​Detecting And Understanding The Signs Of Borderline Personality Disorder In Mothers

Summary

Podcast Summary: Detecting And Understanding The Signs Of Borderline Personality Disorder In Mothers

Episode: Detecting And Understanding The Signs Of Borderline Personality Disorder In Mothers
Host/Author: MK Media (Maureen Callahan)
Release Date: July 25, 2025
Duration: Approximately 50 minutes

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Introduction

In this deeply insightful episode of The Nerve with Maureen Callahan, Maureen delves into the complex and often misunderstood topic of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in mothers. Joined by Sam Vaknin, a renowned professor of clinical psychology and author, they explore the signs, impacts, and coping mechanisms associated with BPD in maternal relationships.

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Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder

Maureen opens the discussion by sharing her personal connection to the topic, acknowledging her experience as the child of a borderline mother. She introduces Sam Vaknin, who brings his expertise to unpack the intricacies of BPD.

Key Features of BPD: Sam outlines the core characteristics of BPD, emphasizing that not all individuals exhibit every trait:

• Innate Emptiness: A profound sense of void or a "black hole" within.
• Emotion Dysregulation: Intense and uncontrollable emotions that can be overwhelming (05:53).
• Suicidal Ideation and Self-Harm: Persistent thoughts of suicide and tendencies toward self-mutilation (05:53).
• Chronic Anger: Unlike narcissistic rage, the anger in BPD is a constant undercurrent (06:15).
• Intense Relationships: Frequent cycles of idealization and devaluation in relationships, often described as "I love you" followed by "I hate you" (06:00).
• Twin Anxieties: A simultaneous fear of abandonment and engulfment, leading to unstable attachment styles (06:30).

Notable Quote:
Sam Vaknin (05:53): "The first one, I think is a sense of innate emptiness, void, a black hole that is all-consuming from the inside."

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Personal Experiences and Clinical Insights

Maureen shares vivid memories of growing up with her borderline mother, highlighting unpredictable rage and manipulation tactics such as "splitting," where siblings are categorized as "good" or "bad" (09:00).

Parentification and Emotional Burden: Sam explains that children of borderline parents often experience parentification, where they are forced to regulate the parent's emotions, effectively becoming the emotional caretaker instead of the child (10:11).

Notable Quote:
Sam Vaknin (10:11): "As a child, the borderline parentifies you. She expects you to regulate her emotions, she expects you to stabilize her moods."

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Comorbidities and Relationship Dynamics

The conversation shifts to the overlap between BPD and other personality disorders, notably narcissistic personality disorder and psychopathy. Sam points out that many individuals with BPD also exhibit traits of narcissism and psychopathy, which can complicate their relationships and parenting styles (12:38).

Choosing Partners: Individuals with BPD may gravitate towards partners with strong self-confidence and charisma, often narcissists or psychopaths, seeking external regulation for their internal chaos (13:36).

Notable Quote:
Sam Vaknin (13:36): "They tend to pick up people who exude a sense of self-confidence and charisma, which is a great description of narcissists."

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Coping Mechanisms for Adult Children

Maureen inquires about strategies for adult children dealing with deteriorating relationships with borderline mothers, especially when the mother's behavior intensifies with age (16:52).

Therapeutic Approaches: Sam emphasizes the importance of therapy, particularly Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which has a 50% success rate in mitigating BPD symptoms. He underscores that with effective treatment, individuals can lose the diagnosis and lead healthier lives (16:06).

Notable Quote:
Sam Vaknin (16:52): "Borderline personality disorder is among the very few mental health conditions that are actually amenable to treatment."

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Distinguishing BPD from Bipolar Disorder

A critical segment addresses the common confusion between BPD and Bipolar Disorder. Sam clarifies that while both can involve mood swings, the nature and duration differ significantly:

• Bipolar Disorder: Mood cycles last weeks to months, with distinct manic and depressive phases (28:19).
• Borderline Personality Disorder: Mood swings are rapid, often within hours, and are not tied to distinct phases (28:35).

Notable Quote:
Sam Vaknin (28:35): "In borderline personality disorder, the cycling is very, very fast. It's accelerated like the borderline can switch between moods within the hour."

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Media Representation and Misconceptions

Maureen references cultural portrayals of borderline mothers, notably Livia Soprano from The Sopranos, illustrating how media often captures the manipulative and emotionally volatile nature of BPD (35:00).

Gaslighting and Reality Testing: Sam discusses how borderline mothers use tactics like gaslighting to undermine their children's perception of reality, fostering feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt (46:06).

Notable Quote:
Sam Vaknin (46:06): "Gaslighting induces in the child what we call impaired reality testing."

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Healing and Moving Forward

As the episode concludes, Maureen offers resources, including the book Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship of the Borderline Mother by Christine Ann Lawson, which she credits for her personal growth and understanding.

Final Thoughts: Sam reinforces the optimistic outlook that with awareness and therapeutic intervention, adult children of borderline mothers can overcome the psychological scars and lead fulfilling lives.

Notable Quote:
Sam Vaknin (48:09): "Everything can be reversed and erased. Absolutely. Money back guarantee."

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Conclusion

This episode of The Nerve provides a comprehensive exploration of Borderline Personality Disorder in mothers, blending personal anecdotes with clinical expertise. Maureen and Sam offer valuable insights into identifying BPD traits, understanding their impact on familial relationships, and navigating the path to healing. For listeners grappling with similar experiences, this episode serves as both an informative guide and a beacon of hope.

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For more information and resources mentioned in this episode, listeners are encouraged to visit Maureen Callahan’s website or reach out through her social media channels.

