I’ve always related to my romantic attachments as if I only had an abbreviated time to spend with them before they died. I have done the same with my beloved pets. This practice is called, being in the moment, and fully appreciating the gift of a treasured other’s presence in my immediate world. Do most of us ever do this?? NO! We take our significant others for granted, assuming they’ll always be around.

I knew a fellow years ago who didn’t appreciate the gal who loved him. He apparently felt bored with her, perhaps for failing to put him on an emotional roller-coaster ride, like perhaps all the (not so healthy?) others he’d known prior. This reaction is not uncommon among humans. The question that begs to be asked therefore, is WHY?

Real love is never painful, folks. If you experience painful longing or yearning in your relationship dynamic, this is merely a carryover from childhood when you couldn’t get the warmth and nurturance from your mother you needed. In short, you developed a grossly distorted definition of Love that you mistakenly thought was “the real thing” during your earliest years of life, because it stirred dramatic feelings within you. I suspect a lot of you are still equating pain with love, and vice-versa.

Painful longing and yearning have nothing whatsoever to do with genuine love! These feelings are just moldy old remnants of an early life plagued with unrequited craving for what you had to live without, when it was age-appropriate to receive warmth, affection and adoration.

When my friend’s lover finally got to the point of needing to leave him, due to having tried literally everything she could to gain his love and devotion, he broke down and howled at the moon while steeped in regret, for many weeks afterward. This isn’t my observation of an isolated incident. I’ve known several to whom this has happened, both male and female.

Most of us don’t appreciate our good health and vitality until we lose it.

We can’t feel grateful for the lover who meets most of our needs, until they’re gone.

We take our pets for granted until they’re at death’s door, and our life is immeasurably impacted by the pain of loss in their absence.

Being in the present and fully appreciating what you have, is the greatest gift you can bestow on yourself.

Quit looking for and hating the parts of a person you can’t change or control (which is a Borderline Personality Disorder trait), and see if you can find ways to give them back the love and affection they routinely demonstrate for you, barring fundamental incompatibilities, of course.

Like attracts like, birds of a feather flock together, and water seeks its own level. We are at the same level of emotional development as the partners we select and choose to remain with! As different as we might be from one another, we are developmentally at precisely the same level of growth and healing, as they.

This is a hard truth to swallow! We might feel superior to a lover or partner, due to having special skills or abilities in arenas we believe our significant other lacks, but we make a conscious choice to stay put, because we are fundamentally a developmental match. We share their core wounding from early childhood, and neither of us have healed nor resolved those injuries. Thus, we are two peas in a pod. A match made in Heaven as they say, and we each have developed a very high threshold for tolerating pain.

It’s vitally important to recognize as a caregiver, fixer, rescuer type, that the one who needs the least in any relationship endeavor, is always the one one in the power seat, and many of us relish this position. If you didn’t require the sense of empowerment that being with someone you might view as inferior in some way to you, you’d have instead chosen another with equal footing who could dance with you on an even and balanced playing field! But might that have made you feel insecure??

The upshot? We are who we eat. Our subconscious mind selects our partners in order that we might grow to know, love and appreciate ourselves more deeply, which then gives us the opportunity to learn to love and bond with another. If you are your own harsh judge and critic, you are literally incapable of receiving genuine love from another, or giving it.

If you have problems in your relationship dynamic, the only one you can get help to repair, is You. Borderlines are attracted to chaos, drama and conflict, because they are Intensity Seekers. Intense emotions (whether positive or negative) are enlivening and activating to one who has dissociated from a litany of (largely painful) feelings, since they were a toddler.

An existence without elements that cause strife in their relationship, is boring to a Borderline. Boredom generates feelings of emptiness, flatness and inner-deadness. One with BPD features can feel as if they’re invisible and cease to exist, during these stimulation-free episodes.

If you’re dissociated from your feelings lifelong, you have no way of accessing stimulation or excitement for yourself, and forever remain dependent on another to catalyze those intense feelings for you! Hence, your compulsive attraction to partners who are happy to supply either intensely good OR bad emotions within you.

The Borderline will aways find ways to activate intensity of emotion, whether it’s by routinely putting their partner on an emotional roller-coaster ride, or triggering intense sensations within themselves through brutally critical, guilting, shaming self-beatings, until they’re too depressed and/or exhausted to continue that particular bout of self-flagellation.

Life then returns to some level of homeostasis, until the next wave of intensity-craving behavior comes along, and the chaotic circus of your relationship resumes once again.

If you have any interest in learning more about Borderline Personality Disorder, my website houses 25 in-depth, highly detailed, comprehensive articles on this topic, for which I have gained international acclaim. www.ShariSchreiber.com

A few of my new friends here in Tennessee are lovable, marvelous people, but if I followed ‘em around for just three days, you’d have to hospitalize me! Admittedly, I’ve never handled stress well, and I genuinely envy those who do~ but there comes a point where the rapid, highly stressed pace they keep, starts looking masochistic.

These friends are what I consider, hyper-religious. While I’ve enjoyed a marvelously intimate, long-enduring relationship bond with God, you wouldn’t be wrong for thinking me sacrilegious. I’m often profane, I don’t believe that “forgiveness” of others is an imperative, and I’ve never tried to be Christ-like or God-like. My only job as I see it, is to be Human, with all the strengths, weaknesses, flaws and shortcomings that attend it. To assume otherwise is egocentric and unhealthy, as we consign ourselves to exist in a “I should be” cage of our own making, which can be painfully limiting!

The question that begs to be asked here is, did God intend for us to be anything more than human?? Or has he simply wanted us to balance our inner-darkness with our inner-light, and attempt to be kind, mindful, humanitarian creatures willing to be responsive to the needs of other species, as well as our own?

I believe infant baptism is a scam generated by various denominations to take money from people who’ve been convinced by their church that we’re all born with Original Sin~ and never (God forbid) question it! Besides, if a religious sect is truly loving and concerned with “saving” as many souls as possible, would it not be delighted to perform no-charge baptisms to anyone who wants one, rather than instilling fear in folks that they’ll burn in Hell for eternity, if they don’t fork out several hundred bucks for the privilege of getting drizzled on or dunked?? Seems like a racket to me, and I’ll go to my grave thinking nothing less.

I’m a live-and-let-live kinda dame, but I could never in a million years presume that a beautiful, innocent newborn has entered this lifetime “a sinner.” Society and defective parenting turns people into monsters. We are not born with vile nor evil intent!

Alas, ya can’t change the mind of a devout Christian, any more than you can change the mind of a leftist liberal, and expect ‘em to start thinking rationally. Trust me, I’ve tried.

I believe that we humans have a strong need to feel anchored to something stable and irrefutable. It’s a huge part of feeling secure and safe in our world, and both our sanity and peace of mind depend on it! But some of us are brainwashed from an early age to think in faulty, very limiting ways, and never outgrow the very narrow, rigid container we were programmed (or force fed) to accept when we were little.

If a child questions and tries to break away from his early familial conditioning, perhaps because he’s an older soul who has a broader ‘take’ on life and love, are his views considered and accepted by his parents, or do they compulsively make him feel wrong for seeing his world and his place in it, from a vastly different perspective? And if this occurs, how does he ever get to feel a sense of belonging in his family of origin~ much less, understood, accepted and cherished for who he is??

People who have BPD traits lean toward extremes. You cannot change a Borderline’s mind regardless of how much concrete, unequivocal proof you offer ‘em, which demonstrates their thinking, ideations and fantasies are dead wrong! Why? They’ve found a stable enough base on which to plant themselves and feel secure~ sort of like a drowning man floating atop a large chunk of driftwood in a vast, terrifying ocean, and nothing can budge him off it. Believe it or not, even atheists have forged distinct beliefs, perspectives and superstitions that help them feel safer in their (God-less) world!

We are all survival oriented~ just look at what many of us had to survive while still in our mother’s womb, and how violent our birth process is! Survival orientation is a normal state of being for emotionally healthy humans, BUT if you routinely self-sabotage and undermine yourself to where you’re episodically miserable, you’ve acquired a secret death wish.

Self-sabotage is typical among addicts. It truly doesn’t matter what you’re addicted to, whether it’s alcohol, over-eating, gambling, sex, porn, or staying way too busy trying to outrun your feelings, which have a chance to surface only during quiet, calm (non-busy) moments. Addiction is addiction, as it’s a means to escape difficult emotions we’d prefer not to experience, since the age of around 2 years old.

I’ve successfully worked a lot with addiction in my practice, due to my ability to have healed and eliminated my own eating disorder many years ago. I realized soon after this event, that it’s not rocket science, nor all that hard to dismantle addictive, compulsive habits. It simply requires training one how to stay in their body and feel/experience their emerging emotions, rather than mentally analyzing, running from or killing ‘em off by staying “busy.”

These are dissociative behaviors, which keep us forever trapped in pain and self-loathing for continuing to feel and act in ways we were taught as young children, were wrong and “unacceptable.” I’ll never suggest we should spare the rod, for many grow up so boundaryless and unempathic in the absence of appropriate punishment, it has bred epidemic proportions of narcissism in societies all over the globe.

I’m just stating that “childhood” is the time we should be allowed and encouraged to simply be Human, and grow up possessing an unshakable sense that we are good enough and intrinsically lovable for Who we are (not who our parents need us to be), no matter what!

Just as God never needed us to be clones of Him, our parental units shouldn’t expect us to become clones of them! If we could finally adopt a realistic level of awareness about these issues, we’d have the makings of a far healthier society, and 80% of our world’s depression would cease to exist.

Feeling hungry for fresh entertainment one recent evening, I watched a series starring Kim Cattrall who’s character is a former model turned cosmetic industry icon. She does a good job in this series, but her part’s a far cry from Sex in the City (we’re older and a bit more tame, now).

Half the characters in this series were so androgynous, I couldn’t separate the boys from the girls for the duration of half the show. Needless to say, transgenderism and gay play are significantly represented and highly supported (perhaps even lauded) in this production.

Did I find it hard to watch? NO. In fact, I was consistently delighted and fascinated by it. I came to like, care about and feel sympathetic toward the characters, despite their anomalous (sometimes, self-sabotaging) behaviors.

I’ve thought a lot about my reactions to this series while watching, and since completing it. Needless to say, it was well written, acted and directed, or I coulda never hung with it. I wondered if other conservative-minded folks might feel similarly, if they gave themselves the chance to view it.

I like to think of myself as being mature enough to keep a level head as well as a balanced view of Life in all its rich and varied forms. In younger years, I loved going to drag bars and watching female impersonators. The entertainment value of such excursions was purely delightful. I also loved strip clubs, and envied those gals on stage for having confidence about their bodies, in ways I never did. I subscribed to Playboy magazine for years, because it was an important reminder to me of how beautiful the female form is. I think I gained a sort of vicarious acceptance of and appreciation for my own body, due to that magazine. These experiences were all part of my development as a young woman, and I have no regrets.

I recently posted a reply to another’s note about not seeing myself as a fanatic~ unless ya push me too far, and then watch out! I like the fact I’m a live and let live kinda dame, but whenever we give perhaps too much latitude to a fringe element that’s undoubtedly been striving lifelong for acceptance in an effort to vanquish their inner shame, the potential for them going off the rails might be a natural consequence.

Being different from everyone else was a feeling I’ve always relished. The little white streak that grew in the front center of my hair which I sported in my early 20’s, was no-doubt tangibly symbolic of how I treasured all the ways I was unlike my peers.

I’m beginning now, to recount and appreciate even more, the less visible ways in which I’ve been distinctly different from others. I’ve felt like a very old soul for a long time. I cannot account for the wisdom I have in this lifetime, except to assume it has clung to me from past lives committed to learning, healing and growing, and I’m still fiercely dedicated to this process.

This is just to give you a bit of background, but I think it ties rather neatly into my experience of the Netflix show, “Glamour.” I didn’t feel offended by it, though I wish all the chaos and conflict going on politically in today’s world concerning these issues, did not exist.

I have a family member who ‘transitioned,’ and I’d hoped for many years that she’d have gained enough inner-stability (regardless of gender preference) to retain the relationship bond with me we once had, even as she experimented with a plethora of lifestyle changes and body ornamentation in an effort to feel good about herself, prior to this radical one. I sincerely doubt her beard and alternate genitalia choice has altered her/his lifelong incapacity for experiencing contentment and joy.

Anyhow, I liked the show despite my political persuasion. Perhaps this says something positive about me, and perhaps not. I can only assume my sense of humanity, fairness and broad-mindedness continue to influence my views on life and love, and hope that I’ve managed to achieve and maintain a sense of balance about it all.

I do know I most definitely abhor and wanna separate myself as far as possible from the fanaticism, dogma and stigma that Leftist’s operate from and appear to celebrate, and so I think for now, I’m on the right track. How about You?

I do my level best to move unfinished business with someone off my back-burner, but I occasionally require a bit to time (perhaps a few weeks) to find a way to accurately and/or sensitively convey what’s on my mind and in my heart.

Some who have Entitlement Issues left-over from childhood (never feeling deserving or worthy of fully receiving what they need and want) fail to ever address what’s been festering long-term inside ‘em. That’s a pity, because that icky clump of unresolved upset, hurt or dissatisfaction robs us of precious energy and focus we could otherwise be giving to more productive pursuits!

Every now and then, something might trigger us. It may directly have little to do with the person we’ve been reluctant to confront, but all that stored up, swept-under-the-rug gunk comes spilling out of us~ and to the one on the receiving end, it feels as if it’s a heat-seeking missile that’s slammed ‘em clear outta the blue!

I think it’s vitally important to our sense of Self, our personal integrity and our character to convey our truth~ but I also think it’s wise to consider that our timing enters into this equation, whether we wish it to or not. In short, perhaps every now and then, it’s useful to consider when another might be open and available to receiving our concerns (particularly if a lotta time has passed) and how we choose to convey them, which is part of exercising empathy for others.

I’m in the process of crafting a letter to my older sis. I’ve wanted nothing more than to feel a close, intimate kinship and friendship with her, yet she has repeatedly shown me I can’t trust her with my heart. This issue has existed for many years.

I’ve been resigned to our lack of closeness despite my numerous attempts to narrow that chasm between us, but there’s a part of me that’s never reached full resolution. My letter is gonna lay it all out, though I don’t anticipate it will catalyze change in her of any kind. She’s unaware of her prodigious narcissism, and I fully anticipate she’ll deflect, defend and blame-shift when she gets my communication, just as she always has.

Closure, contrary to popular belief, is not something we necessarily must get with another. The secret value of Closure is, we can Gift it to ourselves, long after the person we think we need it with, has died. It’s not about feeling resigned to the hurt that still festers within, it’s getting fully resolved with it, which is an inner process~ or nobody could actually heal from their childhood trauma!

You might resent or hate me for stating this, but there’s literally nobody I respect, approve of, trust or admire, more than Myself. I worked many years on achieving this state of being, and it continues to serve me well. You can call me arrogant, narcissistic, opinionated, narrow-minded, and a litany of other identifiers you think may describe me. I’m good with all that, ‘cause I’ve come to fully accept and embrace myself with all my strengths and shortcomings, and I LIKE me, just as I am.

I was telling a dear couple of friends last night, that I feel exceptionally lucky. I grew up with significant anomalies in my home of origin, due to having had a mother with Schizophrenia. She was diagnosed when I was seven, and spent a lot of time away from home in mental institutions. Even when she was around, she could barely manage being ‘present’ or emotionally available. My mom lived in her own little bubble, and it was most the time, impenetrable.

Still, my mom was never critical, shaming nor guilting of me, and as invisible as I felt as a child growing up with her, I had it a hellova lot easier, than every female friend I’ve ever had, who barely survived the traumas of living with a Borderline Personality Disordered mother! Such is the case with my friend whose maternal object is as close to being a clone of “Livia,” Tony Soprano’s mother on the show, The Sopranos.

I consider myself extremely lucky, as I escaped enormous levels of toxicity, and the dreadful injuries it could have left alive inside me for a lifetime (my sister has not surmounted those primal wounds, incidentally). What most (including clinicians) do not understand, is that BPD traits are merely a cumulative grouping of defenses we build as young children, to shield ourselves from further harm.

You might think of these defenses as a Suit of Armor that somehow kept us upright when we’re feeling afraid, fragile or in some way vulnerable, and we wanted to run and hide under our bed to try and reduce the risk of severe injury to ourselves. Think, earthquake preparedness, here.

This suit of armor keeps us relatively safe during childhood and deters thousands of childhood suicides, but it works against us as adults. Think of it this way~ who can get really close and cuddle up to another wearing a suit of armor?! That stiff, cold steel protection not only insulates Us from getting too close to be hurt by another, it keeps Them from getting too close to us (our acting-out, come-here/go-away behaviors make damned sure of that)! We do not outgrow these traits in adulthood, unless we’ve engaged highly specialized help to mend and evolve.

I’m not the only family member my sister has alienated (and blamed those others for). Is my timing gonna be sensitive or empathic when sending this letter out? Probably not, although given our respective ages (we’re not spring chickens), I’ve surmised that sometime around our shared birthday week this month, it’s gonna be good enough to give me long-needed closure, which is the whole point of this exercise.

If you’ve got unfinished business with a parent, sibling or friend, perhaps you’ll give yourself a chance to assess whether or not that person is enhancing to your existence and you actually need them in your life. Do you simply put up with ‘em, based on shared history or blood? What do they actually contribute to your happiness and contentment~ and if it’s nothing, perhaps it’s time to do some Fall cleaning.

As just one of 25 of my pieces devoted exclusively to BPD, it’s basically little snippets/highlights about this disorder you will either recognize you’ve been exposed to in a past relationship (or two, three or ten) or you’re gonna finally understand why you’ve felt confused and disconcerted while trying to navigate the one you’re presently in.

I have always been an educator at heart. Imparting Emotional Education to people whose interpersonal world has sadly never supplied it, can’t just be life-altering~ it can literally be Life-Saving. My hope is that this linked-to page will help you heal, grow and evolve, for when you think about it, what could possibly be more important than that?!

https://sharischreiber.com/there-must-be-a-pony-in-here-somewhere/

People become adversarial with each other, because they try to make something “work” with another who either wasn’t a proper and good fit for them in the first place, or they grew and evolved in ways their partner couldn’t keep pace with.

Breaking up with someone you’ve loved should feel as painful for You as it is for Them. Most of us won’t allow ourselves to experience this pain, so we stick around and beat a dead horse until we build up so much resentment and hostility, walking away from ‘em feels easier.

Is this healthy? Is it respectful? Is this the best or most loving way to exit a relationship bond? Ask yourself, “how uncomfortable or disappointing did I allow it to get with this person, before I decided to give up on getting it right with ‘em?”

Years ago, I broke off a relationship with someone I really cared for. It was painful, and I cried right along with him when it became clear that we couldn’t build a significant, more enduring bond. I hadn’t stopped loving him~ I just knew he wasn’t an optimal fit for me. This requires courage, and a strong self-preservation instinct.

BOTH of my eyes got conjunctivitis from shedding copious tears that day, and I awoke the next morning with my eyelids glued together. I remedied this problem with a bit of antibacterial ointment on the inner corner of each eye that morning and night before bed, but it was still a bizarre experience.

People tend to think that if they part, it’s gotta be as enemies! They stay just long enough to despise each other, and the beautiful love they once shared at the start, seems utterly lost from memory. Personally, I think this is tragic~ yet I believe far too many are terrified to be ‘alone with themselves,’ so parting as enemies is the most common outcome. It’s a damned shame for us, and it’s an even bigger shame when our children get caught in the crossfire of that once loving, vibrant union.

You CAN still love someone, and let them go. You just have to be prepared to mourn and grieve this loss, rather than scapegoating that partner for your unhappiness or discontent, and harshly punishing him or her for letting you down. Once upon a time, this person starred in your perfect fantasy of “happily ever after,” but all fairy tales come to an end~ and isn’t it best for everyone, if you can part as mutually caring, respectful friends?

I have believed for many years now, that a Soul Mate is someone who enters our life for a brief or extended time, and catalyzes our growth, healing and self-awareness. It doesn’t matter how under-satisfying or painful this relationship is, we are forced to evolve because of it.

Try and remember: It takes two to Tango, and two to tangle! Accept that every relationship you have teaches you far more about yourself and how to better navigate your life, than you knew before you met that person. So in fact, they’ve been one of the many gifts you’ll receive during the course of this lifetime.

Many weeks later, a gal pal neighbor of mine said she’d had the same initial reaction to the show, but upon watching later episodes at her grown son’s home, she took to it. She suggested I might give “Lioness” another try. I did, and rapidly fell in love with the emotional complexities played out between the characters. I was glad I’d changed my mind.

I kept watching, due to my new appreciation for this series, but have gone back to hating it. I’m done with Lioness, having chosen not to view the entire thing (way too monotonous and painful) and what follows, details how I reached this decision.

“Joe,” Lioness’s main character portrayed by Zoe Saldana is presented to us as one who is ultra-patriotic and altruistic~ but as I watched, I couldn’t help seeing her thru a more comprehensive, and far less desirable lens.

Joe always puts her career and work before family. “How does she consistently do this” some of us may ask, as we watch in awe every time she literally risks her life, having decided it’s acceptable to leave her two daughters motherless, and her loving, surgeon husband a widower~ even after he’s clearly voiced he can’t live without her.

How, indeed! I see Joe’s character as selfish, self-involved, incapable of bonding with anyone (including her children), and egocentric to the max. She’s emotionally volatile without restraint, always tries to prove that her dick is bigger than any man’s in the room, and relishes exerting power and control over all others including her hubby, with whom sex always has to be precisely on her terms and timing, or it doesn’t happen.

Add to this, Joe’s an adrenaline junkie. She’s apparently addicted to chaos, drama and conflict, which keeps her on the battlefield instead of at home with her two daughters, who will grow up with a grossly distorted definition of Love, because it’s always been entwined with painful longing and yearning for their mother’s presence and attention! For kids like Joe’s, Love becomes inextricably entwined with painful cravings for a mother who is persistently unavailable. And you’ve wondered how gals stay with emotionally unavailable and/or abusive men?? It’s this in a nutshell, folks!

Contrary to what millions all over the world believe, when it comes to romantic attraction, painful longing and yearning have nothing whatsoever to do with real love! Genuine love is never painful, because the one who is consistently present and returns our adoration, does not invoke agonizing yearning in us!

This principle holds true, even when someone is physically around, but emotionally distant or disconnected from us! Love does NOT equal pain and vice versa. If even half the world’s population could come outta the ether long enough to learn this, we’d have societies that rarely see incidences of divorce.

I am reminded due to watching Lioness, of Princess Diana, whose famous tours to third world countries made her an icon. People all over the globe pedestalized her, while she only sporadically showed up at home to shower her sons with (short-lived) affection before taking off again to gobble up more glory from her public. Diana was regarded by millions as a Saint, yet she couldn’t handle motherhood, and her children have paid a heavy price for it. We clearly see how it messed up Harry. His older brother is more discreet~ but I assure you, the man has abandonment issues.

I never thought well of “Princess Di.” I clearly saw her as an attention whore, with an unshakable addiction to fame. Elements we knew about Diana like her eating disorder, hinted at an emotionally unstable female (to say the least)~ yet, how could we NOT adore someone who appeared so sweet, generous and philanthropic?!

Many of my clients who grew up with BPD moms have loved telling me how “Mother” was a pillar in their community, and how everyone loved her because of her generous acts. In short, the outside world thought she’d hung the moon and the stars!

But while her children were happy their mother garnered so much praise, they remained confused, conflicted and unhappy, due to her consistent neglect of them. Oh, she managed the perfunctory tasks of mothering, but there was no consistency of warmth or emotionally nourishing attention to be had from good ol’ Mom. Many can’t even remember being hugged nor held by their mother, as she was too busy amassing as much glory as she could, outside the home.

A child can only supply love to a mother. He cannot give kudos, praise nor public approval and adoration. And as I’ve always said, the job that pays a parent the least, is always the one that suffers.

In truth, I pitied Diana. She wed a man who was in a long-term love affair with another woman. This gross betrayal wasn’t touched by the media. In the early years of Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles, I don’t recall that Camilla (the other woman) was ever mentioned at all. No, this scandal was effectively snuffed out by British society. Humans always believe what they want to, which will never change.

So, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that poor little virginal Diana was chosen simply to procreate and provide heirs to the British throne. This in itself, is pitiable, and I frankly find it disgusting. The fact that this could even happen in a reasonably developed nation, is beyond my comprehension~ though I’m probably naive in assuming that many more arranged marriages don’t occur for precisely this same reason, all around the world.

Females who marry royalty are seldom (if ever) emotionally whole, self-actualized, healthy individuals. They’re underdeveloped and emotionally myopic, meaning shortsighted. Just look at once actress, Meghan Markle who rapidly managed to separate husband, Harry from his entire family, and get him stripped of his royal title. A ‘Prince’ of a husband no more~ yet she still compulsively tries to stay in the spotlight and remain relevant, because when a Borderline ceases to garner public attention, they emotionally and psychologically wither and die.

The battle scenes in Lioness are tedious and seem gratuitous, perhaps to expand the length of various episodes. Taylor Sheridan, like too many producers/directors appears to have forgotten the intrinsic value of the cutting room floor, and that editing-out needless footage can vastly improve a reel. Perhaps relishing violence on television is ‘a guy thing,’ and as a full-fledged woman, I can’t appreciate it for the same reason I have zero interest in watching football games.

I can’t help but wonder though, if other women have felt as I have, regarding this series. Can they just tune-out and dissociate from the perpetual violence in so many of Lioness’s scenes? Do they possess an inner filter very different than mine?? Feel free to comment.

But one thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, is as much as we might love, revere and admire Zoe Saldana’s character, “Joe,” she has Borderline Personality Disorder traits (at the very least), and I figure I need to keep watching this crappy show, as much as I need a serious case of hemorrhoids.

I also find it hard to mentally track with a series if a lot of the storyline is revealed in the characters’ dialogue. My ADD traits make it hard for me to visually absorb what’s on the screen and simultaneously follow intricate (especially political) plots~ like why Lioness’s crew must head into yet another life-threatening battle. My brain, while (thankfully) not feeble, just isn’t geared to keep pace with it all.

For this same reason, I had to rewatch Billions episodes 2 - 3 times when it aired, before I could ingest enough dialogue data, to track with that series! Alas, nobody’s perfect.

Art is, and always will be, subjective. Some shows I love watching are not responded to favorably by some of my friends, and vice versa. I’m drawn to medical series, law series, and comedic shows. I’m not a fan of historical or biblical series, nor do I have much fascination with science fiction.

To each his own, I always say~ and as a matter of fact, our diverse tastes, desires and needs, is what makes the world go round.

That’s all confrontation really is, folks. Oh yes, the word has developed a nasty, negative connotation, because so many are terrified of telling their truth for fear of rejection, abandonment, punishment, incurring a Shame Attack, etc., for no good reason at all.

Many grew up being told, “children should be seen and not heard,” and unfortunately, few of us ever outgrew that ideation. The saddest reality is, most of us weren’t even SEEN by our parental units! We were just part of the living-room furniture.

Avoidant Personality Disorder sits under the BPD umbrella. It’s an extremely common trait many Borderlines live with, due to poor self-worth, as well as unresolved anxiety disorder features. Let’s face it~ if you’ve always gone thru life feeling unsafe, insecure and afraid, you’re sure as hell not gonna be inclined to rock the precarious boat you’re floating along in, with anyone!

Trouble arises however, when we shut down emotionally, take ourselves away, or just clam up, because if we never say “Ouch!” when someone steps on our toes (wittingly or unwittingly) and bring that injury we’ve sustained to light, we not only deprive ‘em of the chance to apologize, we rob ‘em of the opportunity to grow and become a better person!

Hence, you might say, our unwillingness to confront is a selfish act. Oh, I’m sure it feels self-serving at the time we run away from that fire, as opposed to toward it, but this is the stuff that literally destroys relationships. And boy, could I tell you dozens of personal stories where relationship death was the inevitable outcome of another’s avoidant behavior.

Learning how to confront is easy, but it requires a special set of tools. I’m gonna share those with you today, so you can take something of real value away with you and try it, next time you think you wanna run like hell from confronting someone.

First, you’ll benefit from some emotional education. 98% of people are excruciatingly uncomfortable with sharing their real feelings or thoughts. If you’ve ever had a fear of confrontation (programmed from early childhood onward), you know I’m right about this.

In short, what are the feelings in your body that come up when you think about confronting someone with an uncomfortable truth? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? Is it dread they’ll abandon you? Is it awkwardness? Is it just a vague, indefinable sense of discomfort? What’s the bodily sensation you’re having, feeling like in that moment?

Sitting in whatever discomfort you’re noticing in your body, is what ya talk about FIRST. This initially comes outta your mouth, right AFTER you approach your mark and utter these words: “I have a very difficult conversation I’m feeling a need to have with you.” And then, “this is really (awkward, scary, uncomfortable) for me.”

Now, imagine someone came to You and said these things. Wouldn’t they immediately have 100% of your attention? Sure they would!

Not only that, but nearly everyone HATES confrontation, so whether they wanna give it to you or not, you’ve triggered some empathy within that other person for you!

The following is really important, so don’t drift off here! When we state our feelings, when we say our emotions out loud, we diffuse them somewhat! That’s right, they actually shrink! Repressing our vulnerable emotions makes ‘em grow much bigger, so quit doing it! Say ‘em out loud.

You’ve now managed the hardest part of your confrontation, and believe it or not, you’ve greased the chute for the rest of what you wanna say, to come out much easier! Like approaching most things in life, starting is the hardest part.

So, now your new (for now, monologue) sounds like this:

“Sally, I have a really difficult conversation I’m feeling a need to have with you. It’s scary and awkward for me, but I have to get it off my chest.” Then…

“the other day when you took a business call in the midst of your dialogue with me and never called back to resume our exchange, it hurt my feelings and made me think that I don’t matter to you.”

Then, shut up~ because you’ve already succeeded at your first real confrontation! Congratulations!!! Watch their face if they’re in front of you, or if you’re doing this in a phone call, give the other person some space to respond and reply.

When I teach this magnificent Confrontation Tool to my clients, I use an onion analogy. I have them picture a brown onion with slippery, parchment-like skin that’s impossible to penetrate without a serrated-edged knife, or they’ll cut their hand.

Our first layer of feelings (like the skin of an onion) are the hardest to identify and express. Once we get that part outta the way, there are juicy, easy to slice layers underneath… and these represent the rest of your feelings and needs.

PLUS, you have the other’s full attention and a little empathy, ‘cause they know how hard it is for them to do what You’re doing! Take your time. You’re not required to blurt out everything you want and need to say in the space of 60 seconds! This isn’t a race to the finish line (though you’ll desperately want it to be)!

Bottom line, you’ll be doing something that takes a lotta courage, and come away from this exercise with more respect from the other person than you had before practicing this technique.

This little ‘power tool’ can launch positive, life-altering changes for you, so be prepared for feeling stronger and more confident in your world~ and for your self-esteem to grow, as well.

It’s OK to react. It’s not a sin, nor does it make you less a “good person.”

Normal, healthy humans can get triggered, as not one of us can think on our feet 100% of the time to decide in a given moment of extreme stress or frustration, what may have been the better course of action, a week or so later. Hindsight really is, after all, 20/20.

Fully functioning adults allow for, respect and honor their full repertoire of emotions, and don’t make themselves wrong or “bad” for feeling ANY of them. Emotional reactivity is not something reserved only for people with personality disorder traits, so it’s time to let yourself down off the cross!

If you’ve gained enough emotional development under your belt in this lifetime, you will find the impulse control and circumspection you need to be responsive a good 93% of the time you’re interacting with others. The other 7% will have you losing it on someone who’s persistently provoked you, and guess what? They deserve to get back the full measure of what they gave!

I think we too often wanna forget or de-emphasize the phenomenon of Cause and Effect. Borderlines hold themselves accountable for NOTHING. They can murder their children and manage to sidestep the moral decay, extreme lack of impulse control and their incapacity to bond, that have long-resided within. They can whack you in the head with a cast iron frying pan, yet be shocked and outraged when you fight back.

Most of us do not fit this paradigm. We’re just humans with a plethora of feelings both light and dark, and occasionally we must try very hard to allow ourselves to be just that, instead of living inside a rigid, confining cage of our own making.

Psychotherapists, psychologists and virtually everyone else in the helping/healing professions NEVER take off their Therapist’s Hat. They’ll withdraw and take themselves away from their spouse for days or weeks at a time, instead of expressing any kind of strong emotion. They cannot allow themselves to just be human, nor can they react appropriately when a situation calls for it and an emotional outburst would be fitting.

Why?? Because these are core-wounded folks who’ve grown up believing that their darker emotions and half their personality facets are bad and wrong! Poor babies. Ya can’t walk someone else thru a dark and scary tunnel that you yourself, have been afraid or unwilling to navigate.

These are not emotionally whole, self-actualized beings who like, respect and admire themselves. In fact, they beat themselves to a bloody pulp on a daily basis just as You do, for simply having a dark or negative thought or reaction.

It’s my opinion that God didn’t invent us to be “Christ-like.” That’s just a brainwashing manipulation used by various religious sects to control the masses, and stave off utter societal chaos (and how’s that workin’ for us TODAY?!).

No, IF you believe in God, you have to accept he created us as fallible, flawed beings who (with any luck) most the time get it right, and are proud of and pleased with our behaviors. The other 7% of the time, He overlooks and doesn’t fret about, because being “perfect” was never, ever part of our original design.

We might take for granted that others are generous, kind, thoughtful, ethical beings like ourselves, and feel surprised or even shocked, when we have to confront the reality that they are in fact, NOT.

There IS evil in our world. Humans who act-out treacherous, larcenous, heinous crimes against others without a moment’s thought, do exist. We call them sociopaths or psychopaths, because we cannot fathom how they can live with themselves and their obvious (to us) vile darkness that resides within.

This is an extreme example of how many do not echo personality traits and features that we possess~ but even slight disparities between others and ourselves can feel confounding or troubling to us. In truth, anything we can’t identify with or relate to, can become a source of obsessional concern for us~ which is why I was inspired to write 25 articles about Borderline Personality Disorder for y’all, years ago.

I believe the main reason many notable differences between us and others exists is, we are not all shaped with the same cookie cutter. Myriad contrasts and anomalies may exist within our own personal desires or agendas, that others simply don’t give a hoot about.

But what could be the root cause of such occurrences? Could it be something as simple as, their priorities are vastly different from ours? I suspect that for some of us, this means we cannot forge a much desired sense of community with others, with the exception of a precious few who share our wants and needs. Finding those people and hoping they equally share our wish for connection, is the problem.

Meeting and connecting with kindred spirits can realistically be as rare an event, as a full solar eclipse. Perhaps our life is far less busy and hectic than another’s, and so our outreach might be met with, “I just can’t find the time.”

One of the most vital pieces of awareness that I’ve gained during my somewhat lengthy time here, is that each one of us sets up our life precisely the way we NEED it to be. I’m not talking of wants or desires here. My needs may be vastly different from yours, and nobody’s wrong or right in this regard. This, like much of life, just IS.

I’ve also learned (sometimes the hard way) that if someone or something is important to us, we never “find the time” to respond to that person~ we make the time for it. (Re-reference the paragraph above.) For the majority of my life, my older sister could ostensibly never “find the time” to respond to my outreaches. Her standard back-up retort was always, ”Oh, I’ve been meaning to call you!”

Meaning to do something, has nothing whatsoever to do with doing it. My stepmother’s favorite saying was, “the road to Hell was paved with good intentions.” I tend to agree.

I’m told that in CoDA (Codependent’s Anonymous) meetings, their bottom-line chant and rule of thumb is, “rejection is God’s protection.” I’m very pleased that chapters of that organization have historically purchased my first book publication in bulk, as it delves comprehensively into unresolved Codependency issues in a manner that other books of its type do not. But I digress.

When someone doesn’t take your hand when it’s offered, it’s very rarely about You. This disconnect is far more often about their inability to feel confident and capable of swimming in deeper waters they perceive are native and natural to You. In short, they might feel as if they can’t measure up to whatever strengths or status they think you represent.

We are all just human. We’ve all got baggage, which some of us have unrelentingly worked hard to reduce in size, so it can fit snugly into the overhead compartment on an airplane~ and the rest of us, have not. We’ve all had to surmount life’s challenges, and duck the curve balls it has episodically thrown at us. We are only united (with any luck) by the phenomenon of likeness of mind and spirit, which (in my world) is so extremely rare, it’s nearly non-existent.

So many painfully go through life assuming that if someone isn’t responsive to their expressed desire to explore a friendship, there’s something “wrong” with them. This ideation is extraordinarily common among millions who struggle with unresolved self-worth issues. They project their own sense of inadequacy onto others, and presume the world sees them as lacking as they see themselves. What a pity.

For some reason, I felt inspired watch a few of my YouTube videos last night. They’re usually entertaining for me, and sweet reminders of my passion for helping folks attain everything they need and want out of life. One has to do with embracing your own Greatness (which like happiness, is solely an Inside Job), and I have a hunch it might speak to a few of you today.

Wishing each one of you an enjoyably meaningful and productive week ahead, even if all ya wanna do is lie around watching streaming video, till the cows come home. Mooo!

THEY’RE DEAD WRONG. You can most certainly “move-on,” and create a far more gratifying life for yourself, beyond that incident of harm and/or betrayal. It will not impede your forward movement at all~ in fact, it might just enhance it!

Anger is THE most enlivening, activating, energizing and passionate emotion we humans have access to, in our emotional repertoire. Quit judging it!

Ever felt that adrenaline rush when you’re moved to feeling glorious, uncensored, uninhibited rage, and just wanna put your fist through a wall?? That’s pure, unfiltered energy, my friends!

There’s nothing ever written about the natural, normal, human emotions of anger and rage, beyond being “bad.” And yet, your church doesn’t allow it. Your parents didn’t allow it (even if they were certifiable rage-aholics!) and society frowns on it, simply out of fear.

Fearful folks have grown up harshly judging and making themselves “wrong” for feeling anger, because their parental units found that emotion inconvenient to accommodate, and made their kids wrong for feeling and (God forbid) expressing it!

Lemme tell ya folks, it’s time to wake the hell up! The people who finally crack and get up on rooftops with rifles, are just like you and me. They’ve harshly judged and suppressed their anger lifelong, and one day they finally SNAP and explode with murderous rage. This is the absolute truth, and I care not, if you don’t believe me.

Many years ago, I met a couple thru a guy I dated at the time. Their 7 or 8 year old was a sweet kid, but way too uber-polite and passive, due to living with hyper-controlling, narcissistic parents. I couldn’t help but see a trainwreck waiting to happen when I met that child. Years later as a young man, he elected to engage me for help at his parents’ urgings, because he was suicidally depressed and they felt impotent to help him outta that hole he’d fallen into, much to their shock and dismay.

This fellow was deeply core traumatized. By this, I mean he had no sense of self-worth, believed his parents were “perfect” and could do no wrong, and had started being attracted to and dating only girls who had Borderline Personality Disorder traits, just like his mother (imagine my surprise).

This boy’s father and I had become close friends, and there was also a mutual respect and affection shared between his mother and me at that time. This dutiful husband, my friend, frequently complained about the lack of sex, affection and sensuality in his marriage. He told me of his wife’s frequent departures from their wedding bed, to sleep in her son’s bed for weeks at a time. These master bedroom departures did NOT come on the heels of any (overt) arguments, she just preferred to sleep with their pitifully mother-enmeshed son, who’d apparently tried desperately to fill the ghastly hole in his mother’s soul, his entire life.

Cold wars between a mother and father are every bit as powerfully felt and absorbed by their offspring, as emotionally volatile, screaming battles, just so ya know. Children have heightened awareness of tensions that exist between their parents. These beautiful, sentient little creatures literally do not miss a thing.

But I’ve digressed. As I observed this little boy when I first met him at my BF’s birthday bash, the repression he obviously lived under since he was a toddler, had me saying to myself, this is a future mass-murderer . . . either that, or he’s gonna kill himself one day.

His parents of course, made him believe they were “perfect,” and that he was flawed. They spontaneously and harshly punished him for simple infractions (accidentally spilling his milk, laughing too loud, accidentally breaking a flower vase while running around the house, etc.), when they could have instead sat him down and said, “I love you very much, but I don’t like that behavior, and I want it to stop.” Nope, by their actions and words they consistently managed to convince him that he was a “bad boy.”

How does a child survive this kind of upbringing?? Not well. Anytime you stick a living organism in a rigid, non-expanding container~ whether it’s a plant, a puppy or a human child, that container’s gonna BREAK as that living entity continues (through no fault of its own) to grow and develop. And in all likelihood, it’s gonna deeply resent having been so tightly confined and controlled for so long, it may ultimately rebel.

Then my friends, we have a Charlie Manson, a serial killer or a rooftop mass murderer on our hands, and we cannot help but be perplexed as to why and how this coulda happened to that fine, upstanding, super-polite boy we watched growing up in our community.

I had a sweet, bright client in my MFT intern practice a few decades ago. One day, he came into session feeling distraught. He’d had an upbringing like the one you’ve just read about. Clearly disturbed about a dream he’d had the night before, he related the “horrifying” details of it to me. He told me of going into every room in his family’s house, and one by one, methodically murdering his siblings and parents.

Did I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was carrying some unresolved hurt, and rage from way back in his childhood?? You bet your life! Did I help him heal from those early traumas, and grow a healthy sense of Self and genuine empowerment? Absolutely.

Underneath anger and rage is always hurt. Anger is a natural, normal, reflexive human reaction to being harmed in some way, whether somebody’s accidentally crunched your toe under the heel of their shoe, or they’ve dismissed you, insulted you, invalidated your feelings or maimed you in a vehicle accident.

I for one, have lived quite well after someone’s betrayed or hurt me. I’ll lick my wounds for a few days, and then decide what kind of punishment they deserve for having committed that particular crime against me. I’m always around to hear about the outcome of my balanced and fair-minded comeuppance imaginings.

