Stepping Over Our Wounds (via Henri Nouwen)

There is a struggle for those of us who bear the scars of old wounds. Each time a new hurt happens, it can rip open wounds, which remain fresh, because, instead of allowing the pain to fade and heal, in time, I know I have spent too long living with and feeding the underlying hurt by living and reliving the most painful of memories. It's as if I have a belief that I could 'undo' the past by remaining inside the trauma, condemning myself to be held captive in an never-ending 'time loop'.

I have a choice, to remain forever frozen in those moments of pain and so prolong the suffering, or accept that they have happened and will leave me with scars, reminders of what I have survived, but no longer capable of stopping me from moving forward. I found this meditation from Henri Nouwen helpful in explaining that choice and the moment when I can 'step over...' and move beyond the most difficult of experiences. I may be a product of my past but I do not have to be its prisoner:

'Sometimes we have to "step over" our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there. Then we become the "offended one," "the forgotten one," or the "discarded one." Yes, we can get attached to these negative identities and even take morbid pleasure in them. It might be good to have a look at these dark feelings and explore where they come from, but there comes a moment to step over them, leave them behind and travel on.'

A note of caution if you find this thought of 'stepping over wounds' challenging - acceptance and moving on from the wounds of the distant past is not condoning all of the wrongs done to us, nor does it prevent us, if it is the right time and circumstances for us from seeking justice. What acceptance does is to help us recognise that no person, circumstance, substance or material possession will be able to undo the injustices and pain of the past. Nor does acceptance entirely remove the shadows cast by such traumas. What it allows us to do is accept that we have had the strength and courage to survive the worst. Having recognised that, we then have a choice: to remain trapped in the past, or to build on the strength and courage we have to live whatever life we choose, for ourselves. The prison door is open, but I still need to walk out of it, myself.

To Move Forward, Do I have to Go Back?

TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of Childhood Trauma including sexual abuse and symptoms of PTSD

It's a vexed question. After all, if your symptoms include intrusions from the past that interfere with your life now, then it stands to reason that you need to go back in order to go forward. Throughout my life I think I spent most of my energy in avoiding any emotional or cognitive acknowledgement of the trauma I had suffered throughout my formative years. All my energy was spent in avoiding any acknowledgement of the fact that I had actually suffered any trauma at all.

And there it is - trauma - a word that I refused to hear from my CPN or any other professional in relation to 'my life'. After all, until I got away from home and started looking around and experiencing life outside my family, I had thought myself relatively well off as I had grown up. We were, materially. I was unaware that the pain and grief I was suffering growing up was not related more to me being 'highly strung' and 'a bit weird' as I was told over and over. The fault always lay in me. For the fact that a grown man thought it was ok to touch me up at the age of 11 because I was 'well developed', for my mother holding my nose and force feeding me at the age of 9 because I wasn't hungry, for the fact that I made my father lose his temper so much that he smashed my head against the wall so hard I felt sick, for the numerous times people decided it was okay to use me sexually. I felt it was my fault for suddenly growing into a 'woman' and therefore causing adult men (and some women) to lose control of themselves.

This is the heart of the shame felt by so many child victims. There has to have been something wrong with me for the people who did those things to me to get away with it. On top of this of course is the fact that there was more than one abuser. So, logic says, it had to have been me who was the common factor. Right? Wrong. However, that, for so many years has been my reasoning and therefore all my behaviours, including self harming behaviours centred on the belief that I was basically flawed, destined to continue the cycles of abuse for my whole life. My overwhelming emotional experience became self hatred and all the secondary emotions associated with it, shame, guilt, anxiety, fear of rejection. It is this set of beliefs which when overlaid with a predisposition to emotional dysfunction has led to the patterns of behaviour, feeling and thinking identified as BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder).

For years I was offered counselling and therapy based on the need for me to disclose in detail my life story. These therapies attempted to get me to connect with the grief process over my childhood which had been short circuited by my attempts to just 'get on with it'. The problem being I couldn't connect myself with any real suffering. I was disconnected not only from feeling any emotional pain, but also from any identification of myself as a victim of trauma. Some approaches tried to get me to go back and relive the experiences - who wants to do that? I've survived it, I know what it felt like, I just need to release the emotional response, to free myself enough to grieve and recognise that I have been traumatised and that my reactions and my grief are understandable. More than once counsellors told me that I didn't want to get better because I could not engage emotionally. They were right, after all if dissociating myself from my experiences had got me this far, what were they offering me other than a painful journey backwards?

I suppose for me, I didn't need to remember the events, some of them were etched on my consciousness and were very much intruding in the here and now, through nightmares, flashbacks and unresolved emotions. Above all, I grappled daily with an ongoing cycle of heightened anxiety and anticipation that seemed to stream in an unbroken flow from the moments of past trauma. Each new experience of abuse throughout my life laid another wave of destructive emotion over previous ones, reinforcing the destruction and distorted emotional experiences of childhood.

One of the most difficult DBT skills to grasp hold of is Radical Acceptance. It is, for me, the most powerful and effective in helping me deal with my past experiences. It taught me that there was no therapy or magic pill which could go back to those traumas and undo them. I had tried for over forty years to manage the emotions from that without having the ability to even acknowledge that I had suffered any trauma. It also helped me to recognise that even though the feelings of trauma were ever present, they actually didn't need to be, as the threat was in the past too. I guess the experience of cycles of abuse and re-victimisation maintain the sense that even though my experience of trauma is in the past, it is inevitable that something equally damaging is going to happen again to me, because that's my life and my lot in life.

Radical Acceptance for me, has meant accepting that I can't predict the future, even if the past tells me that because people have hurt me badly then they WILL hurt me badly again. It is accepting that the past doesn't have to predict my future, or even my present, which is the beginning of saying, 'I can enjoy this moment'. I can take time now to enjoy what I am experiencing, in this moment. Feelings of shame, terror and grief, if unconnected with what is happening in this moment, do not belong here.

Slowly, I have allowed myself to feel the grief and cry - without having to relive the moments of trauma. My mind has blocked some events. Personally, I don't feel a need to seek justice through formal channels, that is my choice. This means that I don't have to recall and recount events from my past over and over again. Slowly, I have learned to accept that what I have lived through has had a part in shaping the person I am today. I don't need to remain in the past, it is done with, I have taken positives from it, at last. The rest needs to relegated to the dustbin of history. I don't need to return again and again to the prison cell to remind me, I have been released. The past, for me, belongs in the past. I have accepted what has happened to me, I have accepted that it has made me stronger than imaginable. I have accepted that I can overcome the worst that I have lived through and I am accepting that I do deserve to enjoy the life I have today. Acceptance is not a moment, it is an ongoing process and I need to practice it every time thoughts and feelings float in from my history - accept them and move on, is what I need to do. An ongoing piece of work, but I am getting better at it.

I have found as I have worked through this process of acceptance, that the symptoms of flashbacks and flooding negative emotions to triggers around me, have faded from my day to day life. Finally, I was able to let my CPN call what had happened to me 'trauma' and in that I accepted that I had suffered events which made sense of some of my emotional and psychological 'quirks'. Ultimately, one of the most freeing things to be told over and over again, was that my behaviour and responses to life were 'understandable given what you have experienced'.

I know that for some, there is a need for ongoing support and therapy to manage more severe symptoms of PTSD based on childhood experiences. I only write from my own experience and say this way has been a way for me to lay the past to rest without having to go ALL the way back.

How on Earth do you 'Deal with the Past'?

This is a question that used to really vex me. For years, because of a lack of understanding about my underlying emotional sensitivity in many counsellors and practitioners dealing with me, I came across comments like 'you need to get over the past', 'you need to simply acknowledge what was done to you', 'you need to recognise the hurting child inside' - simples, huh? Except no one seemed to be able to recognise that there was something missing in my ability to even recognise my emotional responses to my abusive past.

One rape counsellor, who I think was compassionate and probably usually effective in her work, became frustrated with my lack of ability to acknowledge the trauma I experienced as a child. Firstly, I tended to either describe my remembered experiences without any outward evidence of any emotional attachment or response to the experiences being described. Secondly, because they were my experiences, I did not perceive them in the same way as my hearers, because it was me, I minimised the trauma.

It was around this time that my GP and a Graduate Mental Health worker who was offering me brief CBT for work stress, began to ask if I thought that there was more to my emotional issues than met the eye. So began my journey to discover what my diagnosis was and how that related to my childhood experiences.

I have referred before to the description by Marsha Linehan of people with a Borderline PD diagnosis as having 'emotional third degree burns'. I have always assumed this refers to the unbearable emotional distress experienced by those with BPD. I think to an extent this aspect of the picture is true, although it was when watching a documentary about a burns unit, that I learned more about 3rd degree physical burns, and thereby shed additional light on Linehan's statement. 1st or 2nd degree burns are extremely painful, however the damage done when someone suffers third degree burns is so extensive as to destroy all normal physical sensations, this means that there is a point at which the pain is so severe as to render the wound site numb to all sensation. When I applied this aspect of the original image to my own experience of the emotional impact of my past on my psyche, it made absolute sense.

I have previously described how I was not aware I was experiencing high levels of distress prior to the crisis which prompted me to seek help once and for all for my emotional 'issues'. I was incapable of feeling anything at all, either good or bad. There had been times when the pain of my life was excruciating, but I had passed through first and second degrees to the third degree, in order to survive. Many survivors of childhood abuse recognise this distancing from the experiences they have survived. Dissociating or depersonalising my own experiences helped me to survive the experience of abuse in the past. It causes problems in the here and now because I have been so successful in separating myself from my experiences, that I am unable to connect in any meaningful way with my experience of life as an adult. Either good or bad.

In a very real way for most of my life, emotionally and mentally, I remained trapped in a loop reel, whereby the most traumatic experiences of my life were on constant replay, regardless of how long ago they happened to me.

"In a sense Music, along with the sense of smell tends to be the most powerful of ‘time machines’, usually with a default to the past....Mindfulness training and DBT exercises were focused on bringing me to and keeping me in the moment. However, one of my true pleasures in life was in danger of inadvertently causing me to ‘time travel’ to the past. I didn’t want to lose out on one of my real pleasures in life, just because of my overwhelming emotional responses to it. Not every memory is painful and it’s important to acknowledge that, even before recovery, my life was actually made up of shadows AND light." (from Blog: Music My Own Special TARDIS )

With this never ending stream linking me to the past, even the most seemingly everyday problem or difficulty would connect to the torrent of emotional distress just below the surface, so that terms like 'overreaction', 'out of proportion' and 'drama queen' were applied to me. For those on an emotional 'even keel' it seems almost impossible to imagine the almost physical pain caused when I face disappointments, dilemmas, arguments and problems which are the stuff of everyday life. For the survivor of childhood abuse these experiences are reminders and directly connect to the emotional pain of the abuse perpetrated. Everything seems to rip the scabs from the wounds over and over, so that even the most benign of human relationships becomes a minefield of anticipated terrors to be avoided.

The wrong thing to tell me is 'to just get over it'. Recent exposure of the issues around victims of historical abuse has brought to light the reality that for survivors of abuse, you just don't or can't 'get over it'.

Having survived my abusive life, I continue to be in the process of leaving it behind. I always thought that once I had gained the skills I needed from DBT I would be in a position to finally, 'deal with the past'. I assumed this would mean some form of Trauma counselling. However, I have found that the very practise of mindfulness and the emphasis in DBT on Acceptance of life ('It is what it is'), in this moment seem to be enough for me to feel I have begun to leave my past behind.

This blog post reflects my own journey, it is not a blueprint for dealing with the impact of trauma - my symptoms of trauma are my own and my path through is my own. Hopefully, if you continue to deal with the stream of painful memories and feelings from the past, then this may offer you some hope that there is a way through.

1. I Finally Accepted That I didn't ask for or 'deserve' what happened to me. This means accepting that I am maybe worth better than happened to me - something that was an alien thought even six months ago.

Acceptance is an important group of skills in DBT treatment. The original version of DBT does not offer specific therapy for PTSD. (Recently, however, a specific DBT skills module for PTSD has been developed. I am not sure how widely this is currently available in the UK) The DBT skill of Radical Acceptance, allows me to accept what happened and to begin to leave my experience of trauma in the past. I have accepted that not only have I survived, but I have been strengthened by my survival. The abusers can only have power over me, if I allow myself to remain in the prison cell of the past. I carry the scars of the past and they may have shaped me, but I do not have to remain imprisoned by past experiences.

2. I have learned to trust my experience of the present as I have used mindfulness skills to focus on life as it is in this moment. I am no longer 'absent' - I've stopped 'time travelling' and am able to be 'present' - this means that I don't get bored as often as I used to. Also, it means I am able to give more effectively to those I am engaged with.

3. I have learned to name my feelings and to recognise when anxiety, fear, sadness, guilt etc from the past is distorting my perceptions of the present. I used to distrust pleasant feelings, like hope and happiness because they meant that the darker feelings and moments were more painful in contrast. Now I have learned to enjoy what I am able to enjoy for what it is. It has taken me a long time to say goodbye to the damaged child of yesterday and to reconnect with the adult I am today. That child remains a part of who I am, but her emotional paralysis no longer keeps me frozen in the past.

4. I have decided that the skills I have learned to manage my BPD are enough for me to accept the pain and grief about the past, without having to go back and relive it or do any sustained work on addressing what happened to me. Having denied and minimised it for so many years, the fact that I have been able to accept that I was a victim of abuse has been enough for me to be able to move forward.

It is important for me to emphasise that specific PTSD therapies are helpful for others as the symptoms of PTSD may continue become intrusive following other therapies for complex mental health conditions - each person knows their own needs better than anyone else.

'Dealing with the past' is not something that we can 'do' as a one-off-give me-the-silver-bullet solution. From the moment I first experienced the trauma I have been dealing with it. What I have learned is that at different points in my life I have developed strengths and skills that I have used to deal with the consequences of the past.

"When I finished my DBT therapy, my Therapist reminded me that I had begun the process of healing from the 3rd degree emotional burns, which are at the heart of the BPD experience of life. I have probably managed to develop a thin layer of emotional skin over deep, deep wounds..." (my blog 'Return to the Forbidding Planet:

I am pleased that I am no longer a hostage to a torrent of pain and distress streaming into my day to day life. Looking back I realise this is because of a process and time, along with the moment by moment determination to use my mindfulness skills to keep me focused on life in this moment. I have also permitted myself to enjoy the good things in life, gradually.

Return to the Forbidding Planet: Going back to the Invalidating Home

TRIGGER WARNING: Some discussion of childhood sexual, emotional and physical abuse

I am an adult child - my parents are elderly and infirm. As a family we face the same issues as all adult children with elderly parents, but for me I also face battles with caring for the people who created the environment which conspired with my biological disposition to create the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) I have struggled with all my life. To all intents and purposes I am a fully fledged adult with my own home and responsibilities. I no longer have to maintain relationships which damage me emotionally,

I am now in a position where I can choose where to invest my resources, both physical and emotional. Which begs the question, why go on holiday with the people who continue to invalidate my value as a human being? And in the response to that question lies the paradox at the heart of the relationship between the adult child and invalidating parents.

I have survived a week with my family. Before I started the week, I felt safe doing so, after all I had more than survived my childhood. I have learned to accept that the approval I have always sought from my parents will never be forthcoming. There is no point in me waiting for some miraculous change or realisation in them. After all, no amount of success or achievement in my life ever evoked any level of validation, or at least none that I could assimilate. Instead, the medals I won in my swimming competitions were dumped by me in one of my drawers at home. Even my winning the Ulster Championships and appearing on the back page of the newspaper failed to evoke any level of praise or approval that I could detect as a child. There was no showing them with pride to friends and family, no display cases full of our achievements as children. To all intents and purposes myself and my siblings were a separate entity from my parents, little people who lived under their roof, and who required 'firm discipline'.

Our emotional needs didn't enter into their reckoning of the parental 'contract', after all, we were fed, we were clothed and we had a roof over our heads. The only emotional contact I had with my Dad growing up was when he was angry. And when he was angry he was out of control. The level of physical abuse we suffered would result in our being subject to 'safeguarding procedures' today. However, my parents were good at sidestepping any outside scrutiny of our treatment - for me, it was all I knew. On one occasion, aged 6, I walked to school with a huge red hand mark visible on my bare leg. I thought I had done wrong when the teacher asked me to wait in the cloakroom. I waited until I was taken to the Headmaster's office to find my Mum waiting for me with a face like thunder. I don't remember the conversation with the Head, but I do know I was 'walked' home where I was beaten with the wooden spoon. I had no idea what I had done wrong, I hadn't said a word to my teacher, I didn't know that anything was amiss. As a family we have laughed since about the fact that Mum beat me so hard one time that she broke the wooden spoon on my legs. Then, she replaced it with a Tupperware spoon, which I attested was stronger - oh how we laughed about that one! No wonder that my BPD means that I am confused about appropriate emotional responses in numerous situations.

The conundrum for me as an adult is how I have managed to understand the complexities and deficits in my upbringing, but still I crave the approval of my parents. At times in the past week, my brother and I reverted to competing for our parents' attention. It hurt that no one asked about my recent health issues, or about the exciting opportunities offered to me in church to help use my experiences to help others. I was once again relegated to my familiar role of observer and silent child in the family.

In my first two years at school I was already so traumatised by my home life, that I was effectively mute around all adults including my parents. My friend spoke for me for the first year at school, until they removed me from the same class as him. I was traumatised and ended up lashing out at the teacher - I was the five year who kicked the teacher - hard, in the shins.... no Daily Mail shock headlines in those days, though, just ongoing punishment for the reported infringement at home.

When I finished my DBT therapy, my Therapist reminded me that I had begun the process of healing from the 3rd degree emotional burns, which are at the heart of the BPD experience of life. I have probably managed to develop a thin layer of emotional skin over deep, deep wounds. If I needed a reminder of that truth, then time back in the invalidating environment soon reminded me as my thin protective layer was ripped through once again. Little things, like talking over me, ignoring what I'm saying, ridiculing my weight, reminding me that I am indeed 'a nutter', 'weird', often pre-empted by me in an attempt to take the sting out of the teasing, took me right back to my childhood.

I was always the 'highly strung' one, the one who cried at the pain or suffering of small animals, who cried at the Little House on the Prairie. My family enjoyed laughing at me for my 'softness', but the truth was those occasions were the safe places to release my sorrow over the emotional pain I was struggling with at the time. All my life I've been told that I'm making mountains out of molehills, that I'm overreacting, that my emotional responses don't bear any relation to reality. Is it any wonder that, as an adult I have struggled to recognise what I'm feeling in any given situation, or that my reactions are out of proportion to the triggers, especially to the onlooker.

One of the biggest legacies of the invalidating environment is a lack of confidence in my own reading of situations. Aged 10 I told my Mum that my music teacher had been touching me in places on my body which made me feel uncomfortable. Her response was to tell me that this was a 'sign' that I was growing up and that I should expect men to be interested in me in this way as I 'developed'. My problem was I was an 'early starter' I had my first bra and period by the age of 11 (before I left Primary School). My Mum's response to my first attempt to speak up about something that felt so wrong (it wasn't my first experience of sexual abuse) convinced me that my feelings about what he was doing were mistaken. She told me that I was 'growing up' and that I should expect men to become interested in me in that way. She hinted that it was flattering. This caused me to doubt my own misgivings and feelings of discomfort about sexually abusive behaviour.

My Mum's response laid the foundations for me to ignore my misgivings and led to me suffering more serious sexual assaults and violations from that age, right into my adulthood. After all, I had told an adult about something that felt really wrong only to be told that, I needed to 'grow up' and accept it as something that just happens and is some kind of rite of passage. Why would I, as an adult, trust my own feelings of distress and pain when I had been so wrong in the past? Such is the ongoing conflict for me between what I know as an adult and survivor and what I 'feel' I deserve in terms of justice. I have moved on, I have learned to begin to protect myself and to fight back.

May I make a plea on behalf of any of your friends or family who suffer from the effects of BPD? Please never tell them that they are 'overreacting', or that they need to 'just let the past go'. If it was that easy for me to manage the overwhelming emotional responses I am swamped with at times, then I wouldn't have needed 18 months of intensive therapy. I wouldn't have had to learn to manage them and to learn to live in the present moment, without letting the pain of the past or the anxiety about the future drown me in waves of distress. Imagine if you will that you have a severe burn. How long before such a wound stops being sensitive? My own experience of minor burns tells me that even when new layers of skin have grown, sensitivity to pain remains a long time. 3rd degree burns, will always remain sensitive. So it is with me. I am learning to allow myself to heal, to let new layers of emotional skin grow. My new life is one which is helping me to heal. However, the reality is that a return to the invalidating environments and their complex relationships, rips through new growth and healing.

Therapy means that I am equipped to manage my distress better, it does not mean that I stop feeling things deeply. During my time with my family I used a variety of different DBT skills:

- Distraction - my ipod equipped with positive playlists and some Loving Kindness meditations. I played with animals. I kept to my room when I needed to restore my emotional energy.
- I prayed
- Self Validation - I texted supportive friends, I listened to positive Mindfulness exercises
- Opposite Emotion/Opposite Action - Instead of getting embroiled in family rows. I focused on my environment, read an absorbing book, or watched other people in the hotel. I didn't explode, which is easier to do in my family environment than in other settings.
- Mindful Breathing - I constantly refocused on my breathing and posture when starting to feel distressed.

Above all, I returned home to my world, where I am in control of my environment. I am able to manage my time and space. I am able to choose the relationships that are positive and validating for me. The realities of family life, dictate that as I have chosen not to confront my parents with the impact of their behaviour during my childhood, I then have a duty to relate to them as an adult child. I choose to treat them according to my values and beliefs, not according to how they dealt with me. That means I will continue to face times when I need to return to the invalidating planet of home. More and more they are becoming dependent on me and my siblings. My own sense of compassion and humanity tells me that it matters that I care for their needs, as I am able. I have learned in the last week that I can survive that. I have learned that I don't have to remain hurt and locked away because of those experiences. I have learned that I am able to manage my BPD and allow my wounds to heal. One brilliant realisation is that my resilience against my family has developed - I am able to recover from my visits home quicker.

Acceptance is not Approval

Trigger warning: this blog deals with my personal journey through childhood trauma to forgiveness and may bring up some difficult issues - if this is likely to affect you please give this one a miss

"You know what your problem is? You've never learned to forgive."

For a start, when someone's opening gambit is to tell what your own problem is, you know the conversation is not going to be going anywhere positive. Secondly, the person speaking had never actually talked to me in sufficient depth to know if I had anything to forgive at all, let alone the real story. The reality is that I am learning to accept that I suffered physical, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse from a number of people in my childhood. Because it has been my journey, it has taken me a long time to accept that what I took to be a 'difficult childhood' actually was full of traumatic events. When you are the one living through and surviving trauma, then 'normality' very quickly becomes a distortion of other people's reality.

Forgiveness is a huge subject, for me it is central to my overcoming my past. However, no matter how I have found the process of forgiveness I don't believe that I can prescribe the 'how to' for anyone else, no matter how closely our stories may resemble one another. That is because I have learned that just as my experience of emotional and mental instability is unique to me, so my journey to forgiveness is equally unique.

I would say, though, that forgiveness is a crucial process on the road to recovery from trauma caused by other people's abuses. I do not believe forgiveness to be a single act (or determination) of the will, but it is a long and, often painful, process.

First, I have to acknowledge that I have been the victim of a wrong done to me by someone else. For me, that meant allowing that at the age of 4 or 5 I was not the author of my own physical and emotional scars. I have had to learn to view myself with compassion, often the same compassion I usually reserve for the pain of others. For some traumas this has taken me my whole lifetime, due to the depth and extent of the scarring.

It does not help to compare my wounds with those of others. I do not know what someone else has had to endure or is able to tolerate compared to me. I am not able to feel the physical pain of another person. In the same way with emotional scars and pain, I can never truly say 'I know exactly how you feel'. I may be able to say 'I think I can understand where you've been....' No one has lived my life, or survived what I have survived, so no one can know what I feel I need to forgive. It is only I who can decide who and what to forgive. And only I know when is the right time for me to forgive and 'let go'.

Second no one can decide what Justice means for me. For some, there is a need for retribution, for the validation of going through the full formal justice process. I am not able to tell another victim or survivor of abuse what Justice is for them, I only know what my need for justice is and whether I feel I need to go through a formal court process for me to feel I have achieved it.

A number of years ago I decided that I would not pursue any formal charges against those who had hurt me, because I did not have a need to protect any others at the time from abuse, and because to do so would have caused enormous hurt to others who mattered to me. I believe that there is a natural justice which has meant that I have been able - in time to leave Justice in other hands than my own. This sense of letting go has not been easy, there has been an ongoing process of recognising the wrong, acknowledging I have the power to choose which path to justice I follow and being prepared to leave the wrong doers to God/fate or natural justice, call it what you will.

I have not been able to confront any of my abusers directly and therefore, there has been no restorative process of them asking and then me choosing to forgive them. Rarely, are victims offered this opportunity, simply because of the complexities involved in the relationships between perpetrator and victim. Forgiveness, then becomes an important part of my healing process, which allows me take control and without any reference to the perpetrator, to be able to choose to forgive. This has been necessary in some instances as I have decided to maintain some kind of relationship with some who have abused me. In this process, there has had to be a radical acceptance of the fact that often those who are closest to us, may never be able to acknowledge the wrong they have done to us. Therefore, for me to move forward I have to recognise that I am the one who is capable of recognising the situation as it is and either accept it or change it. Ironically, I have found that in accepting that I can forgive without seeking retribution or justice, I have also changed my attitude to the relationships involved and therefore I have allowed myself to move forward in my own emotional healing.

The most important thing for me to say is that acceptance is not approval. Just because I accept that I was a victim, and that my abusers will never acknowledge the wrong they did to me, does not mean that my forgiveness is some form of tacit approval of the actions which caused the wounds.

Rather, I have accepted that I cannot change the past, I have accepted that there is an inner strength which has been a result of surviving my past and finally, and most importantly I have accepted that those who have hurt me, as well as the wounds from the past do not have to keep me chained up for the rest of my life. Ultimately, forgiveness and acceptance of the past frees me to enjoy the strength of character my life's journey has created in me and to stop those from the past from continuing to hurt me in the present. I am free to be myself, with all my colourful complexity, in the here and now.

Can Success replace Parental Validation?

I was six when I won my first competitive swimming medals. Two golds and one silver. Although very young, this event had a profound impact on my life. What it did for me was let me know that here was a world in which I could be noticed - not only that but it dawned on me that I might be considered valuable, certainly by the coaches and club which 'head-hunted' me, along with my brother, after this auspicious start in schools swimming. So began a determination to work hard at being the best - always in the hopes of my parents noticing - however, unusually for parents of competitive swimmers, they rarely attended our appearances at galas and Championships. We were always the kids who were picked up from training etc by the waiting car.

By the time I had left home aged 18, leaving behind my parents and their casual indifference to any part of me as a person, the only validation I registered was from over-achieving. Ironically, I was so numb to encouragement and praise that I have always considered myself to be a failure - despite being a county level swimmer, despite completing three successful degree courses in my life, despite holding down very responsible jobs for over 25 years.

I didn't notice that my periods of 'instability' had a regular pattern to them, or that there was a link between the emptiness I felt inside and the childhood traumas I had survived. (It has taken three years of hard work and therapy to accept that much of my childhood was indeed traumatic). It was only at the age of 42, when an amazingly compassionate GP (now, alas retired) persevered with a sustained period of emotional instability and considerable time off work, that I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. For the first time people started to make sense of what I thought of as my worst faults: 'och, she's highly strung', or 'she's just oversensitive'. Not to mention my white hot temper and inability to live with myself, let alone, anyone else!

I found giving up work almost impossible because that was where I was most comfortable, where I felt confident, where I had a professional persona which had defined boundaries and rules for dealing with people. I didn't have to divine people's motives about me personally. Although emotionally demanding, my caseload allowed me to ignore my own problems and focus on helping others manage theirs. Problem was that I had shut myself off from all relationships outside work - not that I had no friends, it was just that I had learned it was easier to skate along on the surface of relationships.

In the end, though, I had to acknowledge that I had run out of 'emotional steam' and stopped 'functioning' as my GP so nicely put it. Now, just over a year since I gave up paid employment to focus on attending DBT therapy and recovering, I've realised that feeling successful was the only means of validation I had built into my life. And that obviously didn't work.

Now I'm facing a major shift in my attitude regarding what it means to lead a successful life. Do I return to similar demanding roles as the past? Or do I acknowledge that even Christmas was too much for me to handle, let alone contemplate returning full time? For me it has been a struggle to accept that even without a defined, paid, role I am worth something. If the message from your parents was that you didn't matter, then no amount of achievement (as defined by external values) can help fill the emptiness inside.

What has helped me is to accept that there is a purpose to my life, as it is, regardless of certificates, salary scales or other measures. My belief in God is a starting point - I am taught that He loves me as I am. As with my basic practise of Mindfulness, focusing on truths about myself takes so much time and practice. I am only at the beginning, but I know that reversing the lack of validation in my childhood requires that I dedicate myself to focusing on and accepting myself. Not that I'm advocating self obsessed introspection - no I mean focus on what is enjoyable right now, including what I am able to contribute towards helping others. When I can feel that I have a purpose and root in this world, then I can accept my experience of each moment.

Success for me now is not about replacing something that can never be replaced or changed, because that is in the past, but it has become the ability to knit my experiences from the past into my life as it is now, accepting the strengths and gifts it has given me that have brought me to this moment. In this moment I can accept that success is still being here after everything I have been through, beginning to be able to love and be loved by others. In this context, I don't need to seek a successful career - I just need to be content with my life as it is - right now! That I think is the essence of Radical Acceptance.

BPD Blessing or Curse?

I love detective shows. One of my favourites is Wallander. He struggled with an illness for most of the first series before reaching crisis point and finally being diagnosed. Now, the exact name escapes me, but his diagnosis both troubled him and made him laugh as it was called something like 'blob'. Each time he told someone his news and the name of his 'diagnosis' he both laughed and took the opportunity to explain what he understood of his condition and how this would affect his life in the future.

If only Mental Health diagnoses were as simple as Wallander's 'blob'. I have a friend who thinks that I shouldn't be as comfortable with my diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder with co-morbidity of Clinical Depression as I am. He feels that the word 'disorder' is an insult to me and the stigma of the diagnosis will hinder me rather than help me.

I understand his reservations and I have, as a professional, encountered the assumptions prevalent in some areas that this is not a treatable condition,that those of us who exhibit 'emotional sensitivity' to the extent that we require intervention, are among the most difficult of service users and that we absorb more resources than is warranted. In short, I have heard BPD sufferers described as 'manipulative', 'difficult', 'emotionally blackmailing' and 'highly volatile', by fellow professionals when working in the Criminal Justice System. Unfortunately, the most prejudiced views came from colleagues within Mental Health teams who sought to distance themselves from managing 'these people' and kept telling us that the anti-social behaviour displayed by some BPD offenders was a 'criminal justice' problem and one that had no answer within the psychiatric or psychological community. Then slowly, just before my own diagnosis in 2009, whispers began of a 'treatment'(Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) available for BPD which began in America. Suddenly, this has become a diagnosis with hope for management if not cure. However, I wonder if the optimism of those working within DBT has communicated itself to other medical professionals who have limited contact with BPD or DBT?

Some observations of me and my 'diagnosis'.

1. Although the title 'Borderline Personality Disorder' indicates that I have a fundamental flaw in my very being I don't see it as such, but as a failure of language and semantics to adequately explain complex emotional distress and its impact on my ability to live a fulfilled life.

2. The reality of resource allocation determines that resources follow need and risk. If a nomenclature encapsulates a cluster of symptoms which are shared among a significant group using local resources, then it follows that it is easier to identify the need for those resources to be directed towards treatment of 'blob' or 'BPD', whichever is most convenient to refer to at the time - this one is for the bean counters! For good or ill, for the sake of the accountants we all need to be fitted into neat little boxes that can be counted!!

3. What is important about BPD is the relatively recent acceptance in certain areas that there are treatments available to help 'sufferers' (for want of a better word) manage the worst symptoms of emotional dysfunction.

4. I am lucky to live in a postcode which quickly established an intensive DBT programme lasting nearly two years, with adequate aftercare and staff willing to see beyond labels and perceived 'difficult behaviour'.

5. Despite the name of my 'disorder' I am not BPD - I am an individual with a large number of characteristics - some of which make me more susceptible to certain emotional struggles - some of which provide an inner core of strength which allows me to make the most of the treatment offered to me.

6. There is a reality about a significant proportion of mental illness, which clearly links to significant trauma in childhood. Too often the question asked by practitioners has been 'what's wrong with this person?' rather than 'what has happened to this person to make them react to life in this way?'

The willingness of DBT therapists to ask this question, to listen to the answer and to acknowledge that my previous ways of coping with life were understandable in the light of the answer, is one of the keys to the success of this programme in helping me manage patterns of emotional dysfunction which had lasted over 30 years.

For me BPD is not a diagnosis of stigma - that is other people's problem. It has given me clarity about what had been an undefined pattern of self destructive behaviour. Like the label or not it has opened the door to hope of moving forward with my life.