Transcript

[Maureen Callahan]

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[Maureen Callahan]

Download today. Hey everyone, welcome to your Friday edition of the Nerve. We have a long awaited episode for you today. It took us a while, but I think you'll agree it's worth the wait. It's our first segment on difficult mothers, a subject that is near and dear to me because I, like so many of you out there, am the product of one. And as we learned from the first part of the Billy Joel documentary which I heard from so many of you about, and we will be reading your emails about Billy and getting to some other later things later in the show. Billie too had a very difficult mother. A very, very difficult mother. So there are a ton of us out there from all walks of life and I'm hoping that the Nerve will be ground zero for this ongoing discussion. Let's get into it. We need to make America healthy again and that starts with what we put in our bodies. I am constantly on the move, working, traveling and I need a snack that fuels my body, not poisoning, poisons it and drags it down. Paleo Valley's 100% grass fed beef sticks are clean, high quality and free from the chemical junk so many other brands sneak in. Most quote unquote healthy beef sticks at big box stores. Those things are loaded with preservatives like citric and lactic acid, not Paleo Valley. They use old school fermentation to keep their sticks fresh. No chemicals, just real food. And that fermentation also supports gut health, which is something we all need to prioritize. We deserve better than ultra processed junk pushed by the same industries making us addicted to their products and making us sick. The system may be rigged, but we do not have to play along. Paleo Valley Beef Sticks come in five delicious flavors made from grass fed grass finished beef sourced from regenerative American farms. No MSN, no sorry, no MSG, no gluten and no sugar. Over 55 million sold and backed by a 60 day money back guarantee. Paleo Valley makes 100% grass fed beef sticks. Because healthy living should be easy and accessible for everyone right now, you can get 15% off your first order [e-mail] with code. The nerve. Let's make America healthy again. One real food choice at a time. Troublemakers. I am so happy to finally bring you this segment, which honestly, I have been thinking about since the very inception of the Nerve. Not just the overarching topic of the difficult mother, of which there are many different kinds of subsets, but the borderline mother. To begin, this is a very personal topic for me because my mother sometimes I say was, you know, as I've shared with you, she has dementia, so I toggle between past and present tense with her depending on the day. So. But I would consider her a true borderline mother. And it wasn't well into my adulthood while I was in therapy that I came to the realization on my own, which is a whole other discussion. But over the years, you know, I've, I've had friends and colleagues and acquaintances who have, in the course of discussing their own difficult, difficult mothers would outlay a kind of similar set of traits or behaviors. And then I would ask maybe one or two questions and I would say, you know, you might really want to look into the borderline personality and the borderline mother in particular. With one of them, it was like a light went off and that person went and did some reading and came back and was like, yeah, yeah. And it's now one of our favorite topics of discussion, our borderline moms. Anyway, joining me now is Sam Voxnin. He is a professor of clinical psychology at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies. He has authored several books, Malignant Self, Love, the Narcissist Mother, Narcissistic and Psychopathic Parents and Their Children, to name but a few. So, Professor Voxnin, thank you. Thank you for joining us on the Nerve for this discussion.

[Sam Vaknin]

Thank you for having me. Please call me Sam. Better use of the time.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, okay. Well, thank you, Sam. The first question I have for you is what constitutes a borderline? I know there are, there are many different traits and not all borderlines exhibit all of them. It can be some of them, but if you suspect that you might be the product of a borderline mother. What would be the significant tells?

[Sam Vaknin]

The first one, I think is a sense of innate emptiness, void, a black hole that is all consuming from the inside. The second is what we call emotion dysregulation or affective lability. The inability to control your emotions. They overwhelm you, they drown you. You are unable to regulate yourself. The third feature is constant suicidal ideation, constant suicidal thinking and in 11% of the cases actually committing suicide. So suicide is a prominent feature of borderline. And vast majority of borderlines self mutilate one way or another, self harm in some way. The next feature is anger. There's rage and fury in Borderline. Unlike in narcissism. In narcissism we have narcissistic rage. But narcissistic rage is reactive. If you challenge a narcissist, if you undermine the narcissist, then the narcissist may rage upon you. But in the case of borderline personality disorder, it's a background noise, it's always there. The borderline is always angry, always on the verge of fury, you know. The next feature is intense relationships, especially intimate relationships, but not only relationships that involve highs and lows, cycles of idealize, idealization and devaluation of the partner. And what we call approach avoidance. I love. I, I, I hate you. Don't leave me this time.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yes, yes.

[Sam Vaknin]

And the final feature, I'm trying to be as brief as I can. The final feature is what we call the twin anxieties. The twin anxieties are mutually exclusive. The borderline is terrified of being abandoned and rejected. There is what we call separation insecurity or abandonment anxiety in colloquial terms. But on the other hand, she or he is equally terrified of being intimate, of being engulfed and consumed by love. So there's approach, there's falling in love, limerence, infatuation, idealization and so on. And then when the other party responds in kind, when intimacy is on offer, when love is in the air, the borderline runs away. She's terrified of the outcome of intimacy. So we call it the twin anxieties. Abandonment anxiety versus engulfment anxiety. These are the key features. There are others, but these are the key ones.

[Maureen Callahan]

And again, not every borderline will present with all of them. For example, for my childhood, which was normalized in the house, it was often described as, that's just the way she is and we just all deal with it. So as a little child I could be sitting at my kitchen table doing my homework and it would be completely quiet and in the kitchen my mother would be making dinner and out of nowhere, like, bam. You know, a pan would slam down on the rage and it would be, she would be swearing and cursing and yelling and you would jump out of your skin going, what just happened? What did I do? And then it would just be like, forget that ever happened. And then you could flash forward to teenage years, adulthood, where my mom would engage in what's called, I believe, if I'm using this term properly, splitting, where one sibling is the good sibling and one sibling is the bad sibling. And you're constantly trying to triangulate and make alliances with your own children. And you know, thirdly, it would, it would be those similar things of, you know, I hate you, don't leave me. When, whenever it comes to a child of a borderline mother, that, that is who they may be dealing with. I used to refer to my mother as a non negotiable personality before I had the actual nomenclature for what was wrong with her or what plagued her. What does one begin to do when this realization strikes you?

[Sam Vaknin]

You can't do much as a child, of course, as a child, the borderline parentifies you. She expects, she expects you to regulate her emotions, she expects you to stabilize her moods. She, in other words, she renders you the parent and she becomes childlike. I'm saying she. Although currently half of all borderlines diagnosed borderlines are men. So this is. Oh really, gender bias. Yeah. So parentification is a major, a major issue. This confluence of emotional dysregulation or effective lability, inability to control emotions, coupled with ever present anger, that's what you have described. Because the anger is not reactive. It's not a reaction to something outside, it's a reaction to something inside. These internal dynamics dictate the eruptions. It's like a volcano, it's utterly unpredictable. And the twin anxieties simply mean that the attachment that the mother fosters or the mother engenders in the child is insecure. Children of people with cluster B personality disorders, narcissists, borderlines and so on, they grow up to be insecure. As far as attachments go, they're always a bit suspicious, a bit paranoid, a bit hyper vigilant, expecting the worst, catastrophizing, and so on, so forth. There's a legacy of the borderline mother or the borderline father, but mother, mostly.

[Maureen Callahan]

It is mostly mothers and you know it is. There is an overlap for sure of, at least in my mother's case, you know, I think they call them Comorbidities. A borderline will often display narcissistic personality disorder behaviors. You know, everything was really organized, at least in my household growing up, on placating and pleasing the mother at the expense of anybody else's real wants or needs. And I think probably part of the collateral damage as well is that borderlines tend to attract just, in my experience, equally damaged partners who can't quite recognize or are avoidant as to what may be going on in the home. Can you speak to that a little bit?

[Sam Vaknin]

The main preoccupation of people with borderline personality disorder is the craving, the desire to put an end to the internal mayhem and chaos and tumult. And so they seek what we call external regulation. They seek a figure, someone, the rock. They call it the rock. They want to find someone who would be able to stabilize their moods, regulate their emotions, afford them with a sense of certainty and determinacy, always be there for them, never abandon them, and so on and so forth. And they pick. They tend to pick up people who exude a sense of self confidence, overwhelming self confidence and charisma, which is a great description of narcissists. It's exactly what narcissists do. And so they tend to pair up with narcissists and psychopaths, regrettably, as well.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, really?

[Sam Vaknin]

Yeah, because psychopaths are the same. Psychopaths exude this. These magnetism and this overconfidence and this, you know, just follow me anywhere. And so the what the borderline does, she outsources her mind. She outsources her mind, her ego functions, her internal psychological processes to an outside subcontractor. And then when the subcontractor inevitably fails, the borderline becomes enraged and furious and vindictive and aggressive and even violent. It's not uncommon. Violence is not uncommon in borderline.

[Maureen Callahan]

I love this description of outsourcing and subcontracting one's emotional, psychological, even intellectual needs. And. And it seems like the borderline themselves, they're on a hamster wheel where they keep sort of doing the same thing over and over and hoping that it will quell the rage and the deep black hole of need in them that will never be filled by another, because that's work you have to do on yourself.

[Sam Vaknin]

I'm afraid even that is not very helpful until. Until you get to be 30 or 35. If you were to ask me if a borderline is capable of being a good mother, my answer would be, depends on her age. Prior to age 35, a borderline is likely to be A very damaging mother. A very problematic mother. Really? Yes. Prior. After age 35, a borderline mother could be utterly functional and perfectly okay. And the reason is that 81% of people with borderline personality disorder lose the diagnosis. After age 35, they are no longer borderline.

[Maureen Callahan]

What happens?

[Sam Vaknin]

This is completely news to me because we don't know. We think it has something to do with the brain. We believe that borderline is hereditary. There's a genetic component and involves specific brain abnormalities that are more common in one's teens and twenties. And then the brain being neuroplastic. The brain is neuroplastic. The brain rewires itself, adapts somehow. And after age 35, well over 80% of people with borderline no longer have borderline. That's a fact.

[Maureen Callahan]

And what are the studies that point to this, Sam?

[Sam Vaknin]

Numerous, actually. The ICD itself is mentioning this, so.

[Maureen Callahan]

Really?

[Sam Vaknin]

Yeah. And then I feel like it.

[Maureen Callahan]

Sorry, go ahead.

[Sam Vaknin]

And then there's another thing. Borderline personality disorder is among the very few mental health conditions that are actually amenable to treatment. There is a treatment modality called DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy. And DBT is successful in 50% of the cases. In other words, if you spend one year doing DBT as a borderline, you have a 50% chance of losing your diagnosis, regardless of your age. And this percentage goes skyrockets as you. As you grow older. Now. Yeah, please go ahead.

[Maureen Callahan]

Can you speak to. Could you speak to the cohort of women and mothers who do not shed the diagnosis and whose behavior only intensifies as they age, which I find to be the case with adult children of my cohort, my generation and older. And I think a lot of this predates the constant conversation in the culture of psychotherapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy. What are the coping mechanisms for adult children of borderline mothers when the mother's behavior only solidifies and intensifies?

[Sam Vaknin]

When the mother's behavior solidifies or intensifies, she is very likely not a borderline, or at least not a pure borderline, as you have indicated. She's likely to suffer from other comorbidities which do worsen with age. So, for example, she's very likely to be a narcissist as well. Narcissism does not ameliorate or mitigate with age. With the exception of antisocial behaviors, all other features of narcissism become worse.

[Maureen Callahan]

Fascinating.

[Sam Vaknin]

So it's very extremely likely, actually, that this kind of person has actually shed the borderline part, but has remained with the Narcissistic part. And now the narcissism is glaringly ostentatious and obvious and that makes the situation a lot worse. We have an identical situation with dementia. You've mentioned dementia.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah.

[Sam Vaknin]

In dementia, certain cluster B personality disorders become much worse. For example, if you are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and then develop dementia, your narcissism would be accentuated and become much, much more deleterious and egregious. So this is exactly what happens with borderline. The borderline is reduced somehow ameliorated, mitigated, softens soft edges. While the narcissism, the psychopathy. Because psychopathy is also very common with borderline other histrionic. Histrionic personality disorder, which is also very common in border. All these, all these survive the borderline and then.

[Maureen Callahan]

Fascinating.

[Sam Vaknin]

Yeah, the borderline is. Consider. Think of the borderline as an invisibility cloak. So there's this invisibility cloak and when it's tossed away, what's left is the wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Then you see the true face of.

[Maureen Callahan]

The individual, the narcissism, the histrionic personality disorder. Definitely. I see those in my own mom. And psychopathy, can you just speak to a little bit of that as a comorbidity? Because I think when people hear psychopathy, they think one thing, and that is the extreme end of psychopathy, which is you are a hardened criminal, if not a serial killer. But does psychopathy exist on a spectrum?

