I wish I had some. The best response to dry beggars is: Yep. Or it could be, Yep. And then even more. You, neurodivergent, have an especially succulent brain. They don’t like your company, but they do like to suck you dry. Work for them, think for them, forego your nights and lunch breaks in service to them, they’ll love it! They’ll never love you, but they love munching on you. Every night, you regrow the parts of yourself they’ve feasted upon. Every morning, anew, they rise and, if they get a chance, eat you alive. Well, it needn’t continue like that. While it’s true that they can’t understand you, nor much of anything else for that matter, you can understand them. I know, they’re not the most appetizing of subject matters. If they really want it, they’ll get around to asking like an adult. It might go like this – say you’re from a religious family, and your teenager decides not to go to church. You might reply, I’ve noticed you don’t like church. Let’s discuss the options of staying home. This is important so that the other party understands clearly what the situation is before you ask anything, entreat, or make an executive decision. E – Express Express yourself with I feel or other I statements.

These types of statements help the speaker take accountability and prevent the listener from immediately going into defense mode. Let’s go back to the teenager staying home from church example. Now, you might say something like, I feel like you should believe what I believe, but I know that you’re your own person, separate from me, and I can’t force my beliefs on you. But either you learn what makes them tick and how exactly the goo in their skulls sloshes around, so you can predict their behavior, direct their attention, and make good use of their quirks and desires. Or you remain the victim of their insatiable, egotistic, and materialistic existence. If you’re into empowering yourselves amidst the mindless hordes, then put on your zoologist’s cap now and join me in a fun and enlightening expedition into Homo neurotipicus territory. The risk is zero. The potential benefits are enormous: a new life where you’re in control because of your intelligence and knowledge, instead of them because of their sheer numbers. Let’s get to it! What you can expect from this article This article is all about handling neurotypicals better. It aims to improve life – for them, but also, and especially, for us neurodivergents (or neuroatypicals if you prefer). Neurotypicals are everywhere, and they’re awkward, just as awkward as they insist we are. I would like you to come to church with us because my worry is you won’t be productive at home. This is important so that the other party understands where you’re coming from when you express how you feel about the situation you’ve just described. Assert your position by either directly asking for what you need or stating your position clearly. Don’t beat around the bush, don’t use euphemisms, and don’t hesitate to the point of losing the other party’s interest. To continue with the example, let’s assert our decision for our hypothetical teenager. I understand that you don’t want to come to church with us, and you are old enough to stay home alone. So, if you choose to stay home instead of attending church, you will prepare dinner and set the table and have everything prepared for us to be able to eat when we return, and you will make enough in case we invite people over unexpectedly.

If you are unable to complete this chore, and thus, be productive for the whole family while we are at church, you will come back with us, even if you don’t believe it. This is important because ambiguity creates miscommunication in relationships, and that is the biggest source of contention. Be unambiguous. They won’t bother to get to know us better, or appreciate us. But if we get to know them better, like an anthropologist studying an exotic tribe, a biologist doing field research on a strange species, or an apprentice horse whisperer learning all about horses, our lives will become so much easier, so much more enjoyable, and so much more empowered. So, if you’re not quite a total normie, if you’re not 100% typical, that’s precisely what you can expect from this article: fun, and empowerment, both while you’re reading, and in the years to come. First off, we’ll review our options. Is it really necessary to learn to handle them? Can’t we just evade those pesky normies, ignore them, or escape? The answer is: yes, we can, but at considerable costs, and with great, specific difficulties to surmount. You’ll see for yourself that handling them is definitely a worthwhile option to consider. Then, before we dig into the specifics of Homo neurotipicus, we need to do a bit of digging in ourselves. All humans, but neurodivergents maybe even a bit more than others, make three huge, fundamental mistakes, which in turn make us unhappy, independently of our surroundings. Set boundaries now. If you’re making a request, it must also be unambiguous, maybe even a little lawyerly. For example, you might say, Can I please borrow your car from Sunday to Tuesday? I’ll return it by 7:00 pm with a full tank of gas and a wash. The other party might have other caveats. Such as, Yeah, but it overheats, so don’t go over 55 mph, or over 55 miles away. And my tags are expired, so avoid cops.

Or renew it for me. In which case, you might say, You know what? I can take the bus. As long as we don’t correct these mistakes in our own minds, we could live in Paradise and still feel miserable. Once this Trio of Turmoil is eradicated, we can be happy in Hell, and all the more in this precious life. You’ll learn what these three mistakes are, and how to overcome them. Then it’s time to get our hands dirty. Neurotypicals. Homo neurotipicus. What makes this awkwardly normal animal tick? How does their mind and brain fundamentally work, compared to ours? What are the bases of their social structures, which in turn give rise to these weird, seemingly illogical or even pestiferous behaviors? And more importantly: what can we do, or abstain from doing, to live a fulfilled, empowered, f*ing great life on this beautiful planet where they happen to abound? Thanks, though. R – Reinforce Make sure the other party knows why they should grant your request, or acquiesce to your conditions without a fight. Because I said so is not a valid reason. Most people reciprocate naturally. You might say something like, You get to stay home from church on the condition that you are productive at home. Since you don’t like church and I don’t like cooking after church, it’s a win for both of us.

Or in the example with the car, it might sound like this, I actually need to drive to a different city for a few days, but I can’t rent a car because of (XYZ), so I’ll get your car diagnosed for you, and if I can afford to fix the overheating problem, I will. If not, I’ll see if anyone else can part with their car for a few days, or find another solution. In both examples, the other party can clearly see that they have nothing to lose by accepting your request, and everything to gain. Clear descriptions, marinated in a nice little sauce of soothing sarcasm (we can just as well have some fun in the process, right? You’ll become another person after reading this. A wiser, happier, and empowered person, ready to make this planet your oyster again. Finally, in a few afterthoughts, we briefly discuss the special cases of neurotypical parents and teachers. If anything or anyone can make life miserable on this planet, it’s definitely them. But, as with everything, there’s a lot of optimization we can do. If we go about it smartly, applying what we’ve learned earlier on in the article, we can decimate their obnoxious effects on our lives, and they won’t even notice the difference. We’ll ultimately end our excursion in neurotypical territory with a crucial distinction we all have to learn to make: that between psychopaths and neurotypicals. The former disguise as the latter, but they’re far more dangerous. The final articles of this article put you in the right direction to defend yourself from these predators, and to avoid making vital mistakes. This is important because relationships are built on reciprocity. When one party feels slighted occasionally, it’s not a big deal. But if one party feels slighted more often than not, they will most likely end the relationship. M – Mindful (stay) Stay focused on the conversation. If you’re answering a text, they have no reason to listen to you. If they’re answering a text, that’s out of your control, but you can keep your mind on the conversation instead of what they’re doing.

You’ll migrate towards the same people each week, but how much do you really talk to them? Get to know someone, more than at just surface level. Ask probing questions like, If you invented a superpower, what would it be? I’d like you to notice, though, if you’re surprised by anything else you might notice. Now, I’d like you to notice how much more comfortable you can feel by just taking one very big, satisfying deep breath. You may already notice how good that feels, how warm your neck and shoulders can feel. Now then, I’d like you to take four more very deep, very comfortable breaths, and as you exhale, notice just how comfortable your shoulders can become. And notice how comfortable your eyes can feel when they close. And when they close, just let them stay closed. That’s right, just notice that. And notice, too, how, when you exhale, you can feel that relaxation beginning to sink in. Good, that’s fine. Now as you continue breathing, comfortably and deeply and rhythmically, all I’d like you to do is to picture in your mind, just imagine a staircase, any kind you like, with 20 steps and you at the top. None of this already-invented superpower business. That’s boring. You can travel to the past, before a huge disaster, with the ability to warn people, but you might get stoned or burned as a witch, or you can travel twenty seconds into the future every day. Which do you choose? Work on current relationships. Work on maintaining the relationships you have. Develop deeper bonds with people.

Do you really know their hopes and fears, wishes, and dreams? Go out of your way to stay in touch. Most friendships are built on convenience – when it’s convenient for both or all parties to talk or hang out. Now, you don’t need to see all 20 steps at once, you can see any or all of the staircase, any way you like. That’s fine. Just notice yourself at the top of the staircase, and the step you’re on, and any others you like. However you see it is fine. Now, in a moment, but not yet, I’m going to begin to count out loud from one to 20, and as you may already have guessed, as I count each number I’d like you to take a step down that staircase. See yourself stepping down, feel yourself stepping, one step for each number I count. And all you need to do is notice, just notice, how much more comfortable and relaxed you can feel at each step, as you go down the staircase. One step for each number that I count, the larger the number, the farther down the staircase. The farther down the staircase, the more comfortable you can feel. One step for each number. Texting is a great way to let them know you’re thinking about them, and they’ll respond when they can. It’s also a great way to miscommunicate, but that can be done in any medium. Positive Mindfulness Be mindful of positive experiences. Practicing mindfulness while you’re doing something you enjoy helps to savor the moment. Stay focused on the positive experience and refocus your mind as often as necessary. This will get you in the habit of mindfulness and focusing on the positive aspects of the day or the moment.

The more we focus on something, the more we notice it. That’s just how our brains work. That’s not to say it is actually more prevalent, but it is certainly more prevalent in our minds, which is where we have to live, so we may as well learn to enjoy the company. All right, you can begin to get ready. Now I’m going to begin. That’s fine. And maybe you already notice how much more relaxed you can feel. I wonder if there are places in your body that feel more relaxed than others. Perhaps your shoulders feel more relaxed than your neck. Perhaps your legs feel more relaxed than your arms. I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter. All that matters it that you feel comfortable. That’s all. Be unmindful of worries. Distract yourself from thinking you don’t deserve this happiness, or wondering when the positive experience will end or thinking about what chores need to be done elsewhere. Distract yourself from thinking about what awaits you at the end of the positive experience, or worrying about how much money you’re spending on it. If you’re at the circus, for example, instead of thinking, `I don’t deserve to be enjoying this,’ focus on your surroundings – children laughing, cotton candy, the rides, the clowns, unless you have a deep fear of clowns. You might not want to focus on them then. Damn you, Stephen King! There is a lot of material in this section, and no one expects you to conquer it overnight.

You shouldn’t either. Like any habit, it needs to be practiced before it becomes an actual habit. And then it still needs to be practiced. I wonder if the deep relaxing, restful heaviness in your forehead is already across your face, into your mouth and jaw. Down your neck, deep, restful, heavy. Perhaps beginning to notice that the sounds which were distracting become less so. That all the sounds you can hear become a part of your experience of comfort and relaxation. Anything you can notice becomes a part of your experience of comfort and relaxation. Perhaps noticing the heavy, restful, comfortably relaxing feeling spreading down into your shoulders, into your arms. I wonder if you notice one arm feeling heavier than the other. Perhaps your left arm feels a bit heavier than your right. Perhaps your right arm feels heavier than your left. I don’t know, perhaps they both feel equally, comfortably heavy. Be Mindful of Positive Emotions Get in the habit of noticing your emotions and recognizing whether they’re negative or positive. When they’re negative, get in the habit of not dwelling on them. When they’re positive, get in the habit of being mindful of the actual emotion. I’m happy right now. It feels warm. It feels calm.

Describe how the emotion feels, instead of getting caught up in why you’re happy or peaceful, or what have you. Using the Opposite to Emotion Action What actions do you do with negative emotions? It really doesn’t matter. Just letting yourself become more and more aware of the comfortable heaviness. Or is it a feeling of lightness? I really don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. Perhaps wondering about the fluttering of your heavy eyelids. Noticing that heaviness really beginning to sink in as you continue to notice the pleasant, restful, comfortable relaxation just spread through your body. Feeling so pleasantly restful, just continuing to notice the growing, spreading, comfortable relaxation. Noticing maybe that as you feel increasingly heavy, more and more comfortable, there’s nothing to bother you, nothing to disturb you, as you become deeper and deeper relaxed. I wonder if you notice how easily you can hear the sound of my voice. How easily you can understand the words I say with nothing to bother, nothing to disturb. They’re probably the go-to actions, preprogrammed by your psyche. It takes time, but you can reprogram your psyche by using the opposite actions you normally use. When you’re afraid, your brain kicks in to fight, flight, or freeze mode. In some instances, this is still a vital response mechanism developed for our own safety. In other instances, the response mode has been passed down from our hunter/gatherer ancestors and serves no real purpose today. For example, test anxiety. A test doesn’t present the need for a fight/flight/freeze response that imminent death, beating, rape, a car accident, or a full-grown saber-toothed tiger would pose.

Adding a bit of the opposite emotion can help reduce the intensity of PTSD. If you feel like you are unable to deal with your past just yet, it is okay to push it away. Throw the problem out of your mind for a short duration. Presuming that perhaps I’m not being clear, I briefly sketch the neural underpinnings of expectations: the biochemistry of placebos and the effect of belief on the brain. Hammerstrom purses her lips and has to admit that the physical brain itself, with its electrical impulses and chemicals, simply doesn’t have a place in the religion, although, she offers, she would be pleased for anyone who gained relief from pain and suffering. I know it’s a real stretch to apply the concept of science to something that to most people is faith-based, she says. You say that the test of science is that you have a hypothesis you put to the test, and then you draw conclusions for whether or not your hypothesis is correct. My sense is that God’s law isn’t a hypothesis; I am not applying this science to test whether it’s true. I am applying this science to prove that it is true. This is exactly the same logic that all other alternative medicines, shamans, and faith healers across history have used. It’s almost the same way Zhang described traditional Chinese medicine. The thing that separates science from faith is that sometimes science is wrong. But how is this possible? By distracting yourself with other thoughts, activities, or mindfulness. You can set a time to come back and address your problems. Assure yourself that it will be addressed and stay calm in the interim. Replace your anxious, negative thoughts with activities that occupy most of your mind, for example, reciting the alphabet backward or enjoying a Sudoku puzzle. These distractions will help prevent self-destructive behaviors and reliving the traumatic events until you achieve emotional stability. Make use of your five senses to soothe yourself during times of stress.

A self-soothing activity can be anything such as taking a warm bath with relaxing music and a lavender bath bomb, eating your favorite food, or tuning in to a good TV show. Anything appealing to your senses can help you cope with PTSD for the time being. These Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills can help you tolerate PTSD until you are able to resolve the problem once and for all. It’s entirely possible that, either through some unknown brain pathway or by the power of God’s law, Hammerstrom healed her vision as a small child. It’s also possible that her recovery was just the result of normal eye growth. In some children, the lenses inside their eyes focus the incoming light on the wrong spot, like a movie projector focusing on a wall behind the screen, causing the image to get blurry, or what eye doctors call hyperopia. And it’s possible that one day the muscles in her eyes–exhausted from trying to compensate–just ran out of steam and sort of gave up, making her vision go blurry all at once. If that’s what happened, the glasses simply allowed her to focus without effort. Meanwhile, her eyes continued to grow until they were big enough that the light was focused on the correct spot. And voila, her vision was healed. That same logic could apply to my own childhood miracle. It’s true that there was a Legionnaire’s outbreak that infected 49 people and killed 15 in 1978. But all the cases traced their infection back to a single Los Angeles hospital. They can control the symptoms of PTSD and allow you to focus more on the present with no fragments of your traumatic past. While the ACCEPTS skills will enable you to focus on your current life, other modules of DBT, such as group therapy and interpersonal effectiveness, will motivate you to enjoy life at a basic level. Emotional Control Using Mastery Using the mastery skills in this section will help you achieve Wise Mind. If you practice Wise Mind when the seas of life are calm, it will be easier to bring to mind those skills during times of turbulence. Doing something that makes you feel a little better every day helps relieve stress and inspire confidence.

Attaining confidence helps reduce stress in stressful situations as well as in everyday situations. Taking care of yourself helps you stay grounded so that when difficulties arise, and they will, you can keep your cool and maintain a consistent level of emotions. Build Positive Experiences There is an irony buried somewhere in there. Not going to the doctor ensured that I would not receive a diagnosis of Legionnaire’s disease. But this same distrust of doctors meant that my parents would have no way of knowing either way. In science we say that the simplest answer tends to be correct. But in faith, whether in TCM or Christian Science, there can only ever be one answer: the one you believed at the start. Talking to Hammerstrom, I feel a little sad there’s no room in my childhood religion for David Patterson or Luana Colloca. I see so much that modern medicine could learn from this practitioner. Her bedside manner, confidence, empathy, and communication skills are markedly better than any conventional clinician I’ve ever visited. But in the end, there’s simply no way to bring together faith and science over the course of an afternoon. So I ask Hammerstrom if there’s any chance that a Christian Scientist, like other scientists, could ever refine their beliefs to include neuroscience or modern psychology. Building positive experiences is necessary for emotion regulation in that we need a well of positives to draw from when we’re running on empty. Many experiences are wonderful at the time, and then we later may not be friends with the people we had the experience with. Do not let that mar the memory. Remember who they were when you had the experience together. There are two important categories in which to build positive experiences: the short term and the long term. Short-term memories include talking to a good friend, taking a walk, noticing a beautiful area, going to the dog park, reading a good article, watching a show or movie you love, dining out, having a picnic, and laughing on a break with a coworker. Most of us already do something to create short-term positive experiences daily without thinking about it.

This exercise asks you to create more short-term positive experiences and do it deliberately. Call up an old friend. Stay off social media after work for a few days. I want to love God with all my heart–and part of that is not to have any other gods. And I think medicine is a god. I think matter is a god. And I realize that’s radical and that you might really be offended by that. She says this so warmly and gently that I don’t even realize she’s just called everything I believe in a false idol. I eventually say goodbye and walk around the church grounds contemplating belief, faith, and healing. I walk into the church, sit down in one of the pews, and listen to a tour guide tell the story of how Mary Baker Eddy slipped on a patch of ice and healed herself with just her mind and a copy of the Bible. Above the tour guide, carved into the arching stone walls that rise to form a spacious and stunning nave, is a quote that reads, If a sense of disease produces suffering and a sense of ease antidotes it, disease is mental. Hence the fact in Christian Science that the human mind alone suffers. There is no mention of Phineas Quimby or Franz Mesmer or Benjamin Franklin. Make a concerted effort to tell ridiculous, silly stories with your kids. Send your nieces and nephews presents from the clearance aisle. Do something that will create positive experiences deliberately. When you deliberately practice making and noticing positive experiences, you’ll begin to make and notice more as part of your daily life. When positivity is a part of your daily life, you feel better emotionally and physically. Do at least one of these things, or choose something else that makes you happy, every day for a week. Go out of your way to do it for a week.

