I once dated a man with borderline personality disorder. At one point, he told me that it broke his heart to see what I was not, what I hadn’t become, how small my life was, how I had squandered my brains and looks. This unsolicited mourning of a fantastical me (a behaviour indicative of co-dependency, which frequently occurs alongside BPD) was my first inkling that something was very wrong. We had bonded over having been in the trenches of childhood abuse together.
He too knew the darkness, intimately; instinctively, we spoke one another’s language, like siblings do. Yet there was also a darkness in his disparagement of the objectively good place that, against the odds of the ACE score, had become my reality, a darkness that would expand and soon permeate every aspect of our togetherness.
In the aftermath of this relationship, I learned more about BPD and its overlaps with CPTSD. I concluded that while I had traits of the former, my symptoms overall added up to the latter.
Since cutting off contact with my family of origin a decade ago, my life had grown and healed in ways I never dared hope for, which is indicative of the context-dependent activation of triggers that is characteristic of CPTSD but not BPD (Martin 2026). Nonetheless, the point raised by my ex-partner – who would you be had it not been for your horrendous childhood – touched a nerve and remains difficult to explore. Partly, this is due to the fact that since day one of my professional life, I had aimed to perform and succeed ‘as if’ – as if everything was, and had always been, hunky-dory. The achievements that ensued from that mindset, and from working as if my life depended on it (which, on reflection, it did, as I was unable to maintain a relationship, and relying on my family of origin was not an option), meant that over the years, I would increasingly find myself in rarefied settings, rubbing shoulders with the super-rich.
At home with the homeless
I had arrived, it would seem, I had made it, at least professionally. But there is a paradox to flourishing as a survivor of childhood abuse. Mingling with highly accomplished and confident people can seem like a betrayal to an inner child who is certain that this is not where we belong. On a social continuum that extends from homeless junkies via those crippled by personality disorders and suffering from CPTSD to those whose emotional and financial affairs are in marvelous shape, is our tribe not that of Gabor Maté’s hungry ghosts?
Pitiful, revolting, filthy, broken addicts whose stench and existential hopelessness are but a stomach-churning testament to the severity of the crimes committed against their younger selves, a deafening silent scream the world cannot ignore, however hard it tries. No, their wordless reproach goes, I am not okay, and neither were the things that happened when I was a child, nor is the fact that nobody cared to ask questions, let alone intervene. Now look away already, you know you want to.
According to my inner child, it is with these people, like with my BPD ex, with whom I will always share an instinctive, kin-like belonging. In contrast, interacting with emotionally healthy, high-functioning, and immaculately groomed folks while nibbling unpronounceable foods at swanky dos involves painstakingly learning a whole new language.
This, foreign to me, idiom is the shibboleth to social and emotional mobility of dizzying proportions, a leap into the world of generations of professional triumph and familial stability. My blending into these circles is the ultimate ‘as if’, an overcoming of childhood adversity so enormous that my inner child feels invisible, more so as the language barrier works both ways: these graceful sophisticates are protected from many of life’s trials through not just their wealth but by many-layered, strong personal bonds and professional networks, and the permanent severing of family ties is not just a delicate and ugly taboo subject but indeed, beyond comprehension and unfathomable.
Connectedness is everything, and so is family. This is a healthy sphere, seemingly with no concept, let alone first-hand knowledge, of the darkness. Of course, my fitting in here is only skin-deep, and my healing only partial. My private life remains non-existent, a vacuum so obvious that it too is a silent scream, telling the untellable story, making sure the inner child does not go ignored.
The best revenge
And then I kept investing in my recovery. I am incredibly grateful to be alive at a time when I could stumble across the transformative works of Bessel van der Kolk and Richard Schwartz, among others. Eventually, my private life too began to heal, but only after I made a deal with my inner child, telling her that while my life will more and more look ‘as if’, the past will never be denied or forgotten. And that the best revenge is a life well lived.
Alice Segell is a pseudonym. The author is a wife, researcher, writer and survivor.
References:
Martin, Mozelle (2026), ‘When Dysregulation is not what First Appears: Differentiating BPD, CPTSD with Attachment Dysregulation, Trauma-Bonded Anxious Attachment, Chronic Pain Identity, and Long-Term Instability’, https://cptsdfoundation.org/2026/03/24/when-dysregulation-is-not-what-first-appears-differentiating-bpd-cptsd-with-attachment-dysregulation-trauma-bonded-anxious-attachment-chronic-pain-identity-and-long-term-instability/.
Maté, Gabor (2009), In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction, Random House Canada.
Schwartz, Richard C. (2023), Introduction to Internal Family Systems: A Revolutionary Therapy for Wholeness & Healing, Vermilion.
van der Kolk, Bessel (2014), The Body Keeps the Score, Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Penguin.
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Alice Segell is a pseudonym. The author is a wife, researcher, writer and survivor.