Table of Contents
8 Best Tips for How to Cope With a Loved One’s Borderline Personality Disorder Learn About the Illness. Validate Their Feelings. Simplify Your Message. Encourage Responsibility. Set Boundaries. Don’t Ignore Threats of Suicide or Self-Harm. Help Your Loved One Find Treatment. Find Support for Yourself.
How do you calm someone with BPD down?
Listening to your loved one and acknowledging their feelings is one of the best ways to help someone with BPD calm down. When you appreciate how a borderline person hears you and adjust how you communicate with them, you can help diffuse the attacks and rages and build a stronger, closer relationship.
How do you respond to BPD anger?
Listen actively and be sympathetic and focus on emotions rather than the words. Ensure that you demonstrate that the person with BPD feels heard. When someone is upset or angry, it’s easy and understandable to reciprocate, but it is not helpful.
What triggers a person with borderline personality disorder?
Separations, disagreements, and rejections—real or perceived—are the most common triggers for symptoms. A person with BPD is highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone, which brings about intense feelings of anger, fear, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and very impulsive decisions.
What do you say to someone who is struggling with BPD?
Tell them that you really want to understand, and ask if they can say more about what they are feeling and why. Give the person hope for recovery by reassuring them that people with BPD can and do get better. Accept that the person is struggling and that life goals might need to be broken down into smaller steps.
Are borderlines aware of their behavior?
People with borderline personality disorders are aware of their behaviors and the consequences of them and often act in increasingly erratic ways as a self-fulfilling prophecy to their abandonment fears.
Can someone with BPD ever be happy?
This person says it exactly right — people with BPD have very intense emotions that can last from a few hours to even a few days, and can change very quickly. For example, we can go from feeling very happy to suddenly feeling very low and sad.
Why do borderlines get so angry?
Many people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience anger so intense it is often referred to as “borderline rage.” This anger sometimes comes in response to a perceived interpersonal slight—for example, feeling criticized by a loved one.
What BPD anger feels like?
For example, a person with BPD may react to an event that may seem small or unimportant to someone else, such as a misunderstanding, with very strong and unhealthy expressions of anger, including: Physical violence. Sarcasm. Yelling.
What does quiet BPD look like?
People with quiet BPD might seem high functioning on the outside. Still, on the inside, they are often dealing with extreme bouts of shame, self-loathing, fears of abandonment, mood swings, obsessive emotional attachment to others, and many more debilitating symptoms.
What happens if BPD is left untreated?
If left untreated, the person suffering from BPD may find themselves involved with extravagant spending, substance abuse, binge eating, reckless driving, and indiscriminate sex, Hooper says. The reckless behavior is usually linked to the poor self-image many BPD patients struggle with.
How long do BPD episodes last?
These episodes can last for a few hours to a few days. While there is no known, clear cause for BPD, experts believe a combination of genetics, brain structure and function, as well as environmental and social issues come into play.
Are borderlines psychopaths?
According to the findings compilated in this review, an epidemiological and phenomenological relationship of BPD syndrome and the psychopathic syndrome can be confirmed. BPD features are highly represented in subjects with psychopathy as well as psychopathic traits are highly prevalent in patients with BPD.
Can a person with BPD really love?
A romantic relationship with someone with BPD can be, in a word, stormy. It’s not uncommon to experience a great deal of turmoil and dysfunction. However, people with BPD can be exceptionally caring, compassionate, and affectionate. In fact, some people find this level of devotion from a partner pleasant.
How do you make someone with BPD feel loved?
In order to foster a strong bond, it’s important to know how to love someone with borderline personality disorder in a way that nurtures both of you. Acknowledge the Realness of BPD. Make Room for Yourself. Stop Rescuing. Encourage High-Quality Treatment. Treatment at Bridges to Recovery.
Why do therapists hate borderlines?
Many therapists share the general stigma that surrounds patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Some even avoid working with such patients because of the perception that they are difficult to treat.
How do borderlines think?
People with BPD also have a tendency to think in extremes, a phenomenon called “dichotomous” or “black-or-white” thinking. 2 People with BPD often struggle to see the complexity in people and situations and are unable to recognize that things are often not either perfect or horrible, but are something in between.
Can a BPD be a good parent?
People with borderline personality disorder can be very effective and nurturing parents, but because the symptoms of BPD can be very intense, for many people this does take some work.
Do borderlines have empathy?
Previous research has demonstrated that patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are more sensitive to negative emotions and often show poor cognitive empathy, yet preserved or even superior emotional empathy. However, little is known about the neural correlates of empathy.
Do borderlines fall in love easily?
People with BPD tend to have relationships that are intense and short-lived. You may fall in love quickly, believing that each new person is the one who will make you feel whole, only to be quickly disappointed.
Are BPD narcissistic?
Narcissistic problems are common in BPD and can present in multiple ways, including with a prominence of inferiority and fragility notably different from NPD described in the DSM-5. 2.
Does BPD get worse with age?
Borderline personality disorder usually begins by early adulthood. The condition seems to be worse in young adulthood and may gradually get better with age.
Do borderlines feel remorse?
Often it seems as though there is no remorse or regret when someone with borderline intentionally, or unintentionally, hurt someone they love. They say cruel things, act in cruel ways, and can cause real harm to themselves or to others. When called on it, they will act with little remorse or regret.
Why is BPD so painful?
The negative emotional instability, feelings of emptiness, intense and inappropriate anger, dissociation, and stress related suspiciousness in BPD may be extensions of underlying, chronic mental pain [30]. There are a few studies reporting an association between increased mental pain and BPD.
What does high functioning BPD look like?
Impulsive and risky behaviors (perhaps around spending, eating, driving, gambling, or other areas of life) Relationships suffering—with family, friends, significant others, and coworkers. Isolation. Worsening co-occurring mental health disorders.