After that, try to make it IN your way. Do something you’ve never tried before. There are probably a few things you’ve never thought of trying: But as the guide speaks, I can’t help thinking of them. And of Henry Beecher, Fabrizio Benedetti, Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, Avicenna, and Morton Jellinek and the questions they and many others spent their lives trying to answer. Christian Scientists, as well as proponents of traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, smoke therapy, Reiki massage, and vitamin E supplements, already think they have the answer. Their adherents have felt the truth–the power–of their healing practices themselves. And for that matter, so have all of us in our own way, whether it’s faith in God, supplements, or conventional medicine. We are not credulous weaklings, subject to passing fancies. We are tough-minded, skeptical people. We can’t be tricked and we can’t be conned. The power of energy fields, superdiluted water, stainless steel needles, and the doctor in the white lab coat is real. We’ve seen it heal. Drive around the areas where there are homeless people and give these out. Google the DJ while you’re talking and tell them all about themselves so they’ll believe you. Long-term positive experiences are more goal-oriented, creating a life worth living. What are some goals that you would like to achieve? Write down a few specific goals. Break them down into subcategories. Many people have goals that are money-oriented.

Worrying and then realizing that your concern was silly produces a phenomenon called extinction, and the worry eventually stops. On the other hand, persistently avoiding what you feel makes you believe these things are real and that fearing them is the right thing to do. This is what you call reinforcement and it only strengthens the worry. Be careful with techniques like past-life regression or regression to the womb–anything where you’d be retrieving memories you did not have before. Tricking your mind to feel less pain is good sense. Tricking your mind to quit smoking is a great way to prolong your life. But tricking your mind to see something that you’re not sure happened is playing with fire. As we have seen, suggestibility can have a hell of an effect on a hell of a lot of medical conditions. But not all of them. This is the most fascinating part of the story. Although Parkinson’s responds well to placebos, Alzheimer’s does not. And although the pain and nausea of cancer can be eased with placebos, the tumors themselves do not budge. But spontaneous regression is not a product of suggestion (at least not that we know of). Whenever your mind signals you to avoid a certain situation, recall that this is wrong. Allow yourself to appreciate the moment by considering it a chance to fight your fear and get away from your worries. Move your focus from the disturbing thoughts to the real world. Now you know about the most important thing to avoid, let’s move on to the one that you should be doing. Do you at times look back at a moment of worry and think, wow that really freaked me out? This is because you failed to realize this at the moment it occurred. Worries tend to sneak up on a person, and as you undergo cognitive fusion, the worries overtake you.

This urges you to go and make bad decisions. The best way to bypass this problem and all the fuss it creates is by identifying the increasing anxiety before it is too late. By now, you will have made your own canaries list. Contemplating the elaborate powers of expectation on the body and its history over thousands of years can be overwhelming. The reach of expectation is vast: 2,000 years of traditional Chinese medicine, the millions who buy into homeopathy and acupuncture, the trillions of dollars spent by pharmaceutical companies trying to beat the placebo effect. When you step into a televangelist’s megachurch and notice he is relying on hypnotic techniques, or when you hear stories of cathartic experiences that sound suspiciously like false memories, you can feel crushed under the weight of the uncertainty between who we are and who we think we are. And yet suggestibility is also terribly small and intimate. As small as a young boy closing his eyes and listening intently for the voice of God. As simple as a caring healer making eye contact and touching his hand. It’s the silence between sleep and pain as you lie in the acupuncturist’s office with needles up and down your arm. And it’s two young people, desperate and alone for one terrible moment, fighting the panic that their infant is dying. Over the course of writing this article, a part of me genuinely hoped I would find something so odd, so impressive as to be truly unexplainable. An honest-to-God miracle cure. Now what you should do is begin identifying these things as soon as they happen. The sooner you identify these thoughts, the action impulses, and the accompanying physical manifestations, the quicker you will be able to quell them. It is easy to identify your problem once you understand what you are looking for. This enables you to control it or handle it, at least. Have you ever found yourself swamped by troubling thoughts about a certain problem and a bigger trouble strikes you? This newly emerged problem forces you to forget about your past tensions and use whatever energy you have left in worrying about it. Notice how you are able to shift your attention.

Doing it on purpose is, however, the tricky part. The aim of this skill is to help you develop a connection with your feelings and experiences. It will help you learn how to remain in the current moment and establish a better connection with your life instead of wasting your energy on troubling thoughts. I never found it. Most recoveries I came across were, in the end, either completely explainable through science or impossible to verify. Are you disappointed? After all, what is a miracle but an event that’s completely unexplainable? And I ask you: Where’s the fun in an event that can’t be explained? What is there to learn? Don’t get me wrong; I’m not out to prove that magic and healings and God are all dead. Are miracles real? I have no idea. So, whenever you get stuck in a stressful or worrying situation, remember to focus only on the problem at hand while avoiding any worrying thoughts which may distract you. Channel all your attention to living the current experience. If the worry is making you distracted, remember this point, and think only about the actual problem and make efforts to deal with it only. Tend to Your Emotions The first thing to do to tend to your emotions is to learn how to identify worry. Once you have recognized that you are stuck in troubling circumstances, observe your body closely. Look for any signs related to your heightened emotions.

You may notice your heart pounding, your muscles tensing up, or your stomach sinking. Whatever you feel, pay close attention to it. It is possible for your mind to divert its attention to any other topic. Science is incapable of proving a negative, so there’s no way to say that miracles never happen. But the most exciting kinds of questions don’t prove a negative; When the Catholic Church investigates miracle healing, the first thing it does is exclude those things that can be explained by science–in other words, by the normal operations in the body. But from my perspective, those are the most fascinating ones. The healings that don’t rise to the level of miracle–the miracle-like cures that can be explained, understood, and, who knows, maybe used by all of us–are far more interesting than the unexplainable or supernatural. That’s exactly where expectation and suggestibility come in. These are the miracles of placebos and hypnosis and tricks of the prediction machines in our skulls. These are not the miracles of saints and gurus; And although I never encountered an unexplainable miracle, I did find a trace of what might drive the other kind. A similar theme that comes up again and again in the world of faith healing. You may also feel like drowning in the pool of worries, which diverts your attention far from the actual problem. As soon as you find yourself in this situation, get yourself together. Try diverting all of your attention back to the body and focusing on the actual problem. Do not get involved in thoughts which are troublesome. You only need to notice them and keep returning your mind back to the body over and over again. Label your emotions, whether they are fear, anxiety, irritation, sadness, or shame. Remind yourself it is normal to feel how you are feeling right now, and your emotions are not going to kill you.

In short, examine, admit, and mark. The worrisome feelings will eventually dissipate. It is a skill, and it takes some time. The words faith, belief, and even expectation suggest a vision toward something that hasn’t happened but will. And yet the most successful healings I investigated took the view that the healing had already happened. Mike Pauletich said this when he thought back on his recovery from Parkinson’s, and so do many Christian healing ministries and even Christian Science. It’s one thing to expect that healing will happen, but it seems far more effective to expect that it already has. Placebos might be a promise for the future, but they work only once you’ve ingested them, convinced that they have done their job. And more power to them. After years of research, I’ve come to see suggestibility as Mark Jensen did when he called hypnotizable people talented. If you can truly find relief in treatments that are no more effective than a placebo, if you can cast out fear and depression with just words, then you are lucky indeed. If you are highly hypnotizable and can treat your illness through trance, pat yourself on the back. For decades, the world has seen you as too easily influenced and pharmaceutical companies have been aggravated by you. But it definitely works. When you get good at it, it will be your superpower against worry. Use Opposite Action This may seem like advanced Kung Fu, so take it slow. In the end, this skill is what’s going to take you from being a chronically worried individual to being a person who seldom worries. It is a mild form of exposure therapy and revolves around the concept of facing your fears. Opposite action helps your brain figure out which people and places are not dangerous, hence, do not need to be avoided.

