the young and the restless

image credit...ddmag.tumblr.com

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental health condition in which a person has long-term patterns of unstable or turbulent emotions. These inner experiences often result in impulsive actions and chaotic relationships with other people.

Symptoms

Persons with BPD are often uncertain about their identity. As a result, their interests and values can change rapidly. They also tend to view things in terms of extremes, such as either all good or all bad. Their views of other people can change quickly. A person who is looked up to one day may be looked down on the next day. These suddenly shifting feelings often lead to intense and unstable relationships.

Other symptoms of BPD include:

• Intense fear of being abandoned
• Cannot tolerate being alone
• Frequent feelings of emptiness and boredom
• Frequent displays of inappropriate anger
• Impulsiveness, such as with substance abuse or sexual relationships
• Repeated crises and acts of self-injury, such as wrist cutting or overdosing

Narcissistic personality disorder is a condition in which people have an excessive sense of self-importance, an extreme preoccupation with themselves, and lack of empathy for others.

Symptoms

A person with narcissistic personality disorder may:

• React to criticism with rage, shame, or humiliation
• Take advantage of other people to achieve his or her own goals
• Have excessive feelings of self-importance
• Exaggerate achievements and talents
• Be preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, beauty, intelligence, or ideal love
• Have unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment
• Need constant attention and admiration
• Disregard the feelings of others, and have little ability to feel empathy
• Have obsessive self-interest
• Pursue mainly selfish goals
  
  
  as i continue to work with others who are addressing addiction and/or seeking recovery, a very simple yet profound realization has come into view. those who are new to recovery often have not had the time nor the inclination to experience nor even consider what calm, peace, and serenity are. most of the time those attributes may not even be remotely in view. what seems more likely to the beginning of recovery is a tendency to lean towards chaos and drama for a feeling of comfort. since their lives and their brains have probably been steeped in crazy for a period of time, that is where they tend to take encounters,  because that is what is most familiar.

  
  

  interestingly, it becomes necessary to allow people the space to have their own discovery process around this, without strong redirection and hopefully without doing do much damage as they strive to rule planet chaos. this is ideally what i like to do. but man- it is not always how the story plays. often, for me, my patience gets tried or my own history at the theatre of the absurd goes into revival and i seem to intervene.
  
  i cannot know just how this small reveal will shift my days, nor can i know if that shift will have an impact on those i encounter. i do believe that a new level of empathy has been ushered in. i know that the soap opera of new recovery will be seen in a new light- hd if you will. stay tuned.

  
  

  “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”