Those who need to feel safe and loved the most and eventually to form part of a caring community are those labeled with a borderline personality. Psychiatry has created a description that seems to doom a large group of these marginalized people to an eternal hell of segregation, confinement, homelessness, incarcerations, drugs designed to snow and turn living beings into robot-like creatures. The broad antiseptic diagnosis ends up being an almost hopeless one with a bleak prognosis. Their life stories are a litany of sorrow—abuse, neglect, molestation, rape, beatings, spousal fights, segregation and eventually dismissal from school, incarceration, promiscuity, self-harm, and then the continuation of their adult lives in a manner similar to what the very person had gone through in their childhood. The two hallmark of Gentle Teaching are sharply tested in this regard. The diagnosis is dire, but the need to feel safe and loved, therefore, makes it even more vital to teach.

Their stories make it very hard for them to learn the meaning of safe and loved, but they need it much more than most. It is a process of creating multiple opportunities that focus on:

  • “I am safe… We are safe”
  • The focus continues to shine on each person, but also the group;
  • The purpose is to create a caring community in which each and all feel safe and loved and reach out to one another