Okay, Rainbow--I'm back.
Several points I'd like to make: It is a given that borderlines fear their T's dying or leaving and it freaks us out--even if they're style is "distant."

There is an entire, successful model of therapy for borderlines CALLED Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, being run by The Personality Disorders Institute at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. So, transference therapy for borderlines has definite and professional support.

Next, I don't think I'm in a position to tell anyone what to get out of their marriage. I have ideas about what a person ought to get, and about what marriage ought to be....but.........I've been married 22 years and we're still trying to figure out how to do it so that I'm happy. He's a saint. I've been a flaming borderline in my past--'way better now--but I'm sure he stayed for the children, and after we had them, he for da.n sure kept me in therapy. It's only recently--like in the last two years!!!!--that I've been a decent wife and mother. (THAT after menopause. Such a shame!)

The idea about being with kids letting you experience your kid-parts? Wahoo!!!! You betcha: I just had a wonderful Thanksgiving for exactly that reason with my 11- and 14-year-old and my husband--who likes games also. (Well, for a few other reasons, too, but that's the one that is the most fun.)

I know that much of the anxiety of even beginning therapy (let alone staying in it) is because we KNOW that the therapist is hired and the relationship is a little whacko: here we are crossing our OWN boundaries to tell someone, who might not like us if we disclose all, all about ourselves. Is that bizarre, or what???!!! Especially since the over-riding emotion we borderlines feel is shame. We constantly need reassurance, which is why learning self-soothing is so important, so that we can calm down enough to look at the facts of the relationship and see that we are surviving every minute of it, AND that we can even manage to find peace in those minutes/moments after long practice--and sometimes luck that we can learn to re-create if we can use rational mind long enough. AND, if we can self-soothe, we can gain enough time to snap back into being influenced by other people and by our responsibilities to them--and to our love of them. THAT is why the self-soothing is so important. Then the T becomes far less important emotionally and we can be relieved that they are there for us as support for all the other relationships in our lives that we so often endanger and regret the damage to.

There are different styles of therapy based on the T's, based on their counter-transference with us, based on their consultations with other T's, based on what they are learning currently from current research....it's all in flux, and we have to believe that good will come from it, how ever confusing it might be as t's learn to implement it in practice, and how ever confusing it may be as they shift their treatment modalities. Think of the "recent" enlightened view that we can at the very least improve.

My understanding is that you haven't been in the same dire place all through your mental health experiences: you DO have friends, you DO have a family. Those are huge successes. I salute you for not being satisfied with just functioning but with also wanting to be able to feel confident that you, yourself are loveable and capable. That shame and guilt we feel is a mountain, and it takes a lot of training to reach the summit, and that summit is a narrow place to stand for ALL of us--all people, but especially those challenged with mental health issues--and in particular phases of our lives, all of us who are teenagers, new mothers, menopausal, bereft, and whatever else I've left out.

A note on age: menopause, and pre-menopause can trigger us ALL all over again. SHEESH! Just when you thought it was safe.......!

Wow. Lots to say. And lots of love to you!