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1. 00:00 line mother. And it wasn’t well into my adulthood while I was in therapy that I
2. 00:06 came to the realization on my own, which is a whole other discussion. But um over the years, you know, I’ve
3. 00:14 I’ve had friends and colleagues and acquaintances who have in the course of discussing their own difficult mothers would out outlay a kind of similar set
4. 00:25 of traits or behaviors and then I would ask maybe one or two questions and I would say, you know, you might really
5. 00:31 want to look into the borderline personality and and the borderline mother in particular. Um, with one of them, it was like a light went off and
6. 00:42 that person went and did some reading and came back and was like, “Yeah, yeah.” Um, and it’s now one of our
7. 00:48 favorite topics of discussion, our borderline moms. Anyway, joining me now is Sam Vachnan. He is a
8. 00:57 professor of clinical psychology at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies. He has authored
9. 01:04 several books, Malignant Self-Love, The Narcissist Mother, Narcissistic and Psychopathic Parents and Their Children, to name but a few. So, Professor
10. 01:15 Vachnan, thank you for joining us on The Nerve for this discussion. Thank you for having me. Please call me
11. 01:21 Sam. Better use of the time. Oh, okay. Well, thank you, Sam. Um, first I’d like to ask you, um, and I’m going to pause here, you
12. 01:32 guys. I need to see him on my screen, please. Why would you want to? Thank you. I want to see you so I can
13. 01:39 have a much better conversation with you. Um, Dr. Vachn, um, I suppose
14. 01:46 the first question I have for you is what constitutes a borderline? And I
15. 01:52 know there there are many different traits and not all border lines exhibit all of them. It can be some of them. But
16. 01:58 if you suspect that you might be the product of a borderline mother. Um what would be the significant tells? First of all, it is important to realize
17. 02:10 that 80% of humanity that’s 80% of humanity do not accept the diagnosis of
18. 02:16 borderline personality disorder. The diagnostic manual that is used by four
19. 02:22 fifth of humanity is known as international classification of diseases ICD and it does not contain such a
20. 02:30 diagnosis. So are you saying humanity or are you saying the psychiatric profession 80% of humanity in 80% how do you what’s the how do we know that I mean I can’t recall seeing a poll
21. 02:42 because the ICD is used by 80% of humanity. There are two competing diagnostic manuals.
22. 02:48 Okay. One of them, one of them is called the diagnostic and statistical manual known by its acronym the DSM
23. 02:55 which we here in the west use which we which is used mainly in North America actually.
24. 03:01 Mhm. Oh really? Okay. And the other one is the ICD, international classification of diseases. It’s published by the World
25. 03:07 Health Organization and the ICD is used in four fifths of the globe. And in the
26. 03:14 ICD and in the ICD there’s no borderline personality disorder. Okay. So I would I would say you and I
27. 03:20 are among that cohort that firmly believe that borderline personality disorder exists.
28. 03:26 Let’s live to tell the tale. Yeah. Let me let me qualify what I’ve just said. No one disputes the fact that
29. 03:32 there is something um something called borderline pattern or borderline
30. 03:38 personality organization. No one is disputing this. The debate is whether this is a variant of perhaps complex trauma or whether it’s merely a problem with the regulation of emotions or so
31. 03:51 there’s a lot of academic debate as to what it is. But to answer your question finally, yes,
32. 03:57 there are six uh I think there are six um prominent clinical features of someone who would
33. 04:04 be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in the United States. The first one I think is a sense of innate emptiness, a void, a black hole that is all
34. 04:15 consuming from the inside. Mhm. The second is what we call emotion
35. 04:21 dysregulation or effective liability. The inability to control your emotions. They overwhelm you. They drown you.
36. 04:28 You are unable to regulate yourself. The second uh the third feature is constant
37. 04:34 suicidal ideiation, constant suicidal thinking and in 11% of the cases
38. 04:40 actually committing suicide. So suicide is a prominent feature of borderline and
39. 04:47 vast majority of border lines self-mutilate one way or another self harm in in some way. The next feature is
40. 04:56 anger. There’s rage and fury in borderline unlike in narcissism. In narcissism we
41. 05:03 have narcissistic rage. But narcissistic rage is reactive. If you challenge a narcissist, if you undermine the narcissist, if then the narcissist may rage upon you. But in the case of
42. 05:15 borderline personality disorder, it’s a background noise. It’s always there. The borderline is always angry, always on
43. 05:21 the verge of fury. You know the next feature is intense relationships
44. 05:27 especially intimate relationships but not only relationships that involve
45. 05:34 highs and lows cycles of idealize idealization and devaluation of the partner h and what we call approach avoidance. I love I I I hate you. Don’t
46. 05:46 leave me. This kind of Yes. And so Yes. And the final feature, I’m trying to be
47. 05:52 as brief as I can. The final feature is what we call the twin anxieties. The twin anxieties are mutually exclusive.