[Sam Vaknin]

Well, yes, the overwhelming vast majority of psychopaths have nothing to do with serial killing, not even as a hobby. And they actually cope well, they're pillars of the community. They are chief executive officers. For example, there are studies by Babyok and Hare which have demonstrated that the prevalence of psychopaths among chief executive officers surgeons in operating rooms is much higher than in the general population. So most psychopaths are functional, pro social, socially adaptive and so on, so forth. The only difference between a psychopath and a healthy person is a. Psychopaths would tend to be goal oriented, they would lack empathy, and therefore they would be callous, reckless, unscrupulous and immoral. That's one reason why there's a debate whether psychopathy is a mental illness at all.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah, that's fascinating.

[Sam Vaknin]

In the case of borderline personality disorder. Coming back to the topic, the comorbidity with antisocial personality disorder, which is a clinical name for psychopathy, the comorbidity is pretty high, actually. There are some learned guesses that about one in three Borderlines would also be a psychopath.

[Maureen Callahan]

I would love to talk to you about this a little bit, just because, again, in the case of, you know, my mom is the template for the idea of the difficult mother, the borderline mother. She could be in public, at events, at family gatherings, even dealing with strangers. The charm would just come on like that. Extremely charismatic, has a gravitational pull. People just wanted to be around her, be near her. Even if she could be outright, clearly mean, say something mean, people would laugh it off, like, oh, that's just Mary. You know, that's how she is. And then the child becomes, I think, even more confused because they see the mother interfacing with the rest of the world as this lovely, charismatic, just magnetic personality. And behind closed doors, the child is actually treated to the opposite. And what happens is the child becomes very confused. I'm speaking about myself. Who would believe me when I say that behind closed doors, my mother can be a monster?

[Sam Vaknin]

Well, first of all, I hate to break it to you, but you're describing a psychopath, not a borderline. One of the key diagnostic features and clinical features of psychopathy is superficial charm and glibness. It's a key feature, which.

[Maureen Callahan]

It's also a key feature of narcissism. Right.

[Sam Vaknin]

To a much lesser extent, really. It's actually the antisocial dimension in narcissism. It's definitely psychopathic. But coming back to your question, I tend to digress, and I apologize. But coming back to your question, the main message that such a mother conveys to her child is, something's wrong with you. Something is wrong with you. Other people love me. You don't. Or other people behave one way, you behave another way. You are incapable of making me feel good. You're incapable of making me happy. You are. So there's always a message, an underlying message of your failure. You're constantly failing me. You're a disappointment. And so if you happen to be the scapegoat and not the golden child, and these are transitory roles, by the way, but if you have.

[Maureen Callahan]

Exactly. I was often a scapegoat. I was often a golden child. I will say my mom did a lot of things right with me and encouraged me in so many ways, but there were other times where there was nothing I could do to satiate her need for love and attention.

[Sam Vaknin]

That is what I mentioned earlier, the approach, avoidance, repetition, compulsion. That's the inability to actually reach a plateau of intimacy and so on. When you gratify, when the child gratifies, such a mother, when the child meets the mother's expectations and needs. She feels suffocated, she feels threatened because in her mind she's expected to reciprocate and she is unable to reciprocate. And so she feels that she's being set up for failure or that she's being framed somehow. And at that very moment she flips and she becomes, she renders the child a secretary object. She renders the child an enemy in her mind, someone who is challenging her actually to be a good mother. And so the child can never win. And consequently the child develops what we call in psychology, or in some schools in psychology, an internalized bed object, a voice or a set of constellation of voices in the child's mind that inform the child that he is, or she is unworthy, inadequate, a failure, perhaps also ugly and stupid, definitely disappointing, and so on, so forth. And this constellation of voices, they're known as introjects. You carry them with you for the rest of your life. You may kid yourself, you may kid yourself that now you have recovered somehow, that you have a lot of self esteem and self confidence, you're an accomplished person and so on. But these voices are inside you and they're undermining you and they're corroding you and they're not letting you be.

[Maureen Callahan]

Would you say those are fixed traits or would you say that if you are an adult child who is cognizant to a degree of what went on in your childhood with a borderline mother and you do go and seek therapy as I did, that those can either be mitigated or eventually purged from your system.

[Sam Vaknin]

Eradicated? Yes, absolutely. The prognosis is very good. The problem is the vast majority of people do never reach this level of self awareness.

[Maureen Callahan]

They, you know, I think a lot of people don't realize they even had a borderline mother. Yes, we were just talking on the nerve the other day. There's a big documentary about the artist Billy Joel that's airing now on hbo. And he and his sister referred it to his mother who had rage explosions like this. And they, they described their childhood as, quote, walking on eggshells, as bipolar. And I think there's a confusion between what a bipolar mother presents as and a borderline mother presents as. Is there much of a difference? Sam, introducing a warehouse, your one stop shop for handmade unique home goods sourced exclusively from small businesses. A warehouse is dedicated to supporting American manufacturers with over 75% of their items created right here in the US from hand thrown pottery to luxurious candles. I got one of those from a warehouse. I love it. I love it. Every item is selected for its integrity, craftsmanship and story. Small businesses need our support now more than ever. This year, Forbes has predicted a record breaking 15,000 retail store closures in the US. That's more than double the 7,000 plus closures in 2024. So by making the effort to support these small retailers, you can really make a difference in people's lives. Today, a warehouse believes that true luxury isn't about brand names or labels or price tags. It's about the dedication, creativity and care that goes into every product. Visit warehouseshop.com and use code the nerve for 15% off your first order. That's a warehouseshop.com, code the nerve for 15% off YOUR first order. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance. Business owners meet Progressive Insurance. They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business. Quote in as little as 7 [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company coverage provided and serviced by affiliate and third party insurers. Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations.

[Sam Vaknin]

Bipolar disorder is cycling between moods and the cycles take very long time. Typical bipolar cycle is weeks to months. Months is very common.

[Maureen Callahan]

Manic versus depressive.

[Sam Vaknin]

Manic versus what used to be called manic depressive. Yes, hypomanic and manic. While in borderline personality disorder the cycling is very, very fast. It's accelerated like the borderline can switch between moods within within the hour or within hours. It's extremely rare to document a case where a mood lasts for four days. That's considered to be an outlier. You know something amazing. So that's the first difference. The second difference is everything that is happening to the bipolar is an outcome, a direct outcome, a result of the underlying mood disorder. Whereas in borderline personality disorder, the mood disorder is ancillary is not a main clinical feature. There are other clinical features which are much more relevant in borderline and which are completely absent in bipolar disorder. Anyone who confuses the two is a bad clinician to use a British understatement.

