Kiera Van Gelder Quotes

#1. Accepting a psychiatric diagnosis is like a religious conversion. It's an adjustment in cosmology, with all its accompanying high priests, sacred texts, and stories of religion. And I am, for better or worse, an instant convert.

Kiera Van Gelder

#2. For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned - and in this case branded with a label no one would ever choose to wear.

Kiera Van Gelder

#3. Connection gives us our life, yet it also threatens to take it from us.

Kiera Van Gelder

#4. All you want is love and belonging, and your very existence depends on it. But when you get it, you have no existence except that love; there's still no you.

Kiera Van Gelder

#5. But what if you simply don't have a solid self to return to - if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can't conceive of "normal" or "healthy" because pain and loneliness are all you remember?

Kiera Van Gelder

#6. Yet I also recognize this: Even if everyone in the world were to accept me and my illness and validate my pain, unless I can abide myself and be compassionate toward my own distress, I will probably always feel alone and neglected by others.

Kiera Van Gelder

#7. I'm so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself.

Kiera Van Gelder

#8. All the skills from DBT glom together, a mass of acronyms without any meaning. I pull out the DBT books and paw through the pages. Something has to help. Then I find these words: 'The lives of suicidal, borderline individuals are unbearable as they currently being lived.

Kiera Van Gelder

#9. We do not deserve to be trapped in hell. It isnt our fault.

Kiera Van Gelder

#10. Ironically, the word "borderline" has become the most perfect expression of my experience - the experience of being in two places at once: disordered and perfect.

Kiera Van Gelder

#11. recognizing how even poison is a form of medicine when used the right way.

Kiera Van Gelder

#12. An inner ease spreads inside me. Such is the power of acceptance and understanding from other people, the power of validation

Kiera Van Gelder

#13. Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs.

Kiera Van Gelder

#14. I need them to be aware and present with me in the midst of the storm, not just tell me what to do.

Kiera Van Gelder