48. 06:00 The borderline um is terrified of being abandoned and rejected. There is what we
49. 06:06 call separation insecurity or abandonment anxiety in colloquial terms.
50. 06:12 But on the other hand, she or he is equally terrified of being intimate, of
51. 06:19 being engulf engulfed and consumed by love. So there’s approach, there’s falling in
52. 06:26 love, lirance, infatuation, idealization and so on. And then when the other party responds in kind, when intimacy is on offer, when love is in the air, the
53. 06:37 borderline runs away. She’s terrified of the of the outcome of intimacy. So we call it the twin
54. 06:44 anxieties. Abandonment anxiety versus engulfment anxiety. These are the key features. There are others but these are the key ones. And not again not every borderline will present with all of them. For example, I I I can for my childhood um which was
55. 07:00 normalized in the house. It was often described as that’s just the way she is and we just all deal with it. So from a
56. 07:08 as a little child, you know, I could be sitting at my kitchen table doing my homework and it would be completely
57. 07:14 quiet and in the kitchen my mother would be making dinner and out of nowhere like bam, you know, a pan would slam down on
58. 07:21 the rage and it would be she would be swearing and cursing and yelling and you would jump out of your skin going, “What
59. 07:27 just happened? What did I do?” And then it would just be like, “Forget that ever happened.” Um, and then you could flash
60. 07:33 forward to teenage years, adulthood, where um, my mom would engage in what’s
61. 07:39 called, I believe, if I’m using this term properly, splitting, where one sibling is the good sibling and one sibling is the bad sibling. And you’re constantly trying to triangulate and
62. 07:52 make alliances with your own children. And, you know, thirdly, it would it would be those similar things of, you
63. 07:58 know, I hate you, don’t leave me. um when whenever it comes to a child of a
64. 08:06 borderline mother that that that is who they may be dealing with. I used to refer to my mother as a non-negotiable
65. 08:12 personality before I had the actual nomenclature for what was wrong with her
66. 08:18 or what plagued her. What does one begin to do when this this realization strikes
67. 08:26 you? You can’t do much as a child. Of course, as a child, um, the borderline
68. 08:33 parentifies you. She expects Yes. She expects you to regulate her emotions. She expects you to stabilize
69. 08:40 stabilize her moods. She, in other words, she renders you the parent and she becomes childlike. I’m
70. 08:48 saying she, although currently half of all border lines, diagnosed border lines are men. So, this is really gender bias.
71. 08:56 Yeah. So um parentification is a major a major issue. This confluence of emotional dysregulation or effective liability inability to control emotions coupled
72. 09:09 coupled with everpresent anger. That’s what you have described because the anger is not reactive. It’s not a reaction to something outside. It’s a reaction to something inside.
73. 09:21 These internal dynamics dictate the eruptions. It’s like a volcano. It’s utterly unpredictable.
74. 09:29 And the twin anxieties simply mean that the attachment that the mother fosters
75. 09:35 or the mother engenders in the child is insecure. Children of people with cluster B
76. 09:41 personality disorders, narcissist, border lines and so on. They grow up to be insecure as far as attachments go.
77. 09:48 They they’re always a bit suspicious, a bit paranoid, a bit hypervigilant, expecting the worst, catastrophizing and so on so forth. There’s a legacy of the borderline mother or the borderline
78. 10:00 father. Yes. But mother mostly it is mostly mothers and
79. 10:06 you know I it is there is an overlap for sure of at least in my mother’s case you know I think they call them coorbidities a borderline will often display narcissistic personality disorder uh
80. 10:18 behaviors you know everything was really organized at least in my household growing up on placating and pleasing the
81. 10:26 mother at the expense of anybody else’s real wants or needs. needs. Um, and I
82. 10:32 think probably part of the collateral damage as well is that border lines tend to attract it in my just in my experience equally
83. 10:43 damaged partners who can’t quite recognize or are avoidant as to what may be going on in the home. Can you speak to that a little bit? The main preoccupation of people with
84. 10:55 borderline personality disorder is the craving, the desire to put an end to the
85. 11:02 internal mayhem and chaos and tumult. And so they seek what we call external
86. 11:08 regulation. They seek a figure, someone the rock, they call they call it the
87. 11:14 rock. They they they want to find someone who would be able to stabilize their moods, regulate their emotions, afford them with a sense of certainty and determinacy,
88. 11:25 always be there for them, um never abandon them and so on so forth.