[Maureen Callahan]

But if you're a child or an adult child, what is absent in the bipolar mother that is present in the borderline or vice versa?

[Sam Vaknin]

What the bipolar is predictable.

[Maureen Callahan]

Ah, okay.

[Sam Vaknin]

You know, you know that father right now is can't sleep is into her brain schemes of getting rich quick is. So that's a manic phase. And you know for sure as a child that the next phase is father goes to bed and never leaves bed for a few months. So it's utterly predictable. The cycling is predictable. Whereas with a borderline mother, there's no way, there's no model, there's no theory you can construct which will predict the mother's future behavior. And we say that when you are with a borderline mother, there is a failure of what we call theory of mind. There's a failure of mentalization. You cannot create a theory about your mother's mind which would allow you to feel safe, to feel that you are in a secure base. And that is terrifying for a child. It's a horror movie. There are two other issues, I think, with the borderline mother. The first I've mentioned, which is the bad object, the messaging that you are not good enough, you're unworthy, you're a failure, you're disappointing, you're this, you're that. And the second, I think problem is that the mother sets you up for failure. You see, when you as a child, you're confronted with a bad mother, a dysfunctional mother.

[Maureen Callahan]

Dysfunctional, yeah.

[Sam Vaknin]

Yes. When you're confronted with such a mother as a child, you have two options. You can say, my mother is dysfunctional, but that's terrifying because if your mother is dysfunctional, she won't feed you, she won't shelter you, you may die. So no child adopts this position. No child says, yeah, my mother is a problem. The other option is to say, I am the problem. It's all happening because of me. I'm doing something wrong, or I am wrong. So you adopt this stance that you are the reification of wrongness. You are wrongness embodied and personified. And you spend the rest of your life believing that you are wrong. Now because of that is very difficult for people to reach a level of self awareness because it requires them to admit finally that nothing's wrong with them, that it's mother and they still have the inner child. That is terrifying of admitting this. Because you see, if you're six months old and you reach a conclusion that mother sucks and you know, is not unlikely to feed you or shelter you or protect you, that's a life that's life threatening. No child would do this. And we only kid ourselves when we distinguish these phases in life. Now we are adults, we are not children. That's not true. We're always children. Especially when it comes to mother.

[Maureen Callahan]

Absolutely. You know, it's fascinating in my mother's case, she had a true gift of relating to. She was so good with babies and children. You know, once. Once they hit, especially kids who weren't hers. But, you know, I. I found. I would always say, you know, the problem is once you become of an age where you develop your own thoughts and personality and you're going to defy the mother, and that's where the conflict would come in with her. But I always felt her gift was so pronounced with babies and children because she was a child herself. I believe her. Her borderline personality developed as a result of. From all of my reading, the trauma of losing her mother very young, of feeling abandoned, of going through several more traumas before she even hit the age of 20. And instead of getting help again, it was a different time. It was always just the. The. I've spoken to relatives about this. The constant refrain in the house was, that's just how she is. She's otherwise a wonderful person. Just go along to get along and we'll just move. It's the easiest way to keep this train going. Now, to that. I want to. I just want to show a couple of clips. I'll show one. I'll get your reaction. We'll go to the next one. I think the biggest depiction, the most, I'm gonna say influential on the culture and most profound was Livia Soprano, Tony Soprano's mother of the Sopranos. And David Chase, the genius creator, has said more than once, livia is based on my mother, who I did realize at a certain point was a borderline. And I have never seen a better depiction of how a borderline will box you out of any possible solution you could answer to bring them a bit of happiness. So we're going to look at this clip of Carmela visiting Livia and trying to get Livia to back off her own son, who's just doing his best vis a vis what his mother needs. Let's take a look. But I want you to cut the drama. It's killing Tony. What are you talking about? I'm talking about this. This poor mother, nobody loves me victim crap. It is textbook manipulation. And I hate seeing Tony so upset over it. I know how to talk to people. Well, I am a mother too, don't forget. And you know the power that you have, and you use it like a pro. Power up. I don't have power. I'm a shut in. You are bigger than life. You are his mother. And I don't think for one second that you don't know what you're doing to him. Oh, me, me. What do I. What did I do? Look, I didn't come by to argue. I came by to check on you and to bring you the regart. If you don't want it, you can give it to Junior. Cause I know he stops by a lot. He's my husband's brother. He can't check up on me once in a while? That's none of anybody's business. Oh my God. I am not saying that. All I am saying is if you don't want it, give it to Junior. I know what you're hinting at, Ma. There is nothing wrong with companionship. What is wrong? Oh.

[Sam Vaknin]

Wait until you're abandoned.

[Maureen Callahan]

To me, that is textbook dialogue. I've heard versions of that millions of times. Sam, what do you say to that?

[Sam Vaknin]

I agree. This is 100% borderline. I would emphasize just two points because we've discussed the others. Actually the first point is the. The drama thing. Borderlines use drama as a regulatory mechanism. I mentioned that they outsource their internal psychological processes to a single individual. Usually it's a single individual and at the same time they create environments, specific environments that are. That force the other party to comply with expectations and needs as verbalized or non verbalized. This environment is dramatic. It's always dramatic. They use drama to force, to coerce other people to behave in highly specific ways. This has a name in psychology. It's called projective identification. So this is one element. They're drama queens and kings. The second element is the mother here appears to be acting. And many, many people will tell you, yeah, they're acting. I don't think she's acting. The problem with borderlines, narcissists and even to some extent psychopaths. They are what we call ego syntonic. In other words, they don't feel that they have done anything wrong. They feel that people are wronging them. That's why they have this victimhood complex and so on. They don't see what it is that people keep complaining about. Why people keep criticizing them and disagreeing with them. In their mind's eye, they are perfection. Borderlines are as grandiose as narcissists, by the way, even without the comorbidity. Grandiosity is a key feature of borderline.

[Maureen Callahan]

So interesting.

