Buddha and the Borderline

by Kiera Van Gelder

  “The Buddha and the Borderline is a strikingly candid and comprehensive account of the author’s personal experiences of the effects of borderline personality disorder spanning more than two decades. Van Gelder is a very well informed, engaging, and talented writer. She reveals the multiple and complex symptoms of borderline disorder as manifested in her life with great honesty, revealing the devastating pain with moving and insightful vignettes that are tempered on occasion with a finely tuned sense of humor. This is a must-read for people with this disorder, their families and loved ones, and mental health professionals.”

  —Robert O. Friedel, MD, author of Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified

  “The Buddha and the Borderline is a masterpiece. Kiera shares her road to recovery in a captivating way that brings a unique understanding to a confusing, challenging, and controversial disorder. Having the privilege to personally know Kiera, I applaud her on so many levels, least of all this must-read book. She is an inspiration to all who strive and hope for recovery from borderline personality disorder.”

  —Perry D. Hoffman Ph.D., president of the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder (NEA-BPD)

  “Kiera’s book is destined to become a classic in the growing literature on borderline personality disorder. I expected to get a somber account of a transformation from suffering to enlightenment, but the book I read was not only entirely entertaining and revealing, but also had me up way past my bedtime in stitches. The Buddha and the Borderline is seriously funny, authentic, and sublime in its wisdom. The book embodies the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and integrates the world of core unrelenting suffering with the world of freedom from suffering. Transcendent stuff.”

  —Blaise Aguirre, MD, medical director of the Adolescent Dialectical Behavior Therapy Residential Program at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA

  “Kiera creates a window into the soul of one coming to grips with severe mental illness. Fully exposed, she shows us the pain, pleasure, and finally, the redemption of the borderline experience. Her gripping story sheds new light upon one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized of all human conditions, and for that, I am deeply grateful. Her words will quite possibly be shocking to some, but will validate and comfort those with the disorder and those who are trying to understand them. Welcome to our world: the pain, shame, and pleasure, and then, finally, the insight and skill-building that leads to healing, love, and happiness. Kiera captures the experience brilliantly.”

  —Tami Green, internationally recognized speaker, life coach and advocate for those in recovery from mental illness.

  “The Buddha and the Borderline is a gripping, authentic, and ultimately inspiring portrayal of one woman’s triumph over borderline personality disorder. An intriguing, riveting, and compelling read, the depth and complexity of both character and story are to be savored. Kiera Van Gelder has shared the private depths of her heart and soul and, in doing so, has bestowed upon the reader a great and sacred gift.”

  —Roy Krawitz, author of Borderline Personality Disorder: The Facts

  “A very educational and insightful look into the inner world of borderline personality disorder and its treatment. Kiera Van Gelder’s witty tone and engaging journey brilliantly chronicles the dialectic of profound suffering and how that suffering can be transformed into a life worth living.”

  —A. J. Mahari, author of Life Coach and Mental Health Coach

  “The Buddha and the Borderline by Kiera Van Gelder is captivating, literary, and insightful. Van Gelder’s use of metaphor enhances the haunting nature of her journey through life. As I read the book, I recognized her pain, and cheered her on. Her insights led me to a better understanding of myself and the nature of borderline personality disorder.”

  —Lisa Dietz, owner of www.DBTSelfHelp.com

  “Out of a profoundly painful experience, Kiera Van Gelder has written a brave and hopeful book exploring her recovery from borderline personality disorder. Kiera’s story will undoubtedly touch countless lives and be a source of inspiration to those who have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, their families, and the mental health professionals who play a crucial role in the complex nexus of education, treatment, and support. The Buddha and the Borderline is a compelling and invaluable narrative for anyone wanting to learn more about the difficult, yet ultimately rewarding, process of recovery.”

  —Amanda L. Smith, Florida Borderline Personality Disorder Association

  “The Buddha and the Borderline is a cross between Girl, Interrupted and Bridget Jones’s Diary. While reading it, I found myself admiring Kiera’s talent for vividly describing borderline hopelessness and pain while keeping me laughing with her tales of life as a ‘lonely and increasingly horny receptionist.’ While this book has something for everyone, Kiera’s detailed account of how she recovered from this deadly disorder will be enormously inspiring to people with borderline personality disorder and their family members.”

  —Randi Kreger, author of Stop Walking on Eggshells and The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook

  “Kiera Van Gelder’s The Buddha and the Borderline is a remarkably clear, coherent, and candid description of the author’s turbulent internal world and chaotic life, as well as a mental health system that can be inconsistent and contradictory. As she searches for a path to recovery, she finds that the way has not been well established and shares her journey of building the very road that she wishes to travel. This groundbreaking book provides a much-needed and highly personal example of how recovery can occur, making it a very generous and significant contribution to the field.”