89. 11:32 And they pick they tend to pick up people who exude a sense of self-confidence, overwhelming self-confidence and charisma, which is a great description of narcissists. It’s
90. 11:44 exactly what narcissist do. And so they tend to pair up with narcissists and psychopaths regrettably
91. 11:50 as well. Oh, really? Yeah. Because psychopaths are the same. Psychopaths exude this this magnetism
92. 11:56 and this overconfidence and this, you know, just follow me anywhere. Mhm. And so the what the borderline does, she outsources her mind. She outsources her
93. 12:08 mind, her ego functions, her internal psychological processes to an outside
94. 12:14 subcontractor. And then when the subcontractor inevitably fails,
95. 12:20 the borderline becomes enraged and furious and vindictive and aggressive
96. 12:26 and even violent. It’s not uncommon. Violence is not uncommon in borderline.
97. 12:32 I love this description of outsourcing and subcontracting one’s emotional, psychological, even
98. 12:40 intellectual needs. And it it seems like it’s it they the borderline themselves
99. 12:46 they’re on a hamster wheel where they keep sort of doing the same thing over and over and and hoping that it will
100. 12:52 quell the rage and the deep black hole of need in them that will never be
101. 12:58 filled by another. because that’s that’s work you have to do on yourself. I’m afraid um even even that is not very
102. 13:06 helpful until until you get to be 30 or 35. If you were to ask me if a borderline is capable of being a good mother, my answer would be depends on her age.
103. 13:19 Prior to age 35, a borderline is likely to be a very damaging mother, a very problematic mother. Yes. prior. After age 35, a borderline mother could be
104. 13:30 utterly functional and perfectly okay. And the reason is that 81% of people
105. 13:36 with borderline personality disorder lose the diagnosis after age 35. They’re
106. 13:42 no longer borderline. What what happens? This is completely to me because yeah, we don’t know. We think it has
107. 13:49 something to do with the brain. We believe that borderline is hereditary. There’s a genetic component and involves
108. 13:56 specific brain abnormalities that are more common in one’s teens and 20s and
109. 14:02 then the brain being neur neuroplastic. The brain is neuroplastic. The brain rewires itself adapts somehow and after
110. 14:10 age 35 well over 80% of people with borderline no longer have borderline.
111. 14:16 That’s a fact. And um what are the studies that point to this Sam? Numerous actually. the ICD itself is mentioning this. So really yeah and then I feel like it sorry go ahead and then there’s another thing borderline personality disorder is among
112. 14:33 the very few mental health conditions that are actually amidable to treatment
113. 14:40 um there is a treatment modality called DBT dialectical behavioral therapy
114. 14:46 and DBT is successful in 50% of the cases in other in other words if you spend one year doing DBT as a borderline
115. 14:53 you have a 50% chance of losing your diagnosis regardless of your age and
116. 14:59 this percentage goes skyrockets as you as you grow older now. Yeah, please go ahead. Can you speak to could you speak to the cohort
117. 15:10 of of women and mothers who do not shed the diagnosis and whose behavior only intensifies as they age which I find to
118. 15:17 be the case with adult children of my cohort, my generation and older and and I think a
119. 15:25 lot of this predates the the constant conversation in the culture of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral
120. 15:31 therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy. What are the coping mechanisms for adult children of borderline mothers w when
121. 15:38 the mother’s behavior only solidifies and intensifies? When the mother’s behavior solidifies or
122. 15:44 intensifies, she is very likely not a borderline or at least not a pure borderline.
123. 15:50 As you have indicated, she’s likely to suffer from other co-orbidities which do worsen with age. Um so for example, she’s very likely to be a narcissist as well. Nar narcissism
124. 16:03 does not am ailarate or mitigate with age with the exception of antisocial behaviors. All other features of
125. 16:09 narcissism become worse. So fascinating. So it’s a it’s very extremely likely
126. 16:16 actually that this kind of person has actually shed the borderline part but has remained with the narcissistic part. And now the narcissism is glaringly ostentatious and obvious. And that makes the situation a lot worse. We have an
127. 16:32 identical situation with dementia. You’ve mentioned dementia. Dementia. Yeah. In dementia, certain cluster B
128. 16:39 personality disorders become much worse. For example, if you are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and
129. 16:46 then develop dementia, your narcissism would be accentuated and become much
130. 16:52 much more deletious and egregious. So this is exactly what happens with borderline. The borderline is reduced somehow, amilarated, mitigated softens,
131. 17:04 soft edges while the narcissism, the psychopathy because psychopathy is also very common
132. 17:10 with borderline. Um other histrionic histrionic personality disorder which is also very
133. 17:16 common with border all these all these survive the borderline and then fascinating. Yeah. The borderline is consider think of the borderline as an invisibility cloak. So there’s this invisibility cloak and when it’s tossed away what’s
134. 17:32 left is the wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Then you see the true face of the individual. You know the narcissism, the histrionic personality disorder, the
135. 17:43 psychopath. Definitely. I see those in my own mom. Um and psychopathy. Can you just speak to a little bit of that as a coorbidity? Because I think when people hear psychopathy, they think one thing and
136. 17:54 that is the extreme end of psychopathy which is you are a hardened criminal if not a serial killer. But does psychopathy exist on a spectrum?