[Sam Vaknin]

So a borderline would say I'm perfect by definition. I'm a perfect entity. Therefore I can make no mistakes. And it's not. She doesn't say this. She wouldn't say this as a kind of bragging or braggadocio or something. It's just a fact of life. She's perfect and she's infallible. She never makes mistakes. And Then people around her are either too envious or too stupid or malevolent or something's wrong with them. Something's wrong with them. This is called alloplastic defense. The Borderline has, like the narcissist, she has alloplastic defenses. She blames other people, the environment, institutions, the period in history, her own personal history, her mother, her father, the neighbors, the dogs. You name it, Someone is to blame. Never her, Never she.

[Maureen Callahan]

I can attest to this. I can attest to this firsthand. My mother was never to blame. There was never an apology to come. It was. In fact, if you called her out on inappropriate behavior or an explosive rage, it would. The response would often be, you made me do that.

[Sam Vaknin]

Yes, alloplastic defense. You're to blame. But it's even more than this. If you dare confront the Borderline, criticize her, expose her, force her to face the mirror, present evidence to the contrary, because she has a narrative that is often counterfactual. Now, there's nothing to do with reality. If you do any of these things, probably you are a sadist. Probably you're malevolent and hateful and vengeful. And it says something about you. It says nothing about the Borderline, but it says everything about you. Or maybe you're just stupid, unable to appreciate the borderline's endowments and gifts. Or maybe you're envious. Even as a daughter, you may be envious of her. Borderline mothers compete with their daughters.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah, when it's.

[Sam Vaknin]

When it comes to external appearance, looks, they. They compete with their daughters. When it comes to the social circle of the daughters, even the daughters, lovers, I mean, there's constant competition. And so if there's competition, there's envy. And if there's envy, there's aggression. And you're being aggressive. You're being aggressive.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there was definitely levels of that. And I think what is. Becomes very difficult for the child as they mat. And then become an adult is really trying to come to terms with marrying the. The bad mommy with the good mommy. Right? Because I think part of the reason there's so much resistance for an adult child to say, wait a second, what's been going on here is not my fault at all. Something is deeply wrong is because it is your mother. As Carmela says in that clip to Livia, you are larger than life. You are his mother. You gave him life. You kept him alive. And I want to just play this very brief clip of Tony Soprano in session with Dr. Melfi. And Dr. Melfi coming to a realization that she's. She. She doesn't have the time to let Tony realize that his mother wants him dead. Now this is an extreme dramatic version. And she's. She's going to tell him, listen, your mother's a borderline. And I'm going to explain what that is to you. And Tony's inability to process this at all. Let's take a look at this clip. I say what your mother has, at the very least, is what we call borderline personality disorder. A borderline personality disorder. Let me read to you from the DSM 4, okay? Definitions of the condition. A pattern of unstable relationships. Affective instability. It means intense anxiety and joylessness. These people's internal phobias are the only things that exist to them. The real world, real people are peripheral. These people have no love or compassion. Borderline personalities are very good at splitting behavior, creating bitterness and conflict between others in their circle. What stuck out for me when Dr. Melfi says these people have no love or compassion for others? I do have to say I would never describe my mother like that. I don't think the love that she showed me or my brother or any of the children she helped raise would apply. So if you could, please.

[Sam Vaknin]

I tend to disagree with about 50% of what this doctor said.

[Maureen Callahan]

Interesting.

[Sam Vaknin]

I think she was describing a narcissist.

[Maureen Callahan]

Interesting.

[Sam Vaknin]

Yeah. Of course, narcissism, pathological narcissism and borderline. Borderline state are very, very similar. There's been a scholar by the name of Otto Kernberg who is the father of the field, and he suggested that borderline and narcissism are so intimately linked that they're one and the same.

[Maureen Callahan]

Wow.

[Sam Vaknin]

So it's easy to make this mistake. I would like to focus on splitting. First of all, everyone goes through a phase of splitting. People. Splitting is an infantile defense. In early childhood. Children split. Someone is all good, another person is all bad. That's precisely the reason that when the child says mother is all good because it's too threatening to consider the alternative, the child is forced to say, then I'm all bad. It's the outcome of splitting. If she is all good, I'm all bad. That's the first thing. Healthy mothers, functional mothers. Mothers who Winnicott, the famous pediatrician and psychoanalyst called good enough mothers. They signal to the child. They constantly inform the child subtly, non verbally. I am both good and bad. I'm not only good, I'm also bad. Sometimes, for example, you cry and I don't pay attention to you. Or you want to eat and I'm out of the room. So you see, mommy can be frustrating, Mommy can be not nice. So the mother broadcast to the child, the healthy mother, the functional, the good enough mother, constantly broadcast to the child, I am both good and bad. You need to integrate these parts of me. You need to create a composite which is not black or white, but gray. It is the mother that helps the child to graduate from the splitting defense, to leave it behind, to go to move on from the splitting defense. But what if the mother actually broadcasts? Yes, you are right. I am all good. I am blemishless, I am perfect. And that means, of course, that you are the exact opposite. This kind of person would not be able to move on and would be stuck in the splitting phase. So borderline mothers induce primitive defenses, induce splitting in their own children.

[Maureen Callahan]

I would also submit, just based on my own experience, that to have a mother as you just described, not the good enough mother, but the all good mother who is behaving badly or in ways that scare you as a small child and then turns around and says, no, I'm all good and you're the problem, can inculcate a fundamental miswiring of one's own intuition and in one's own ability to self identify what I am seeing and hearing versus what I am being told I am seeing and hearing.

[Sam Vaknin]

Yes, this is gaslighting.

[Maureen Callahan]

Gaslighting, yes.

[Sam Vaknin]

So gaslighting induces in the child what we call impaired reality testing. I think what I'm trying to tell you a bit politically incorrectly, is, is the children of. Of borderline parents, mothers mostly. The mother is the critical figure in the first 36 months of life, not the father. It's politically incorrect to say this, but it's the mother's fault, if you wish. The mother molds a child and shapes the child in the first 36 months. The father plays a very marginal role in these first three years. So what I'm trying to say, I think, is that the borderline mother, the legacy of the borderline mother in the child is some borderline features. It wouldn't be true to say that the borderline child is all good, all pure, and it is the borderline mother that is all bad. That's a splitting.

[Maureen Callahan]

Right? Of course. Of course.

[Sam Vaknin]

So the borderline, the. The child of the borderline mother is likely to engage in splitting, likely to have a bad internal object, likely to fall for the wrong type of people in romantic, intimate relationships, likely to be terrified of intimacy and love, however, unconsciously likely to develop Repetition, compulsion, approach avoidance, likely to do all these things, likely to be a bit dramatic, likely to be a bit histrionic, and seek attention all the time, and so on. This is.

[Maureen Callahan]

And again, absolutely. And just to put a point on that before we go, as said earlier, this does not mean the child of a borderline is doomed to that kind of a life, that once they recognize it, if they are involved in getting some sort of treatment, self help, what have you that they can overcome. Said.

[Sam Vaknin]

I want to emphasize, with your permission, I want to take another minute to emphasize this, not in order to end on an optimistic or hopeful note, but because it's a fact. If borderline personality disorder has an excellent prognosis. If people with borderline personality disorder, even people with borderline, they get well in the overwhelming vast majority of cases, they lose a diagnosis. They're perfectly healthy. So even more so when it comes to children of people with borderline, the prognosis is excellent. If you become aware that your mother may have been a borderline, and so on, so forth, your best bet is therapy. We have numerous treatment modalities. If you have the bad object, for example, these sentences in your mind that keep saying, you're inadequate, you're nothing, you're a failure, you're a loser, you're unworthy. This can be eliminated with cognitive behavior therapy, literally eliminated for life. Splitting can be tackled with psychodynamic therapies. We have the tools and you will be as good as new. Everything can be reversed and erased. Absolutely. Money back guarantee.

[Maureen Callahan]

Well, thank you, Sam. We'll hold you to that.

[Sam Vaknin]

All right.

[Maureen Callahan]

I hope that you will come back on the nerve as we continue our discussion of difficult mothers in all of their forms. So thank you again.

[Sam Vaknin]

Thank you for having me. Kind of you.

[Maureen Callahan]

Wonderful. Thank you so much. And to you out there who are watching and thinking, oh my God, like, yeah, my mom might be a borderline. I might have grown up in a home like that. I would love to suggest to you the book that I turned to when I had my own eureka moment and how to tell my own shrink. This is what's going on over here. This book is called Understanding the Borderline Mother. It was written by. Let me hold it a little bit more closely to the camera. It's written by a woman named Christine Ann Lawson. It's called Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, unpredictable and volatile Relationship of the Borderline Mother. It was eye opening for me. And even as I began to move through that reckoning, I would often turn to it as my mom tried to pull out all of the tricks from her playbook in her toolbox and they weren't working. And this book, really I can only speak personally for myself, but it helped me a lot. And so I recommend it to any of you who might be having that very same thought right about now. And that is it for our first segment on Difficult Mothers here at the Nerve. By all means, as always, email me DM me. I am maureenvilmakeremedia.com you can find me at Maureen Callahanrider on Instagram. Let us know what you thought of this segment and if you would like more and what other kind of difficult mother you would like us to see tackle next. Okay, see you in a minute. What if you could delay your next two mortgage payments? That's right. Imagine putting those two payments in your pocket and finally getting a little breathing room. It's all possible when you call American Financing Today. If you are feeling stretched by everyday expenses, groceries, gas, bills piling up, you are not alone. Most Americans are putting these expenses on credit cards and there doesn't seem to be an immediate way out. 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That's joinmochi.com Results may vary. Eligible GLP1 patients typically lose 1 to 2 pounds per week in their first six months with Mochi when combined with a healthy lifestyle. Now first, before we get to your emails, we have some updates coming in through the ticker. Troublemaker Updates Jennifer Our troublemaker Jennifer. I reached out to her and she has agreed to build us a new wing for the woodshed. Yes, the Kennedy wing is happening. So that's a great, exciting development. I have a feeling Cheryl Hines is getting ready to send one Bobby Jr. To her own personal woodshed. But we'll. We'll talk about that on another show. We've also got the results in from our first ever Nerve poll. Excuse me. I'm so excited. And you guys did not. I mean, you never disappoint. You never disappoint. But when it came to our first Nerve poll, the Instagram story versus the post of whether the unholy union of yours truly and Bill Maher has legs, you are totally divided. It was totally schizophrenic. Look at these results. Look at these results. What am I supposed to do? I'm completely confused. If you haven't already, go over to the Nerve show on Instagram just to read through the comments. I laughed out loud. I laughed out loud. Also, we are looking for an intern. The Nerve is growing so fast that we need help. And we thought, who better to ask than you guys? Who knows the show better than you guys? So head on over to again, the Nerve account on Instagram or X for details. Okay, now on to Reader. Reader. Why do I. It's like the columnist in me is like. It's Reader. No, it's. It's audience email. I gotta. I'm all over the place today, but. All right, I'm dialed in to your feedback, which is so good. Okay, first, we're going to talk about Billy Joel. Email. And the second part of Billy's doc drops tomorrow on HBO and HBO Max streaming. So if you guys do watch Part two, email me your thoughts and we can discuss them on Tuesday's show. I've got a special guest who promises to show up and we can all talk about it together. Hello, Maureen. This is from a devoted troublemaker who wants to go by just the word, the name C, the initial C. Excuse me. Your recent segment on Billy Joel brought back some powerful memories. I, too, was an outcast, a misfit, as Billy says. He was in the doc. I was at a school that boasted the likes of JFK and in my time, Anthony Radziwill. Jackie attended his graduation, which was my brother's year, and my mom made me stand near her so she could pretend to take my picture when it was Jackie, she was focused on all along. I was a day student, farm girl with no sense of fashion, wealth, or urban culture. Surrounded by the elite from around the world, I found my place in athletics and she had a 70s orange Datsun station wagon that she nicknamed Storm and Norman. Storm and Norman helped. Later on as these same elites needed rides to the New Haven bars and I obliged. But I was never truly one of them. I am okay with that. P.S. you're a bit of a guilty pleasure, so it would help my conscience if you could be nice to Jesus. Conscience? Troublemaker C. I've got no problem with Jesus. I love the teachings of Jesus. I may be a lapsed Catholic, but I think the teachings of Jesus are great. You know, it's sometimes it's just you're trying to punctuate something and it slips out and I mean no harm. I promise. Okay. From another troublemaker, Billy Joel on Maui, circa 1996. Your segment reminded me of the time he came into the clothing store I worked at on Maui. He came in with a woman I'm guessing was his agent or manager, and the woman was a New York City type of person. Obnoxious, loud Billy. However, the megastar, the multimillionaire could not have been kinder or more down to earth. I love stories like this. So while the woman he's with is ransacking the store, I was so struck that he was quietly looking around and politely chatting with me about how high some of the clothing prices were. He could have bought the whole store out, but it was obvious that despite his fame, celebrity and much deserved success, he had not forgotten his childhood roots. I always thought it was terrible. This is such a great point. I didn't realize this, but I love it. I always thought it was terrible how Anthony Bourdain, God rest his soul, constantly ripped on Billy Joel and made fun of him and his music on his show all the time. It seemed to be malicious and not jesting and fun. I never saw or heard Billy Joel say anything negative about Anthony in return. I did enjoy Here We Go Troublemaker. I did enjoy Bourdain's show and I don't want to speak ill of the dead. You can speak ill of the dead with me. Just because you're dead, it doesn't turn you into a saint. But the fact is that while Billy Joel was busy making great music and dating supermodels, Anthony Bourdain was a homeless, heroin addicted line cook. I hate to say it, but it's the truth. Love you, Troublemaker. Hi Maureen. Thank you for discussing Billy Joel on the Nerve. I lived and worked in Japan for several years. While I consider it my second home, it was definitely a very challenging time Personally and professionally. I rediscovered Billy during that time and the Stranger in particular was my soundtrack for those years. He is truly an American great. Agreed with you. Hello, Maureen. Good afternoon. All the way from Manchester, England. Hello. I knew I had found my tribe at the Nerve from the very beginning. And then you started to talk about Billy Joel. My earliest memory of his music was around seven or eight years old. Uptown Girl was number one here in the uk. It would show up on Top of the Pops every week and her mom would race upstairs, put on her fur coat and come back down and I would laugh my head off as she is no longer with us. It's a memory I cherish. I am probably the only Billy Joel fan I've ever met, but watching your show yesterday, it was like I finally found the other members of the secret club that I am already a member of. Who needs cool when you've got Billy Joel? Agreed. Now I also got some killer art in my inbox from you troublemakers this week. First, I want to show you three images of Anna Wintour that were sent in by troublemaker Jarrett. First name only. This is one. Anna Freed of her editor in chief perch at Vogue and now freed of the shackles of lifelong calorie restriction. Just my supposition. And you know, perhaps Anna is girding her loins for The Devil Wears Prada 2, which is shooting now and potentially undergoing some rewrites now that Anna is no longer in her position of power, as I call it. It's like they found Saddam Hussein in the spider hole. Anna found her out in the wild eating some pizza. Thank you, troublemaker Jarrett. We also got this decree from troublemaker Laba, which I died. I died. This scroll, and we're showing it to you now, reads, by the power vested in the troublemakers, we banish those who test our patients. To the woodshed. To the woodshed where our new wing is currently under construction. Two more of your emails. One from a troublemaker. And this is such a great observation. I think there's something almost like, I mean, again, we're a baby show, but you guys are so active on the YouTube feed and we're working on other areas for everyone to to go and talk to each other and for me to talk to you outside of the show or Instagram, but it's almost like we take it for granted because we all are of like minds. This troublemaker made a point in this email to me to remark upon. I'm going to call her Andrea S. Troublemaker number one. You might have to fight for that crown. But I'll give it to you just about the level of discourse among all of us, she says. Maureen, I do hope you know just how clever your Troublemaker audience is. Trust me, I do, I do. She goes on. Yes, there are a plethora of podcasts, great word plethora and silos of podcast audience community. But just quietly, in my opinion, most of them are too dumb for words. Literally too dumb to write a lucid sentence. On other YouTube channels, the stream of content comments on the episodes are mostly a giant cesspool of self confessional crap which we here at the Nerve are dedicated to eradicating. It's a lifelong mission. Now furthermore, in your Troublemaker comment section on YouTube, we don't go after each other in the individual reply comments. This matters. Yes, completely. We're unicorns over here. There aren't long running lists of replies in the comments with people beating each other up. Trust me, Maureen, this is all over YouTube. But not on the Nerve. I also like that you invite us to share, to email you whatever we think is relevant. I mean, of course, what are we doing here if not that? Okay. And finally, from a troublemaker named Leah, a query. And I'm liking the way you're thinking about a potential future Nerve con. Maureen found you on YouTube. I love this. You make me enjoy the English language again. Thank you. Anyway, my question is, what would be your vision for the Nerve Con? That is, if and when it happens, Smiley face. You know, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna work towards that. I can't make any promises, but we're gonna work towards it. You know, we troublemakers would eventually want to assemble and meet you in person. Same. I would love to meet all of you guys in person. So again, email or DM me and think. Tell me, tell. Tell us all at Team Nerve what your ideal nerve con would look like, where it would be held, what the talks and events would be like. We want to know all about it so we can begin brainstorming. Final note, as ever, sayonara to Harry and Meghan's Netflix deal. We'll pop some champagne over that next week. And again, we're just waiting for your thoughts so you know where to go to deliver those. We will see you this weekend over at the Mini, where we are doing a deep dive into the dark side of reality tv. And this, this has been in the headlines. And again, it bleeds out whether this is a genre you particularly care for or not, or whether this is a show you particularly care for or not. We are seeing the ripple effects in, in the real world. And it's something I think it's, it's imperative that we all pay attention to and push against. So I hope to see you guys over at the Mini tomorrow. That drops at 10am on YouTube. Again, the minis for the moment are only on YouTube. So we will see you over there for our weekly weekend coffee date and then we'll see you on the other side of that, you troublemakers. And we will reconvene next week's Full Nerve on Tuesday. Join us here again at the Nerve, where you will never guess what we're about to say next. We can't gatekeep this any longer. The secret to adding easy, delicious protein to your meals is Gorton Seafood. That's right, America's oldest and most beloved frozen seafood brand is your protein. Go to with so many easy prep fish and shrimp products like their classic fish sticks or their new Double Crunch Shrimp. If you want to keep protein a part of your routine and enjoy restaurant quality at home, look for Gortons in the freezer aisle. Visit www.gortons.com to learn more, find a store and get recipe inspiration.