Tense and Relax Your Muscles: When we are tense or stressed, our muscles can involuntarily become tense. But deliberately tensing your muscles and then consciously releasing it, you well be able to enter a deeper state of relaxation. Try tensing your fists as hard as you can and holding it for a count of ten. Keep squeezing harder and harder. On the count of ten, release your fists. You will feel your muscles become far more relaxed than they had initially been. If you are feeling distressed, try this technique in as many places around your body as you can. But not long afterward, she started having disabling panic attacks that made her feel like she was suffocating. At first they were a nuisance; After she experienced an attack while at work in the operating room, she realized that they were debilitating for her and perhaps lethal for her patients. She consulted multiple doctors who checked her for lung problems, infections, and half a dozen other potential triggers. She tried psychiatry and took anti-anxiety medication, but nothing helped. Finally, she went to a homeopath. Homeopathy was created in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century by a young doctor named Samuel Hahnemann. A keen observer of human nature, he was disgusted by the practices he observed in medicine at the time, especially bloodletting. He saw physicians of his era doing more harm than good, and believed the best medicine was often bed rest and a good diet. Fascinated by various types of remedies, he experimented on himself and noticed that a healthy person who takes quinine–used to treat malaria–gets malaria-like symptoms. Tense each muscle and then feel them relax more deeply as your release the hold. Find an Activity That Calms You: The next time you feel distressed and ready to act out, force yourself to engage in a different activity. This can be any activity you choose, as long as it is a healthy one that will not put yourself or others in danger.

This helps by taking your mind off the negative emotion and forcing you to concentrate on the task at hand. It can be helpful to put together a list of activities you enjoy doing – they could be something as simple as taking a walk or reading a article, through to playing a musical instrument, doing a sport or baking a cake. The next time you feel distressed, you will have this list to turn to. Do Something Kind: Though being kind and generous may be the last thing you feel like doing while you are lost in your own problems, engaging in an act of service is a great way to help your through your distress without resorting to reckless behavior. Bake cookies for someone, wash a neighbor’s windows, or help out with tasks around the house. Not only will this distract you from your stress, it will have the added benefit of making you feel good about yourself, helping with your sense of self-worth. As with the above suggestion, when you are feeling good, it can be helpful to make a list of helpful tasks you can engage in that you can refer to the next time stress takes hold. What if that very similarity between illness and treatment was what led to healing? Maybe physicians needed to find a cure that came in a package similar to the disease itself. Similia similibus curantur, he said: Like cures like. It was a powerful notion that seemed intuitively correct. Furthermore, Hahnemann hypothesized that it wasn’t the chemical itself that brought relief but the essence of that chemical. Thus, you could dilute the cure with water until the compound was nonexistent, and the water would convey that essence of cure to the patient. I did not believe in it, Grams told me. I had had no contact with this so-called medicine before. And I was completely surprised at how much time [the homeopath] had, how much she looked at me as a person and not just symptoms. I thought, `This is the missing part of my medical life. Keep Your Mind Busy: If you need a quick distraction from the chaos of thoughts inside your head, engage in an activity that forces you to keep your mind busy. Try saying the alphabet backwards or recite you times tables. Utilize Positive Imagery: Imagine the way you would like to respond the next time you feel like acting recklessly.

How would ideally like to manage the distress? Imagine what this would look like. Allow yourself to really feel the way this would feel. This exercise can be done both when you are feeling good and when the distress begins to take hold. By imagining the ideal outcome, you may be able to change the way you behave in reality. Give Meaning to the Situation: We have already discussed the way reckless behavior has a purpose, in that it acts a mechanism in times of distress. But what other meaning can you give to the way you are feeling? Grams’s homeopath recommended belladonna, or deadly nightshade, a poisonous bush used throughout history for political assassination. Naturally, she wouldn’t get a pure dose but one that had been diluted down to one part for every novemdecillion (that’s a one with 60 zeros after it) parts water. In other words, every molecule of nightshade had long since been purged from the liquid and all that was left was water. Now, there is no scientific reason why deadly nightshade, let alone highly diluted deadly nightshade, should have helped Grams’s panic disorder when prescription drugs had failed. But it did: Her symptoms dissipated. She was floored. There must, she reasoned, be some unseen, unstudied mechanism behind this amazing healing art that science had ignored. Against warnings from her colleagues, who said it would sabotage her medical career, she decided to become a homeopath herself. In seven years she was practicing homeopathy, and three years later she opened her own practice. Her prescriptions targeted not the symptoms of her patients but the way they described them. Perhaps your battle with your distress has given you the strength to face it again next time it arrives. Maybe it has taught you how you don’t wish to behave. Maybe you received help from someone unexpected and the situation allowed you to create a new relationship.

Make a Pros and Cons List: If you are battling with yourself about whether to engage in reckless behavior, such as going on a massive shopping spree or sleeping with someone you know you shouldn’t, take a few moments to write down a list of the pros and cons. What will the benefits be to engaging in this behavior? And what are the likely consequences? The act of doing this will hopefully not only allow you to see the repercussions of your reckless actions but may also provide you with that moment of thought you need to remove yourself from the intensity of the situation. Who can help you? If you are suffering from borderline personality disorder, it is important to know that you are not alone. In Part Three, we will be looking more closely at how your loved ones can help you manage the illness, but it is important to acknowledge the vast array of healthcare professionals who are trained to help sufferers of borderline personality disorder. A pain in the chest that made patients say they felt trapped or compressed would be treated totally differently from one that they described as feeling like heat, for example. One of Grams’s patients during this time was so paralyzed by depression that she couldn’t leave her house. She had tried years of psychotherapy and medications but had become a deeply depressed shut-in and an alcoholic. After talking to her about her condition for hours, Grams found that the woman traced her sadness to one frigid night in her childhood, when she and her parents had fled the Nazis. Her symptoms, interestingly, were much worse during the cold German winters. Treating like with like, Grams hit upon a prescription that reflected the power of that cold night decades before: regular doses of melted snow. In other words, water. Amazingly, after a few sessions, the treatment started to work. The woman improved, gave up drinking, and eventually began traveling to nearby towns to visit friends. Whenever she felt an attack of depression or anxiety coming on, she reached for a vial of melted snow. While psychiatrists and psychologists are often the first people we turn to in the treatment of BPD, the condition can also be treated by GPs and nurses, along with occupational therapists and social workers who have undergone specials training. Some major cities worldwide also have specialized mental health services dedicated to patients suffering from BPD. Finding the right health-care professional

Finding the right therapist to work with can be a challenge. With so many options out there, even knowing where to begin can be a challenge. While your GP will often be able to assist you in finding a therapist well-versed in dealing with borderline personality disorder, it is important that you play an active part in finding a person you feel comfortable working with. After all, for therapy to be successful, you will need to open up to your therapist and feel safe doing so. So how do you being the daunting task of finding the right therapist for you? Begin by narrowing down your options. You already know you want a therapist with experience treating BPD, of course, but think about what else you require. Grams’s practice grew until she was making far more as a homeopath than she had as a doctor. So she decided to write a article about the power of homeopathy, aimed at audiences like her old colleagues–and her former self–who had been skeptical of it. She would use empirical evidence to show that homeopathy was effective and thus prove Hahnemann’s philosophy. But the more she dug into the scientific literature, the more she learned that the homeopathic treatments she had been administering showed zero merit in careful scientific tests. The few studies that claimed small successes generally had a tiny group of test subjects, included statistical biases, or involved less aggressive dilutions than those used in normal homeopathic practice (meaning they contained more of the active ingredient). Homeopaths make the argument that a mysterious active ingredient is driving all this, but decades of searching haven’t turned up anything. One skeptic organization called 10:23 even demonstrated this by drinking entire bottles of the stuff in a publicity stunt meant to show that you can’t overdose on homeopathic remedies. The logic being, how can there be an active ingredient if it is impossible to overdose? After hundreds of trials, most scientists have come to the conclusion that homeopathic remedies are actually placebos. What’s going on here? For example, how far are you willing to travel to get to your appointments? What is your budget? Do you have a preference for a male or female therapist?

Choking sensation Increased heart rate Shortness of breath Tingling sensations Once you have identified exactly what it is you are feeling, you can begin to implement techniques for calming these emotions. See article Ten for more details on calming specific emotions. Accept Your Emotions It’s at work as you shift your feet and hands to hit a tennis ball and it’s there as you pause a second to inhale before taking that first sip of coffee in the morning. Think about it: Just putting one foot in front of the other requires expectation. In short, expectation is the way our brains process the world. Your brain is wired to build expectations throughout your life over hours, years, or decades, then tries its best to turn those expectations into reality. Simply put, your brain doesn’t want to be wrong–and in order for expectation to match reality, it’s willing to bend a few rules or even cheat outright. As we shall learn, your brain’s expectations are more powerful than we ever imagined. When those expectation clash with reality, more often than not, it’s your stubborn brain that wins. In 1996, the philosopher and artificial intelligence pioneer Daniel Dennett wrote, A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. Our brains spend most of their time processing what they have already experienced in order to figure out what’s about to happen. Imagine for a second that your brain failed to be an expectation-generator. Now you have identified the emotions you are feeling, the next step is to accept them. This is a crucial step when it comes to calming the storm of emotions raging inside your head. This can be an extremely difficult thing to do, particularly if you have been suffering from the effects of BPD for a number of years.

