Nicky Morris - Dramatherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: Empowering and Nurturing people through Creativity

It is a privilege to write the foreword to this much-needed book.

There is no cure for borderline personality disorder and for years it was not considered treatable. This has been challenged in recent years and now NHS Choices (website), The Department of Health and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines recommend the implementation of arts therapies, including dramatherapy for BPD.

In this book Nicky Morris, a dramatherapist and expert in this field, recounts her work with this population of clients. Her ability to have enduring compassion and empathy for this often maligned group of people needed to be written about. As Nicky writes in the introduction to this book, They have suffered enough and this is a crucial part of the motivation for writing this book.

The book is the first of its kind to explore the use of dramatherapy in assisting those with BPD to find solace, to understand themselves further, and to find elements of peace and some meaning in their lives through creative expression. The clients pain is often expressed through maladjusted behaviour, including at times life-threatening self-harm. This pain that is so bonded with self means that change requires a new identity, which can be uniquely explored through dramatherapy to alter and incorporate new ways of being. Dramatherapy offers the possibility of finding meaning where the tussle between life and death is paramount, particularly through the exploration of story and myth. Self-harm, so often at the core of this disorder, has many reasons and effects but brutally reveals and communicates the pain and distress of the person. Nicky cites Kellogg and Young describing the life of a person with BPD as a kind of inner theater in which the forces of cruelty, rage, submission, and self-numbing each take their turn on the stage. Dramatherapy offers a space through the medium of drama and theatre to try out other ways of managing the trauma.

Other therapies used in the treatment of BPD are documented, together with the history of dramatherapy. The huge and very real impact on practitioners working with this client group and ways to manage the anxiety and maintain hope in the face of adversity are discussed. Self-harm and challenges to relationships through fear and mistrust can be very difficult for the therapist to withstand and Nicky writes of the struggle of practitioners working with these people who have experienced such depth of emotional pain how such valiant efforts can be met with recurring symptoms and subsequent lack of hope. Nicky does not shy away from exploring the grief so many of these clients have felt and feel and the reality of death in a population of people where one of ten completes suicide.

This book beautifully tells the story of Nickys work with these traumatised people and gives voice to those with BPD, incorporating poems and words from service users. This enormously important book is written by a dramatherapist, poet, actor and mother who meets her clients with her uniqueness as a human being and most of all her love.

Kate McCormack
Senior Dramatherapist at The Bethlem Royal Hospital