346 SelfWork: Borderline Personality Disorder, Guilt, and Building Boundaries

Today I’m offering something different for you. No commercials. Just me and you talking. I’ve said before on SelfWork that I’ve seen so many people become paralyzed in their decision -making about what course or direction they should follow. Hopefully, through my own story of discovering my own potential, you’ll get a taste of what I’ve learned works – which is to simply “go.” Go in a direction – any direction that puts itself in front of you. At least that’s healthy and productive. Learn from that. And keep going. Sometimes you have to pick yourself up from disappointments. But you learn every time.

And you'll hear at the end my own exciting announcement of my TEDxBocaRaton talk now being available on YouTube! I'll hope you can watch!

Vital Links:

Here's the link to my TEDx talk! Just click here!Episode Transcript

This is SelfWork, and I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. At SelfWork, we'll discuss psychological and emotional issues common in today's world and what to do about them. I'm Dr. Margaret and SelfWork is a podcast dedicated to you taking just a few minutes today for your own selfwork.

Hello and welcome to SelfWork. I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. I'm so glad you're here today. I am offering something different for you. No commercials, just me and you talking. I've said before on SelfWork that I've seen so many people become paralyzed in their decision making about what course or direction they should follow. Hopefully, through my own story that I'll tell today of self-discovery, you'll get a taste of what I've learned works, which is just simply go, go in a direction, any direction that puts itself in front of you, at least that's healthy and productive. You learn from that and then you keep going, and I have an announcement to make of something I'm more than honored to tell you is now available.

Potential. It's one of those words that would come up, especially for my mom when my life wasn't going so well. "But you have so much potential.," she'd say to me. At least at that time, it felt like I was being chastised, certainly not supported. But I think I was wrong. I was the one who felt so bad about me that I couldn't see any potential. So today is a story about me being open to discovering potential in myself, and hopefully my story will make sense for you.

You know me as Dr. Margaret who does this podcast. Maybe you know, I'm the author of Perfectly Hidden Depression. What you may not know is that I never actually wanted to write a book. Never dreamed of hosting a podcast. I'd never had ambitions to be known for something. Well, you know, that's not quite true. When I was much younger, I thought I'd be a famous opera star, but that wasn't in the cards for me.

But I've come to love being a therapist and a mom and a wife, , and my husband would quickly note the order of those things like, oh, I'm last . And you know, I was quite happy doing that. I'd found my potential, at least I thought I had.

I began writing online when my son had gone to college because I had time on my hands and my husband was undergoing a medical treatment. So that was really new for me. I'd always liked writing emails and things, but I'd never considered myself an author. But I needed to do something while I was being with my husband and a woman here locally that I knew Jeanette is her first name. She's basically a coach for inventors and entrepreneurs taught me about online stuff. I didn't even know what a link was when I began. That was back in 2012.

That's when I started a blog about empty nest and then pretty quickly started writing about mental health. The writing was fun. So I thought, "Okay, this fills my time." And hopefully, as I say on the podcast, I was extending the walls of my practice to those who wanted to read what I had to say and maybe learn a little bit more about therapy and mental health treatment. But in 2014, I was sitting and thinking about the people I'd seen who'd walked into my office, not telling me they were depressed, but saying things like, "I'm not sure what's wrong. I probably don't even need to be here." Or some such story. What they all had in common was an inability to express painful emotion. In fact, they might be telling you about something that was even traumatic, but they'd be smiling as if they were telling me what they'd had for lunch.

They were completely detached from their pain, like they had their anger or sadness or shame stuck so far back that it was as if that pain didn't exist. It was weird to watch, and I had to begin to tune in very closely to what these people were saying and not pay as much attention to how they were saying it. So again, on that afternoon in 2014, I literally grabbed a name from out of the air when I was titling the piece and called it the Perfectly Hidden D...