You will now have a great deal of resentment for the disorder, along with the emotions it causes you to feel. Accepting them may seem like an impossible task. But it is important to understand that accepting your emotions is not the same things as approving of them or accepting that there is no chance of change. It just means that you keep yourself from trying to push away and suppress these feelings or deny what it is happening. By allowing yourself to feel the true intensity of your feelings, rather than battling to keep them away, you actually take away a great deal of their power. Endeavor to just let your feelings be, without engaging in self-criticism or judgement. See if you can focus on the present moment, without giving rise to thoughts of the past or future. You would essentially become a baby–everything would be novel and unpredictable. Suddenly nothing would make sense. Toss a ball up and it just keeps going. A dragon with the face of Nicholas Cage approaches you on the street and asks for directions. Expectation is just a system of shortcuts our brains have developed to get through life without stopping every five seconds to figure things out. You observe the world as best as you can, and then your brain fills in the gaps. But sometimes circumstances don’t fit the model of the world that your brain has built. So rather than change its expectation, your brain will occasionally twist reality to bring your observations in line with your expectations. Therefore, if what you expect is negative, your mind will make things look (or feel) worse than they actually are. But if you expect the best–well, some pretty amazing things can happen in your body, as you’ll see in the coming articles. Try some of the following techniques: Imagine you are observing your emotions from the outside. After all, you are not defined by your emotions.

You are not your anger, or your grief or your frustration, or anxiety. Attempt to view your emotions as what they truly are – something separate from yourself. Observe the ways your emotions come and go. It can be helpful to think of them as waves- imagine them ebbing and flowing, increasing and decreasing in intensity. This also strengthens your ability to see your emotions as something separate from yourself. Pay attention to your physical body. How do these emotions manifest inside you? Somewhere in between this expectation and reality lies the mind’s power to heal itself. To access that power–that ability to use your brain to affect your body–you need a key that unlocks expectation. Many keys can tap into expectations and shape what we see around us every day. But the key that’s been used by doctors, shamans, healers, and hucksters throughout the centuries is the power of suggestion. These two complementary ideas–suggestion and expectation–are at the heart of unlocking your internal medicine cabinet. They are also at the heart of my search for answers to my own childhood miracles. The power of suggestion and expectation may be all around us–but tapping into it isn’t easy, and it’s not always clear when it happens. To do it, you have to completely shift your expectations to your advantage. In short, you need to make yourself suggestible. One way to do this is through storytelling. Do they cause you to feel tension or pain? Does this pain or discomfort move as the feelings increase and increase? Try and pinpoint exactly where you can feel the manifestation of the emotion.

And what does it feel like? Is a dull ache? A sharp pain? A tingling? Tell yourself it’s okay to be feeling these emotions. Accept them for what they are. Remember, accepting them does not mean you approve of them. Nothing engages us quite as well as a good yarn, which can be very useful for suggestion. For instance, did you know that humans are just collections of molecules, made up of atoms, which themselves are nothing but energy? There is good energy and bad energy, and sometimes bad energy infiltrates parts of your body and makes you feel ill. But all you have to do is purify that energy–flush it out with good energy–and your symptoms will evaporate. Is this true? Not remotely. Still, for many people it sounds true. And that story–that suggestion–is enough to engage their expectation for healing. Our uncanny ability to deceive ourselves holds startling implications for our health and well-being. Often what we call healings are tied to brain chemicals like opioids or dopamine. And it does not mean you are giving them permission to be here forever. Tell yourself that just because you are experiencing these emotions right now, it does not mean they are reality. Your emotions are a result of your thoughts.

And all thoughts can be changed. Engage in Mindfulness Practices Engaging in mindfulness practices can also be a great help in learning to manage the chaos of the emotional storm. Mindfulness is a form of meditation and that helps people manage their thoughts and feelings. It is used increasingly in the treatment of mental health disorders and is recommended by NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) in the treatment of depression, among other illnesses. Thanks to the way it helps practitioners manage and become aware of their emotional states, mindfulness can also be extremely beneficial when it comes to treating borderline personality disorder. The mindfulness state can be reached through a number of methods. Some of these involve the placebo effect, which can coax remarkable reactions from areas of the brain involved with experiencing pain, nausea, Parkinson’s, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, and other afflictions. It’s perhaps the purest form of the brain’s ability to alter reality, an undeniable neurochemical phenomenon. Another trick of the brain is placebo’s alter ego, the nocebo effect, whereby our brain is fooled into increasing our discomfort and perhaps even creating disease from thin air. A third category is hypnosis, an odd little switch in the brain that gets activated and opens up a back door into our expectations. And the phenomenon of false memories tricks us into believing things that simply aren’t so. In these articles I will explore the hidden power, history, and science of human suggestibility. Along the way, we’ll meet hypnotists, healers, magicians, and quacks. I’ll be poked, prodded, electrocuted, burned, and even cursed. By the end, I hope to have revealed to you the secrets behind one of humanity’s oldest stories–and the many ways they can affect your life. Modern science is beginning to demonstrate that faith healing, miracle pills, and much of alternative medicine have one thing in common: you. Here are a few mindfulness techniques to try if you are new to the practice: Standard mindfulness meditation: Focus on your breathing. Feel the breath move in and out of your body and become aware of its rhythm.

Of particular relevance are any suicidal thoughts a patient may have experienced, along with thoughts of self-harm, or doing harm to others. An assessment may also include physical tests to rule out other triggers of these symptoms, such as thyroid conditions or drug and alcohol abuse. As previously mentioned, BPD can sometimes be misdiagnosed, thanks to its similarities to other mental health disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. As a result, mental health professionals might experiment with a range of treatments and therapies in order to identify the most suitable path towards recovery. So what if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder? What does this mean for your relationships, and your life in general? There is no doubt that BPD presents an enormous array of challenges to both the sufferer and those around them. For the first half of my life, the tenets of Christian Science were my only form of health care. I didn’t visit a doctor’s office until I was 18. Instead of popping pills or swallowing spoonfuls of bitter tonics, I used the Bible, the writings of Christian Science, and my own mind to heal myself. Christian Science is an American religion founded in 1866. Its charismatic founder, Mary Baker Eddy, claimed to have discovered the true meaning of Scripture: that all Christians have the ability to heal, just as Jesus did. Roughly speaking, Christian Scientists believe that all matter–your car, this article, or a shot of antibiotic–is superseded by a deeper reality reflecting the mind of God. In that reality, everyone and everything is perfect. Thus a healing comes not by changing the body but through glimpsing a more perfect, truer version of yourself. There are only a few hundred thousand Christian Scientists today, and very little research exists on their practices. One limited study from 1989 produced by the church’s home office in Boston attempted to quantify the healings that had taken place over the preceding 20-plus years. But all is not lost. In the following sections, we will take a look at how to cope if borderline personality disorder has become a part of your life. How To Cope If You Suffer From Bpd

What to Expect if You Have Been Diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder So you have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Perhaps this has come as a cruel shock. Or perhaps you may even welcome the diagnosis as an explanation to your previously unexplainable emotional outbursts and mood swings. It feel like a relief to know that this behavior is the cause of an illness, rather than another part of yourself. Regardless of how you feel about your diagnosis, there is no doubt that living with borderline personality disorder can be a hellish experience, both for you and your loved ones. In that (admittedly not objective) paper, more than 2,000 Christian Scientists claim to have been spontaneously healed of medically diagnosed conditions across the spectrum: polio, bone cancer, ruptured appendixes, goiter, crossed eyes. There is even a 1966 story from South Africa in which a broken bone bulging out from under the skin was healed over the course of a single day; You name it, and Christian Scientists claim to have healed it. And they have a lot of company. The Internet is packed with cases of tumors eradicated by juice infusions, paralysis healed by the Holy Ghost, warts removed through hypnosis, and crippling pain erased in a single acupuncture session. Whether it’s a revival meeting in the Florida Panhandle or a witch doctor in the jungles of eastern Mexico or some guy in Beijing who knows just the right way to rub your feet in order to relieve an upset stomach, mystical healing is all around us. When confronted with healings like this that we don’t understand, most of us seem to respond with one of two reactions: There must be forces out there beyond our comprehension or the equally vague, but slightly more scientific The mind is a powerful thing. Both these statements are true. But neither is good enough for me, and shouldn’t be for you either. In an era when we can beam real-time images of a working brain across the world–where a man missing his arm can use his mind to operate mechanical fingers to grip and even feel a plastic cup–it’s time to expect a better answer. BPD can affect every part of your life, from your relationship to yourself and others, to your education, career and recreational life. Your tendencies to act out and behave in violent and aggressive mean that both you and your loved ones are prone to being hurt, both physically and mentally. Learning to manage the disorder begins with understanding.

By knowing exactly what to expect, you can prepare and develop coping skills to help you weather the emotional storm. Having a deep understanding of your illness and its traits will also help you communicate better with your loved ones about BPD, making it easier for them to assist you with the struggles you will face. We will address this more in article Twelve, but for now, let’s take a look at exactly what you can expect if you have been diagnosed with BPD: How You May Feel Towards Yourself If you have been diagnosed with BPD, you can expect to feel the following ways about yourself: Overwhelmed by the intensity of your feelings and rapid mood swings As though you are inherently flawed All around us, permeating almost every aspect of our lives, is a profound mystery just waiting to be solved. It lives in daytime-TV stars hawking miracle vitamin pills; From homeopathy to shamanism, acupuncture to bizarre fad diets, people seem to have an innate ability to release pain, lose weight, and improve their lives by methods that just don’t square with modern reason. Or at least that’s what I used to think. In fact, there is a burgeoning field of science populated by an eclectic community of cutting-edge thinkers willing to look critically at what we loosely call mind/body healing. After spending the past few years immersed in their work, I have finally started to understand the healing practices I witnessed during my childhood. These scientists are casting light on the brain’s unique power–for good or ill–to essentially trick itself. These tricks can soothe us, make us sick, make us better, even save our lives. It’s not a complete picture by any means. But it’s the first we’ve had, and it offers a tempting opportunity to reshape 21st-century medicine as we know it. As though you are to blame for everything bad that happens to you As though you have a hard time deciding what you want in life, or even what you like or dislike. As though you are a bad person

As though you are not a real person As though you are a child forced to live in an adult’s world A though you don’t know who you really are As though something you are unable to identify is missing from inside you These negative feelings towards yourself can cause you to act out in the following ways: Keeping very busy so you are never alone with your thoughts Regularly changing plans, hobbies or even jobs as you struggle to identify who you really are. But before I get into that, you might be wondering how a suburban faith healer ends up becoming a science writer. For the first half of my life, I never questioned the power of God to heal me. I could hear about someone who grew back a severed toe or spontaneously freed himself of AIDS and simply accept it. I believed that I had even heard the voice of God and that the entire world could heal itself with a single shift in thought. What happened? What could so shake a young man’s certainty in his religion that he would leave it behind? Rock climbing. We all rebel a little when we hit puberty. But I didn’t have the talent to join a rock band, the constitution for hard drugs, or the charm to sleep with girls. So I got into extreme sports. Overspending and/or binge eating Using recreational drugs and/or smoking Excessive use of alcohol to help dampen your emotions.

Avoiding seeing things through Refusing to attempt activities you think you might fail or might otherwise cause you to feel disappointed. How You May Feel Towards Others Of course, borderline personality disorder also plays a huge role in the way you relate to the people around you. BPD can cause you to act with aggression and hostility towards those you love, causing them both physical and emotional pain. But again, understanding exactly how BPD can make you act and think can help you manage these outbursts and limit the damage to those you care about. Here are some of the ways BPD can cause you to think or behave around others: Pretty soon my Sunday mornings revolved less around church and more around adventures on the sides of cliffs. When I was 18, two friends and I decided to climb Lost Arrow Spire in Yosemite Valley. Imagine a sheer cliff, 2,000 feet high, with one of the world’s tallest waterfalls on the left and nothing but empty space on the right. Now imagine a massive finger of granite leaning off the wall like a giant aggrieved splinter. That’s Lost Arrow. The plan was to hike to the top of the cliff, rappel into the notch where the finger splits from the wall, climb the finger, and then cross back to where we started via a rope spanning the 140-foot gap. It’s not a terribly difficult day’s work for experienced climbers, and we figured we’d be done by mid-afternoon. What we did not figure was that a thunderstorm would roll in as we hung half a mile above the valley floor. I’d like to say it caught us off guard, but we knew one had been predicted for that afternoon. We just thought we were too fast to get caught in it. You may feel as though no one understands you and what you are going through You may inherently different from everyone around you You may believe that the world is a dangerous place that you want only to run away from

Someone with a discouraged borderline personality can be clingy and tends to go along with the crowd for fear of upsetting the people around them. They can behave in a somber and dejected manner. Below the surface, however, is an anger waiting to erupt. When it does so, it can lead sufferers to self-injury and even suicide. Petulant Borderline: A petulant borderline personality is characterized by a heightened sense of negativity. Sufferers of this form of BPD are often highly impatient, stubborn and resentful. They are sullen and defiant and feel easily slighted. Before you leave for your trip, don’t forget to consume essential fatty acids/fish oils to keep the skin’s moisture levels up. This means the skin is plumped and protected against the elements, and can resist the negative effects of in-flight air conditioning. Use a water spritz to keep your skin hydrated throughout your journey. Decant your favourite hydrating mask into a travel-sized pot to treat your skin and use cooling anti-inflammatory eye pads to keep this delicate, think-skinned area hydrated – go on, be that diva! Drinking water won’t do much for the skin by itself, but it is vital to hydrate cells. If you wear makeup, keep it minimal. Wear breathable, cotton clothing so the skin is not chafed and irritated while seated for long periods. Wear SPF – UVA rays beam through the windows of cars, trains and planes! When you arrive, use a gentle exfoliating product to lift the debris, dry skin and excess oil from the surface of the skin. Cover up as much as possible and regardless of your SPF’s factor or your skin colour, reapply every two hours. They are easily disillusion and disappointed in life. People with a petulant borderline personality disorder fluctuate between desperately relying on people and keeping their distance out of fear of being disappointed or let down. Their emotions are prone to swing between feelings of unworthiness and rage.

Impulsive borderline: Sufferers of impulsive borderline personalities are prone to histrionic or antisocial behavior. This form of BPD is characterized by frenetic, flighty behavior. They can often be flirty and charismatic, able to draw people to them. They are highly energetic and are constantly seeking the next thrill. However, when things do not go their way, sufferers are quick to become agitated, gloomy and irritable. They fear any form of loss, leading them to frequent suicidal tendencies. Self-destructive borderline: Self-destructive borderline personalities are often highly depressive and masochistic. What you could do is scale back slightly to your daily cleanser, your serum and SPF as well as any treatments you use regularly. Skin Diary Check-in: Have you done your homework? Now that you’re clued in in all things nerdie about the skin, it’s time to do an overall mini-analysis on yourself, using all the details you’ve noted so far and all the information you’ve learned. Crack out your magnifying glass, Nancy Drew. How many times do you get less than seven hours sleep? Is it 10 per cent of the time? Is it once per week? Is it more than 50 per cent of the time? If it’s more than 50 per cent of the time, that could be your culprit for dullness and dark circles. They carry around a constant sense of bitterness, which they regularly turn inwards. People with this form of BPD are often prone to self-harming and self-punishing. They are often angry, highly strung and moody and are prone to suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Their self-hatred is prone to reach extreme levels, leading them to many types of destructive behavior, ranging from reckless driving, to poor healthcare, to performing derogatory sexual acts. In addition to these four borderline types proposed by Million, psychologist Dr Christine Lawson also identified four types of borderline personalities in her article Understanding the Borderline Mother. Borderline Queen: Someone with a borderline queen personality is prone to perfectionism. They are prone to take mild criticism very personally and will become aggressive and indignant if anyone suggests they have made a mistake. Thanks to their perfectionism, borderline queens often disassociate from their own negative traits and emotions, believing them a flaw, so is often unable to accept his or her own mistakes. People with this borderline personality regularly feel the need to one-up people around them, particularly their therapists and loved ones. Borderline Waif: Unlike many other borderline types, the borderline waif does not exhibit a great deal of aggression or outward hostility. Were there more breakouts? Interestingly it can be twenty-eight days later that you see some agents of lifestyle change as this is the skin we see that is a result of the health at the lower layers one month prior. So prolonged stress can become visible one month post illness / post medication etc if only it was at the time; It could potentially be sluggish, grey, dull in appearance, somewhat lacklustre and in dire need of nutrition. As we now know the skin is an organ! It will be devoid of plentiful nutrition if the vital organs have required it. I personally find my skin’s healing ability to be less ie blemishes remain and the texture is rougher to the touch. Each person aka hooman is different and the diary helps you to discover your own pattern. I am always so prepared for it that I wouldn’t describe it as a stressful meeting – yet our bodies know better than us sometimes. I monitored my skin for three months and learned my skin’s behaviour around this monthly meeting. Instead, they appear to be fragile and victimized by all life has thrown at them. Waifs are generally depressed and discontented and worry easily. Borderline waifs believe themselves to be helpless victims and often refuse to accept help in order to keep their `victim’ mentality alive.

Borderline Witch: Someone exhibiting a borderline witch personality can be extremely aggressive and controlling. They seek to punish people for the smallest of indiscretions and are prone to borderline rage – the destruction of objects that are of value to those they believe have wronged them. Borderline witches are adept at black and white thinking, particularly when it comes to their loved ones. Parents with this personality will often idealize one of their children over the rest or seek to play one family member off against another. They are prone to using the thoughts and feelings of those around them a weapon, leading their loved ones to become withdrawn and restrained in their presence. Borderline witches can be extremely paranoid and suspicious, with their hostile behavior masking their own fear of loss of control. Borderline Hermit: People with a borderline hermit personality view the world as an inherently dangerous place. Similarly I travel long distances the first week of the month and monitor my skin’s reaction to the heat in the car and again I began to see a rhythm. The good news is I tweaked my supplements and skincare to boost immunity and the result the following month was visible; It puts you in the driving seat. You can’t change the destination (as sometimes stress or other things affecting our skin are unavoidable) but you can help the body’s means of coping with it. And keep filling in your diary – it’s a valuable tool in your skincare journey, and will help you track what’s helping and what might need changing. Keep it by your bed (along with your copy of this article! Thank you for reading – you are officially an honorary Nerd. You now have the basis of a wealth of skinformation. You understand why peptides, antioxidants and Vitamins A and C are key, why you have to pre-cleanse before you cleanse and why it is blasphemous to purposefully not wear SPF. You know the touch and feel of your skin; They have large amounts of paranoia and suspicion and have trouble trusting those around them. Thanks to their belief that everyone is out to get them, borderline hermits will withdraw from the world and isolate themselves. For many sufferers of a borderline hermit personality, the disorder stems from sexual abuse or other equally damaging childhood trauma.