Living well, they say, is the best revenge. God’s not gonna punish you for imagining bad things happening to bad people (or even, good ones who’ve disrespected you). Everyone gets what they deserve (good OR bad) whether you think that’s a right attitude or not. What goes around, comes around, and you’re not gonna be struck down by lightning, if you have a murderously rageful thought or two (or twenty) toward somebody. Hey, I’m still here, living a pretty glorious life.

I figure, if God didn’t approve of me or needed me to have evolved differently than I have, he’d have created me in that configuration, rather than the one he did. (We’re on very good terms, incidentally.)

My experience is, the passage of time may not heal all wounds, but eventually they fade in their severity, and we get to a place of feeling something close to indifference about ‘em. They’re no longer lighting us up. The electrical charge on that issue has dissipated.

Our ability to heal from (adult) emotional injuries, is kinda like having viewed a slasher film as a little kid that scared ya half to death while you watched it in a theater. After two or three weeks, your nervous system settles back down, those mind-searing, gruesome, visual details have started to fade from your brain’s memory, and you’ve pretty much rebalanced from having hypnotically watched all that gory stuff and been impacted by it.

Wishing you all Light, Love, and blessed Anger and Rage. In short, try real hard to start being a normal Human, who doesn’t detest and forever flagellate themselves for feeling a darker emotion.

I am a product of a broken home. My dad and mom split when my older sister was 12, and I was 5 years old. Their separation was emotionally devastating to me, NOT because they’d broken up, but because my father was the sole source of my affectional supplies. When he was gone from our house, neither my mother nor sister were innately sound enough emotionally, to take up the slack and fill that cannonball-sized hole in the middle of my torso.

I suffered terribly, and you might imagine what starting school shortly thereafter, was like for me. I was hopelessly traumatized without my daddy around, and my ability to focus on anything other than this pain inside me and learn, was severely inhibited.

85% of clients who’ve come thru my practice over the past thirty years or so, are from broken homes. They’ve actually fared better, than those who grew up around adults who had an adversarial dynamic. Even if their parents’ fights weren’t violent and the child was only subjected to sarcasm, frequent emotional withdrawals and ongoing tensions between Mom and Dad, he was more deeply injured than those whose parents separated before coming to hate one another.

Had my parents (who were like oil and water) remained together, living in a never-ending war zone would surely have been my only reality, and I seriously doubt I would ever have learned or fully understood that a better, more wholesome relationship dynamic was even possible.

It’s not your children’s fault that you may not have actually known yourself and been developed enough to select a solid and nourishing relationship bond for yourself when you first contemplated marriage. Yet your kids have paid an enormously heavy price for those errors You made as post-adolescent adults in your twenties or even into your thirties.

Okay, so you didn’t know any better~ and most do not, but two Wrongs never make a Right, and remaining in a loveless, passionless marriage is the worst thing you can do to a child. It thwarts their idea of what “marriage” is supposed to look, sound and feel like, which is what happens to millions of children whose disgruntled, unhappy parents stayed together “for the kids sake.”

In truth, it’s not unlike human nature to beat a dead relationship horse, when splitting apart feels a little too terrifying. I mean, who the hell wants to start all over, and hope to find a really solid partnership fit for ourselves?! Like, NOBODY.

Children learn best, from example. Try and remember the example of a committed attachment bond you gave your kids for many years of their childhood, and ask yourself if this might be why they’ve struggled to form and maintain loving, harmonious relationships. Are you paying attention, here??

I’ve been saying for many years now, that if one grew up with a mother who had BPD traits, he or she will automatically be attracted to romantic partners who possess these same personality features. There’s no way around this unfortunate issue, as it’s subconsciously driven.

We were in love with Mother before we were born. We grew an intimate bond with her during our entire gestation period, as we developed in her womb. We had no sense that we separate from her. She was us, and we were her. We were one.

When we meet a Borderline and the love-bombing stage of that dance begins, we feel this same sense of “oneness,” that we did with our mother in-utero. The BPD lover discerns our likes and dislikes. They mirror us perfectly, as if they absolutely share all our preferences and dislikes. In short, they echo our views and values magnificently~ all the while, looking at us like we’d hung the moon and the stars, and can walk on water.

The incredibly high, heady feelings we get to have about ourself in those early stages of this relationship are addictive. If we’d ever had concerns about our lovability or being ‘good enough’ during childhood, those doubts about our worth start to vanish under the Borderline’s adoring gaze.

This describes a Borderline’s seduction dance, and he or she has practiced it dozens of times with various partners, even if they swear you’re uniquely special, and “the only” man or woman who’s ever evoked these feelings in them! Right . . . and pigs can fly.

It is so crucially important to be developed and mature enough to forge healthy attachment experiences before you even think of marrying. Why? Because staying in an under-gratifying or conflictual relationship dynamic, even if it routinely plays out as a Cold War, has far reaching, lifelong consequences for your offspring. Your parents taught you this experientially, did they not??

Religious folk take commitment very seriously~ perhaps too much so. “I married for better or worse,” they like to say. If their parents’ high conflict marriage miraculously managed to sustain itself over the course of decades, many won’t even allow for the possibility that there’s a more gratifying alternative for what a marital relationship could and should be.

Again, children learn best, by example: “If my parents survived an adversarial, loveless, passionless marriage, surely I can, too!” And these individuals stay stuck right where they are for decades, no matter how unhappy they are!

But WHY is this so tragically common?? Because most people are terrified of being “alone.” This, and the fact that someone with BPD traits needs a whipping post present at all times. If they can’t take their lifelong dissatisfaction, unhappiness and unresolved rage from childhood pain out on You (or anyone else nearby), they turn their leftover anger about maternal deficits they had to endure, onto themselves.

Depression is rage turned inward. Show me a Borderline who doesn’t live with a baseline of depression and anxiety, and I’ll show you a person who doesn’t exist.

Depression and anxiety have lived inside Borderlines on a cellular level, lifelong (no matter how much psychotherapy they’ve enlisted). It’s much easier to blame and shame one’s partner for “causing” these difficult emotions, than to do the essential inner healing and growth work it takes to heal and outgrow one’s inner-pain and the personality disorder traits that are an inescapable byproduct of it.

Emotionally whole, healthy people do not remain in unfulfilling relationships! They respect and like themselves enough to say, no more! People with BPD traits tend toward masochism. Most of these folks secretly hold a Victim mentality, which is an unfortunate remnant from not getting their emotional needs for closeness, warmth and affection met during childhood. Emotional pain periodically nudges them out of their long-held dissociative bubble, and makes them FEEL something that translates to sensations of aliveness.

This is yet another reason people don’t leave relationships that are under-satisfying or injurious to them. They’re accustomed to pain (since they were newborns), and if that pain gets intense enough for ‘em, they derive something very close to an adrenaline rush from it, and bingo! They’re suddenly feeling alive!

Borderlines thrive on chaos, conflict and drama. These same feeling states that make the rest of us run like hell away from painful emotional experiences, are like a flame to a moth, for one who has BPD features. They are intensity seekers, for without extremely intense emotional experiences, the Borderline feels empty, bored, flat, invisible and dead inside his or her body.

Feelings of aliveness are sought by us as well, if we are perpetually attracted to BPD-plagued lovers. Emotionally healthy, whole individuals are able to self-manufacture various ways to access stimulation and feelings of aliveness for themselves. One with BPD cannot. It isn’t that we’re cognizant of these dangerous features in a potential partner, but we’re subconsciously drawn to them, due to our maternal attachment difficulties from infancy onward.

I listen to an oldies station here in Tennessee. On a fluke, I’d phoned in on an open invitation to callers by the DJ. He expressed how shocking it felt to discover that Tennessee has one of the highest populations of ‘swingers’ in our nation. The station as I understand it, broadcasts from Georgia. Apparently, the stats were in, and he was utterly flabbergasted by ‘em! He wanted swingers to call, and share why they made the lifestyle choice to be a couple who engaged in spouse-swapping.

I didn’t expect to get on the air, but thought, why not give it a shot? I’ve always fantasized about having a radio talk show. Closest I got to that years ago, was producing and hosting my own cable show for public access in L.A. It was an interview show I’d named, Speak Easy. My guests were people who advanced public awareness in the arenas of mental, physical and emotional well-being. Speak Easy and I garnered a nice following.

Anyhow, this DJ invited anyone who was a “swinger” to phone in. I was the second caller, made it clear I wasn’t part of the Swinger community, and offered what I’d hoped would be food for thought to his listeners.

I opened with considerations I’d had about moving to this (southern) region after I lost my CA home to the January, 2025 wildfires. My priorities for a new residence were: conservative politics, somewhat moderate weather patterns, friendly social dynamics and visual aesthetics. I just had to land in another beautiful place. I added, the one thing that never occurred to me when moving south, was landing in The Bible Belt!

During this call, I explained that suppression of our emotions makes them grow larger, to the point they may become irrepressible. Religious people typically grow up with rigorously devout, church-going parents and relatives. As this was their earliest, most consistent programming, they rarely stray from it as adults, and tend to raise their own children the same way. It’s not important at the juncture to delve more deeply into the various reasons why this occurs~ but suffice it to say, “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.”

I spoke of all the natural, normal feelings we as humans have in our emotional repertoire when we enter this life, and that as we grow, they’re often invalidated, chastised, punished, harshly judged, mocked and just plain not allowed, by our parental units. Our burgeoning sexuality in pre-adolescence unfortunately, may come under intense scrutiny and hyper-control by well-meaning parents~ particularly if we had a devout mother or father. The general consensus under these conditions is, that sex before marriage, is a sin.

If one cannot sow their wild oats (so to speak) before they marry and pledge their sexuality and body to a life partner, what happens to sexual learning along the way? Extremely few young people know how to please themselves sexually, much less a partner, without any pre-nuptial exploration.

Becoming a good lover is a lot like learning how to ride a bike; it does not come naturally. There’s a huge learning curve to getting it right, and plenty of honest feedback is essential from a lover we’re attempting to dance with! Many don’t even know how to ask for what they need and want in general, so how does this automatically happen within the realm of lovemaking?!

Hell, I didn’t even know what was pleasurable to Me, in my early 20’s. Not to worry, I thoroughly made up for lost time and erotic education in the years that followed.

When little girls or teens are repeatedly told, “save it for your wedding night,” or “save it (sex) for someone special,” it messes with us, and you will never convince me otherwise. Young males are never subjected to this advice. Hence, they generally have far fewer sexual hang-ups and dysfunction later in life, than females.

