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Misunderstanding Borderline Disorder

Believe it or not, people with this affliction, at their very core, are the inverse of the narcissist. People with BPD start out 'too sensitive', too empathetic. People with borderline personality disorder empathize to the point of pain.

When the highly sensitive person grows up in a very non-validating and/or abusive environment, with a history of trauma, BPD can manifest.

In order for borderline personality to develop, an invalidating environment with and a highly sensitive person MUST BE present.

What is going on in a Borderline Personality Disorder sufferer's mind and how they are acting can be two entirely different things.

To the sufferer, BPD is about deep feelings, feelings often too difficult to express, feelings that are something along the lines of this:

• If others really get to know me, they will find me reject-able and will not be able to love me; and they will leave me

• I need to have complete control of my feelings otherwise things go completely wrong

• I have to adapt my needs to other people's wishes, otherwise they will leave me or attack me

• I am an evil person and I need to be punished for it

• Other people are evil and abuse you

• If someone fails to keep a promise, that person can no longer be trusted

• If I trust someone, I run a great risk of getting hurt or disappointed

• If you comply with someone's request, you run the risk of losing yourself

• If you refuse someone's request, you run the risk of losing that person

• I will always be alone

• I can't manage by myself, I need someone I can fall back on

• There is no one who really cares about me, who will be available to help me, and whom I can fall back on

• I don't really know what I want

• I will never get what I want

• I'm powerless and vulnerable and I can't protect myself

• I have no control of myself

• I can't discipline myself

• My feelings and opinions are unfounded

• Other people are not willing or helpful ________________

To the family members, BPD behavior is often very frustrating can feel unfair and punitive - something like this:

• You have been viewed as overly good and then overly bad

• You have been the focus of unprovoked anger or hurtful actions, alternating with periods when the family member acts perfectly normal and very loving

• Things that you have said or done have been twisted and used against you

• You are accused of things you never did or said

• You often find yourself defending and justifying your intentions

• You find yourself concealing what you think or feel because you are not heard

• You feel manipulated, controlled, and sometimes lied to. Source

#BPD #Borderline

micolanne-deactivated20251230

14.09.2015// “7 ways to feel (instantly) better” I tried to think about what makes me feel good when i’m blue and i came up with this. I hope it will help even just one of you xoxo 🍑

Tips for Loved Ones of People With BPD

1. Recognize the truth in this statement: Feelings are not facts. Your BPD loved one likely has a range of intense emotions which compel him to say things that feel unkind, unfair and even cruel at times. Recognize your BPD loved one’s reality: he has a mental disorder. His extreme feelings are highly changeable, as you have seen over and over. They are so changeable because your loved one has BPD, and because they are feelings, not truths. Try your best to keep this in perspective no matter how emotionally volatile your BPD loved one may become.

2. Recognize your part in disputes. It is easy to point the finger at the one with the diagnosis, especially when that diagnosis revolves around interpersonal dysfunction, but it is important to recognize that demonizing a person with BPD is unhelpful and is likely adding to the creation of chaos in your relationship. Likewise, seeing your BPD loved one as a “victim” of an illness or disease is also unhelpful. No matter who we are, we must learn to be accountable for our behavior, and that includes people with BPD as well as those who have a relationship with them.

3. Have a self-check in place for the potential feelings of FOG – fear, obligation, and guilt – in response to your BPD loved one, and a plan for handling these ungrounded responses. Susan Forward, PhD, coined the acronym “FOG” for the emotions likely to arise in people who are repeatedly emotionally manipulated. These feelings are unhealthy and unproductive. Change your reality until you have no true cause to fear your loved one; recognize that because your BPD loved one is an adult, no matter her relationship to you, so you are in no way obligated to remain in her life; and understand that guilt serves no healthy purpose. It can be used as a form of subtle manipulation, but manipulation, from someone with BPD, is more a matter of desperation, not real forethought or planning. She is seeking desperately to ensure she will not be abandoned (even while doing things that push you away from her).

4. Recognize, always, the degree of reaction your BPD loved one is likely to have in response to perceived or imagined abandonment. Because this is the deepest fear of someone with BPD, be careful and wise with potentially abandoning or rejecting words or phrases. If you decide to warn your BPD loved one that you may no longer maintain contact with him for any reason, be certain that you: 1) absolutely mean it, 2) are not saying it out of anger or cruelty, 3) are prepared for the potential fallout. No amount of fallout should keep you from going no-contact if this is what you believe to be best for you, but always be aware of the extreme ways your BPD loved one is likely to react, and be prepared.

5. Encourage your BPD loved one to learn distress tolerance, mindfulness, and other ways of handling unwanted emotions by taking part in these therapies yourself. Treatments such as dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), or mentalization therapy are known to be effective for people with DBT, but they can be quite helpful for anyone who wishes to improve their states of mind and more deeply understand human interaction. Your willingness to participate may be an encouragement to your BPD loved one to seek and continue treatment, and it may be good for you as well.”

