudent thing to do, given your experience with this person.
Reframing
It may be helpful to reframe your situation with an emotionally chal-
lenged person as one of conflicting needs (McKay, Rogers, and McKay
1989). For instance, your parent has a need to project his feelings and
deny responsibility for past actions in order to protect his sense of self and minimize the shame he feels. You, on the other hand, have a need for validation of the emotional abuse you suffered and can no longer accept or
identify with his projections if you want to live your own (healthy) life.
When viewed this way, blame no longer seems so necessary—you are no
Guilt, Responsibility, and Forgiveness
77
longer the unwitting victim of the “bad guy.” You have a measure of
control.
Consider the concepts below about personal responsibility, adapted
from McKay, Rogers, and McKay (1989). Keep in mind that these state-
ments may sound radical upon first reading. Also keep in mind that
they’re not designed to invalidate or minimize your past experience, but
rather to help you see your current feelings in a different light.
7 You alone are responsible for the level of satisfaction with the
interactions you choose to have.
7 If your strategies for interacting don’t work, there’s no point in
blaming the other person.
7 The best question to ask yourself isn’t, “Who’s responsible for my
pain?” but “What can I do about it?”
7 You can’t expect others to change or be any different than they
are.
7 Relationships come down to two fundamental choices: adapt or
let go.
7 As an adult, you’re never a victim (though you may have been a
victim as a child, betrayed or neglected by the very people respon-
sible for your care and nurturing).
In a similar vein, in Creating Love, John Bradshaw (1992) writes the following, paraphrasing family therapist Virginia Satir:
. . . when people are highly functional, they have five freedoms
available to them. They have the freedom to:
7 See and hear what they see and hear rather than what
they are supposed to see and hear
7 Think what they think rather than what they are sup-
posed to think
7 Feel what they feel rather than what they are sup-
posed to feel
7 Want what they want rather than what they are sup-
posed to want
7 Imagine what they imagine rather than what they are
supposed to imagine (p. 132)
Think of the five freedoms as not only things you’re free to do, but things you’re responsible to yourself to do!
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STOP AND THINK: Taking Ownership
Complete the following statements about your sense of ownership of your
own thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions. There are no right or
wrong answers; just fill in the blanks with the thoughts that come to
mind:
. I have the right to think. . . , no matter what anyone says about
it.
. I have the right to feel. . . , no mat
ter what anyone says about it.
. I have the right to act. . . , no matter what anyone says about it.
. I may not have control over . . . , but I do have control over. . . .
. I have the ability to make choices about. . . .
. When I. . . , I feel in control of my own life.
Note how you feel after completing these statements. Do you feel
scared, relieved, angry? Write about your reactions in your journal.
Forgiveness
It’s nearly impossible to talk about family dysfunction and negative childhood experiences without raising the question of forgiveness. Questions,
plural, is more like it. What is forgiveness, exactly? How might it help
you? How do you forgive your parent, if you decide you want to?
You can find various concepts of forgiveness in the Bible, in
psychotherapeutic literature, and in the media. It may be more helpful to discuss forgiveness in terms of what it isn’t.
Forgiveness does not entail forgetting or denying your experiences.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting, minimizing, or denying the hurt you
feel. It means acknowledging the wrongdoing, accepting the associated
feelings, and letting go of holding the transgressions against the person responsible. It includes giving up the expectations you held and the beliefs that things should have been different. But no, you don’t forget when you forgive. You simply reduce the hold the hurt has over you.
Forgiveness is not excusing or condoning. By forgiving someone,
you’re not sending a message that the person’s behavior was acceptable or that you approve of it. For less significant infractions, you may be able to excuse or condone some things. Forgiveness is the big gun, called into
play when you have been deeply harmed in some way. It may seem ironic,
Guilt, Responsibility, and Forgiveness
79
but it’s those who have hurt you the most who may be the best candidates
for your forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not a quick fix for an ailing relationship or a tool to
use to avoid your own painful feelings about how you were treated. You
may recall a time when a friend or relative said, “I’m not bitter anymore; I’ve forgiven so-and-so,” when clearly they were still bubbling with anger and pain. Forgiveness is not a mantra to recite over and over in the hopes that one of these times you’ll actually believe it. It’s not a substitute for the difficult work of accepting and feeling painful emotions. Instead, think of it as a reward that you’re able to bestow upon yourself afterward.
Forgiveness does not necessarily mean telling the people you’ve for-
given. You can tell them, should you choose, but in some cases the person you’re forgiving may be long dead or not a part of your life anymore.
That’s fine. Forgiveness is something you do for you. No one else ever
needs to know. You’re under no obligation to inform.
Forgiveness does not entail expressions of remorse, regret, or contri-
tion on the part of the person who hurt you. Some people decide that
they won’t forgive until the person in question has shown some indication of remorse or change, but forgiveness need not rely on anyone else’s
actions or intentions but your own. It’s a unilateral decision—yours.
Forgiveness does not mean being the bigger person, being a martyr,
doing the right thing. Again, you forgive for you, not because someone
says you should.
Forgiveness is not a one time, one shot, all-or-nothing deal. Forgive-
ness isn’t a single event, it’s a process. You can forgive someone for certain deeds but not others. You can decide to forgive slowly, over the
course of weeks, months, or years. You can change your mind about for-
giveness, should your feelings change or new information come to light.
