Understanding the Borderline Mother by Christine Ann Lawson

Author:Christine Ann Lawson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc.
Published: 2000-03-22T05:00:00+00:00

THE ALL-GOOD CHILD

“I never understood why my mother was so mean to my sister. She used to tell my sister that she was born evil . . . their fights were so awful. I hid in the corner like a coward, and tried to comfort my sister later, in secret. I felt so undeserving, guilty, and depressed because I’d been spared. My sister didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t deserve the way my mother treated her. And I didn’t deserve the way she treated me. I wasn’t good! I was scared.”

Three years into therapy, Joanna shed the shroud of secrecy and fear that protected her true feelings about her mother. Like a blossoming flower, she opened up in the safety of the therapeutic relationship. A recent milestone gave her a new perspective. She could see where she had been and where she needed to go.

“I was putting away the laundry when I noticed that my heart was beating faster than normal. I sat down on the bed and told myself that I should’ve eaten lunch. A few minutes later I felt dizzy, weak, and scared. I told myself, ‘don’t panic, this is nothing . . . it’ll go away.’ I kept folding the clothes but was concentrating on my heartbeat. My head felt light, disconnected from my body. My arms and fingers prickled. I was only 40 years old, too young for a heart attack.”

Joanna called 911. Upon arrival, the paramedics found her on the couch and took her pulse. They checked her blood oxygen level and promptly diagnosed the problem as hyperventilation. Her short, shallow breaths had saturated her blood with oxygen, thus producing the rapid heartbeat, dizziness, and tingling sensation in her hands and arms. Through therapy, Joanna discovered what triggered this episode of survival anxiety.

The toy headstone on her birthday cake had been a joke but Joanna didn’t feel like celebrating middle age. Why would her fortieth birthday trigger such anxiety? She discussed the possibility that she panicked when she realized that she had never really lived her own life. Time was running out. In subsequent sessions, her anger and resentment toward her mother began to surface.

Joanna was an all-good wife and mother. She never disobeyed, never argued, and never asserted her true self. In fact, at the time of her panic attack she was dutifully repressing her anxiety as she folded the laundry. Like an uncorked bottle that had been violently shaken, Joanna’s true feelings exploded.

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