Nightmare worlds: psychic equivalence and BPD

Why having borderline personality disorder is a living nightmare

For those struggling with personality disorder life can take on a nightmare-like quality. Trapped in a dark malaise of mental illness, nothing afoot nor ahead — it’s as if you are always one step away from being engulfed.

This all too common perception doesn’t have to be the result of trauma, nor the outcome of intolerable distress; instead it could simply be down to a little cognitive trick (or trap) we fall into. A way of looking at the world based entirely on our own perceptions; what researchers call psychic equivalence

Monsters in the mind

As a child we may have been afraid of the dark. When the lights go out we assume a monster’s going to appear from the crevices of a cupboard.

Children have active imaginations, and through fear, monsters in the mind can suddenly turn inside out: What was once clothing and coat-hangers, soon becomes a clawing apparition made real.

Such monsters exist in the adult mind too; in a nocturnal dark world of paranoia and superstition, trivial innocuous events suddenly become infused with the mind’s own darkness.