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 Explains Borderline Personality Disorder

From a Compass Therapy perspective, the borderline is a flip-flop pattern. That is, the pattern favors one half of the Self Compass at the expense of the other, yet unpredictably flip-flops to its polar opposite.

Borderline-patterned persons primarily exaggerate the Strength and Assertion compass points as “top dogs,” yet make regular swings into the lower compass points of Love and Weakness. They feel boldly entitled in social situations, sweet-talking people to fill the emptiness inside. When others fail to fill this void, they shift into blame and attack mode without warning, aggressively challenging others to meet their insatiable dependency needs.

The borderline pattern’s self-system fluctuates drastically as emotional explosions alternate with the desperate need for reassurance. When caught in the grip of anxiety (Weakness compass point) or longing for nurturance (Love compass point), the person seeks assurance in the manner of the avoidant Worrier or dependent Pleaser patterns. This sends others an SOS signal that elicits a desire to rescue the borderline-patterned person from depression or loneliness. But since the borderline demands assurance that is absolute and comforting that is perfect, these demands are quickly frustrated.

Then self-righteous judgment erupts. Furiously accusing others of neglect and disregard, the behavior then more closely resembles that of the paranoid Arguer and narcissistic Boaster patterns.

Extreme emotional volatility, erratic shifts between aggression and neediness, and a lack of trust in self or others render the borderline’s Self Compass unstable; hence the Compass Therapy term, “borderline Challenger.”

Such shakiness is accentuated by ever-present and contradictory feelings toward others: dependent anger and anxiety-driven superiority. In other words, individuals with a borderline personality pattern experience life as a harrowing roller coaster ride.

For a clinical case study and successful treatment plan for treating the Borderline Personality Disorder, read

Compass Therapy: Christian Psychology in Action

Compass Therapy Provides Hope Over the Lifespan

Compass Therapy offers hope for transformative growth  throughout the lifespan.

The Bible affirms this hope by assuring that God has a positive plan for each person’s life, “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11).

Neuropsychology supports this hope by showing clearly that human personality is malleable. The brain can respond to new learning even into old age.

In the therapeutic alliance the counselor and client are not just working to solve presenting problems, but growing together as persons along life’s way. Through the counselor’s behavioral modeling of caring and courage, humility and esteem, the client comes to experience the interpersonal dimension of hope for fulfilling relationships, giving and receiving love, and if the client chooses, loving and trusting God.

This brings us to a diagram that helps inspire counselees with an overview for their lifetime growth in Christ: “The Actualizing Ascent.” Upon showing the diagram to a counselee, you might say, “This represents the human lifespan.”

You explain that the first half of the curve slopes upward, which represents human development the morning of life, from birth to midlife. The tasks of this phase of life include the acquisition of language and culture, education, experimentation with social roles, identity formation, employment, and marriage and

child-rearing if so chosen.

As shown by the curve’s peak, the middle vertical line designates the high noon of midlife, and sometimes precipitates an identity crisis as people shift from the morning to the afternoon of life. While ambition and ego satisfaction characterize the morning of human development, the afternoon of life requires a more interior search for meaning, wholeness, and interpersonal fulfillment.

Carl Jung reported that virtually all of his patients in the second half of life were grappling with religious concerns. Though an individual may get by the first half of life without cultivating actualizing virtues, the lack of development in the second half of life can lead to confusion, frustration and despair.

It’s almost as if God imbues aging with the power to arrest everyone’s attention -- to finally say, “Look. You really are finite and temporal! You’d better grow in me while there is still time, for without me, you will be nothing.” The down-sloped side of the lifespan curve shows the inexorable decline of bodily health and stamina. Wear and tear in the body shows up in wrinkling skin, slowed metabolism, sagging muscles, stiffened joints, vulnerability to disease, and eventually, diminished mental capacities.

For those who refuse to challenge their rigid personality trends during this time, these trends intensify and take a tragic toll. 

Aggressive persons become crankier and more belligerent, ever more paranoid and chronically suspicious. Dependent persons feel more anxiety-ridden and scattered. Withdrawn people shrivel up like leather left out in the sun too long, adapting to marginal levels of subsistence, barely getting by, and isolating from human contact. Controlling people grow obsessively worried about the things they can’t control, raising their blood pressure and shortening their tempers.

The goods news, though, is that people can grow increasingly wise, patient, and mature in the second half of life. This is represented by the upward-sloped dotted curve, you explain, which shows a person’s potential for actualizing psychological and spiritual growth. 

Indeed, Christians are blessed to know that Christ will help them become more whole through anything they face, and will personally welcome them to everlasting life at the moment of death.

Compass Therapy encourages continued growth and development throughout life. You explain to counselees that individuals who begin growing psychologically and spiritually in their thirties, forties, or fifties tend to keep growing in their sixties, seventies, and beyond.

Since the human personality is malleable, exercising the LAWS of personality (Love and Assertion; Weakness and Strength) and the compass virtues (caring and courage; humility and esteem) promote health and fulfillment even into old age.

Perhaps the single most important attitude that Compass Therapy seeks to impart is that change is normal and the need for growth common to all people. Equipped with an actualizing perspective, stagnation is forsaken in favor of the ongoing transformation of one’s personality and relationships, conjoined with a deepening trust in the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance.

