What defines borderline personality disorder?

Individuals with this psychopathology have much difficulty with self-regulation; the regulation of their own emotional state. A lot of people with BPD also have depression and many are suicidal. Often, they have a history of feeling attacked or uncared for. They are almost hypersensitive to perceived threats from others.

They can react almost with a hair trigger if they feel that they are being attacked, and they are likely to respond with counterattack. People with BPD can be so preoccupied by their own sense of not being cared for and not being understood that they become blind to the impact of their own behavior on others.

Psychotic, psychopathic, or neither?

On Thanksgiving weekend 1991, Nelson bludgeoned pilot William Nelson, her much-older husband whom she married after a four-week courtship, in their Costa Mesa apartment.

Then she skinned the torso, cooked the decapitated head and fried the hands in oil. She was arrested after she stuffed some of her husband’s body parts into garbage bags and offered a friend $75,000 to help her with the disposal.

Omaima Nelson contended her husband beat and raped her regularly, and said she killed him after a particularly brutal assault. A psychologist testified that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and said she was psychotic.

She was convicted of second-degree murder in January 1993 and sentenced to 28 years to life.

The background story: Omaima was born in Saudi Arabia. When she was just six years old, her father ordered her circumcision. She said she screamed and screamed until some older brothers had to tie her down for them to perform this terrible ceremony. She immigrated to the US and married the very cruel Mr. Nelson. Consummating her marriage was excruciatingly painful. As time went on, her husband’s drinking problem became worse and each time he would beat her and sexually assault her. The last time, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, she said she snapped and broke a glass lamp over his head that disabled him. The rest is history…