137. 18:05 Well, yes. The overwhelming vast majority of psychopaths have nothing to do with serial killing, not even as a
138. 18:11 hobby. And they actually um cope well. Um they they’re pillars of
139. 18:18 the community. They are chief executive officers. For example, there are stud studies by babyak and hair uh which have
140. 18:26 demonstrated that the prevalence of psychopaths among chief executive officers. Surgeons in operating rooms is
141. 18:34 much higher than in the general population. So most psychopaths are functional,
142. 18:40 pro-social, socially adaptive and so on so forth. The only difference between a psychopath and a healthy person is a psychopaths would tend to be goal oriented. They would lack empathy and
143. 18:51 therefore they would be callous, reckless, unscrupulous and immoral.
144. 18:58 That’s one reason why there’s a debate whether psychopathy is a mental illness at all. Oh, that’s fascinating.
145. 19:05 Yeah, that’s fascinating. In in in the case of borderline personality disorder, coming back to the topic, the
146. 19:11 co-orbidity with antisocial personality disorder, which is a clinical name for psychopathy, the coorbidity is pretty
147. 19:17 high. Actually, there are some learned guesses that about one in three border
148. 19:24 lines would also be a psychopath. And I would love to talk to you about this a little bit just because you know again in the case of you know my mom is the template for the idea of the difficult
149. 19:35 mother, the borderline mother. She could be in public at events at family
150. 19:42 gatherings even dealing with strangers. The charm would just come on like that. Extremely charismatic. Has a gravitational pull. People just wanted to be around her, be near her. even if
151. 19:54 she could be outright clearly mean, say something mean, people would laugh it
152. 20:00 off like, “Oh, that’s just Mary, you know, she’s that’s how she is.” And then the child becomes, I think, even more
153. 20:06 confused because they see the mother interfacing with the rest of the world as this lovely charismatic
154. 20:13 just magnetic personality. And behind closed doors, the child is acted to the
155. 20:19 opposite. And what what happens is the child becomes very confused. I’m speaking about myself. Who would believe
156. 20:26 me when I say that behind closed doors my mother can be a monster?
157. 20:32 Well, first of all, I hate to break it to you, but you’re describing a psychopath, not a borderline.
158. 20:38 Uh, one of the key diagnostic features and clinical features of psychopathy is superficial charm and glibess. It’s a
159. 20:45 key feature, which it’s also a key feature of narcissism, right? uh to a much lesser extent
160. 20:52 really it’s actually the antisocial dimension in narcissism it’s definitely psychopathic
161. 20:58 u but coming back to to your question I tend to digress and I apologize but coming back to your question
162. 21:04 um the main message that such a mother conveys to her child is something’s
163. 21:10 wrong with you something is wrong with you other people love me you don’t you don’t or other people behave one way you
164. 21:16 behave another way you are incapable of making me feel good. You’re incapable of making me happy. You’re So there’s
165. 21:23 always a message, an underlying message of your failure. You’re constantly failing me, you’re a disappointment, you’re Mhm. And so if you happen to be the scapegoat
166. 21:35 and not the golden child, and these are transitory roles, by the way, but if you happen Exactly. I was often a scapegoat. I was
167. 21:42 often a golden child. I will say my mom did a lot of things right with me and encouraged me in so many ways but there
168. 21:49 were other times where there was nothing I could do to satiate her need for love and attention
169. 21:55 that is what I’ve mentioned earlier the approach avoidance repetition compulsion that’s the inability to actually reach a plateau of intimacy and so on
170. 22:07 when you gratify when the child gratifies such a mother when the child meets the mother’s expectations and
171. 22:13 needs needs. She feels suffocated. She feels threatened
172. 22:19 because in her mind she’s expected to reciprocate and she is unable to
173. 22:26 reciprocate. And so she feels that she’s being set up for failure or that she’s being framed somehow or she and at that very moment she flips and she becomes she renders
174. 22:38 the child a persary object. She renders the child an enemy in her mind. someone who is challenging her actually to be a good mother. And so wow, the child can never win. And con
175. 22:51 consequently, the child develops what we call in psychology or in some schools in psychology an internalized bed object, a
176. 23:00 voice or a set of constellation of voices in the child’s mind that inform the child that he is or she is unworthy, inadequate, a failure. perhaps also ugly
177. 23:13 and stupid, definitely disappointing and so on so forth. And this constellation of voices, they’re known as introjects.
