A Quote That I Try To Stick To.

[Lauren]

'We are not responsible for how we came to be who we are as adults. But as adults we are responsible for whom we have become and for everything we do and say. '

To learn new, anti-BPD behavior you must accept responsibility for your behavior-good and bad, borderline and normal. This is a tough task because BPD people are full of rage, resentment and anger. They blame others and then themselves but they rarely take the time to think about their history as people and how they got to where they are today.

To accept responsibility we need to understand what I call the Existential Paradox:

The Existential Paradox

We are not responsible for how we came to be who we are as adults. But as adults we are responsible for whom we have become and for everything we do and say.

Our developmental environment and our genetic code made us into the people we find ourselves to be. Since we did not have any control over either of these influences, the first part of the paradox is easier to accept: we are not responsible for how we came to be who we are as adults.

The second part is harder to accept but an explanation that can help you do so goes like this. Because we are gifted (or cursed) with the capacity for self-awareness, The Universe empowers us to accept responsibility for our way of living and being. Our self-awareness as human beings, and the empowerment it provides us, enables us to change how we do things. This means that we are not condemned to live out the script written by our genetics and our conditioning. This means that we can choose our destiny by changing the behavioral choices we make. In order to make better choices, we need to accept responsibility for whom we are today (borderline behavior and all). We must courageously accept responsibility for our dysfunctional behavior despite the fact that it was "forced" upon us. This is the harder, but powerfully transforming, part of the Existential Paradox. Its acceptance, however, is the key to escaping from the borderline twister of enraged failure.

Accepting responsibility for our own behavior is never an easy task. Most of us try to avoid doing so at least some of the time, and some of us try doing so all of the time. Our motivation for this is simple: refusing responsibility prevents us from making changes in our behavior. "If I'm not responsible, then I can't do anything to change things. I'm just a victim." We learn to accept being a victim, rather than being happy, once we lose hope for the future.

[Betsy]

good post!

[Swan]

((((((((((((((((((Ex))))))))))))))))))

I don't think I could have said it better and I've been struggling with this paradox for months.

You said it was a quote - but not where it came from - I'd like to know because it is pretty useful - Sounds a bit like Marsha Linehan or one of the DBT theorists?