Borderlines have written to me to tell me that my videos about borderline personality disorder trigger them.

They develop suicidal ideation.

They begin to realize that their life is not worth living because they are empty inside, because they are dysregulated, because there’s no hope.

I haven’t said any of these things.

The borderline’s life is worth living.

Let’s start with the fact that the prognosis for borderline personality disorder is actually very good.

It’s much better than narcissistic personality disorder, bipolar disorder, let alone schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, and a host of other mental health issues.

More than 80% of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder lose the diagnosis by the time they’re 45 years old.

Additionally, they are very effective treatment modalities, very effective therapies for borderline personality disorder, most notably dialectical behavior therapy and schema therapy and so on.

Why the despair?

I don’t understand.

More than 50% of people with borderline personality disorder diagnosis who attend DBT essentially are healed and cured within one year.

DBT is the most efficacious treatment modality anywhere for anything in mental health.

If you look at these facts, there’s no reason for desperation.

There’s no reason for giving up.

But I think there’s more to it than this.

Even the borderline personality organization, even the borderline disorder itself, on one hand is a problem, is a curse, is an obstacle, is a hindrance to tackle, is an impediment to happy life.

Yes, no one is disputing this, least of all me.

And yes, it requires medication, it requires talk therapy, it requires other forms of treatment, it requires social support, and it requires above all patients, infinite patients, because time heals everything.

And in the case of borderline personality disorder, the remission of the disease, because it is a disease.

The remission of the disease is marvelous, is spontaneous, is almost inevitable and inexorable.

By the time you are 45 or 50, it’s gone.

Now you could say 45, 50 is too late, I will have wasted my life, I will have destroyed everything and so on and so forth.

Well, you do have options prior to age 45, such as treatment, such as finding the right partner.

So absolutely don’t give up, don’t give up because the borderline’s life is not only worth living, it’s a rich endowment, it’s a curse, but in many ways it’s also a blessing.

Let me try to explain what I mean.

I call it the CIE acronym.

No, not CIA, CIE, creativity, intensity, enlightenment.

Start with creativity.

Borderline traits or borderline personality disorder, this organization is closely associated with a personality trait known as psychoticism, one of ISENC’s personality factor model.

Psychoticism, which is very common among people with borderline personality disorder, is the close cousin, the first cousin of creativity.

People with borderline personality disorder, therefore, are very often extremely creative.

And what is more beautiful than creating, creation, becoming a creator?

What’s more rewarding?

What more reason to live do you require?

Generating new things for your benefit and the benefit of others.

Creativity is a hallmark of borderline personality disorder.

Next, intensity.

The borderline experiences her life, her emotions, or his life and his emotions, half of all borderlines are men.

Borderlines experience their lives and their emotions intensely.

Their lives are filled with colors, with eruptions.

Calling it dysregulation is a mere label and it’s a denigrating, pejorative label.

But the truth is that the borderline experiences her existence the way no healthy person can.

The lives of healthy people are dreary and drab and boring in comparison to the borderline’s life.

Now, of course, there’s a price to pay for this.

There’s a price to pay for intensity, even when it is totally healthy, let alone when some of its roots are pathological.

But still, the borderline has a profound intimate relationship with life.

The borderline is overwhelmed by her own wealth of emotions, by her own internal processes.

That’s quite true.

But because of that, she is intimately and intricately acquainted with them.

She goes through life tasting and smelling and digesting and getting immersed in every element, component, ingredient.

Her life is a technicolor movie, while the lives of healthy people are black and white.

Now, that’s not always a positive thing, but I know many healthy people who would give up a lot just in order to be able to experience their lives with such intensity, such commitment, such involvement, such immersion, such voluptuous contact or connection.

This is what’s missing in modern life.

Borderline in this sense is a throwback to a previous age of romantics and idealists.

There’s beauty in this.

The borderline is beautiful.

It’s the reification of an aesthetics of libido, a libidinal aesthetics.

The borderline is the force of life embodied incarnate.

She goes through the existence of the world and of others, and she lights them up.

She has the power to give others stimulation, motivation, and satisfaction or gratification.

It’s a huge gift.

Creativity, intensity.

And the last gift is enlightenment, precisely because the borderline is empty inside.

She is like a receptacle, like a container, open to taste, open to experience, open to amalgamate and aggregate, open to divest herself of what other people call ego.

She is open.

That’s why borderlines are very adventurous and very dramatic because they are very much like a blank canvas on which others can paint.

The borderline is there to absorb everything, to assimilate, to integrate.

The borderline is like a Rorschach test, like a Ligmus test.

She is a catalyst of wisdom and enlightenment in others.

And sometimes this comes at a horrible price.

The borderline can be very hurtful, very damaging, can break you apart.

But there is learning in loss.

There is growth in pain.

There is personal evolution in hurt.

The borderline brings on these alchemical processes of the mind, in herself and in others.

And because she is so wide open, sorry for the metaphor, because she’s so wide open and because she has no core or no stable core, she resonates like no one else.

She is able to merge and fuse not only in bad ways but in good ways.

She is able to bring out in others their core, their identity, their dreams.

In this sense, borderlines are kind of a dream come true.

Now I’m not idealizing people with borderline personality disorder.

As I’ve just said, sharing your life with the borderline, sharing even a relationship with the borderline is an onerous experience.

It’s difficult.

The borderline is high maintenance.

The cost is sometimes catastrophic.

But the borderline is a creature of light because she is so ephemeral.

She is vapor, not flesh.

And she’s creative and she intense.

And this can drive her partner and everyone around her to unusual feats of creativity and innovation and self-reflection and introspection and growth.

So if I were a borderline, I would never consider my life as worthless and myself as unlovable or beyond redemption or incorrigible.

Borderlines have a place in the world.

Otherwise evolution would not have allowed borderline to evolve and to become as widespread as it is.

Borderlines, I think, catalyze processes.

They’re there and in their presence things happen.

That’s why borderlines and narcissists are considered dramatic, the dramatic, erratic cluster.

Borderlines are not only bad or mad or sad.

They’re way more than that.

And when the mission is accomplished, there’s always hope for healing, spontaneous remission, or through therapy.

No need to be desperate at all.

At all.

I think the borderline’s life is worth living to the fullest and to the maximum.