178. 23:21 You carry them with you for the rest of your life. You may kid yourself. You may
179. 23:27 kid yourself that now you have you have recovered somehow that you have a lot of self-esteem and self-confidence. You’re
180. 23:33 an accomplished person and so on. But these voices are inside you and they’re undermining you and they’re corroding
181. 23:39 you and they’re not letting you be. Would you say those are fixed traits or
182. 23:46 would you say that if you are an adult child who is cognizant to a degree of
183. 23:52 what went on in your childhood with a borderline mother and you do go and seek
184. 23:58 therapy as I did that those can either be mitigated or eventually purged from
185. 24:04 your system eradicated. Yes, absolutely. The prognosis is very good. The problem is the vast majority of people do never reach this level of self-awareness. They,
186. 24:15 you know, I think a lot of people don’t realize they even had a borderline mother. We were just talking on the nerve the other day. There’s a big b do
187. 24:22 documentary about the artist Billy Joel that’s airing now on HBO and he and his sister refer to his mother who had rage
188. 24:30 explosions like this and they they describe their childhood as quote walking on eggshells as bipolar. And I
189. 24:36 think there’s a lot of confusion uh between what a a bipolar mother presents as and a borderline mother presents as. Is there much of a difference, Sam? Of course, there’s a huge difference.
190. 24:48 Would you explain? Bipolar disorder is um cycling between moods. Mhm. And the cycles take uh very long time.
191. 24:59 Typical bipolar cycle is weeks to months. Months is very common. Whereas in manic versus depressive, manic versus what used to be called manic depressive. Yes, hypomomanic and
192. 25:10 manic. While in borderline personality disorder, the cycling is very very fast.
193. 25:17 It’s accelerated like the borderline can switch between moods within within the hour or within hours. It’s extremely
194. 25:24 rare to document a case where a mood lasts for four days. That’s considered to be an outlier, you know, something
195. 25:31 amazing. So that’s the first uh difference. The second difference is everything that is happening to the to the bipolar is an outcome a direct outcome and the a result of the
196. 25:43 underlying mood disorder. Whereas in borderline personality disorder the mood disorder is ancillary
197. 25:52 is not a main clinical feature. There are other clinical features which are much more relevant in borderline and
198. 25:58 which are completely absent in bipolar disorder. Anyone who confuses the two is
199. 26:04 a bad clinician to use a British understatement. But if you’re a child or an adult child,
200. 26:11 what is absent in the bipolar mother that is present in the borderline or vice versa? What the bipolar? The bipolar is predictable. Ah okay. You know, you know that father
201. 26:23 right now is can’t sleep is into herb brain schemes of getting rich quick is
202. 26:30 so that’s a manic phase and you know for sure as a child that the next phase is
203. 26:36 father goes to bed and never leaves bed for a few months that so it’s utterly predictable. the cycling
204. 26:43 is predictable. Whereas with a borderline mother, there’s no way, there’s no model, there’s no theory you
205. 26:50 can construct which will predict the mother’s future behavior. And we say that when you are with a borderline mother, there is a failure of what we call theory of mind. There’s a failure
206. 27:02 of mentalization. You cannot create a theory about your mother’s mind which
207. 27:08 would allow you to feel safe to feel that you are in a secure base and that is terrifying for a child. It’s a horror movie. There are two other there are two other issues I think with a with a borderline mother. the first
208. 27:24 I’ve mentioned which is the the the bed object the messaging that you are not
209. 27:31 good enough you’re unworthy you’re a failure you’re disappointing you’re this you’re that and the second I think uh
210. 27:38 problem is that the mother sets you up for failure you see when you’re as a child you’re
211. 27:45 confronted with a bad mother bad mother a dysfunctional mother dysfunctional yeah yes when you’re confronted with such a mother as a child you have two options. You can say my mother is dysfunctional.
212. 27:56 But that’s terrifying because if your mother is dysfunctional, she won’t feed you. She won’t shelter
213. 28:02 you. You may die. So no child adopts this position. No child says yeah my
214. 28:08 mother is a problem. The other option is to say I am the problem.
215. 28:14 It’s all happening because of me. I’m doing something wrong or I am wrong. So you adopt this stance that you are the raification of wrongness.
216. 28:26 You are wrongness embodied and personified and you spend the rest of your life believing that you are wrong.
217. 28:33 Now because of that is very difficult for people to reach a level of self-awareness because it requires them
218. 28:41 to admit finally that nothing’s wrong with them that it’s mother and
219. 28:47 they still have the inner child that is terrifying of admitting this because you
220. 28:53 see if you’re six months old and you reach a conclusion that mother sucks and you know is not unlikely to feed you or shelter you or protect you. That’s a
221. 29:04 life that’s life-threatening. No child would do this. And we only kid
222. 29:11 ourselves when we when we distinguish these phases in life. Now we are adults. We are not children. That’s not true. We’re always children especially especially when it comes to mother.
