|
|
 |
|
| | |
| | Coping With Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) | | | Monday, July 21, 2008 (12:28 AM)
(I'm feeling Exasperated) | | This is what I'm currently reading...and RE-reading! It's quite the eye-opener!
This is an EXCELLENT book on how to effectively cope when you find yourself in the gunsights of a loved one or friend with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). While BPD's often experience Bipolar Disorder as a companion affliction, BPD is characterized by a random and chaotic "Jeckyll-and-Hyde" split in the way the subject relates to those around her. People are either extremely wonderful, or extremely bad. Born of feelings of worthlessness and abandonment issues stemming from early childhood abuse(physical,emotional and/or sexual)/neglect, a Borderline's "split" can be triggred at anytime by a real or imagined "wrong" committed by whoever upon whom she has become emotionally dependent. Accusations fly freely from such individuals, who live in a private hell of an eternal "now", and will act impulsively to avoid feelings of emptiness, abandonment and self-loathing, often projecting their own self/other-destructive behaviors onto those for whom they care. Alternately, the Borderline will adore the same person to the extreme of idolization, mostly to assuage the fear of abandonment by the person she attacked.
Splitting is a mental mechanism in which the self or others are reviewed as all good or all bad, with failure to integrate the positive and negative qualities of self and others into cohesive images. Often the subject alternately idealizes and devalues the same person. From a psychoanalytic point of view, splitting is fundamental to borderline personality disorder, and underlies the dramatic shifts in the person's experience of self and others and their difficulty in finding a stable adaptation to life.
The one word that best characterizes the borderline condition is "instability." Their emotions are unstable, fluctuating wildly for no discernible reason. Their thinking is unstable - rational and clear at times, quite psychotic at other times. Their behavior is unstable - often with periods of excellent conduct, high efficiency and trustworthiness alternating with outbreaks of babyishness, suddenly quitting a job, withdrawing into isolation, failing.
Their self-control is unstable - ranging from the extreme self denial of anorexia to being at the mercy of impulses. And their relationships are unstable. They may sacrifice themselves for others, only to reach their limit suddenly and fly into rageful reproaches, or they may curry favor with obedient submission only to rebel, out of the blue, in a tantrum.
Because of the hellish chaos of their inner turmoil, Borderlines have extreme control issues, employing an arsenal of tactics to control, manipulate and demoralize those close to them--all to keep such people from leaving them, which is their primary fear. To protect their own long-shattered egos, they will accuse others of the very same controlling, manipulative and demoralizing behavior that they themselves have committed upon those whom they accuse. It is not uncommon for the Borderline to embark upon a distortion campaign against someone in order to rally public support for the villification of the person whom she has demonized in a split. Such supporters usually have absolutely no clue as to the truely insidious nature of the disorder that motivates these smear campaigns.
Ever feel like being tag-teamed two different versions of one person, or one person who sees you in two different ways with no visible reason? I have. More times than I care to reveal. BPD affects about 20 million Americans...and they all seem to find ME! When I learned of BPD, I started investigating it for myself. There are no Public Service Announcements on TV for BPD, unlike those for Bipolar Disorder or Depression, so I fear that many people don't know about BPD through normal channels. They gotta find out the hard and painful way like I have...by KNOWING someone.
The following is the criteria listed in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Disorders, Fourth Edition (1994) for Borderline Personality Disorder:
A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in (5).
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. This is called "splitting."
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in (5).
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.
The Good News and the Bad News I've Learned From This Book:
Good News: None of it is my fault. Although by action or inaction I may have triggered a "split" , I did not cause the condition of BPD, of which splitting is characteristic. I do not have to take a Bordeline's accusations, insults, and distortion campaigns personally...nor do I have to accept their idolization at face value (although it is often irresistable...that's their hook). I have the right to set boundaries for behaviors I will and will not tolerate from a Borderline. BPD CAN be treated with the right kinds of psychotherapy, cognitive behavior modifications and sometimes antipsychotic drugs.
Bad News: I can't be a real "friend" to a Bordeline. At best I can be an enabler, at worst, a codependent. There is nothing I can do to help a Borderline, as much as I would like. The Borderline has to WANT to seek help. But it is a catch-22 paradox. To admit to suffering from BPD, the Borderline risks reinforcing feelings of worthlessness, which causes unbearable stress on the subject. They'll often lash out at their therapists and quit treatment.
The only thing I can change...is MY behavior in response to a Borderline. ...and sometimes that means discontinuing my association with the individual--for BOTH our sakes.
If you're curious about BPD, just Google "Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)" and you'll find a wealth of information. Enter the same thing into YouTube's search engine and you'll find some excellent Vlogs, both by therapists, AND sufferers of BPD, where you can learn what its like on the INSIDE of this terrifying disorder. If you suffer from BPD yourself, or think that you might be a possible candidate, you may see yourself in these vlogs and know that you are not alone. | | | 33 Views | 2  Thumbs Up | 1 Comment |  |
|
|
| | The Argent009 "British Urine Drive" campaign and controversy. | | | Monday, July 14, 2008 (7:35 PM)
(I'm feeling thoughtful) | | Okay, most of you who know me well enough to have a modicum of respect for me in spite of my various and numerous character flaws also know that I steer away from unnecessary drama and personal controversy whenever possible. But after seeing predominantly hostile bulletins directed at Argent009, I finally had to investigate the video in question for myself.
Fully expecting to see Argent009 pass judgment on someone and say something awful to them--in this case merry olde England--I steeled myself for something patently offensive. Based on the postings and their accompanying "visual aids" I had seen in the bulletins, it HAD to be something pretty fuckin' BAD, right?
Well....it wasn't.
What I viewed was Argent009's attempt at "Observational Humor" centered around the kinds of colloquial anomalies that fueled much of the cleverest humor of the late great George Carlin, coupled with an absurdist's literal interpretation of the colloquialism in question.
It involves one of my favorite UK expressions "[to] take the piss out of [someone]", which basically means to deflate a person's ego. To knock them down a peg. To "take the wind out of their sails". Brits, because of their relationship to the Mother Tongue, can make vulgarities sound absolutely great (Especially when spoken with a brogue! Whenever Victor1st would say "Teck tha PESS ou' of 'im", it made me smile.), whereas from American mouths they tend to sound just plain..well.. vulgar (to me, at least).
It's very different from the American excremental expression "[to] kick the sh*t out of [someone]", which almost means literally what it says, although I've never seen that happen in a fight. The combatants must somehow always manage to void their bowels before their altercation commences.
Argent009 proceeded to feign comedic ignorance by presenting a literal interpretation of "taking the piss out of someone" to mean REMOVING urine from the body, much the way one might siphon blood from a non-consensual donor, thus creating the absurdist's impetus to start a campaign of Red Cross-like mass urine donation. I remember a Monty Python sketch with Eric Idle desperately attempting to donate a pint of urine to a blood bank.
That concept as a comedy bit is actually quite funny, just like a fictitious network news campaign would be to find a matching "feces donor" for some hapless kid who got "the sh*t kicked out of him" by the school bully.
The problem that generated the controversy was not so much WHAT was said, but HOW it was said. Also, as a secondary consideration, WHO said it.
I do NOT believe that Argent009 posted the Vlog with malicious intent. Until he tells me otherwise, I believe that Argent009 wanted to make everyone laugh, American and Brit alike. His delivery, however, came across as dead-serious. I'm certain he was going for dead-PAN delivery of humor, the masters of which are the Brits for whom he explicitly declares his admiration prior to his gag. Taken out of comedic context, it is easy to see how this delivery could result in several people taking knee-jerk offense to the joke. I don't think that was what Argent009 was shooting for, but that was probably the detonator which caused the joke to bomb.
Argent009 is an American. Although it most likely was not his intent, his joke rankled of anti-foreign Nationalism, and disrespect born of culture shock. Argent009 unintentionally presented himself as the textbook caricature of the "Ugly American", which his how much of the rest of the world justifiably sees us. If Englishman John Cleese (Whose "Declaration of Revocation" should be required reading!) were to do the same bit, it would be hilarious, because his audience--both US and UK--would be IN on the joke. Forget John Cleese for a moment!--How about our own TerryBubble, KrisInteract, or WheresTheSea delivering the "Piss Drive" campaign? It would be absolutely hilarious--provided, of course, that they were making their own absurdist observation of their local colloquialism the way I just satirized the "Kick the Sh*t" of my people.
Finally there is the ancient Chinese comic Art of T'ai-Ming in comedy. The timing in Argent009's comedy was off. While he did provide a disclaimer at the beginning ("I'm an Anglophile, etc..."), he did not "warm up" his audience in a way that would usher them into his absurdist comic worldview. Instead, he abruptly came right out of left field with what sounded like 1) an attack on another culture's linguistic metaphors, and 2) a global invitation for the world to micturate en masse upon their nation.
How can I pontificate like this on this subject? Easy: I've BEEN THERE! Ahhh, there's nothing like the cooling moisture of flop-sweat one feels when a joke BOMBS! LOL
This all boils down to yet another LiveVideo "Tempest in a Teapot" born of misunderstanding on BOTH sides of the equation. **sigh** Business as usual.
--Baron | | | | 55 Views | 6 Thumbs Up | 4 Comments | |
|
|
| | Thanks For The Movies, Chuck. | | | Sunday, April 6, 2008 (1:20 PM)
(I'm feeling nostalgic) | | Actor Charlton Heston dead at 84.
Yeah, I knew he was on his way out for a few years now. Once someone famous announces he's got Alzheimer's (A disease which makes your brain literally shrivel up in your skull) and retreats into privacy, you know it's just a matter of very short time. Most younger audiences here may only remember him as a famous mouthpiece for the Nazi-esque Neo-Conservative political agenda (thus rolling back his more progressive social activism in the 1960's) and his final film appearance in Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine" where he is cornered in his own home about his politics regarding gun control (He was President of the NRA for a time). But I remember him as my favorite movie actor of all time.
While movies were undergoing a lot of aesthetic changes in the 1960's, when I was a kid, you could get a steady diet of classic films on broadcast television. There were weekly and weekday afternoon movies, the CBS late movie, CBS's Monday Night At The Movies, Local broadcasts of movies at many odd hours, sci-fi/horror movie shows hosted by colorful characters, "Night Owl Theater" type broadcasts of old movies in the wee small hours of the morning...plus movies were constantly being re-released theatrically. I was always being dropped off at kiddie matinees (Probably to be out of my parents' hair for four or five hours--they were always double features) to watch whatever they were unspooling that weekend, whether it be a new movie or some musty old classic. Didn't matter. I was (and still am) catching up on dcades of classic Hollywood movie culture that I missed out on from making the mistake of not being born earlier.
The stars were bigger-than-life. And one of the biggest bigger-than-lifers was Charlton Heston.
I had probably seen him in many movies before 1967, but he first got my attention in "Planet Of The Apes" which is hands-down my favorite movie of all time. Heston, usually the victorious moral hero in his epic movies, is the misanthropic victim in "Apes". Even at the tender age of 6 years old, I could RELATE to this guy. He didn't do anything to the talking apes to really deserve their contempt, but they constantly abused him nonetheless, all because he possessed a talent that SHOULD have made him a celebrity in their world (he could speak). But more frightened religious conservative elements would prevail and he would get beaten down. That's how I always felt at school. Kids would pick on me just for having a weird name like "Baron", and then throw in being a creative artistic type in there and you have the makings of a schoolyard victim. So I'm watching Chuck being bullied by these talking apes (Cornelius, Zira and Lucius excepted of course--and even THEY were pretty iffy about him!) and I'm thinking "Yeah....THAT's my life right there." And at 6 years old, I wasn't even getting all the socio-political satire undertones of the story! I didn't even get the Statue of Liberty bit back then. But I understood the character of George Taylor on a very viscreal level. ...and the apes were cool, too.
I spent my ninth year as a fourth grader at a non-denominational Protestant Christian elementary school....and it was "Planet Of The Apes" all over again! And ti wasn't just the other kids as the apes this time, but a whole bunch of "Dr. Zaiuses" in the form of the Fundamentalist Faculty! I grew to understand "Planet of the Apes" on a deeper level, and the motivations for the apes' McCarthyist tactics.
I would soon discover Charlton Heston's Biblical Epics and historical epics. Even when Chuck had a smaller role in a movie like "Big River" or "Greatest Story Ever Told" you REMEMBERED him! It's no mistake that this guy was cast to play one of the "God-Squad". You NEEDED someone like Chuck to fill those shoes. Chuck had BIG MOVIES coarsing through his veins! To put him in a, say, a domestic melodrama, wou'd cause the theater to explode because Heston is just too BIG for tiny movies. He needed that wide screen to properly contain him. He needed that cast of thousands to play to. I'm not a religious man. Even when I WAS religious, I wasn't very religious. But for the four hours (There is no such thing as a "short" Biblical epic) I spend with Chuck in "Ben Hur" or "Ten Commandments", I BELIEVE! The same way Willam Shatner makes you BELIEVE in those plywood and styrofoam sets in "Star Trek".
My mom would kinda sneer and say "I don't really like Charlton Heston. He's so OVERBEARING." and I'm like, well...."YEAH! That's his JOB!" Whether conquering hero, lecherous villain, or downtrodden victim, Heston COMMANDS that big screen. It's no wonder that Charlton Heston was one my biggest influences as a young actor on stage. You might even see a litttle of him peering through my performances as the Tyranovision Tyrant.. I even want to do with Heston someday what Christian Slater did with Jack Nicholson in "Heathers", which is play the entire role on a movie AS Charlton Heston (Since I do a damn good impression of him). I at least "hommaged" Chuck's "Planet of the Apes" performance in the "7/11" episode of "Tyrannovision"--the ONE episode where I didn't lip-synch to a pre-recorded dialog track (I was in a hurry).
Like many powerhouse actors of his stature, it was hard to cast him in his later years. What the hell do you put Charlton Heston IN?? What is there left for him to DO that could possibly eclipse his already incredible body of work? He got trotted out for cameos in later movies, which always reminded the viewer how great this guy was on screen. His politics might have sucked, but you hafta separate the art from the artist a lot of the time. Look at him in his bit-part cameos in "True Lies" as Arnold Schwarzenegger's boss, in the Tim Burton "Apes" redux as a bitter old ape (Yes, as a Repulican, he joined the ranks of the Apes, "Damning" all the humans to hell), and most notably and poignantly in "Wayne's World 2" as the "better" actor who is literally shoved into the frame to deliver one line of expository dialogue better than the unknown actor who previously delivers the same speech. Charlton Heston BELONGED on the Big Screen. It was his natural habitat.
I've missed him in new movies for a while now. Yeah, he WAS overbearing. he wasn't some inwardly-directed "method" actor. Charlton Heston was a fuckin' MOVIE STAR. I would happily shove him into the frame of any movie I made. Maybe we can stuff him and do a remake of "Weekend at Bernie's"! He has the proper cinematic training: "El Cid"!
I do keep Chuck alive in my own little way though...
Whenever I'm downtown and a bum tries to panhandle me, I scream at the top of my lungs "SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OUTTA PEOPLE! IT'S PEEEEEEEEEEE-POOOOOOLE!" That clears them out pretty quickly.
Thanks for that one, Chuck. | | | | 72 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| | Skip This Section | | | Thursday, February 28, 2008 (6:43 AM)
(I'm feeling apathetic) | | Sorry to disappoint you. Not much to see here. Outside of what I put on Video or in text commentaries I keep my personal life rather private. Besides, it's pretty boring, really. I'm holed up in my studio creating art and video, and y'all get to see the results, which is the only interesting part of my life. I create interesting stuff, but I myself am rather boring.
But I promise that if I think I have something to say, and don't want to hassle with video, then I'll post something in here.
Meanwhile, go watch videos. They're the fun part. | | | | 103 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