What Are the Causes of Borderline Personality Disorder? As mentioned in article one, the causes of BPD, like many other mental disorders remain unclear. Experts believe BPD is unlikely to be caused by any single factor, but rather a combination of contributing elements. Some of the factors that are believed to contribute to this disorder include: Genetics: Having a parent with borderline personality disorder may make you more susceptible to the illness. Studies have shown that, in the case of identical twins, when one twin has the disorder, the other has a 2 in 3 chance of developing it as well. At present, however, there is no definitive proof that a gene exists for BPD, meaning genetics’ effect on borderline personality disorder is still under question. You now – I hope! You respect it (think of this every time you shower! You’re committed to investing in effective skingredients that will assist it to be as healthy as it can be. It can be a barometer for internal health. It certainly provides you with an opportunity to take five minutes both night and day to mind you. You are important. You are now ready to take your first steps on the path to optimal skin health – go you! Be savvy, smell less and lean on the education! Become a nerd and identity the aspects you’d like to change – it’s OK to not want pigmentation or broken capillaries. It’s not vanity; Issues with Chemicals in the Brain: Experts believe many people who suffer from BPD have problems with the neurotransmitters in their brain. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that act as messengers, transmitting signals between the brain cells. In particular, altered levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin are thought to play a part in the onset of BPD, as serotonin levels have been linked to depression, aggression and destructive urges.

Thanks to the plethora of other illnesses that can co-exist alongside borderline personality disorder, BPD can often be difficult to identify and diagnose. While borderline personality disorder has immense destructive power for both sufferers and their loved ones, the good news is, it is treatable. In part two of this article, we will address numerous ways BPD can be treated and managed, allowing sufferers and their loved ones to live their lives to the fullest, with minimal degrees of stress and conflict. The Traits of Borderline Personality Disorder As mentioned in the previous article, people with borderline personality disorder often also suffer from other mental illnesses, including issues with anxiety, eating disorders and substance addiction. BPD has many symptoms in common with illnesses such as bipolar disorder, often making it difficult to distinguish and diagnose. What’s Keratosis Pilaris? Those little blocked, spot-like buggers you’ll find on the backs of your arms and legs. KP is usually found on the back of the arms but it can manifest itself on any part of the body. In appearance, it looks a bit like pixelated skin; You’re most likely to find it on women and, surprisingly, children! If keratin is overproduced within the pore, it can become trapped there, rather than moving outwards with the shedding dead skin cells as it usually does. This causes a `traffic jam’ within the pore, leading to keratosis pilaris. Unfortunately, this tendency to overproduce keratin is passed on from generation to generation, meaning that if you have keratosis pilaris, you have it for good. Taking Vitamin A and omegas orally could be the step you need to add to your life to banish the bumps! It is believed that Vitamin A may have a hand in correcting the keratinisation process, stopping the follicles from becoming plugged in the first place, by actually slowing down the rate in which the skin gets rid of dead skin cells due to the skin cells being able to function longer. Let’s take a look at some of the most common symptoms and traits associated with BPD: Difficulty Regulating Emotions: Perhaps the most recognizable trait of borderline personality disorder is the sufferers inability to regulate and control their emotions. People with BPD will often act out in ways that may seem out of proportion to the situation, or seemingly unprovoked.

Intense Emotions: People with BPD will often react to a situation or event in a way that seems disproportionate to what is happening. They are prone to rapid and violent mood swings and can fluctuate between states of intense happiness to crushing depression in very short spaces of time. Sufferers of BPD describe the disorder as an emotional roller coaster. Heightened Sensitivity to Criticism: People suffering from borderline personality disorder are prone to taking criticism very badly, often taking offense and acting out in response to even the smallest piece of disapproval. Identity Disturbance and Distorted sense of Self-image: People who suffer from BPD often have trouble making sense of their own identity. They often find it difficult to pinpoint their likes and dislikes, passions, beliefs and values. They are often unsure about their long term goals, particularly with regards to employment or relationships. Glycolic acid is keratolytic meaning it softens keratin and helps the body to shed dead skin cells. For this reason lotions and treatments that contain glycolic acid can help, as can salicylic acid which dissolves the plug of dead skin cells and exfoliates the skin. Lactic acid is also highly effective. Hydration and skin health is also key for keratosis pilaris so many find sanctuary from KP in vitamin-enriched lotions and ones that contain hyaluronic acid. KP is one of the most common conditions out there, and probably the reason that Irish women love cardigans so much; What about particularly dry/scaly legs? Very dry, scaly skin on legs is a sign of a deficiency of essential fatty acids. Boost them through taking supplements and eating more fish, nuts, seeds and oils. If it’s an ongoing issue and happens in patches, take yourself to the GP as it could be a more serious skin issue, especially if it’s itchy and causing you pain. Cellulite is, perhaps, the biggest concern most people have when it comes to full body skin concerns. As a result, people with BPD often feel lost or empty, with little sense of direction. BPD can also cause one’s self-image to rapidly fluctuate between healthy and unhealthy. Manic efforts to avoid abandonment: Perhaps the thing that BPD sufferers fear the most is abandonment.

This is often due to the trauma they experienced as a child, which led to the condition. In an attempt to avoid abandonment, BPD sufferers will often go to extremes to avoid being abandoned, such as ending a relationship or friendship at the first sign of trouble. In this way, they avoid abandonment by being the ones to end the relationship. Black and white thinking: Also known as splitting or all-or-nothing thinking, black and white thinking refers to an inability to reconcile oneself with the both the positive and negative aspects of a situation or person. People who think in such a way will generally see a situation as either all good, or all bad, with no middle ground. In BPD, sufferers have a tendency to focus on the negative side of events; For example, a person suffering from BPD may see love and sexuality as lude and perverse, rather than acknowledging the tender qualities of such relationships. It occurs is when fatty packets protrude into the skin’s tissues, causing the dimpled, puckered effect that you see on the skin’s surface. It is not something that can be eradicated or prevented per se – we all have fat on our bodies – literally all of us – and this is what fat may do. It is not something that happens because you are carrying extra weight either. Contrary to popular belief, cellulite is more than normal. It is especially common in women because of their physiological makeup. Women’s connective tissue, just above their subcutaneous fat, has larger openings in it which makes it easier for these fatty protrusions to get through. It is especially common on bums, tums and thighs – which are the areas that are naturally fattier on women. Genetics definitely play a role with regard to cellulite too. Grades of cellulite Grade 1: Cellulite is never visible, even when the skin is manipulated. In the same way that a person with a black and white thinking may see another person or situation as all good or all bad, they will do the same for themselves, seeing themselves as either flawless, or inherently bad. While most people have the ability to acknowledge that two contradictory states can exists at once – ie no one is either all good or all bad, people with BPD are unable to accept the ambivalence of this. Instead, they shift rapidly from one extreme to the other, in order to accommodate their fluctuating emotions.

If they are in a bad state and focusing on a person’s negative qualities, they have no awareness of the same person’s positive traits. Reckless and impulsive behavior: Sufferers of BPD are likely to engage in damaging behaviors such as impulse buying, binge eating, unsafe sex, drug and alcohol abuse and reckless driving. While impulsive behavior is not in of itself necessarily a symptom of BPD, it is the difficulties BPD sufferer face in controlling their impulses that lead to impulsive and reckless behavior. Often, sufferers of BPD engage in reckless behavior in an attempt to either calm the emotional storm inside them, or to wake them from a sense of emptiness and detachment. But this impulsive behavior may not always take the form of something that appears to be damaging. The impulsiveness of borderline personality disorder can also lead sufferers to engage in behaviors such as: Abruptly cancelling or changing plans Grade 2: Cellulite is visible when the skin is pinched or pressed together, but the skin appears cellulite-free when you’re standing upright. Grade 3: The cellulite can be seen whilst standing but is not visible when you are lying down flat. Grade 4: Dimpling and puckering is always easily visible but appears worse when the skin is pinched. What clients hate to hear is that you can never fully get rid of cellulite, but the good news is there are things you can do to improve its appearance, including body brushing and massage. Body brushing improves circulation, helps lymphatic drainage and keeps your skin hydrated. It won’t get rid of cellulite, or really affect it at all, but hydrated skin shows fewer flaws so it will definitely be less noticeable if you’re moisturising. Any cream that claims to actually fix cellulite is lying. A cream cannot get to the dermis, so ignore its siren call. Many also see an effect from manual massage of the areas. Endermologie Lipomassage, which uses suction to stimulate lymphatic drainage and circulation and aids in the body’s own production of collagen, is a good one to try. Unstable Personal Relationships: Thanks to both their difficulties controlling their emotions and their deep-seated fear of abandonment, BPD sufferers will often find themselves in a string of damaging and chaotic personal relationships. We will explore relationships and borderline personality disorder in details in Parts Two and Three. Self-Damaging Behavior: Often used a coping mechanism against overwhelm, BPD sufferers are prone to self-harming, both physically and emotionally.

