Understanding the Borderline Mother Quotes

“The Queen is controlling, the Witch is sadistic, the Hermit is fearful, and the Waif is helpless.

And each requires a different approach. Don't let the Queen get the upper hand; be wary even of accepting gifts because it engenders expectations. Don't internalize the Hermit's fears or become limited by them. Don't allow yourself to be alone with the Witch; maintain distance for your own emotional and physical safety. And with the Waif, don't get pulled into her crises and sense of victimization. Pay attention to your own tendencies to want to rescue her, which just feeds the dynamic.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“To stave off the panic associated with the absence of a primary object, borderline patients frequently will impulsively engage in behaviors that numb the panic and establish contact with and control over some new object.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“The borderline Queen experiences what therapists call "oral greediness". The desperate hunger of the borderline Queen is akin to the behavior of an infant who had gone too long between feelings. Starved, frustrated, and beyond the ability to calm of soothe herself, she grabs, flails, and wails until at last the nipple is planted securely and perhaps too deeply in her mouth. She coughs, gags, chokes, and spits, eyeing the elusive breast like a wolf guarding her food. Similarity, the Queen holds on to what is hers, taking more than she could use, in case it might be taken away prematurely.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“The Queen's children must allow her the right to self-destruct while exerting their right to protect themselves.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Like many Waifs, Angela never learned to nourish herself emotionally, and suffered from an eating disorder. She simply could not take in or tolerate good feelings. She had to reject what she needed in order to protect herself from disappointment. She could not lose what she did not have.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Unbearable pain that is expressed and acknowledged becomes bearable. But borderlines received no such responses in their childhood. Therefore, they are stuck in the past, trying to elicit what they needed as a child—validation of their unbearable pain.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Emotional intensity, impulsivity, unpredictability, and fear of abandonment are symptoms observable primarily by those who have an intimate relationship with the borderline.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship

“Casual acquaintances, co-workers, or neighbors are less likely to witness the borderline’s sudden shifts in mood, self-destructive behavior, paranoid distortions, and obsessive ruminations.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship

“Borderlines have negative thoughts because they have negative feelings about themselves and others. Memory difficulties, difficulty focusing attention, confused and disorganized thinking, the inability to reason logically, morbid introspection, and intrusively negative thoughts are common”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship

“Therapists hear horrifying stories of child abuse that never make the headlines. The media seem drawn to stories about children who die, as if the suffering of those who survive is any less terrifying.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“The borderline’s children are preoccupied with what researchers call “risk assessment”—with determining the nature of their mother’s state of mind from one moment to the next. It is an unconscious and involuntary process, like breathing. They do not realize they are doing it.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Children who live with a predatory mother become unconsciously preoccupied with reading their mother’s moods. A fleeting glance, a furtive gesture, deceleration, and a shift of direction are signals of an approaching Turn. Bracing, hiding, or merely holding on gives children a much-needed sense of control. Shutting down, avoiding eye contact, and getting away are other means of establishing control.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Although borderline mothers may love their children as much as other mothers, their deficits in cognitive functioning and emotional regulation create behaviors that undo their love. Borderline mothers have difficulty loving their children patiently and consistently. Their love does not endure misunderstandings or disagreements. They can be jealous, rude, irritable, resentful, arrogant, and unforgiving. Healthy love is based on trust and is the essence of emotional security.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Borderlines may destroy what is good and loved by their children because they are intensely jealous of the loved object.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Although she can function extraordinarily well in other roles, mothering is the single most daunting task for the borderline female.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship

“Children of borderlines may tune out by dissociating and disconnecting from their environment. They cannot feel embarrassed, humiliated, ridiculed, or hurt if they are no longer in their own bodies. Unfortunately, the sensation of depersonalization or dissociation makes them feel crazy.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Children of borderlines and survivors of hurricanes have much in common. Survival is dependent on finding a safe place, staying low, and not being fooled by the eye of the storm.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Laura explained that her mother “went on tirades.” Something could set her off and she would whirl around the house like a cyclone. The warning signal was “the look.” The look was a piercing, threatening glare that meant “I could kill you.” When Laura was a child, her mother actually said it, with no awareness of the power of her words.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Witch mothers possess a laser-like ability to detect areas of vulnerability in others. Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, the borderline Witch has “a keen sense of smell” for human weakness. Witch mothers know what to say to hurt or scare their children, and use humiliation and degradation to punish them.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Attacks by the Witch mother are like tornadoes: random, devastating, and unpredictable. Naturally, her children are on constant alert for changes in the atmosphere that might indicate when and where she will “Turn.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Borderline mothers who threaten or attempt suicide keep their children emotionally trapped, and their children may suffer from extreme anxiety even as adults.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Therapists sometimes warn family members not to depend on the person with BPD to validate their self-worth, yet young children have no choice. They can and will do anything to hold onto the good mother (the loving, caring person) who unpredictably turns into the Witch mother (the terrifying, raging beast).”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Some children of borderlines secretly wish that their mother would die, not because they hate her, but because living with her seems impossible.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“It is rare for even adult children to abandon their mother, regardless of how many times their mother has abandoned them.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Upon entering therapy, adult children of borderlines are initially reluctant to discuss their childhood experiences. Several patients developed psychosomatic symptoms such as feeling a lump in their throat or experienced panic attacks following sessions during which they discussed their mother.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Because she lives in a state of alarm, she notices things that others miss.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“The relationship between a borderline mother and her child may change dramatically when the child is approximately 2 years old, begins to speak, and expresses a separate will. The mother’s anxiety intensifies because the child is no longer totally dependent and cannot be completely controlled.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“The voices of children are easily silenced by the fear of not being believed. If 3-year-old Michael Smith had somehow miraculously survived, would he have told anyone that his mother tried to drown him? Would anyone have believed him? No one wants to believe that a mother would sacrifice her own child, especially the child.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Borderline mothers have difficulty allowing their children to grow up. The dependency of a newborn can be intensely satisfying to the borderline mother, but as the child becomes increasingly independent, conflict erupts.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother

“Emotionally stable parents share their children’s joy and quiet their fear. But caretaking roles are reversed for children of borderlines whose mothers are chronically upset. Children repress their fear in order to calm their mother. Situations that should frighten children may not because they have learned not to feel.”
― Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother