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ok, I have read and read and read, I still don't think I totally grasp what is meant by sense of self. Am asking for all yall good explainers to help me with the concept or maybe some examples

I  easily see self hatred in my stbexw as she has told me over and over and written horribly about herself in journaling, then all this hatred now is turned on me and alternately her mom and dad, my mom etc.  But those seem like severe lack of self esteem which from my understanding is different from a sense of self

A stable sense of self means knowing who you are, what you like, what your boundaries are etc.  We all go through a process of finding out who we are before it clicks into place. It never does for a borderline. They are a chameleon - doing whatever it takes to fit in and secure an attachment i.e. 'mirroring' the likes and dislikes of the love object - thus appearing to be the perfect soulmate you met during the idealisation phase.


Hope this helps.


Fanny

Hey ck, who are you?  You have a pretty good idea of who you are and who you aren't, yes?  That image you have of yourself may not be accurate, but at least you have it and it doesn't change much, yes?  A borderline has one of those too, a self-image, but it's unstable, so who a borderline thinks they are changes, sometimes rapidly, sometimes drastically, which is why folks here report their ex could seem like a "completely different person", depending on whom they are with and what they're doing.  Can you relate to that?

But that sounds more like multiple personality disorder?

Mine changes between capable warm confident to angry/incompetent/suspicious... But this part is hidden and done well so really I am the only one who sees it besides kids but they are too young to grasp it.

That could be helpful, multiple personalities are multiple senses of self, sometimes they're not even aware of each other, sometimes they are; you could consider them the superachievers of sense of self, or selves.  Borderlines only have one sense of self, an unstable one.  But think about it, it's a matter of degree: we all have "moods" and sometimes call ourselves a 'hero', sometimes an 'idiot', but who we are to ourselves is relatively stable, for a borderline it's not, when a borderline sees themselves as worthless, they have always been that way and can't see another, same with feeling like they're on top of the world, they have always been that way and can't see another, no grounding, no home base.

Everyone has this idea of a true self.

Usually various trauma throughout anyone's life puts up internal walls for protection.

These walls are usually a type of false self. You can say codependency traits is a type of false self.

Depending how severe and how long they have been nurturing it,  the false self can totally override the real self underneath.

Take a BPD for example, their self is stemmed from their romantic partner.

What they like, their demeanor, etc. That is why the idealization is so intoxicating, the self they are portraying is your own.

Have you ever noticed that a pwBPD is an emotional amplifier? When you are happy they are 10x happier, when grumpy 10x grumpier, etc. This is because they don't have a solid self to stand on. As the relationship progress it becomes more and more difficult for a pwBPD to mirror this self. This is why the relationship is eventually hollow as you don't even know the real person underneath, you can't tell the real for the projected.

But that sounds more like multiple personality disorder?

cootkilla,

A pwMPD (multiple personality disorder) actually has a core, whole self; unfortunately, they have many other self's as well. But, they own all of them; their self's are not contingent upon who they are in contact with at the time (Simply put, self's are owned, not borrowed).

A pwBPD has an incomplete/fractured self. When a pwBPD mirrors another person it is their attempt at becoming whole; it is a borrowing of that self. A pwBPD essentially goes through life trying to replicate that first initial bond that they had with their primary caregiver, which either during the attachment or detachment phase (depending on which camp you're in) went terribly wrong for the pwBPD. A pwBPD was whole during this initial bond (in the quoted material in cosmonaut's post, this is Masterson's "fused pair." Unfortunately, they never developed an identity beyond that caregiver; hence, they never developed an autonomous self. This is the core of the "attachment" component of the disorder, which occured before the age of three. We were all afflicted with BPD at one point in our lives, and that was/is normal. (This is why a BPD diagnosis cannot be given in early childhood.)