I Hate You—Don't Leave Me (14 page)

The recent trend in child raising, toward a more equal sharing of parental responsibilities between mother and father, makes divorce even more upsetting for the child. Children clearly benefit from dual parenting, but they also lose more when the marriage dissolves, especially if the breakup occurs during the formative years when the child still has many crucial developmental stages to hurdle.

Studies on the effects of divorce typically report profound upset, neediness, regression, and acute separation anxiety related to fears of abandonment in children of preschool age.
²²
A significant number are found to be depressed
²³
or antisocial in later stages of childhood.
²⁴
Indeed, teens living in single-parent families are not only more likely to commit suicide but also more likely to suffer from psychological disorders, when compared to teens living in intact families.
²⁵

During separation and divorce, the child's need for physical intimacy increases. For example, it is typical for a child at the time of separation to ask a parent to sleep with him. If the practice continues and sleeping in the same bed becomes the parent's need as well, the child's own sense of autonomy and bodily integrity may be threatened. This, combined with the loneliness and severe narcissistic injury caused by the divorce, places some children at high risk for developmental arrest or, if the need for affection and reassurance becomes desperate, for sexual abuse. A father separated from the home may demand more time with the child in order to relieve his own feelings of loneliness and deprivation. If the child becomes a lightning rod for his father's resentment and bitterness, he may again be at higher risk for abuse.

In many situations of parental separation, the child becomes the pawn in a destructive battle between his parents. David, a divorced father who usually ignored his visitation privileges, suddenly demanded that his daughter stay with him whenever he was angry at her mother. These visits were usually unpleasant for the child as well as for her father and his new family, yet were used as punishment for his ex-wife, who would feel guilty and powerless at his demands. Bobby became embroiled in conflicts between his divorced parents when his mother periodically took his father back to court to extract more child support monies. Bribes of material gifts or threats to cut off support for school or home maintenance are common weapons used between continuously skirmishing parents; the bribes and threats are usually more harmful to the children than they are to the parents.

Children may even be drawn into court battles and forced to testify about their parents. In these situations neither the parents, nor the courts, nor social welfare organizations can protect the child, who is often left with a sense of overwhelming helplessness (conflicts continue despite his input), or of intoxicating power (his testimony controls the battle between his parents). He may feel enraged at his predicament and yet fearful that he could be abandoned by everyone. All of this becomes fertile ground for the development of borderline pathology.

In addition to divorce, other powerful societal forces have contributed to the “absent father syndrome.” The past half century has witnessed the maturing of children of thousands of war veterans—World War II, Korean War, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Iraq—not to mention many prison-camp and concentration-camp survivors. Not only were many of these fathers absent during significant portions of their children's development, but many were found to develop post-traumatic stress disorders and delayed mourning (“impacted grief”) related to combat that also influenced child development.
²⁶
By 1970, 40 percent of World War II and Korean War POWs had met violent death by suicide, homicide, or auto accident (mostly one-car single-occupant accidents).
²⁷
The same trend has continued with Iraq War vets. According to U.S. Army figures, five soldiers per day tried to commit suicide in 2007, compared to less than one per day before the war.
²⁸
Children of holocaust survivors often have severe emotional difficulties, rooted in their parents' massive psychic trauma.
²⁹

The absent father syndrome can lead to pathological consequences. Often in families torn by divorce or death, the mother tries to compensate by becoming the ideal parent, arranging every aspect of her child's life; naturally, the child has limited opportunity to develop his own identity. Without the buffering of another parent, the mother-child link can be too close to allow for healthy separating.

Though the mother often seeks to replace the missing father, in many cases it is actually the child who tries to replace the absent father. In the absence of father, the symbiotic intensity of the bond with mother is greatly magnified. The child grows up with an idealized view of the mother and fantasies of forever trying to please her. And a parent's dependence on the child may persist, interfering with growth and individuation, planting the seeds of BPD.

Modern permissive child-rearing practices, involving the transfer of traditional parental functions to outside agencies—the school, mass media, industry—have significantly altered the quality of parent-child relationships. Parental “instinct” has been supplanted by a reliance on books and child-rearing experts. Child rearing, in many households, takes a backseat to the demands of dual careers. “Quality time” becomes a guilt-induced euphemism for “not enough time.”

Many parents overcompensate by lavishing attention on the child's practical and recreational needs, yet providing little real warmth. Narcissistic parents perceive their children as extensions of themselves or as objects/possessions, rather than as separate human beings. As a result, the child suffocates in emotionally distant attention, leading to an exaggerated sense of his own importance, regressive defenses, and loss of a sense of self.

We are moving more than ever before. Greater geographical mobility can bring rich educational benefits and cultural exchange for a child, but numerous relocations are often also accompanied by a feeling of rootlessness. Some investigators have found that children who move frequently and stay in one place for only short periods of time often have confused responses, or no response at all, to the simple question, “Where is your home?”

Because hypermobility is typically correlated with career-oriented lifestyles and job demands, one or both parents in mobile families tend to work long hours and so are less available to their children. Having few enough constants in their environment to provide ballast for development, mobility adds another disruptive force—the world turns into a menagerie of changing places and faces. Such children may grow up bored and lonely, looking for constant stimulation. Continually forced to adapt to new situations and people, they may lose the stable sense of self encouraged by secure community anchors. Though socially graceful, like Lisa they typically feel they are gracefully faking it.

