Self Mutilation is the Language of Pain Associated With Borderline Personality Disorder
Self-mutilation, for many who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), is a learned language of profound pain. It is a primordial scream for help. It is
the apex of needing to be heard, validated, and soothed. It is one of the most
prolific and anguished expressions of borderline pain, pain that has otherwise been abandoned. It is self-defeating and holds you hostage to the pain of the false self – to the pain that you can’t heal by further wounding and re-wounding your body and your precious soul.
Self mutilation is the way many with BPD transfer the abandoned pain of BPD from its deep intra-psychic (subconscious) roots to the light of day. Borderlines channel this intolerable emotional pain that they do not know how to cope with into physical pain which is much more understandable. Borderlines understand suffering. The self abuse of self mutilation takes the borderline’s abandonment trauma (Masterson) from the mind to the body. Borderlines use their bodies to express what is too unsafe and what feels annihilating to even begin to absorb in a conscious psychological way. Sadly, however, this transfer of psychological pain into physical pain does nothing to actually begin to get in touch with abandonment trauma in ways that can mean learning, through therapy, to learn the skills necessary to first tolerate the distress of the pain, and then secondly, work at resolving it.