When counselees internalize this health model for hope, grace, and transformation, they learn to face the coming years with increased flexibility and resourcefulness.

The Actualizing Ascent Diagram helps counselees see the importance of exchanging rigidity for rhythm, egocentricity for actualizing development, manipulation for authenticity, and personality   idiosyncrasies for compass virtues.

In this way, the invitation of Christ, the witness of the counselor, and the vision of the counselee converge in the pursuit of a life lived gracefully, accruing in wholeness and purpose. Though there are quintessential tough times and challenging adversities, the overall direction is toward an actualizing ascent in Jesus Christ.

Compass Therapy Promotes Direct Action

Not long ago I was in a therapy session with a twenty year old woman (I'll call her Rachel) who was struggling to recover her battered self-esteem from an eight-month relationship with a domineering and misogynistic man. Of course her boyfriend (I'll call him Bill) had his charm. He bought her a few gifts. He made her laugh sometimes. But that hardly compared to how badly he ran her down in his presence.

We began our work with her describing Bill's many ways of verbally abusing her, at the same time trying to convince her that she deserved this treatment. 

Now in the present session I show her the Self Compass diagram, explaining how people need access to the four compass points of Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength—the LAWS of personality health.

Rachael immediately got it. She said, "I was definitely stuck on the Love compass point, pleasing and placating Bill in every way, always trying to keep the peace, and always wondering why he was so mean and critical. I didn't dare show Assertion or Strength." Likewise, she identified Bill as stuck on the Assertion compass point with relentless aggression. "He always became angry and impatient, especially if I hesitated to do whatever he wanted."

Once we both grasped the relationship dynamics, I offered insights for developing healthy Assertion and Strength in Rachel's personality. But we needed more than insight alone. We needed to exorcise the emotional anxiety from his reign of terror in her life. In the next session, I moved into a Compass Therapy action technique.

"Rachel, our talking so frankly and fully about the emotional wounding you received from Bill is the first step in recovery. But the next step requires action on your part."

"What do I need to do?"

"Just relax where you are sitting and follow my instructions for the next couple of minutes. We're going to go deep in your psyche, where your unconscious has stored hundreds of painful memories—humiliation, false guilt, and fear of displeasing Bill or any other man. We're going to cast these feelings out of you by replacing them with their polar opposite: peace, dignity, and self-love."

Rachel agreed to follow my lead. I guided her into a deep breathing and muscle relaxation sequence, where she tensed and then relaxed muscle groups from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes.

Once she was physically and mentally relaxed, I said, "Now while you continue to melt your muscles and breathe deeply, I'm going to speak to you the way Bill often did, and use the same tone of voice. Your task is to keep relaxing, and come up with new responses that tell him now—based on your newly developing Assertion and Strength—what you wish you had said back then, but were too afraid."

Once she fully understood what we were doing, and did indeed relax, I repeated many of the criticisms that Bill once used, and was pleased to see her standing up to them. She drew from the Strength of our relationship, and trusted the process of Self Compass expressiveness that Bill inhibited. I cheered her on until she actually felt this healthy assertion in her body/mind/spirit.

A session like this isn't an instant fix. But it does have psychological power to generalize into a person's current and future life. And for Rachel it was lifesaving to develop a new sense of peace and self-confidence. She was taking the first steps to learning how to build a self-boundary strong enough to ward off any future encounter with a misogynistic man.

There are twenty-five counseling techniques in one of my books on Compass Therapy. To read the first chapter, 
visit Amazon.com here:

Christian Counseling That Really Works: 

Compass Therapy in Action

Philosophical Underpinnings of Compass Therapy

As the founder of Compass Therapy, I'm occasionally asked why I choose a Christian worldview as the philosophical foundation of this approach to counseling. The obvious answer is that I am a Christian by faith and choice, though in coming to this experience I did try out atheistic and agnostic perceptions of reality. 

Beyond my personal faith, I want to take a stand as a professional psychologist who believes that spirituality is essential to human nature and vital to mental health. I agree with many world religions that are rooted in a community of faith, where people find purpose in suffering, hope in times of loss, and meaning in their sacred scriptures and traditions.

So why am I selective about making Christianity the foundation upon which Compass Therapy arises? Because the Trinity, the core teaching of Christian faith and doctrine, reveals a spiritual reality that underlies all human experience: the reality of One God in Three Persons. In other words, human life and history, deriving from being created in the image of God, is fundamentally interpersonal, just like the divine Trinity is fundamentally interpersonal: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But aren't these religious assertions a far cry from modern psychology and psychotherapy, and shouldn't there be a permanent barrier that separates what happens in a house of worship from what happens in a therapist's office?

I think not.

Whether we like it or not, we are born into a social context of Life Together. Therefore our mental health is linked to the progress we make in getting along with God and other people. No person is an island, and alienation from community (ie. the inability to give and receive love) is a sure mark of psychopathology.

Compass Therapy suggests that developing a healthy personality and fulfilling interpersonal relationships are primary aims of good therapy. Toward that end a therapist uses techniques of psychotherapy to relieve symptoms of anxiety, depression, relationship dysfunction, addiction, or a host of other disorders and psychological disabilities. Yet let's never forget that the primary aim remains the development of personality health and social integration, a pursuit that lasts a lifetime.

For more about this, see

COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY:
 Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet