Kiera Van Gelder's The Buddha & the Borderline Press Kit

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Earlita Chenault [email protected]

“If you met me, you’d never suspect the suicide attempts, hospitalizations, and diagnoses. But if you saw me in a relationship, you’d know something isn’t quite right. I’m always good in the beginning, but after that fi rst fl ush of romance, my

lipstick will be smeared like a clown’s and I’ll revert to the dismay of a child lost in the department store,

curled up and wailing on the fl oor.

THE BUDDHA & THE BORDERLINE is the riveting account of Kiera Van Gelder’s struggle with borderline personality disorder (BPD), a condition that affects more than ten million Americans and which for most of Kiera’s life went undiagnosed.

Shrouded in mystery, BPD is considered by many to be the most stigmatized of all psychiatric disorders, and only recently have treatments like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) been developed for this “incurable” condition that causes chaotic and unstable moods, self-injury and/or suicide attempts, and reckless, impulsive behavior. Kiera’s story is one of a young woman who, despite being a star athlete and prize winning artist at a prestigious boarding school, ended up addicted to drugs and living on the streets by age seventeen.

Even after numerous hospitalizations, diagnosis and treatments, it would be almost twenty years before Kiera learned about the condition at the root of her lifelong emotional pain and received effective treatment for it. In The Buddha & the Borderline she offers an intimate look into her struggle, as an adult, to gain control over her emotions and reclaim her life through DBT, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and Buddhism.

Now an international advocate and educator, Kiera reveals how the combination of education, support, treatment, and spirituality taught her to transform such BPD symptoms as self-destruction, self-hatred, and anger into a compassionate kinship with all human beings. The reader will come away not only with an understanding of what recovery involves, but with the belief that recovery is possible for anyone willing to learn and grow.

“[A] triumphant account of coping with an elusive mental disorder.” — Publishers Weekly

A fascinating inside look at what it’s like to live with borderline personality disorder.

Kiera’s

Inspirational

Story

NEXT: About the Author & Suggested Interview Questions

THE BUDDHA & THE BORDERLINEMy Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder Through

Dialectical behavior Therapy, Buddhism & Online Dating

Kiera Van Gelder / August 2010

ISBN-13: 978-1-57224-7109 / Paperback/ $17.95 / 6 x 9 / 280 pp

Photo by David Tucker


KIERA VAN GELDER, MFA, is an artist, educator, and writer diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. An international

speaker and seasoned conference presenter, she is featured in the documentary “Back from the Edge: Living With and Recovering From Borderline Personality Disorder.” As one of the nation’s foremost BPD advocates, she is endorsed by and collaborates with leading academic and mental health experts, while her unique blend of candor, wit and lived experience has made her a much sought after media fi gure. Trained in dialectical behavior therapy, Kiera is also a practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism. Currently she lives in Massachusetts at a Buddhist meditation center. For additional information, please visit www.buddhaandborderline.com and www.kieravangelder.com.

“To those looking from the outside, it might seem this illness took possession one day out of the blue, as signaled by some specifi c behavior: Kiera’s cutting herself; Kiera’s doing drugs; Kiera shaved her head. But that’s part of the whole problem—no one saw, knew, or understood how long I was suffering and sick. Even my mother thinks it started later, when I went to the private school and began cutting and burning myself. But I disagree. As soon as I read the symptoms, I realize the seed was there all along, watered by pain, secrets, and inattention, and by my own desperate need for relief.” — Kiera Van Gelder

1. What is borderline personality disorder (BPD)?

2. In your memoir The Buddha & the Borderline you call it “the disease that dare not speak its name.” Why is that?

3. Looking back, when would you say you fi rst started to display symptoms of BPD?

4. You attended the prestigious private school Groton. How did having BPD affect your behavior during this time of your life?

5. What effect did your symptoms have on your family and how did they respond?

6. You found out many years later that you were diagnosed with BPD, but the doctor chose not to tell you or your family. Do you have any idea why a doctor would keep a diagnosis a secret in that way?

7. What were the years between when you were secretly diagnosed and formally diagnosed like?

8. What led to you fi nally getting the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder?

9. How did you react to this diagnosis?

Continued on next page



THE BUDDHA AND THE BORDERLINE

My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through

Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

Photo by David Tucker

Suggested

Interview

Questions





About the

Author


10. When did you fi rst attempt suicide? What was that time of your life like? What drove you to that point?

11. You have also battled alcohol and drug addiction. Did addiction

contribute to your BPD, or was it a result of the BPD?

12. In spite of the debilitating symptoms of BPD, you were often extremely functional. How was that possible?

13. If you could give advice to parents or other family members of someone with BPD, how would you advise them to help their loved one?

14. What is dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)? How did DBT help you cope with your condition?

15. You became an international advocate for borderline personality disor-der at a time when no one admited to having the condition. What has that processs been like?

16. What is it like to now have “come out” with such a personal and candid memoir?

18. Your book describes your introduction to Buddhism. What fi rst attracted you to this practice?

19. How has Buddhism contributed to your recovery?

20. What do you hope readers of your book learn from your story?







Suggested

Interview

Questions

NEXT: Excerpt from The Buddha & the Borderline


My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior

Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

The Facts About BPD

*BPD affl icts approximately 12 million Americans

*BPD is more common than schizophrenia

*10% of adults with BPD commit suicide

*55-85% of adults with BPD self-injure

*A 30-year old woman with BPD typically has the medical profi le of a woman in her 60s

*Over 50% of people with BPD are severely impaired in employability

*BPD is implicated in 17% of the prison population

*38% of those with BPD have substance abuse/de-pendence disorders

Source: Research presentations at NEA-BPD Conferences 2002-2010 (www.borderlinepersonalitydis-order.com) National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, May 2010


I am fi fteen when I meet a boy named Jimmy at the summer arts program. We smoke hash in the graveyard at the far end of the Bennington campus. We dare each other to order margaritas at the local Mexican restaurant, and when we are actually served, share

salty kisses over plates of rice and beans. I give him a blow job in the back of a classroom, and he says he has feelings for me but he doesn’t know what they are. Jimmy is pale and wears eyeliner and is as close to a boyfriend as I’ve ever gotten. When he confesses he has a “real” girlfriend back in New York, I spend a long evening sniffi ng liquid paper out of a plastic bag. Passing out and waking up to the exploding lights in my head, I fi nally throw up my dinner.

I consider cutting off my pinkie fi nger and giving it to him. I’d go to the art studio where they have those paper cutters with three-foot blades. Lop it off, wrap it up. Here. Look what you’ve done to me. You’re leaving me, and taking me with you. But I like my fi ngers. Even the somewhat useless pinkies.

So instead I make myself bleed, as I’ve learned to do. The instrument can’t be too sharp, or it will go too deep and sever important bits. It can’t be so blunt as to be useless. I like the thin, fl exible razor blades that can be taken off a disposable plastic shaver—ubiquitous and easy to remove from the plastic casing. I enjoy the slide of metal into giving skin. Each line eases the rage and sharpens the colors of the room. Regular cutting means you have to rotate the areas, so as not to overtax the skin too much: forearm, then wrist, then upper arm, then back to the forearm. After the razor passes over, there’s a moment before the blood when the faintest fi lm of clear liquid rises, as though the fl esh itself is weeping for you. Then garnet beads of blood rise and elongate into the thin tracks you’ve laid between pain and release.

I wipe and blot the wounds with the calm patience that always follows the bloodletting and think, I could paint with this. I could write with this. I must have cut a lot—enough blood to fi ll fi ve notebook pages with fi nger-painted words: “Please.” “Don’t leave me.” “I need you.” I put the wet pages on the fl oor to dry. In the morning, the large words are maroon and waxy, with my fi ngerprints captured at the beginning and end of each letter’s stroke. The pages go into an envelope with Jimmy’s name, and the letter is placed on his bed in the neighboring dorm. I have known him two weeks.

After lunch, I am pulled from poetry class by the counselor. In a degree-paneled offi ce, the stack of papers sits on the desk like a thesis I must now defend. The counselor asks me why I’d do such a thing. I cannot explain it. I have no words. “Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment” does not readily come to mind. And if this counselor sees borderline personality disorder, he doesn’t say it. He calls my mother. She drives to the campus and they talk. Then she goes back home.

Prologue(1985)








My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical

Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating

Kiera Van Gelder


(continued)

I remain at the program but must agree to check in with the counselor during the last two weeks. He gives me back the blood letter, perhaps

to remind me that it holds a part of myself that I am always infl icting on others, a part of myself I am always throwing away.

Years later I ask my mother, “What were you thinking when you drove away?”

She says, “Adolescence is always diffi cult; I thought maybe it was just a phase.” She says, “I didn’t know what to do; the whole thing was overwhelming.” She says, “The counselor told me you would be okay.”

The truth is, I have borderline personality disorder. But it will take many therapists, many diagnoses, many medications, and many treatments before a name is put to this suffering and I can start down the path to recovery.

This is the story of how it happened.





Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating, by Kiera Van Gelder

NEXT: Kiera Van Gelder photo history





Prologue(1985)

• Prologue: (1985 fl ashback, age 15) in which Kiera suffers from all the BPD symptoms as a teenager but doesn’t know it.

• Part I: Love Bird (2000-2001, age 30-31) in which Kiera has her umpteenth breakdown and fi nally gets the right diagnosis

• Part II: Last Resort (2001, age 31) in which Kiera spends the summer institutionalized three times and attends a cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) outpatient program. In fall, she begins therapy with a new DBT trained therapist and starts to regain a foothold.

• Part III: Shifts in Light (2002, age 32) in which Kiera attends DBT group and therapy, gets a job, a boyfriend, a room of her own and learns to ride a motorcycle.

• Part IV: Emergence (2002-4, age 33-34) in which Kiera learns to keep a job, experience her feelings, deal with her issues, practice mindfulness and not freak out on her boyfriend.

• Part V: Transformation of Suffering (2004-2006, age 34-36) in which Kiera discovers Buddhism, becomes engaged, breaks off engagement, returns to online dating, and eventually fi nds her place and purpose within a community of Tibetan Buddhists.

Timeline






Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating, by Kiera Van Gelder





Life in

pictures

Above, Kiera, aged 5, with her brother Ben.

As a 14 year-old student at Groton School

Above, Halloween 1978. Below in 1989.

Kiera Van Gelder today

Below, Kiera at age 15, when The

Buddha & the Borderline begin

In 2005, at the race trackGraduating from Empire State College, 1995 2008

Lett, Kiera in1985, captain of the varsity

soccer team

Below Kiera at age 18, after fi rst hospitalization.

Kiera Van Gelder's The Buddha & the Borderline Press Kit

Spiritual

Transcript of Kiera Van Gelder's The Buddha & the Borderline Press Kit