#BPD

tndra-deactivated20150825

marianthinks-deactivated2022111

Eleven Important Ways to Take Care of Yourself When You Have Depression/Anxiety

I needed a go-to list of things for self-care so I started making this. Now that I’m done, I thought I would share it for whoever else needed it - but first, some encouraging words: I’ve been through some crazy highs and lows these past few years and if there’s one thing I’ve been able to take from all of those, it’s that it will all be OK at the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end yet - this too shall pass!

1. Pay attention to your ‘home space’.

It’s important that you have at least one space in your life where you feel like you can be at home. For me, that’s my single dorm. No matter how low I feel, I make an effort to tidy up and keep that a place I can feel comfortable and relatively content. Losing things tends to make my moods a lot worse and cleaning makes me feel accomplished (even if it’s just a tiny task like sweeping the floor or making the bed). I also spray my room with scents and try to let as much sunlight in as possible - they’re small things, but they can help reinvigorate you a ton!

2. Attend your therapy sessions.

Reasons you might not: you’re feeling much better, or you’re feeling much worse.

As you’re feeling better, you might be tempted to skip a session or two or five. Instead, attend all sessions, and discuss your reluctance with your therapist. From a book I read: “Personally, the times I skipped sessions with my therapist showed me that I was avoiding profound subjects — or that I was reacting defensively to something in my life. Talking instead of walking showed me how self-defeating patterns were operating and that I needed to address these tendencies.”

If you’re at a particularly low point where you’re missing a ton of appointments and are struggling to get out of bed in the morning - and I know this is hard - force yourself, at the very least, to make it to therapy. You need it the most now, so don’t deprive yourself of that support!

3. Take your meds as prescribed.

Do this, do this, do this. I cannot stress that enough! Missing a dose can interfere with your medication’s effectiveness, and your symptoms might return. It can also deal you a ton of terrible side effects, like really terrible migraine headaches, nausea, and problems sleeping. Alcohol and drugs also can mess with your meds. Stopping medication altogether might trigger discontinuation syndrome. If you’d like to stop taking your medication, don’t do it on your own. Talk with your prescribing physician so you can get off your medication slowly and properly. Take this seriously!

4. Get enough sleep.

Sleep has a big impact on mood disorders. Too little sleep exacerbates mania and too much sleep worsens depression. So it’s important to keep a consistent sleep and wake cycle along with maintaining healthy sleeping habits. Yes, consistent. It’s not always easy, but consistency is key here!

5. Get moving.

Depression’s debilitating and depleting effects make it difficult to get up and get moving. Hitting the gym and running on the treadmill personally helps me a ton with my anxiety as well - when nothing seems to help me calm down and focus on what’s important, running all that bad energy out and taking a warm shower brings me back where I need to be. Plus, endorphins help stabilize mood.

6. Eat well!

Poor nutrition can actually exacerbate exhaustion and impact cognition and mood. Eating well is something I struggle with from time to time - and while this isn’t a perfect substitute, I have found trying to stick with a daily multivitamin also helps perk me up.

7. Know your triggers.

Self-explanatory. In order to prevent relapse, it’s important to know what pushes your buttons and worsens your functioning. Which links to the next one…

8. Avoid people who are toxic.

Toxic individuals are like emotional vampires. Don’t underestimate the impact envious, judgmental, or competitive people can have on your mental health! If you can’t stop seeing these people in general, limit your exposure and try having healthier individuals around when you’re hanging out with the toxic ones. If a specific toxic person won’t leave you alone, even after you’ve tried distancing yourself, don’t be afraid to reach out and get help from an authority figure.

9. Stay connected with others.

Social isolation is your worst enemy. This can be difficult when all you want to do is hide or feel exhausted. Even if you’re a huge introvert like I am, try to do one ‘social’ thing a day - even if that’s just eating around other people. Don’t lock yourself in - it’ll make things worse. That said…

10. Take time to detox when it needs to happen.

If you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed, overstimulated, and can just sense you’re not in the best place mentally - treat yourself for a day! I have a list of movies, books, and tv shows I’ve been meaning to watch growing on a page in my diary. Don’t be ashamed of turning off your phone, logging out of social media, and just watching a movie alone or reading a book for the whole of your Friday night. This is a chill-out playlist I made, and this is a breathing pacer - follow along, and it’ll help you zen out.

11. Take up journalling!

I know, seems kind of Little House on the Prarie, but I swear making a habit of writing in one - even if it’s just to vent - can help you alleviate stress, order your thoughts, and develop your concerns if you need to share them with anyone. A diary provides the privacy of your own head and the distance to be able to hear yourself think. I’ve found writing before bed helps me take a weight of my chest and actually get to sleep - I used to toss and turn, thinking too much, but now that’s less of a problem.

st-pam

When you have borderline personality disorder, everything feels like an attack. Whenever the slightest thing goes wrong, you take it as a sign from the heavens that nothing will ever be right.