223. 29:24 Absolutely. You know it’s fascinating in my mother’s case. She had had a true gift of relating to she was so good with babies and children, you know, once the
224. 29:35 once they hit especially kids who weren’t hers but, you know, I I found I would always say, you know, the problem
225. 29:41 is once you become an of an age where you develop your own thoughts and personality and you’re going to defy the mother and that’s where the conflict
226. 29:47 would come in with her. But I always felt her gift was so pronounced with babies and children because she was a
227. 29:54 child herself. I believe her her borderline personality developed as a
228. 30:00 result of from all of my reading the trauma of losing her mother very young, of feeling abandoned, of going through several more traumas before she even hit the age of 20. And instead of getting
229. 30:12 help again, it was a different time. It was always just the the I’ve spoken to
230. 30:18 relatives about this. The constant refrain in the house was that’s just how she is. She’s otherwise a wonderful
231. 30:25 person. Just go along to get along and we’ll just move. It’s the easiest way to keep this train going. Um, now to that I
232. 30:34 want to I just want to show a couple of clips. We’ll I’ll show one. I’ll get your reaction. We’ll go to the next one. I think the the biggest depiction the the most I’m going to say influential on the culture and um most profound was
233. 30:48 Livia Soprano Tony Soprano’s mother of the Sopranos and David Chase the genius creator has said more than once Livia is based on my mother who I did realize at
234. 30:59 a certain point was a borderline and I have never seen a better depiction of how a borderline will box you out of any
235. 31:08 possible solution you could answer to bring them a bit of happiness. So, we’re going to look at this clip of Carmela
236. 31:14 visiting Livia and trying to get Livia to back off her own son who’s just doing
237. 31:20 his best visav what his mother needs. Let’s take a look. But I want you to cut the drama. It’s killing Tony. What are you talking about? I’m talking about this this poor mother.
238. 31:33 Nobody loves me victim crap. It is textbook manipulation. And I hate seeing Tony so upset over it. I know how to talk to people. Well, I am a mother, too. Don’t forget.
239. 31:46 And you know the power that you have, and you use it like a pro. Power? What power? I don’t have power.
240. 31:52 I’m a shut him. You are bigger than life. You are his mother. And I don’t think for one second
241. 31:58 that you don’t know what you’re doing to him. Oh, me? Me? What do I What did I do? Look, I didn’t come by to argue. I came by to check on you and to bring you the reg.
242. 32:09 If you don’t want it, you can give it to Junior because I know he stops by a lot. He’s my husband’s brother. If you can’t
243. 32:17 check up on me once in a while, that’s none of anybody’s business. Oh my god. I am not saying that. All I
244. 32:24 am saying is if you don’t want it, give it to Junior. I know what you’re hinting at, Ma. There is nothing wrong with
245. 32:30 companionship.
246. 32:36 What is wrong?
247. 32:44 Wait until you’re abandoned. [Music]
248. 32:50 To me, that is textbook dialogue. I’ve heard versions of that millions of times. Sam, what do you say to that?
249. 32:57 I agree. This is 100% borderline. Uh I would emphasize just two points because we’ve discussed the others actually. The
250. 33:04 first point is the the drama thing. Border lines use drama as a regulatory
251. 33:11 mechanism. I mentioned that they I mentioned that they outsource their internal psychological processes to a
252. 33:18 single individual. Usually it’s a single individual. And at the same time they create
253. 33:24 environments, specific environments that are that force the other party to comply with
254. 33:31 expectations and needs as verbalized or non-verbalized. This environment is dramatic. It’s always dramatic. They use drama to force to coersse other people to behave in highly specific ways. This
255. 33:43 has a name in psychology. It’s called projective identification. So this is one element. They’re drama queens and
256. 33:49 kings. The second element is the mother here appears to be acting and many many
257. 33:58 people will tell you yeah they’re acting. I don’t think she’s acting. The problem with border lines
258. 34:04 narcissists and even to some extent psychopaths they are what we call egoonic. In other words
259. 34:12 they don’t feel that they have done anything wrong. They feel that people are wronging them. That’s why they have
260. 34:18 this victimhood complex and and so on. They don’t they don’t see what it is
261. 34:26 that people keep complaining about. Why people keep criticizing them and disagreeing with them and in their
262. 34:33 mind’s eye they are perfection. Border lines are as grandio as narcissist by the way even without the coorbidity. Grandiosity is a key feature of
263. 34:44 borderline. So interesting. So a borderline would say
264. 34:50 I’m perfect by definition. I’m a perfect entity. Therefore I can make no mistakes. And it’s not she doesn’t say
265. 34:57 this. She wouldn’t say this as a kind of bragging or bragadachio or something. It’s just a fact of life. She’s perfect
266. 35:03 and she’s infallible. She never makes mistakes. And then people around her are either too envious or too stupid or
267. 35:11 malevolent or something’s wrong with them. Something’s wrong with them. This is called aloplastic defense. The borderline has like the narcissist. She has aloplastic defenses. She blames
268. 35:24 other people, the environment, institutions, the period in history, her own personal history, her mother, her
269. 35:31 father, the neighbors, the dogs, you name it. Someone is to blame. Never her,
270. 35:37 never she. I can attest to this. I can attest to this firsthand. My mother was never to blame. There was
271. 35:44 never an apology to come. It was in fact if you called her out on inappropriate behavior or an explosive rage. Uh it
272. 35:52 would the response would often be you made me do that. Yes, aloplastic defense. You you’re to
273. 35:59 blame. But it’s it’s it’s even more than this. If you dare confront the borderline,
274. 36:05 criticize her, expose her, um force her to face the mirror, present evidence to
275. 36:11 the contrary because she has a narrative that is often counterfactual. Narrative has nothing to do with reality. If you
276. 36:18 do any of these things, probably you are a sadist. Probably you’re malevolent and hateful and vengeful and it says something about you. It says nothing about the borderline, but it says
277. 36:30 everything about you. Or maybe you’re just stupid, unable to appreciate the the border lines endowments and gifts.