With increasing geographical mobility, the stability of the neighborhood, community school systems, church and civic institutions, and friendships are weakened. Traditional affiliations are lost. About 44 percent of Americans profess affinity to a different church from the one in which they were raised.
³⁰
Generations are becoming separated by long distances, and the extended family is lost for emotional support and child care. Children are raised without knowing their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, losing a strong connection to the past and a source of love and warmth to nurture healthy emotional growth.

With society fragmenting, marriages dissolving, and families breaking up, it is no coincidence that the decade has given rise to the “faux family,” or virtual community, to replace the real communities of the past. This yearning for “tribe” affiliation manifests in a variety of ways: football fans identify themselves as “Raider Nation”; 30 million people wait for hours each week to vote for their favorite American Idol, simply to be a part of a larger group with a “common” purpose; and millions of young people join Facebook and MySpace to be a member of a vast electronic social network. Fifty years ago in his novel
Cat's Cradle
, Kurt Vonnegut playfully (but prophetically) called these “connections” a “granfalloon”—a group of people who choose, or claim to have, a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. The author offered two examples, Daughters of the American Revolution and the General Electric Company; if Vonnegut wrote the novel today, the examples could just as easily be Facebook or Twitter.

Since 2003, social networking sites have rocketed from a niche activity into a phenomenon that engages tens of millions of Internet users. More than half (55 percent) of all online American youths ages twelve to seventeen use online social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace.
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The initial evidence suggests that teens use these sites primarily to communicate, to stay in touch and make plans with friends, and to make new friends. However, the motivation might not be this “pure.” For example, a 2007 study by Microsoft (which should know something about this topic) found that “ego” is the largest driver of participation: people contribute to “increase their social, intellectual, and cultural capital.”
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Twitter, the most recent electronic “rage” to sweep the (faux) nation, is unabashed in its narcissistic bent. A kind of instant text-messaging service, “tweeting” is intended to announce (in 140 characters or less) “what I'm doing” to a group of “followers.” There is little pretense that the communication is intended to be a two-way street.

Few would dispute the growing narcissism in American culture. Initially documented by Tom Wolfe's landmark article “The Me Decade” in 1976 and Christopher Lasch's
Culture of Narcissism
in 1978, the narcissistic impulse has been evidenced since then by a wide assortment of cultural trends: reality TV turning its fodder participants into instant famous-for-being-famous celebrities; plastic surgery exploding into a growth industry; indulgent parenting, celebrity worship, lust for material wealth, and now social networking creating one's own group of faux friends. As Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell note in
The Narcissism Epidemic
(2009): “The Internet brought useful technology but also the possibility of instant fame and a ‘Look at me!' mentality. . . . People strive to create a ‘personal brand' (also called ‘self-branding'), packaging themselves like a product to be sold.”
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As a relatively recent phenomenon, it is too soon to know whether social media is a passing fad or a transformative technological innovation, though it can be safely said that researchers and clinicians should keep a watchful eye on its overall psychological effect, not to mention the inherent potential physical danger, especially for young people.

Communicating with the Borderline

Alright . . . what do you want me to say? Do you want me to say it's funny, so you can contradict me and say it's sad? Or do you want me to say it's sad so you can turn around and say no, it's funny. You can play that damn little game any way you want to, you know!

—From
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
, by Edward Albee

 

 

 

The borderline shifts her personality like a rotating kaleidoscope, rearranging the fragmented glass of her being into different formations—each collage different, yet each, her. Like a chameleon, the borderline transforms herself into any shape that she imagines will please the viewer.

Dealing with borderline behavior can be frustrating for everyone in regular contact with the borderline personality because, as we have seen, their explosions of anger, rapid mood swings, suspiciousness, impulsive actions, unpredictable outbursts, self-destructive actions, and inconsistent communications are understandably upsetting to all around them.

In this chapter we will describe a consistent, structured method of communicating with borderlines—the SET-UP system—that can be easily understood and adopted by family, friends, and therapists for use on a daily basis, and which may help in convincing a borderline to consider treatment (see chapter 7).

The SET-UP system evolved as a structured framework of communication with the borderline in crisis. During such times, communication with the borderline is hindered by his impenetrable, chaotic internal force field, characterized by three major feeling states: terrifying aloneness, feeling misunderstood, and overwhelming helplessness.

As a result, concerned individuals are often unable to reason calmly with the borderline and instead are forced to confront outbursts of rage, impulsive destructiveness, self-harming threats or gestures, and unreasonable demands for caretaking. SET-UP responses can serve to address the underlying fears, dilute the borderline conflagration, and prevent a “meltdown” into greater conflict.

Although SET-UP was developed for the borderline in crisis, it can also be useful for others who require concise, consistent communication, even when not in crisis.

“SET”—
Support
,
Empathy
,
Truth
—is a three-part system of communication (see Figure 5-1). During confrontations of destructive behavior, important decision-making sessions, or other crises, interactions with the borderline should invoke all three elements. UP stands for
Understanding
and
Perseverance
—the goals that all parties try to achieve.

The
S s
tage of this system,
Support
, invokes a personal, “I” statement of concern. “I am sincerely worried about how you are feeling” is an example of a
Support s
tatement. The emphasis is on the speaker's own feelings and is essentially a personal pledge to try to be of help.