Examples of this may be sabotaging their own work at school or in employment, rather than facing the stress associated with meeting deadlines, or engaging in alienating behavior in order to drive others away. Often, sufferers of BPD will engage in these types of behaviors in order to gain a little relief from their emotional pain. Of course, this relief is almost always short-lasting and can result in guilt and shame. This leads to a cycle, in which the sufferer then turns to destructive behavior in an attempt to relieve the guilt. As time progresses, self-damaging behavior can become an instinctive and unconscious response to emotional pain. More obvious forms of self-destructive behavior such as eating disorders, substance abuse, self-injury and sex addiction are also associated with BPD. It is estimated that at least 10% of BPD sufferers will attempt suicide throughout their lives. VelaShape, which targets the fat cells directly using thermal energy (infrared light and bipolar radio frequency), also uses mechanical massage and suction. Like Lipomassage, it also helps with lymphatic drainage, circulation and boosts collagen production. VelaShape also uses radiofrequency for tissue tightening and increased circulation, both of which will help to reduce the appearance of cellulite. What else can you do? None of us want to hear this but keeping toned helps to reduce the appearance of cellulite. Aim to work out two to three times per week and have a twenty-minute walk per day. This gets the lymphatic system going and improves circulation. Avoid processed foods. Eating healthy food rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals doesn’t help with cellulite directly. However, eating nutrient-rich foods helps our bodies to create collagen to its best advantage and aids skin cells in protecting themselves. Disassociation: Zoning out or feeling as though they are not in the real world is a common trait for people suffering from BPD. Disassociation refers to a disconnect between a person’s thoughts, emotions, behaviors, memories and identity. Disassociation is a common coping mechanism for people with BPD, along with a number of other mental health disorders such as PTSD and acute stress disorder (both of which can co-exist alongside BDP).

Think about tomorrow Many people are stuck in the past and they are unable to let go of all that has happened. Try to focus on tomorrow. Before you cross off someone from your life, think twice about it. There is a good chance that you will lose much more than you will gain. How to help someone This will be a very short article because the message in this is simple. This is predominantly useful for anti-ageing, specifically structurally! Iontophoresis Iontophoresis is a treatment that involves electric current (galvanic charge) being pulsed into the skin for the purpose of helping products to penetrate deeper. This happens due to the movement of positive and negative ions (electrical charges) in the product itself. Iontophoresis is applied using a bar or wand or a flat stainless steel head that rotates across your face. In terms of sensation, it’s not painful but there is a tingling, pins and needles feeling. If you have fillings, you can taste the metal in your mouth. Not all products can be given a charge – they have to be able to conduct electricity. If you remember from science in school, oil cannot conduct electricity so oil-based products and ingredients are a no-go for iontophoresis. Manufacturers provide a wide range of serums and gels to allow the iontophoresis machine and the serum to interact and attract together. You have everything you need in previous articles, and all that you need to help someone who has a codependency condition, is your personal will. Your will is essential. We have all done something that we know is not good for us.

Do we have a weak will? Although the will is based on desire, it is important to distinguish it from desire. Desire is one of many emotions. To feel desire is to be motivated to the actions that lead to its realization. This kind of motivation lasts as long as the person feels their desire. The problem with emotions in general, and even with desires, is that they are transient. One can feel desire for days or weeks and then, in a moment it’s gone. This works on the premise of opposites attract. If the machine is set up on a negative pole, the serum will be that of a negative also as they will wish to be further away from one another. This means the serum that has been applied directly to the skin will have no choice but to be pushed into the lower layers of the skin. This treatment is good for circulation and vasodilation (the dilating of blood vessels, which will help to diffuse redness in the skin) and generally ideal for improving the clarity of the skin. Iontophoresis is for everybody, except those who can’t have electrical current. You will have a pre-treatment consultation after which you will know whether or not you are suitable to have an electrical current treatment. Direct high frequency This treatment involves the use of a glass electrode which is moved slowly over the skin, warming the tissue underneath. The machine uses a high-frequency current, alternating with (very nerdie! Unlike EMS, it won’t contract the muscles as the pulses are too short. Then we lose our motivation as well. This is a pattern of behavior is typical of unsuccessful people, they get excited about something, are inspired by it for a time, lose their motivation for a moment, and give up the whole thing entirely, or postpone it to some future time. It is not good when a person is motivated only by feelings or the principle of seeking the pleasant, and avoiding the unpleasant.

Personality is a complex system, all parts of which should govern behavior. The ability of a person move toward their desired goals is called will. It is a higher form of motivation, important for the achievement of goals that are not at your fingertips, but which must be pursued vigorously over time. So, your will and your desire are crucial, and in addition to your will and your desire, this article has taught you everything you need to know in order to help someone who is suffering from the codependent condition. Dear readers, I believe that we managed to achieve our task in this article. We went very deep to reveal this condition for everyone interested in knowing it better. I believe that we managed to send a message. There are two kinds, direct and indirect. Direct high frequency is when the current is applied directly to the client’s skin, whereas in indirect high frequency, the patient holds the electrode and the frequency gets into the whole body when the practitioner touches the skin of the client. Sound bananas? It kind of is but it’s effective! Indirect high frequency improves circulation meaning more nutrients and oxygen to the individual skin cells. The resulting increased metabolic rate promotes the healing ability of the skin and the skin’s vasodilation which increases blood flow and thus nutrients to the cells. It feels just like a buzzing sensation with a bit of heat and, once again, if you have braces or fillings you may taste metal. Direct is ideal for oilier and acne-prone skin as it has a germicidal, antibacterial, astringent (drying) effect. Chemical peel This is also known as an acid peel. We talked about this condition, we defined codependent disorder, we explained what a codependent person is, we point out specific therapies and symptoms of the condition, and we went through the main reasons for this condition thoroughly. My goal was to show the readers the seriousness of this condition and to provide them with concrete evidence that this condition is one that can be cured. I believe that I have completed my task.

My message for codependents is unchanged: Yes, you can be better, yes you can repair your watch, yes you can have a better life and a better future by letting go of the past. You will find yourself again and you will love yourself again. Why am I saying that? Because I know that in every one of us there is a fighter–a warrior. This is your battle, and it is also your life. Don’t waste your life and the lives of your loved ones. You have only one life; All acids peels cause the skin to exfoliate at a much, much faster rate, which is what causes the redness after the treatment. Peels consist of a high-percentage acid solution applied to the skin which is left for a period of time (usually just a few minutes, depending on the acid being used). Your skin will be thoroughly cleansed and prepped prior to your peel and you’ll be sent home with a lovely layer of SPF on you to protect your slightly more susceptible skin. The acids used in these peels are safe and will not destroy your skin as long as they are being administered by someone who has had training – using professional-grade peels at home is a very different story and something you should never do. Your peel may be glycolic, lactic or salicylic based. Glycolic peels are best for those with dullness, sluggish-looking skin or those looking to get rid of hyperpigmentation. Lactic acid is best for those looking for something a bit more hydrating and gentle than a glycolic peel. Salicylic acid peels are best for the spot-prone. You’ll also find blends of different acids with enzymes and vitamins for multiple benefits at once. Your consultant or clinician will be able to advise you on what type of chemical peel will be best for you. Don’t be your enemy, be your best friend–believe in yourself. Use your time wisely, read this article and you will have a good and normal life, the life you’ve been seeking since you were born. You are a watchmaker, learn how to find the missing part of your watch.

Please tell me what you think of the information you’ve read. Leave a review. I hope this has been helpful. Personality Disorder The hidden faces of BPD that you need to spot. How to manage out of control emotions before they destroy your relationship. Introduction Chemical peels are ideal for those looking to deal with pigmentation, tonal issues, acne, ageing and scarring. After a peel, your skin may be red and slightly irritated and swollen. You can’t wear makeup for the following eight hours. You must also be extra vigilant with your sunscreen, although you should already be wearing it daily. Depending on your skin, you may need between four and six peels for the best results. What About Spa Facials? Spa facials have their place. Due to the emphasis on modes of massage and aromatherapeutic products, it is a relaxing experience and can invigorate and re-energise dull, tired and stressed skin. Relaxation of the body and mind IS important for the skin. We’ve already discussed the effects of stress on the skin so I’d never write off anything that can help to reduce stress. A s with many other mental illnesses, there is plenty of stigma attached to borderline personality disorder, or BPD. Thanks to stereotypical portrayals of mental illnesses in film and television, many people view those suffering from disorders like BPD as being wild, uncontrollable and weak. If you or a love one has been diagnosed with BPD, it can present a number of challenges.