  —Seth R. Axelrod, Ph.D., associate professor in the department of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine

  “With a unique blend of wit and raw honesty, Kiera Van Gelder draws her readers into the world of borderline personality disorder. Seeing Kiera’s roller coaster of emotions and experiences helps those of us without borderline view the world through the eyes and mind of someone grappling with an illness that can be devastating. Her constant hard work toward recovery can open minds and doors, helping to eliminate the stigma attached to borderline personality disorder and serve as a beacon of hope to those living with it.”

  —Jennifer Fisher, mental health patient advocate and former manager of the Borderline Personality Disorder Resource Center

  “With wit, clarity, and candor about her sex life, Kiera chronicles her coping with the pain and emptiness of borderline personality disorder while proving that the road to recovery is usually under construction.”

  —Jim Payne, board member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness

  “Brilliant and illuminating. Kiera Van Gelder pulled herself out of the devastation that is borderline personality disorder, an illness so difficult, most therapists won’t treat it. Her remarkable journey to find stability and purpose in her life is insightful and inspiring.”

  —Bill Lichtenstein, president of Lichtenstein Creative Media in Cambridge, MA

  Publisher’s Note

  This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

  The Buddha and the Borderline is a work of nonfiction but the author has on occasion changed identifying characteristics of certain people and events in order to protect the privacy of those involved.

  Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

  Copyright © 2010 by Kiera Van Gelder

  New Harbinger Publications, In
c.

  5674 Shattuck Avenue

  Oakland, CA

  www.newharbinger.com

  All Rights Reserved

  Acquired by Catharine SutkerCover design by Amy Shoup Edited by Jasmine Star

  * * *

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as:

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Van Gelder, Kiera.

  The Buddha and the borderline : my recovery from borderline personality disorder through dialectical behavior therapy, Buddhism, and online dating / Kiera Van Gelder.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  Epub ISBN: 9781608820603

  ISBN 978-1-57224-710-9

  1. Borderline personality disorder. 2. Dialectical behavior therapy. 3. Meditation--Therapeutic use. I. Title.

  RC569.5.B67V36

  616.85’852--dc22

  To Raymond Hartman, Renee Rushnawitz, and Saul Rosenthal—the other Three Jewels.

  Contents

  Prologue (1985)

  Part 1 - Love Bird

  1. Mentally Ill, Suicidal Drug Addict

  2. Girl, Recycled

  3. The Diagnosis That Dares Not Speak Its Name

  4. Mindfulness and the Big Mac

  5. Saviors

  6. Full Circle

  Part 2 - Last Resort

  7. Short-Term Solutions

  8. Dancing with Demons

  9. Flying the Coop

  10. Chalice of the Hopeless

  11. Safety

  Part 3 - Shifts in Light

  12. Keys

  13. Leaving the Dysregulation Zone

  14. No Blow Jobs on the First Date

  15. Empty Room

  16. Learning to Ride

  Part 4 - Emergence

  17. First Touch

  18. Exposure

  19. Being More Than One Thing

  20. Control and Blame

  21. Crossing the Mom Divide

  22. The Tipping Point

  Part 5 - Transformation of Suffering

  23. Taking Refuge

  24. Reversals

  25. Bad Buddhist

  26. Vajrayana

  27. The Meat Man

  28. Mirror of True Nature

  Acknowledgments

  Resources

  References

  Prologue (1985)

  I am fifteen when I meet a boy named Jimmy at the summer arts program. We smoke hash in the graveyard at the far end of the Bennington campus. We dare each other to order margaritas at the local Mexican restaurant, and when we are actually served, share salty kisses over plates of rice and beans. I give him a blow job in the back of a classroom, and he says he has feelings for me but he doesn’t know what they are. Jimmy is pale and wears eyeliner and is as close to a boyfriend as I’ve ever gotten. When he confesses he has a “real” girlfriend back in New York, I spend a long evening sniffing liquid paper out of a plastic bag. Passing out and waking up to the exploding lights in my head, I finally throw up my dinner.

  I consider cutting off my pinkie finger and giving it to him. I’d go to the art studio where they have those paper cutters with three-foot blades. Lop it off, wrap it up. Here. Look what you’ve done to me. You’re leaving me, and taking me with you. But I like my fingers. Even the somewhat useless pinkies.

  So instead I make myself bleed, as I’ve learned to do. The instrument can’t be too sharp, or it will go too deep and sever important bits. It can’t be so blunt as to be useless. I like the thin, flexible razor blades that can be taken off a disposable plastic shaver—ubiquitous and easy to remove from the plastic casing. I enjoy the slide of metal into giving skin. Each line eases the rage and sharpens the colors of the room. Regular cutting means you have to rotate the areas, so as not to overtax the skin too much: forearm, then wrist, then upper arm, then back to the forearm. After the razor passes over, there’s a moment before the blood when the faintest film of clear liquid rises, as though the flesh itself is weeping for you. Then garnet beads of blood rise and elongate into the thin tracks you’ve laid between pain and release.

