Lilith's Brood: A Different Perspective on Borderline Personality Disorder

Would you see the emptiness where a soul should be, and hear the absence of a heartbeat? Would you feel their hunger, their longing to suck the life out of you?

One of the earliest vampire legends is that of Lilith. A queen of demons, and by some accounts Adam's first wife before Eve, she would feed on the blood of children out of bitterness at her own infertility. Once she was human, then she became inexplicably merciless and cruel. No one bothered to ask her why.

We are all a little bit vampire. We draw emotional nourishment from others, whether through human contact or good old-fashioned tearjerkers. There is a gratification in making that connection with someone. The intimacy of a shared feeling is satisfying, even if it's someone onscreen playing a part.

But just as Lilith could never bear a child, some of us can never have feelings of our own. Instead, we feed. Others' emotional lifeblood becomes our own, keeping us alive and sane and feeling human. The rest of our lives exist in a shadow world. Deep feelings are almost unbearably intense, but we live for the thrill and constantly seek a victim. We are the villains of every story, the ones for whom there is no sympathy. It's not bad enough that we have to rely on others for sustenance - they have to hate us for it.

Welcome to Borderline Personality Disorder. Blood-sucking vampires are not real. This is probably as close as you're going to get.

Checking the DSM-IV, you'll find a laundry list of frightening symptoms. Chaotic relationships. Addiction and substance abuse. Severe mood swings. Fits of anger. Suicidal threats, gestures, desires. Self-mutilation. Chronic emptiness and boredom. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. None of these, however, really helps you understand what it's like to live in a Borderline's skin.

This endless hunger - where does it come from? How can feeling simple emotions be so difficult? The last diagnostic criterion gives a clue.

The fear of abandonment in a Borderline is intense. They cannot explain or wish it away, or combat it with logic. It predates reason and understanding, language and memory. It is the primitive fear of a baby who cries helplessly when Mommy leaves the room. Mommy is never coming back.

For some babies, even if Mommy does come back, she's never really there. She may have fed them off her umbilical cord, off her milk, but somehow she never sufficiently feeds them off her soul. This is why Borderlines beget Borderlines, and why emotionally distant parenting can be the most damaging of all.

This vital connection, meant to be made in infancy, somehow never occurs. For some children it is wholesale, literal abandonment. Some children are hospitalized and kept away from their parents. Some may even have a brain defect that makes the concept of object constancy, the realization that things exist when you cannot see them, difficult to grasp.

There is no pill that makes a Borderline well. Anti-depressants can help manage some of the symptoms, but the only cure lies in therapy - dialectical behavioral therapy, to be specific, a newer form of treatment that has shown some of the highest success rates for Borderlines. It involves both individual and group therapy, with an emphasis on helping Borderlines build real, healthy emotional connections with others.

The second most successful treatment? Self-help. Motivated Borderlines are encouraged to buy a workbook like Joseph Santoro's The Angry Heart, then choose a mentor to help them through the difficult process. A recovering Borderline might repeat certain mantras and journal about painful experiences, then re-read the experiences each day until the pain is replaced by peace and understanding.

It's difficult to say who experiences more pain; the Borderline, or those close to her. (Or him, but female Borderlines outnumber men by a significant amount.) Some of us are born vampires, but there is a road to healing - no matter how long and difficult it might be.