So, I stressed that suppression of natural, normal human feelings and drives amplifies our cravings, and it’s likely to have us acting them out at a future point as we mature. Within this context, I proposed to the DJ that if I forbade him from eating chocolate cake, might this not immediately trigger his craving a huge slice of it??

Sure it would~ it’s just human nature! Ask anyone who’s tortured themselves, by going on a strict diet! Humans revolt against deprivation. When you tell us that it’s “wrong” to think, feel or obtain something, it’s the first thing we’ll want! We hate stern regulations and confinements, and we’re supposed to!

So I commented on the psychological ramifications many struggle with, having grown up with parents who had no clue about adolescent development, and never felt it necessary to read books on insuring infant, child or adolescent growth, and educate themselves. (Welcome to MY history as a teenager.)

The upshot? When ya make kids believe that sex is bad and wrong unless it occurs under the lily-white, sacred sheath of “Marriage,” and one has no other frame of reference for pleasurable, sensual experiences outside of one’s spouse is available, sex is gonna get predictable and boring, pretty fast.

This DJ made a point of asking me to spell my name, and requested that I share with his listeners, my website. I said they could find me at GettinBetter.com, and that I was all over the Web, which would also help them find my YouTube channel. This was free press, and I was delighted with it! Maybe something will come of it, and maybe not~ but the experience in itself, was most enjoyable.

Polyamorous folks have reported that their marriage bond has gotten stronger. Variety it seems, is the spice of life for these people. I can’t personally vouch for this, or for how beneficial or advantageous swinging is for couples, but “whatever blows your skirt up,” as a lesbian friend used to say.

Anyway, if one is deprived of an entire chunk of his or her development in this lifetime, some crucially important catching up, seems understandable. I’m reminded here, of a movie I watched in theaters years ago called, Unfaithful.

Unfaithful, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Richard Gere is the story of a happily married woman who has a chance encounter with a fascinating, foreign-born stranger. She has a captivating affair with him, which has nothing to do with any lack of love she feels for her husband (Gere).

Men detested this film! Their distinctly angry vibes were palpable throughout the theater, as they squirmed in their seats, too mesmerized to walk out. They saw a loving, responsible, successful, good man who exemplified “the perfect husband.” So WHY did his wife cheat on him?? For me, the reasons were obvious.

Pfeiffer’s character had married at an appropriate age, became a homemaker, and had a couple of kids. I surmised that like millions of young women, she hadn’t dated much nor explored who she was as a sexual being, before marrying Mr. Right. Her chance encounter with a handsome stranger in the middle of a wind storm took her by surprise. So did her undeniable attraction to him.

I watched this movie knowing full well, this woman could not resist the urge to get better acquainted with herself, than she’d had opportunity to do earlier in her life. She was discovering and getting acquainted with a buried dimension of herself that was previously unacknowledged by her, and that experience felt heady and irresistible!

When you make “marriage” the magical key that’s supposed to unlock the door to your sexuality and eroticism, you’re living in a fantasy world that makes absolutely no sense to anyone who can think logically and rationally. In addition, I’ve always believed that if God had needed us to wait until marrying to explore our sexuality, he’d have configured our intense hormone surges and drives to occur in our mid to late twenties, rather than in pre-adolescence!

So, why does the Bible Belt have the highest population of “swingers” in the United States?? Maybe these folks are finally giving themselves permission to get better acquainted with facets of themselves that’ve been neglected since it was age-appropriate to accept, explore and embrace them.

Perhaps latent adolescent rebellion has something to do with a swinger’s lifestyle choice. Over-correction is not an atypical human reaction to repression, no matter how ya slice that pie.

Sentimentality often makes letting go of people tough (and sometimes scary). We fear judgement, ridicule, and vehement reactions from those who take up space in our life, but contribute very little. Hell, we judge ourselves for even contemplating such a bold act!

Many years ago, I was in close, daily contact with a dear male friend. I adored him, and it wasn’t unusual for us to speak a few times a day. We hit a speedbump at one point, and regardless of how hard I tried to patch us up and mend that rupture, I could not. This man routinely amputated people who disagreed with him, out of his life. I’m not saying that’s a “bad” thing, but one’s narcissism might too swiftly estrange a few who’ve added significant value to our existence.

At the time, I experienced his departure as a monumental loss. But some pretty amazing personal life and professional changes almost immediately followed his absence (who coulda known?). My friend was a wonderful man, but his favorite saying was, “no good deed goes unpunished,” and he complained a lot.

After a few weeks of no contact with him, my phone rang incessantly. People all over the globe were calling for help. My practice grew exponentially. It felt miraculous! This period also coincided with having surrendered my application for MFT state licensure due to serious injuries that inhibited me from re-taking my second state board exam for Marriage and Family Therapy.

My dear friend, Bryan gave and gave of himself without any reserve, sense of boundaries or healthy consideration of who could or would give back or wouldn’t. As a brilliant, self-taught architect with a big heart, his martyr energy was palpable and indomitable. He had no desire over the forty-plus years we relished our friendship bond, to resolve that self-defeating issue. People in our immediate sphere can hold us back~ whether we wanna believe it, or not. What you decide to do with this knowledge, is totally up to you.

A healthy, nourishing relationship bond is not about how much you “Love” someone! It’s about mutual respect, consideration, trust and reciprocation. If ya ain’t got that, all you have is a Wish List that never gets fulfilled, no matter how much you hope and pray that it will.

Remember, dear friends and followers, whatever life condition you have, however your relationship bonds serve you or do not, this is what you are choosing for whatever reasons you think it’s right to do so. Whose opinion on this matter are you still operating from~ does it belong to a parent or a sibling?

Is it our own fear or self-judgement that keeps us sitting on this particular stove burner? Perhaps we simply dread the ‘unknown’ that’s inevitably ahead.

When we truly want our current life configuration to change, we must choose something different than what we’ve been accommodating that’s familiar to us, so our results and outcomes have a shot at improving. We’ve all faced setbacks and challenges in our life that in hindsight, were unavoidable. Shit happens. Most the time it wasn’t our plan, fault or deliberate doing. But it’s vitally important we explore this element for ourselves, to see if the risk of moving toward heightening our joy and enhancing our life is possible.

How did we navigate over various speed-bumps in our past? And will the same formula for surmounting those former roadblocks help us today? Often, they will not, and here’s why: Whether we consciously wish to or not, we are always developing and changing. For some, these changes are dramatic, for others not so much.

The solutions you cleverly came up with a decade ago, can’t help you now. We must continually seek broader, wiser, more circumspect solutions than we knew how to implement in past years! Sorry folks, my own life experiences taught me this, and I can’t deny or unlearn it. The upshot? You are not failing to “do it well enough,” you’re just growing beyond your former capabilities, and new problems require fresh solutions. (What a drag, I thought many years ago!)

When I was a much younger woman, I thought “GREAT!” I’ve surmounted this issue, and I’ll just remember precisely how I got to it, and re-utilize it for the next time I fall or step into a hole in the road. To my surprise and chagrin, this worked in theory, but never in practice. Hell, I thought to myself, this setback should be easier to resolve, given the tools I’d already mastered. Bummer! This happened several times, before enlightenment finally dawned.

You wouldn’t expect your inner 8 year-old self to handle difficulties as well as your inner 30 year-old self can, would ya? Of course not! Even just the notion of this is absurd! This awareness exemplifies genuine growth and healing that is by its very nature, ongoing~ and to some extent, it’s gonna happen with or without our consent.

So, try and roll with the punches, folks. Life’s a gargantuan learning curve, and nobody ever evolves from getting it right all the time. We can only hope to learn how to ‘do it differently or better’ from our setbacks and mistakes, and see if we can avert more pitfalls up ahead, than we’ve already had to put up with.

She’s a wonderfully talented, kind being, but has been severely lacking in basic life skills. She still detests her first husband whom she divorced over 50 years ago, and likely blames him for all her misfortunes. Talk about beating a dead horse.

The gift she unwittingly gave me, was providing a stellar example of someone I never wanted to become. This has served me well.

More than anything else, I pity her. One’s lack of emotional development causes him/her to experience far more struggles and strife than is normal and necessary. It majorly influences all our choices and decisions, and blocks us from forming mutually nourishing, healthy attachments.

The first born child is usually the lab experiment. Books written about infant, child and adolescent development are sadly, never read by people who automatically believe themselves to be experts at taking on a totally new and foreign life experience. Most are not emotionally nor psychologically equipped to raise children effectively. Still, billions all over the world are shooting in the dark and hoping to hit the parenting bullseye, without even knowing how to love a child.

I was a child born to such parents, and so was my sister. We have each navigated our own harrowing journeys in this lifetime, but some of us are lucky enough to learn what NOT to do (by contrast), from an older sibling or parent.

I have never regretted not giving birth to a child in this lifetime. I knew at 20, I was incapable of unselfishly loving one, to help him/her embark on their own gratifying life journey. I am forever grateful for having had this foresight.

My sister’s offspring have bourn the brunt of her not having been emotionally or psychologically prepared to parent her children any better than our mother and father did, and their outcomes have reflected substantial deficits they had to endure while growing up.

“First, do no harm” often means taking a brutally honest assessment of ourselves, our capabilities and our internal resources to live and love well enough, before we act on our fantasies about how life will orchestrate itself. Most never do.

A lot of reparenting has gone into the help I’ve given my clients. I think of this part of my work as providing corrective emotional experiences to souls who’ve never had the good fortune to have found unlimited support, affection, constructive and protective guidance, accurate mirroring or genuine love (without any agenda) from their parental units. When you think about it, how can we possibly create a successful and gratifying life for ourselves. without these essential ingredients? Beats the heck outta me!

A man who worked briefly with me a decade ago, left a voicemail yesterday. My guess is that I’d helped him to some degree back then, which perhaps instilled some trust that I might assist him in navigating his current challenges. The truth is, we are not ready to heal and grow until we’re ready. Sometimes it takes years or decades to find the inner courage, impetus and willingness it takes to begin transforming the faulty childhood blueprint we are still allowing to determine all our outcomes.

Some brave souls commit to doing whatever’s necessary to correct the course of their life and arrive at contentment, inner-peace and joy, and some never do.

Genuine success is not about how much money you’ve made or saved. It’s about having achieved through consistent effort and commitment, the very real and attainable qualities and characteristics listed above.

I was registered with the Democratic party for virtually all my adult life, and they made it so easy to vote, I was grateful. Who needs to research candidates, when the Dem’s send you reams of pre-election materials, and tell ya precisely who to vote for?!

Dumb political bunnies like myself, do not ask questions, we don’t do research into various candidates, and we’re blissfully lazy. It’s not that we don’t care to do our civic duty, but we want that task off our platter as quickly and efficiently as possible, so we can go back to numbing-out when it comes to deciding on matters within which we feel completely out of our depth. As chagrined as I am to admit it, I was ignorant~ and likely the rule, rather than the exception.