  I wipe and blot the wounds with the calm patience that always follows the bloodletting and think, I could paint with this. I could write with this. I must have cut a lot—enough blood to fill five notebook pages with finger-painted words: “Please.” “Don’t leave me.” “I need you.” I put the wet pages on the floor to dry. In the morning, the large words are maroon and waxy, with my fingerprints captured at the beginning and end of each letter’s stroke. The pages go into an envelope with Jimmy’s name, and the letter is placed on his bed in the neighboring dorm. I have known him two weeks.

  After lunch, I am pulled from poetry class by the counselor. In a degree-paneled office, the stack of papers sits on the desk like a thesis I must now defend. The counselor asks me why I’d do such a thing. I cannot explain it. I have no words. “Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment” does not readily come to mind. And if this counselor sees borderline personality disorder, he doesn’t say it.

  He calls my mother. She drives to the campus and they talk. Then she goes back home.

  I remain at the program but must agree to check in with the counselor during the last two weeks. He gives me back the blood letter, perhaps to remind me that it holds a part of myself that I am always inflicting on others, a part of myself I am always throwing away.

  Years later I ask my mother, “What were you thinking when you drove away?”

  She says, “Adolescence is always difficult; I thought maybe it was just a phase.” She says, “I didn’t know what to do; the whole thing was overwhelming.” She says, “The counselor told me you would be okay.”

  The truth is, I have borderline personality disorder. But it will take many therapists, many diagnoses, many medications, and many treatments before a name is put to this suffering and I can start down the path to recovery.

  This is the story of how it happened.

  Borderline Personality Disorder:

  A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

  Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment;

  A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation;

  Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self;

  Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating);

  Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior;

  Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days);

  Chronic feelings of emptiness;

  Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights);

  Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association 2000)

  1

  Mentally Ill, Suicidal Drug Addict

  Beginnings have never been too hard for me: to shape the words of a first line or to choose the right outfit—to pull off a good first act. For me, it’s always after the entrance that things deteriorate, especially in relationships. Fifteen years after the episode with Jimmy, I’ve pulled myself together somewhat. No more drinking until I puke in men’s laps. No more taking bottles of pills and being hospitalized. If you met me, you’d never suspect the suicide attempts, hospitalizations, and diagnoses. But if you saw me in a relationship, you’d know something isn’t quite right. I’m always good in the beginning, but after
that first flush of romance, my lipstick will be smeared like a clown’s and I’ll revert to the dismay of a child lost in the department store, curled up and wailing on the floor.

  It’s no different with Bennet, who I meet when I’m thirty. He’s a musician and a carpenter, with a lanky body habitually clothed in jeans and T-shirts, his pointy hipster sideburns and flop of brown hair making him seem boyish, even though he’s almost a decade older than I am. When we meet, I’m wearing a corset, a latex skirt, and black platform boots, which would be appropriate for a night club, but not the Narcotics Anonymous (NA) convention dance we’re both attending. Bennet, however, isn’t fazed—not by my outfit, and not when I say to him, “You know I’m fucked-up.”

  “We both are,” he grins. “Who here isn’t a mentally ill, suicidal drug addict?” He gestures around the auditorium. We leave the dance, walk through the parking lot, and end up on a small plot of grass with a single tree. We hold each other for an hour and kiss, and since we’ve discovered each other at NA, where it’s often easy to mistake honesty for sanity, having sex seems like a reasonable thing to do.

  It’s a familiar bondage. As soon as he touches me, Bennet becomes my universal reference point. His body grounds me, and his voice brings me back from the various ledges I perch on. He seems okay with my need, but there is one serious complication, one fatal flaw that will eventually cause me so much pain I’ll scream until I lose my voice: Alexis. Bennet’s ex-girlfriend.

  Alexis’s name makes me think of electricity and axes and Greek goddesses. A heavy-lidded beauty, strongly opinionated, and smart, with a degree in film studies from art school, she plays the bass and wears combat boots, and, more to the point, not only was she Bennet’s girlfriend for ten years, now that she’s his ex, she still lives with him. Their apartment is in Lowell, an old Massachusetts mill town struggling to revive itself. Their place is filled with guitars, amplifiers, and art. Together, Alexis and Bennet own Bancha, a plump, colorful lovebird who lives in a wire cage suspended from the kitchen ceiling. Often, after the three of us eat dinner, Bennet or Alexis will open the cage and let Bancha frolic under a drizzling water faucet. She flies awkwardly around the kitchen and, landing on their shoulders, makes joyful little noises while she nuzzles their ears as though she has a wet nose instead of a razor-sharp beak. The beak, she reserves for me.