Alisa Valdes and Borderline Personality Disorder

Alisa Valdes spoke at Collected Works Bookstore the other night about her new book, “The Feminist and the Cowboy.”  A few days later, her blog post, “Shit Borderline Moms Say,” popped up in a Google Alert.  Her borderline mom lives in Santa Fe, naturally.

New Post: The Alisa Valdes Magic Show

At least 3,000 people struggle with borderline personality here in Santa Fe, according to epidemiological surveys of mental illness across the United States.  I would argue that the borderline population in Santa Fe is much larger, because Santa Fe has become a Mecca for people struggling with the identity issues.  Lacking a stable personal identity, some borderlines try to create an identity by linking themselves to a specific location.
Research suggests that a major cause of personality disorders is having a parent who is psychotic or borderline.  The specific disorder a child will develop is dependent on how the child was used by his or her toxic mother.  Some mothers use their children to give themselves an identity—“I am a perfect mother and this is my perfect child.”  Such children grow up self absorbed and narcissistic.

Other mothers ignore and devalue, blaming their child for everything that goes wrong.  These mother project their own bad feelings onto their child.  When a child’s own feelings and emotions are constantly invalidated, the child fails to develop a cohesive identity and remains emotionally stuck in childhood, which is why borderline women often act like two-year-olds. 

Alisa Valdes says she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in 2011.  The blogasphere is now filled with stories about her borderline love affair with a Texas cowboy.  It turns out her Rambo was in fact a rapist.  Or was he?  She loved him.  Or she hated him.  It’s a borderline thing. 

Borderline women are sometimes drawn to men with caretaker personalities.  Virtually all the women who have been sexually abused by their psychiatrists have been borderline.  Caretakers, like therapists, are willing to tolerate the roller coaster emotions of borderline women.

Alisa hates caretaker personalities.  She loved them once, but not anymore.  Now she says they are weak and emasculated and calls them “icky liberal men.” 

In her book talk at Collected Works, she said she now rejects liberal Marxist feminism and embraces female submission to a perfect macho man.  Her book describes her brief borderline love affair with her middle-aged Republican cowboy.  He was her perfect macho soul mate.

Alisa’s father is an outstanding scholar and emeritus professor at UNM.  Years ago, I took his graduate level course on the history and sociology of Cuba, the country of his birth.  He was certainly idiosyncratic, and his clothes were obviously not his priority.  He once came to class for an entire week with trouser legs of different lengths. 

He has an encyclopedic knowledge of Cuba and expects his students to master the assigned readings and do independent research.  His lectures included everything from a discussion of mob influence in pre-revolutionary Cuba to stories of how mothers living near the Bay of Pigs began naming their newborns “Usnavy” after witnessing the failed invasion. 

I loved his class, but many students did not.  Fifty percent of the student evaluations on “Rate the Professor” label him a poor teacher.  These students complain that he did not lecture from the textbook and that he did not teach to the test.  These complaints are childish, in my view.  Adult students should not expect spoon-feeding in a graduate level course. 

The Professor had a reputation for being a ladies' man.  One fellow student said he “is just another macho Cuban, like Desi Arnaz.”  Indeed, the Professor himself alluded to Cuban machismo when he told us how the CIA found it impossible to maintain security at the mercenary training camp they set up in Mexico for Cuban exiles preparing for the invasion.  Despite a camp lockdown, Cuban trainees would sneak into town every night to hook up with women of easy virtue.  Cuban machismo was all about courage and sex.

Another classmate did not know much about economics, so I loaned her “Elementary Price Theory” by Peter Dooley.  One day she told me she had a crush on our professor, and was delighted when he began inviting her out for coffee and more.  

I wonder if Alisa’s search for the perfect macho man is a search for somebody just like dear old dad.

Alisa describes her relationship with her cowboy in typical “I hate you, don’t leave me” borderline style.  She loved him.  He was her master.  Then she hated him.  He was her monster. 

Finally, she imagined that her cowboy was planning to murder her.  She literally runs away, fleeing into the arms of the next perfect lover.  She sounds just like Sally, my borderline fiancée in Santa Fe.  Every borderline’s story is completely different, but their pathological behavior is exactly the same. 

The borderline relationship Alisa describes in her book was just another failed relationship.  Every partner was perfect until he was not.  Each man was her hero.  Then he was zero.  It is of course not her fault.  Nothing is ever her fault.  It’s a borderline thing.

Alisa complains that her publisher is not supportive now that she has told her truth about her cowboy.  Like all borderlines, she feels empty and unloved.  Any failure to give unconditional support is experienced by her as total betrayal and rejection.  She feels just like she did when her mother failed to support her when she was a little girl.  Whenever she feels traumatized, she must act out.  She has no other coping skills. 

It has happened before.  In 2000, Valdes accused her employer, The St. Petersburg Times, of racism and discrimination.  Her accusations were contained in the snotty tirade that was her letter of resignation.  She claimed that the paper’s use of the word “Latino” is a form of genocide.  The word “Latino” was bad. 

Alisa now runs a Latina Book Club and is Latina Magazine’s Woman of the Year.  Latina is empowering.  Latina is good.  Black is white and white is black.  It’s a borderline thing.

The trauma that a borderline mother inflicts on her daughter is devastating to the child’s emotional development.  Unless someone comes to the child’s aid, the victimized little girl remains emotionally stuck in the earliest years of childhood, reacting for the rest of her life as if she was a defenseless little girl.  Borderline women never overcome the damage their mothers have inflicted on them.  With proper therapy, however, they can learn how to cope.

My heart goes out to Alisa and I wish her well, even if that makes me another emasculated icky liberal man.

Alisa's "borderline thing" continues in the comments section below...