Treat The Borderline Personality with The Actualizing Equation

For good reason the Borderline Personality Disorder has a reputation for being the most difficult to treat. In some cases the pattern extracts its pound of flesh from the therapist. One of the reasons for this seeming intractability of the pattern has to do with the Actualizing Equation.

The Actualizing Equation

Actualizing Equation

Personality is inextricably bound with relationships. The Actualizing Equation illustrates this dynamic. Counselees can grasp how actualizing growth connects self-identity with community through a bond of reciprocal communication that compass theory calls existential intimacy. In this equation all three components are equally important and intertwined like three cords in a strong rope. The dynamic basis for this way of living is found in many religions and expressed clearly by Christ’s commandment to love God and others as you love yourself.

Therapists can find it useful to see how the Borderline Personality Disorder functions in relationship to the Actualizing Equation:

Borderline Actualizing Equation

As you can see from the graphic, the arrows between identity, intimacy, and community remain intact, ready to carry thoughts and feelings back and forth between the person and others. Yet the Xs strike out identity, intimacy, and community, indicating that what is carried back and forth is chaos, not communication. No wonder the counselee vacillates from feeling like the center of the universe to feeling completely annihilated. 

Borderline Personality Disorder

There is no spiritual core that holds the identity intact, no interior “I am” from which the counselee can think: “I don’t need to approach others in a love-me-or-leave-me mentality. I don’t need to assume every moment that love and hate are the principle forces of the cosmos, or that my existence depends upon another person’s response to me.”

The beginning of growth involves accepting that one indeed has a Borderline pattern, and that one’s own behavior is the true cause of such on-again, off-again, relationships.

As William James observed, life doesn’t change by manipulating outer events or other persons, but by altering one’s inner attitudes. By making a few crucial interior changes, the architecture of the self undergoes a reconstitution. In therapy this may occur very gradually over a long period of time, but sometimes with the Actualizing Equation graphic explained to them, Borderlines can make more rapid progress.

A therapist might say, “Look. You are hard-wired to care deeply about others, and you are very close to solving the equation of loving others as you love yourself. What we need to do is help you develop more realistic interpersonal expectations, coupled with a more relaxed self-presence. You can really make progress in solidifying your identity so that you experience more stable outcomes with intimacy and community.”

Compass Therapy suggests that working toward a health psychology is as important as diagnosing and treating psychopathology. Counselees can understand and transform their personality rigidities within an interpersonal context that helps them develop identity, intimacy, and community. 

For more, read:

COMPASS THERAPY:

Christian Psychology in Action

 

Compass Therapy and Christian Psychology

All theories of counseling include underlying assumptions and core beliefs about God, human nature, personality, and healthy versus unhealthy behavior. Compass Therapy holds that people are related to the personal, holy, and loving Creator known through the Christian faith.

This does not exclude other perceptions of God or other ways of construing human values within the therapeutic setting. It simply underscores the fact that since cardinal values of Christianity include compassion, empathy for those who suffer, and motivation to heal and transform persons who have lost their ways, Christian psychology offers a viable worldview from which to practice counseling and psychotherapy.

Compass Therapy weds faith and science. The facets of psychology pertinent to the healing of persons include motivation, sensation and perception, learning and memory, personality and social integration, and lifespan development. All are grounded in a God who understands and utilizes counseling and therapy as yet another means of calling people to exercise freedom rightly and benefit from the identity, intimacy, and community he has invited them to know.

From a Christian perspective, Christ embraces people in need, seeking to transform their personal crises through the power of the Holy Spirit present within the alliance of therapist and counselee (Montgomery, 2006, pp. 71-74).

It's as though the Holy Spirit says to any therapist who is open, “Come. Let us work together with your counselee. Let me inspire you with insight and direction to help tame your counselee’s anxiety and heal their pain. Have courage in guiding them to give up the patterns that are defeating them: the manipulations of pleasing, placating, seducing, calculating, controlling, arguing, intimidating, avoiding, or withdrawing. Through a therapeutic bond that draws upon My wisdom, help them find a pathway that leads to flexibility, discerning love, and personal power without guile.”

If your therapeutic experience is anything like mine over the past thirty years, you may have noticed that the Trinity comforts and heals beyond religious category or human constraint, and that the Holy Spirit does indeed enhance your effectiveness as a healer of the soul.

To learn more, see:  

Compass Therapy: Christian Psychology in Action

Welcome to Compass Therapy!

   

The Compass Therapy approach integrates a model of counseling and therapy with Christian orthodoxy. I pray that it enhances your counseling practice or quest for self-knowledge.

   I recall the years in which I studied or received supervision in different approaches to counseling and therapy. Psychoanalytic. Psychodrama. Existential. Gestalt. Transactional analysis. Family systems. Cognitive-behavioral. I read theory and learned techniques, while searching Scripture and praying for a viable integration with my Christian beliefs. Some theories and techniques enriched my way of understanding and helping others. Others didn’t. I kept what worked, and what proved compatible with Christian orthodoxy. 

 For instance, while I found aspects of Freud’s theory of value, I had to leave other parts behind. The belief in the unconscious as a dark and pervasive instinctual force contradicted my experience of people’s resiliency and resourcefulness in the counseling process—not to mention the ingenious ways I sensed the Holy Spirit helping people rebound from terrible pain or loss.

 Gradually, I evolved the bedrock assumption of Compass Therapy: the positive gains of good counseling are an amalgamation of therapeutic principles empowered by Christ’s healing love. Ultimately, therapeutic psychology and the Lord work together in the counseling process, whether or not there are overt references to Christianity. The Holy Spirit blesses people who humble themselves in seeking a greater wholeness.

 Whether you are a veteran therapist, student of counseling, or person undergoing therapy, I invite you to explore and enjoy the benefits of Compass Therapy provided in future posts.   

To view the Compass Therapy book, click:

COMPASS THERAPY: CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION