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your local mental health delivery system ostracizes and ascribes to the stigma that borderlines can't be treated or don't get better anyway and are more trouble than they are worth. This is not true and don't let encountering that attitude shame you or keep you from continuing to reach out to get help. Borderlines can and do get better.

That attitude is out there and encountered way too frequently by people with BPD who really need help and who can and will benefit from that help when it is delivered justly, timely, with limits and boundaries, effectively, and non-judgmental way with an attitude of empathy and care and a belief that borderlines can and do get better in other words professionally. There are many therapists out there who either specialize in Borderline Personality Disorder, or who know enough about it to be able to effectively treat it. Many work very hard. I personally was very lucky in my therapy travels years ago. I don't want to lump all therapists together. So, keeping that in mind, search until you find someone and/or the information (books, self-help) that you need to learn the skills necessary to cope with your feelings and to tolerate the distress you will feel as you transition from cutting and burning (etc) to feeling and dealing with your emotions.

Self-mutilation is chosen behaviour. You have chosen it to help you because you don't feel competent to do anything else emotionally and/or you don't have the developmental tools that others have that helps them to cope with life in age-appropriate and healthy non-destructive ways. Don't be hard on yourself about that.

Self Mutilation is a Borderline language of pain. It is choosing to allow your body to cry for you. It may relieve stress and distress and momentarily feel like a high and/or give you the feeling of great relief but the very minute you hurt yourself to help yourself you set yourself back up to repeat the cycle again. Your abusing your body is taking on the role of your abuser if you were abused. It is becoming an abuser to yourself if you weren't abused. It will only perpetuate any self-hatred that you feel. It is a self-defeating cycle that truly only adds to your pain in the long run. Momentary relief is not worth the damage that you continue to do to yourself, not only physically, but emotionally as well. You need to value yourself enough to learn how to tolerate what hurts long enough to heal it.

Self Mutilation is a Borderline language of pain. It is a learned language of pain. It is a vehicle of expression. It hurts you even more. You can learn to express your pain in a healthier and truly emotional language tears and words spoken that do not have to hold you hostage to the language of Borderline fear and shame. Your true self does not require or aspire to the drama of the tortured and pathologically narcissistic and protective false self.

Learn more about this author, A.J. Mahari.
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