A little history seems in order. I was talking to a former gal pal years back, bitching about the literal stacks of pre-election paper that’s routinely generated by the Dems. I had to either get shredding for hours, or take my jumbo Sharpie pen to those piles in hopes of keeping my identity and address private. Call me crazy, but I haven’t had my name on return address stickers for many years. I’m not paranoid, just cautious.

Anyhow, I’m complaining to my friend about how sick and tired I am of dealing with all that paper every time an election was ahead! I’m not exaggerating, folks. Eight-inch high stacks of glossy, full-color sheets routinely cluttered my home environment! I HATE clutter! When my home is messy or cluttered, so is my brain~ and my ADD traits need no extra incentive to feel flummoxed.

So my friend says, “I never get any of that!” She was a registered Republican back then, and as God is my witness, I immediately changed political parties that very same day! I understand this sounds superficial to the point of absurdity, but that’s what happened, and I felt pleased about it.

Everyone of my close friends is centered, grounded, highly logical and practical. Birds of a feather flock together, after all. They are brilliant independent thinkers who don’t give a damn, if anyone else agrees with them or not. They do not go with the flow, they do not espouse current popular ideations, and they do not look to others for acceptance or approval.

These people have zero concern about winning any popularity contests on social media platforms, so like me, they couldn’t care less how many followers or subscribers or ‘likes’ their posts get. We march to the beat of our own drum, for that’s the only tempo we ever hear.

Some of these friends have struggled through serious setbacks and challenges, yet they’ve developed a sense of grace, inner peace, unflinching character and an indomitable commitment to living their life ethically, whether wealthy or poor.

I suspect a lotta people like myself, finally came outta the ether, when Trump arrived on the political scene. Naturally, he had his own special brand of narcissism along with selfish reasons for wanting to turn this country around and get it back on its feet, but I can’t help feeling his heart was in the right place. Add to this, assassination attempts tend to alter one’s perspectives on life.

Very few know about Trump and his anonymous, altruistic acts of helping people like you and me out of a jam when we needed it most~ but if you came up in New York, you heard thru the grapevine about these incidents. It’s odd, how many people can hate a highly successful man or women. Trump draws no attention to himself when making charitable offerings, but many still detest the guy.

Is this the Green-eyed Envy Monster that so many display when someone’s achieved far more fame, fortune or status than they ever could? I’d had this happen recently with a friend. She got mad at me, literally out of the blue. She’d wanted to rise to her excellence for years now (as a “healer”), yet has far to go. I’m guessing it might have felt a bit too uncomfortable, having to live anywhere near the shadow I’ve cast during my professional life. This is just speculation, but nothing else has made sense.

Now for the hard part. This is where you might wanna sign outta this post to save getting your feathers ruffled, which is your prerogative. You’ve been warned.

The U.S. has been a pathologically Codependent nation for many decades. We have needed to be needed, and I believe we had to reach this current point of critical mass with our extreme self-aggrandizement, to realize how badly our over-giving compulsions have harmed us.

America’s profound narcissism has taken its toll on all of us, and we could never have dreamed we’d be overrun by people from third world countries, and that Trojan Horse could mean our utter downfall. Obama, Biden and their cronies kicked us irrevocably over this edge, but they didn’t invent this insidious dysfunctionality. Our national government did, and it’s been patiently sitting in place and waiting to spring at us, for eons. Alas, no good deed goes unpunished.

The political unrest in today’s world weighs heavily on many. We may remember when there was little or none of this anti-American garbage going on and we were all glued to our television sets, watching the Moon landing! There’s probably never been a more unified time among us in the history of our United States. Seems those times are never to be retrieved again.

There’s a little known fact about super-givers, whether you’re an individual or a nation. People resent ya for it! You’re always in the one-up position, and it makes others feel small, inadequate and never good enough. It magnifies their insecurities. You’re a constant reminder to them as caregiver, fixer or rescuer, that You have all the power, and they have none. This is what our U.S. has long done to the rest of the world. Why wouldn’t they be angry, and itching for revenge?!

I started conceiving this post earlier today, while thinking about how this nefarious abortion of our once-mighty country could have possibly lost its sea legs, and remained standing (thus far, at least). We humans can put up with a lot of trauma, and history’s shown that we can adapt to just about anything. We’ve been cheerfully adapting to being the most generous, welcoming nation on the globe, since we split from Great Britain.

The Biden administration might have (God forbid!) sprinted for another 4 years while fomenting even more chaos, hyper-racism, divisiveness, senseless murders, child endangerment, destruction of public and private property and even illegal immigration, had they not pushed the envelope so outlandishly far outta shape, we’d have to be blind, deaf and (especially) dumb to have not reacted with utter disbelief, disgust and outrage!

Then, adding insult to injury, the Dem’s chose The Quintessential Bimbo as their Presidential candidate, who (by the grace of God) gave us some humorous moments at her expense, while we watched sleepy ol’ Malarky Joe dance the jig on strings held by some desperately unscrupulous actors (Obama, Hillary, Fauci, and the like) playing their parts in this ludicrously dysfunctional family-style stage production.

Is it really any wonder that some of us, perhaps half of us, couldn’t stop thinking, “who do I have to sleep with, to get off this movie?!”

You’ve likely seen me write about Borderline Personality Disorder, along with typical and atypical traits associated with people who have the misfortune to be living with BPD. It’s such a fascinating, intricate, marvelously complex diagnosis, that our diagnostic manuals (DSM-IV and V) barely skim the surface of explaining it. Truly, until you’ve had hundreds of people with Borderline traits come thru your practice, you have no concept of how to recognize, accurately diagnose or repair them.

The upshot? Borderlines have no impulse control, no capacity for empathy, and no sense of boundaries. And neither did Joe Biden’s merry band of thieves. They pushed their agenda to the point we could not brush it off or turn a blind eye to it. They shoved it in our faces, made many of our previously peaceful existences a living Hell, disregarded and undermined the lives of hundreds of innocent citizens, stole from infrastructure funds and relief efforts meant to help people recover from natural disasters, and essentially bent us over and brutally ripped into us with their unlubricated, stallion ganglions.

In my view, the Biden regime didn’t just bring denigration, bloodshed and unending chaos to America. What the leftists did to law-abiding, upstanding Americans was nothing short of RAPE. I hope that all who took part in that hideously evil gang-bang get exactly what’s coming to ‘em, when the Karmic Boomerang completes its transit.

As a final note, a limited number of Borderlines are evil. Our maximum security prisons are full of these people, some of whom have murdered their own children. People who live with BPD seem lucid and normal at times, but their psychosis can sneak out when you least expect it. We refer to these folks as “Borderlines,” because they continually live on the edge or ‘borderline’ of psychosis.

Here are 25 articles written about BPD you may peruse at your leisure, if you wish: https://GettinBetter.com/articles-and-forums ‘cause a little knowledge can go a long way.

But here’s the deal, and you’re getting a very rare glimpse into Moi: I vegetate a lot. I watch way too much streaming video, and I love being lazy as much of the time as is humanly possible in-between the occasional home or garden project I might excitedly launch myself into.

Writing is very often deeply cathartic for me. It’s how I choose to acknowledge and honor my pain, my frustration, my victories, my glee and a bunch of other sordid and sundry feelings that occupy space in my well-established emotional repertoire. It’s LIFE force to me, often scrunched into what becomes an irrepressible urge to get what’s sitting On my chest, Off of it.

I can’t imagine entrusting anyone or anything else with this task. I’m convinced (given the many hours of my perhaps misspent life) that it keeps my most prized possession sharp and so far, intact. The rest of my time is spent mindlessly, and don’t think for a moment, it’s not! When I’m inspired to write, I’m working that mind muscle. I even like how moments of wry humor float to the surface now and then, when I least expect them to.

This process is organic for me. I don’t force nor rush it. I simply allow my Subconscious to chew for awhile on various curiosities, and it inevitably brings me logical, pragmatic answers to life’s (and love’s) fascinating mysteries. I feel very fortunate in this way.

I have found myself wondering; if I gave this sacred task over to AI, could my writing chops keep continuing to grow stronger? Might this natural, God-given talent diminish or become diffuse? Would my unique way of seeing the world and my place in it start sounding somewhat commercialized? And what would become of my brashness and brazenness, which I believe is part of my charm as a writer?! Perhaps most importantly, will my irrepressible passion to reveal and share with you whatever’s percolating inside me, ultimately wither and suffer?

Honestly, these past 18 months or so, have been challenging. If you’ve followed me for a bit, you understand why. I’ve not felt like myself, and have at times, wondered if I’d ever get to return to what once felt like my sense of “normal.” Unrelenting, ongoing, inescapable stress can do this to a person. But lately, I can feel my vigor returning, even whilst half my body parts are covered in blistery red, itching patches that make me wanna rip the flesh off my bones from poison ivy or oak exposure. Nevertheless, it’s started to feel like, I’m baaack.

Humpty Dumpty’s a little worse for wear, but ya gotta know that when I’m in a writing groove and finding it hard to quit, I am indeed, alive and well. You might say, my lust for this creative outlet is my barometer for accurately gauging my current level of well-being. Does this sounds odd to you~ or can you relate?

Just HOW many newsletters have I launched within the past few days?? Who cares! As I write this, it’s the middle of Thursday night, or what you’d could consider, Friday morning~ and I’m feeling so invigorated, I don’t wanna stop! Strike while the iron’s hot, I always say. Creative inspiration can’t happen ‘on demand.’ It stems from our second chakra (pelvic, lower back area) which also houses sexuality and reproductivity. Our mind simply determines the execution details, but it’s never the engine that drives our ‘Creativity Train.’

“Try it, you’ll love it” was expressed not long ago, by a former client regarding her thrilling discovery of AI, and how it’s making composing her second book so much easier and more pleasurable. Nope, I thought to myself. Glad it works for You, hon. But even the idea of using AI turns me off. I’m an old fashioned gal in many respects (liking and respecting Men is part of it), and it’s worked well for me. I suppose if it stops working, I might consider a Plan B.

All the writings on my website, in my book and on social media platforms have sprung from the unconventional, sometimes irascible mind-meanderings of Shari Schreiber, M.A. It stands for Master of Arts, if ya didn’t know~ and helping people learn precisely how to heal themselves is most definitely an Art.

Anyhow, I don’t judge folks who rely on AI for their writing projects. Different strokes for different folks, or as a lesbian gal pal used to quip: “Whatever blows your skirt up!” I cannot envision continuing to grow and enhance this particular skill, without doing it under my own steam and on my own volition, and trusting my creative and discerning mind to ultimately get it right.

Does “practice make perfect”? Who knows? But I’m pretty sure it’s a lot more likely to help rather than hurt, no matter what your chosen field of endeavor is.

I deeply relish the results that materialize out of these intensive brain workouts when I’m on an almost deliriously gratifying roll~ and with any luck and the creek don’t rise, perhaps you do, too.

PS: After I reluctantly yanked myself away from my laptop after 2am, having drafted this piece and thinking I oughta get some sleep, it occurred to me, this resplendent mental and physical energy I’d been feeling ‘might’ be due to the steroid injection I’d demanded at the ER earlier that evening to try and jumpstart my recovery from these horrific poison vine reactions. Aha! I thought. That makes total sense. Talk about hyper-focus! This stuff felt even mightier than my rare, only when really needed experiences with Ritalin, which is a lifesaver around tax organizing time. (UGH.)

The upshot? It seems there was a bit of drug induced ‘artificial intelligence’ at work, after all, but the words were still flowing from My brain, and not a bot. I now totally understand why athletes are fond of steroids! The good news is, I’m finally on the mend from my torment with the poisonous creeping crud~ and I couldn’t be happier about that and the fact that my creative momentum’s still feeling vibrant. WAHOOOO!

My bottom line is, If I lose trust in you or respect for you, the love I’ve felt for you dies a rapid death. I may lick my wounds for a few days, but you might as well have fallen off the planet. You cease to occupy space in my energy field. You are dead to me.

I hold trust very dear. It’s the very highest value I can bestow on another. Betraying my trust is akin to crossing me. The Karmic boomerang being historically what it’s always been with regard to My past experiences of watching it do its magic, you can bet it’s already coming your way if you’ve defiled my trust, and it’s gonna be flying at ya hard.

Trust by its very nature, is a growing thing. It typically takes a long time to develop and establish. It’s literally a cellular feeling inside our body that’s built over a considerable length of time (months, years, decades) based on another’s consistent and nourishing behaviors and interactions with us. We grow the feeling of trust inside us by learning we can depend on someone to be predictably safe for us emotionally, and (over time) we come to rely on this characteristic being ever-present in them.

Contrary to the erroneous belief held by many, trusting someone is NOT a decision we make a mental determination about, no matter how much we may like or admire them. It has nothing to do with their looks, personality, or demeanor. It’s not about how skilled or talented they may be. It’s our ongoing sense of their stability, consistency in temperament, mood and personality, and their capacity to BE there for us (as we are for them), that exists at the foundation of real trust.

Some people have zero sense of what “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” actually means. My experiences with Borderlines both professionally and personally, have magnified this observation. The Borderline seems to possess no connection whatsoever, to Cause and Effect. They’ll act out with you repeatedly, but never anticipate repercussions for their bad behavior. They may abruptly ghost you, lie to you, betray your friendship, have selective memory of their wrongdoings, but forever hold You in contempt for small disappointments or mistakes you’ve unwittingly (or supposedly) made.

It’s entirely likely that a Borderline will drop you on your head by disappearing from your life, then try to make you think it’s your fault they took a powder. This is typical BPD behavior, and it marches under the banner of absurdity. If you’ve ever had this happen and you’ve felt confounded and angry about it, you are fully entitled to these emotional reactions.

Dealing with one of these individuals can feel so perplexing, you think they’re surely going mad~ or you are. There’s no way to explain the dramatic anomalies you’ll continually encounter in your dance with a BPD friend, relative or lover. In my past BPD articles you might peruse in their entirety on my website (for free), you’ll see I’ve noted that the awful confusion you feel with a Borderline, is what actually keeps you obsessing about them, long after your breakup. (I don’t, but you might.)

As humans, we can barely stop thinking about that which is confusing or confounding to us. It’s just one of those “human nature” thingies. We may feel a pressing need to comprehend the unique complexities of life and love, which can mentally torment us for days or weeks on end, when we can’t. We may enjoy working with puzzles of various types, but feel a need to sort out riddles we collide with, as we’re making our way along life’s sometimes perilous journey.

Many of us have been trying to get to the bottom of those riddles since early childhood if our home life was unstable, or a parent or two had peculiarities we had no way of understanding the WHY of. So we obsess endlessly about these things, until we can come up with what seems like a plausible reason for their existence. Then, perhaps we can relax for a bit. Give our mind a ‘mini-vacation’ from it all.

My article link above, will take you to a piece having to do with obsessing about a Borderline. But that’s not actually what we do, once we’re free of that perplexing relationship dynamic.

We obsess about what we may have done differently or better, to have made that relationship work. We keep spinning around in our own juice, re-examining every single chronological detail of the relationship, to determine what we may have done wrong, and even when we come up empty in this regard, we obsess some more. We mentally shame and brutalize ourselves for having let this relationship fail (like there could possibly have been a different outcome?!).

Thus, our obsessional thoughts are incessantly all about Us, not them! Quit that shit!

Here’s a simple rule of thumb, my friends: If you’re frowning more than you’re smiling in any relationship, get out fast (no matter how good the sex is). If they try to turn the tables on you for a mistake they’ve clearly made, know beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is their cognitive distortion at work. You’ve got no shot at getting them to take ownership their error, because it triggers too much unresolved core shame in a Borderline, to admit they’re wrong.

Admitting wrong-doing requires authentic Ego strength. Those of us who’ve worked hard at building this in ourselves are capable and willing to do the hard, awkward, uncomfortable stuff that invariably builds our character and integrity. And it’s tough! It’s much easier to sweep something (or someone) under the rug, rather than muster the courage we absolutely require to offer a sincere, heartfelt apology for screwing-up~ particularly with another we might actually value, and even if we don’t, aren’t we honor-bound to at least try to become a bigger, better person for ourselves?

I’ve always said, IF real healing and growth with a skilled professional’s guidance was easy, everybody’d be doing it. Look around you. How many people do YOU know who are emotionally stable, content and truly happy? This doesn’t happen by accident, and we’re not born into it. It happens solely because we are fiercely dedicated to growing into this state of being, and we’ve put in the considerable time and effort it takes to achieve it.

The great news is, our invariable outcome from all that unrelenting effort, is that we end up trusting our Self to discern who is trustworthy (worthy of our trust) and who is not. Oh, we’ve all probably gotten painfully surprised once or twice, when we’ve made an error in judgement about somebody, but that’s why divorce was invented.

Fool me once, shame on you~ but you can be damned sure you’ll never get second chance at it, from me.

I convey my beliefs and truths, and if you agree with them, great. If you don’t, or my stuff flies right over your head and doesn’t land in a place of comprehension, that’s fine, too. Writing for me, has never involved anything even closely resembling a popularity contest, so I’ve had an entirely different motivation for being on social media platforms.

I’m an educator at heart, whose come to know human nature intimately, because I’ve efforted for many years to understand myself as intimately as possible. Acquiring insight is terrific, but I consistently shoot to enlighten you about yourself, the life you’re living and the people you’re choosing to attach to and love.

A lot of us are probably familiar with the nature of metaphysics, but I’m not sure it translates on practical, applicable levels like it should, in terms of helping us create genuinely positive outcomes for ourselves. Nearly all of us dread change, because it feels destabilizing for a short while, and that‘s enough to turn anyone away from making significant, life-altering decisions that may initially feel uncomfortable!

Metaphysical law says, that which we give our attention and focus to, is that which we create. But there’s a whole lot more to this, than most of us may think.

You’ve possibly heard me say, everything we have in our immediate life began with a seed of desire, and what we Have, is what we Want. But this is only a half-truth, which denies the spiritual component of staying with a life condition or relationship we feel is under-gratifying.

I believe The Universe closely observes our vibrational frequency and what we choose to hold onto, in our immediate world. If we’re in a relationship that might in some ways serve us, but it’s frustrating, feels diminishing or simply has us frowning more than we’re smiling, The Universe readily accepts that this is our desire. It cannot and will not send us anything different or better, because it acknowledges that this is what we are wanting.

In short, unseen forces around us will never exert their will or control over us and whatever (or whomever) it is, we’re adapted to remaining with. It merely observes us, and sends us more of what it discerns we’re willing (and wanting) to accommodate; good or bad, right or wrong.

A man who remains involved with a Borderline for any length of time, has never chosen anyone healthier for himself. He’s drawn to her specific set of personality traits that help him feel excited, invigorated, adored, agitated, frustrated, and confused. He craves the love-bombing his Borderline initially adorns him with, because her effusive comments validate his worth in ways his parents never did.

At his core, he is insecure~ so rather than accepting her initial view of him (like he hung the moon and the stars and can walk on water) as confirmation of what he already knows and owns about himself, she anchors him in a manner that has him finally feeling worthy of being loved. Sadly, this “Honeymoon” phase is always short-lived, but he’ll keep going back to that toxic well, just to get another ‘hit’ of this drug that in the beginning of their dance, seduced him into thinking he’d found his Ms. Right.

Most of the world’s population suffers from poor self-worth. These are folks who for whatever reason, do not deeply believe they deserve anything better than what they’ve got, and are in fact, terrified of surrendering their present job, health condition or relationship, because they’re scared there’ll never be anything better awaiting them. It’s that old, “bird in the hand” principle that plays unrelentingly in the back of their psyche. Personally, I’ve always believed, a bird in the bush is worth two in the hand! :~)

What we believe we can have, is predicated solely on the life experiences we’ve had to date. That’s our reality, and we can’t imagine anything different or better, beyond it. I’ve had experiences myself concerning this faulty belief, but it’s not uncommon. I proved myself very wrong about a situation many years ago, thinking that was the best I could have. What a fantastic lesson that was!

If all you’ve ever known are abusive, neglectful relationship dynamics that began when you were a small child, how can you possibly allow for the very real possibility of finding a nourishing, loving, positively mirroring relationship bond that offers you more joy than you could ever have imagined?

The answer is, you can’t. It’s not in your wheelhouse to accommodate this ideation even as a fantasy, because it’s never been part of your frame of reference, which is predicated on your life experiences up to this present moment in time! So, you end up settling for that which isn’t gratifying to you (professional struggles, financial stressors, frustrating relationship dynamics, etc., because there’s a part of you that firmly believes “this is as good as it can get,” which is a complete fallacy!

A former older lover with whom I was engaged off and on for many years once said, “Schreiber, if you wanna know what you Want, look around at what you Have, because you’ve created that~ and if you truly wanted something different, you’d be focusing on creating that, instead.”

I never forgot his words, and it’s been the most motivating thing anyone has ever said to me. It’s sure had me taking more responsibility for my current reality, and having the courage to alter conditions that aren’t working for me.

Maybe it can help you alter yours, as well.