278. 36:37 Or maybe you’re envious even as a daughter. You may be envious of her. Borderline mothers compete with their
279. 36:44 daughters when it when it comes to external appearance looks. They they compete with
280. 36:51 their daughters when it comes to the social circle of the daughters. Even the daughter’s lovers. I mean there’s constant competition. And so if there’s competition, there’s envy. And if there’s envy, there’s aggression. And
281. 37:02 you’re being aggressive. You’re being aggressive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think
282. 37:08 there there was definitely levels of that. And and I think what is becomes very difficult for the child as they
283. 37:15 mature and then become an adult is really trying to come to terms with
284. 37:21 marrying the the bad mommy with the good mommy, right? Because I think part of
285. 37:27 the reason there’s so much resistance for an adult child to say, “Wait a second. What’s been going on here is not
286. 37:33 my fault at all. Something is deeply wrong.” Is because it is your mother. As Carmela says in that clip to Livia, you
287. 37:41 are larger than life. You are his mother. You gave him life. You kept him alive. And I want to just play this very
288. 37:47 brief clip of Tony Soprano in session with Dr. Melie. And Dr. Melie coming to
289. 37:53 a realization that she’s she she doesn’t have the time to let Tony realize that his mother wants him dead. Now, this is
290. 38:01 an extreme dramatic version. And she’s she’s going to tell him, “Listen, your mother’s a borderline.” And I’m going to explain what that is to you. And Tony’s inability to process this at all. Let’s take a look at this clip.
291. 38:14 I say what your mother has at the very least is what we call borderline personality disorder. a borderline
292. 38:20 personality disorder. Let me read to you from the DSM4. Okay. Definition of the condition.
293. 38:29 A pattern of unstable relationships, effective instability.
294. 38:35 It means intense anxiety, a joylessness. These people’s internal phobias are the only things that exist to them. The real world, real people are peripheral. These
295. 38:47 people have no love or compassion. Borderline personalities are very good
296. 38:53 at splitting behavior, creating bitterness and conflict between others
297. 38:59 in their circle.
298. 39:05 So Sam, that’s a lot. Uh but could you speak to that? And also for for what stuck out for me when Dr. Melie says
299. 39:12 these people have no love or compassion for others. I do have to say I would never describe my mother like that. I
300. 39:18 don’t think the love that she showed me or my brother or any of the children she helped raise uh would apply. So if if
301. 39:26 you could please I uh tend to disagree with about 50% of what this doctor said. Interesting. I think she was describing a narcissist.
302. 39:37 Interesting. Um yeah, of course, narcissism, pathological narcissism and
303. 39:44 borderline borderline state are very very similar. There’s been a scholar by the name of Otto Kberg who is the father of the field and he suggested that borderline and narcissism are in so
304. 39:55 intimately linked that they’re one and the same. Wow. So it’s easy to make this mistake. But I
305. 40:01 would like to focus on rather than criticizing the imaginary clinician, I would like to focus on splitting.
306. 40:07 First of all, everyone goes through a phase of splitting people. Splitting is an infantile defense in early childhood. Children split. Someone is all good,
307. 40:20 another person is all bad. That’s precisely the reason that when the child says mother is all good because it’s too
308. 40:27 threatening to consider the alternative, the child is forced to say then I’m all
309. 40:33 bad. It’s the outcome of splitting. If she is all good, I’m all bad.