You can even flat-out decide for now and forever that you don’t want to
forgive. It’s up to you.
Beliefs about Forgiveness
We all hold certain beliefs about forgiveness, sayings that loop in
our heads, messages we gleaned from grandparents, a teacher, spiritual
advisors, friends. But they may not be accurate. Have you heard any of
the following?
7 Forgive and forget.
7 Revenge is sweet.
7 Just let it go.
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7 Forgiveness is for wimps, pushovers, and codependents; I stick to
my guns.
7 When you forgive, you’re letting the other person off the hook.
7 Forgiveness means I’ll have to reconcile with the person, and
there’s no way I’m ready to do that.
7 Now’s your chance. If you don’t forgive, you’ll regret it when
your mother/father is gone.
Are there others you’ve heard?
STOP AND THINK:
Forgiveness Myths and Beliefs
. What are your own beliefs about forgiveness and where have they
come from?
. For those that seem like myths, write a new statement that
changes the thought into a healthier one.
. How do you define forgiveness? For example, you might start
with, “Forgiveness is the process by which I . . .”.
Why Forgive?
Valerie, forty-eight, chose to forgive her father because the depth of
her anger was forcing her to “sink in the quicksand.” After she forgave
him, she noticed friends were commenting about “how good I looked and
they wanted to know what I’d done.”
Reasons to forgive include freeing yourself from being defined by
the transgression or your painful, hurt feelings. This is in part what makes forgiveness so difficult. It may seem like if you forgive, you’ll lose a part of yourself. In a way, you do. But it’s a part that you may in fact be better off without since it harbors resentment, grudges, and ill will (sort of like an infected appendix that can burst and harm the rest of the body). Sure
those feelings protect you from future hurt, but they also keep you tense and on guard, closed to others and to new experiences.
Forgiveness can help you find a sense of peace. With forgiveness,
you acknowledge that you too are fallible, imperfect, and do the wrong
thing sometimes. Forgiveness releases you from the spell of your own neg-
ative feelings. It helps you get on with your life. Your energy is no longer sapped by continued reactions to events of the past.
Guilt, Responsibility, and Forgiveness
81
Are You Ready to Forgive?
Forgiveness sounds all well and good, but how do you know if
you’re ready? Valerie didn’t think she was ready to forgive her father, but she happened to meet a follower of Buddhism and began chanting on a
daily basis to relieve some of her anger. She began twice a day, chanting for as little as fifteen minutes to as long as forty-five minutes each time, closing her eyes, visualizing her father and wishing him happiness, health, and well-being. “The tears would gush almost every time,” she says. During one chant, the idea of forgiveness came into her mind. “But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.” After many more days of chanting, she
was able to say them, and she visualized handing her father flowers. “Boy, did that bring the tears.” But it also brought a feeling of peace that only increased with time.
To determine whether or not you’re ready to forgive a parent,
assuming you decide it’s something you want to try, consider the ques-
tions that follow. And remember that there’s no easy formula. These ques-
tions are just intended to prompt your explora
tion of the subject. Keep in mind that you don’t have to forgive all at once—you can decide you’ll forgive someone for certain things and not others, or that you’ll forgive only one or two of the people who were involved in hurting or betraying you.
7 Have you ever forgiven anyone in the past? What were the posi-
tive and negative consequences of your decision?
7 Have you given yourself ample opportunity to acknowledge, feel, and express your hurt, anger, pain, whether to yourself, a friend, or therapist?
7 Have you forgiven yourself first?
7 Is your parent or the person you want to forgive ready to accept
any responsibility? (In reality, this may be one of the things you
set out to forgive—the person’s unwillingness or inability to take
ownership.)
7 How will forgiveness help you? How will you feel as a result?
7 What’s your gut-level reaction to forgiveness?
7 If you’re not ready to forgive now, do you think you might be at
some point?
There’s no right way to forgive. Prayer, meditation, physical activity,
sheer will, or writing (or any other form of creative expression) can help get you started. In addition to using one or more of these physical, emotional, spiritual, and creative outlets, write a list of who you want to
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forgive and, specifically, why. And remember that you can include your-
self, as well as groups of people and systems (for example, a child welfare system that allowed you and your siblings to be separated and placed in
foster homes, or a public assistance system that doesn’t provide adequate psychological services for your parent with BPD). As you begin to develop an attitude of forgiveness, consider whether you want to do it silently or let others know, including perhaps the person you’re forgiving. If you find you have trouble developing a forgiving attitude, that’s fine too. Hurt is a big part of who we all are, and it may be difficult or impossible for you to forgive. It’s better to acknowledge that you’re not ready, even that you
may never be, than to fake it. You will only deny your own feelings that
way, which is the last thing you want to do!
CHAPTER 5
Overcoming Anger
and Resentment
Anger. This powerful emotion tends to have negative connotations. But
anger in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What’s bad about anger are the actions you may impulsively take in response to it, as well as the long-term mental anguish you may feel as a result. Your goal in understanding anger shouldn’t be to learn how never to be angry again. Anger is a legitimate feeling, one often designed for self-protection. And that feeling needs to be recognized and acknowledged just like all of your other
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