310. 40:39 That’s the first thing. Healthy mothers, functional mothers, mothers who Winnott,
311. 40:46 the famous pediatrician and psychoanalyst called good enough mothers.
312. 40:52 They signal to the child. They constantly inform the child subtly
313. 40:58 non-verbally, I am both good and bad. I’m not only good, I’m also bad sometimes. For example, you cry and I don’t pay
314. 41:09 attention to you or you want to eat and I’m out of the room. So, you see, mommy can be frustrating. Mommy can be not nice. So, the mother broadcast to the child,
315. 41:21 the healthy mother, the functional, the good enough mother constantly broadcast to the child, I am both good and bad.
316. 41:29 You need to integrate these parts of me. You need to create a composite which is not black or white but gray. It is the mother that helps the child to
317. 41:41 graduate graduate from the splitting defense to leave it behind to go to move on from the splitting defense. But what if the mother actually broadcasts yes
318. 41:52 you’re right I am all good. I am blemishless. I am perfect. And that
319. 41:58 means of course that you are the exact opposite. This kind of person would not be able to move on and would be stuck in the splitting phase. So borderline mothers induce primitive defenses, induce splitting in their own
320. 42:15 children, which is I would also submit just based on my own experience that to have a as you just
321. 42:22 described, not the good enough mother, but the all good mother who is behaving badly or in ways that scare you as a
322. 42:28 small child and then turns around and says, “No, I’m all good and you’re the problem.” can inculcate a fundamental
323. 42:36 miswiring of one’s own intuition and in one’s own ability to self-identify
324. 42:43 what is what I am seeing and hearing versus what I am being told I am seeing and hearing. Yes, this is gaslighting. So gaslighting. Yes. So gaslighting induces in the child
325. 42:54 what we call impaired reality testing. I think what I’m trying to tell you a bit politically incorrectly is that
326. 43:01 please go is that children of of uh borderline parents
327. 43:07 mothers mostly the mother is the critical figure in the first 36 months of life not the father
328. 43:14 it’s politically incorrect to say this but it’s the mother’s fault if you wish the mother molds the child and shapes
329. 43:20 the child in the first 36 months the father plays a very marginal role Mhm.
330. 43:26 in these first three years. So uh what I’m trying to say I think is
331. 43:32 that the borderline mother the legacy of the borderline mother in
332. 43:39 the child is some borderline features. It’s not it wouldn’t be true to say that the borderline child is all good,
333. 43:50 all pure and it is the borderline mother that is all bad. That’s a splitting, right? Of course. Of course.
334. 43:56 So, the borderline the the child of the borderline mother is likely to engage in splitting, likely to have a bad internal
335. 44:04 object, likely to fall for the wrong type of people in romantic intimate relationships, likely to be terrified of
336. 44:11 intimacy and love, however unconsciously. Likely to develop repetition, compulsion, approach avoidance. Likely to do all these things. Likely to be a bit dramatic. likely to be a bit
337. 44:22 histrionic and seek attention all the time and so on. Mhm. This is and again just to absolutely and just to
338. 44:29 put a point on that before we go as said earlier this does not mean the child of
339. 44:36 a borderline is doomed to that kind of a life that once they recognize it if they
340. 44:42 are involved in getting some sort of treatment self-help what have you that they can
341. 44:49 overcome said I want to emphasize I want I would with your permission I want to take another
342. 44:55 to emphasize this not in order to end on an optimistic or hopeful note but because it’s a fact.
343. 45:02 If borderline personality disorder has an excellent prognosis. If people with borderline personality
344. 45:08 disorder even people with borderline they get well in the overwhelming vast majority of cases they lose a diagnosis they’re perfectly healthy. So even more
345. 45:20 so when it comes to children of people with borderline the the prognosis is
346. 45:26 excellent. If you become aware that your mother may have been a borderline and so on so forth your best bet is therapy. We
347. 45:34 have numerous treatment modalities. If you have the bad objects for example these sentences in your mind that keep
348. 45:40 saying you’re inadequate, you’re nothing, you’re a failure, you’re a loser, you’re unworthy. This can be eliminated with cognitive behavior therapy. Literally eliminated for life.
349. 45:51 Um, splitting can be tackled with psychonamic therapies. We have the tools and you will be as good as new. Everything can be reversed and erased. Absolutely. Money back guarantee. Well, thank you, Sam. We’ll hold you to
350. 46:07 that. All right. Um, I hope that you will come back on the nerve as we continue our discussion of difficult mothers in all of their forms. Um, so thank you again. Thank you for having me. Kind of you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And um to you out there who are watching and
351. 46:25 thinking, “Oh my god, like yeah, my mom might be a borderline. I might have
352. 46:31 grown up in a home like that.” I would love to suggest to you