The youtube video is buffering? I should go kill myself.

It’s raining today? Even the weather wants me to die.

My friend is at the dentist and can’t talk to me? They’re lying, they just hate me.

And that’s why it’s so awful when people say things like “Wait, you want to kill yourself over a piece of cake?” Yes, you want to kill yourself over the piece of cake that you can’t have, because you can never have anything without everything going wrong!

Everything is an attack, the world is against you. You feel so invalidated, so stupid knowing that you want to end your goddamned life because you couldn’t have cake, because you broke your pencil, because you lost your keys, over the most ridiculous things! Because everything! is! a goddamned! attack!

That’s what BPD is.

#BPD #Borderline Personality Disorder #Borderline #Attack #Mental Health

sosuperawesome

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The Negative Borderline “Cycle”

whatthefisbpd

**This is how I personally experience MY relationships. How I’ve figured my cycle works. If yours is different thats fine, it doesn’t have to be the same. I’m brutally honest with myself and am able to reflect on the impact I have had on my past partners due to not understanding these behaviours and being in the full swing of my BPD.**

No matter how your particular version of BPD presents itself or how you alter your actions and appearance to please others; people with BPD often experience relationships in the same cycle that if unbroken can repeat time and again. It could take days, weeks, moths or years to complete a cycle but it is a common theme throughout the BPD individuals life story, reinforcing their idea of always being abandoned by the people we love.

Stage 1 - The Love Victim

In the beginning the BPD person may appear to be vulnerable, shy, sweet and looking for a “knight in shining armor”. We will present ourselves as a victim of the bad love and life experienes we have had in the past, this helps the Non-Borderline person form compassion quickly. We will tell them “You get me in a way nobody ever has!” and telling them they are “special”.

This is an intense and emotionally overbearing time in the cycle for the Non-Borderline; they will feel almost worshipped to the point where it can make them uncomfortable sometimes. The Borderline person will crave the attention, thoughts and feelings of their Non-Borderline ounterpart.

Stage 2 - The Clinger

The intense interest will gradually change over time to becoming less about the Non-Borderline person and more about how you make us feel. Your thoughts feelings and ideas fascinate your Borderline partner, but more when they focus on our feelings and issues; this usually helps the Non-Borderline to become more attached and feeding their compassion for the Borderline partner.

This is usually when it changes for the worse. The Borderline person is an expert at getting sympathy from people and being able to identify the best types of people to go to to feed their need. So we will often form physical symptoms, usually related to whether we are getting the attention we crave or not. Headache? Let me give you some paracetamol and a cuddle. Backache? I’ll rub it for you.

But it will intensify and will seem that no matter how much financial, emotional or physical help you give it will never be enough, and from the Borderline perspective? Thats exactly it. We are insatiable and will suck everything you have from you until you fall into the black hole we haul ourselves out of every day.

There will literally be nobody else for us. Nobody else can help us. Only you. We don’t just want you, we NEED you. And trust me it is as real for us as it is for you.

Usually this (for me anyway) is when the Non-Borderline sees the light and escapes, which for the Borderline person feeds straight into the next stage.

Stage 3 - The Hater

If the Borderline person keeps the Non-Borderline on their side the relationship can continue to form in this negative way.

Once the Non-Borderline has been formed into the person the Borderline wants them and needs them to be, once we know we have that control then The Hater becomes apparent. The Borderline can fly into rage at anything and for seemingly no reason, or for the Internalized (silent) Borderline they can seem to self implode now and again, causing their Non-Borderline partner to become very confused and unsteady in their relationship and even their own identity within the relationship.

Walking on eggshells becomes a regular occurrence for the Non-Borderline person, not knowing when their loved one will randomly explode or disappear for hours or days and then appear again with a fresh set of cuts on their arms.

If on the other hand the Non-Borderline gets to the Clinger stage and realizes they can’t rescue their Borderline partner it can go badly for both.

The Borderline person will sense their partner backing way and become even more clingy, using manipulation techniques to get them to stay no matter what. Because they are convinced that without their Non-Borderline partner it will be the most horrible thing they could ever imagine and they will struggle as if they are drowning (I promise you, we are)

But once we have had it made explicitly clear to us that the Non-Borderline can no longer give us what we need we are able to shut off from them. We will completely detach and it will be as if they never existed. If people mention their name to us, we will tell them we hate them and they will become yet another reason why “I am a victim of love” and the cycle can start once more.

#BPD #Borderline #Borderline Personality Disorder #Personality #Personality Disorder

erinpuhlease-deactivated2016081

Dear woman, sometimes you’ll just be too much woman. Too smart, too beautiful, too strong. Too much of something that makes a man feel like less of a man, which will start making you feel like you have to be less of a woman. The biggest mistake you can make is removing jewels from your crown to make it easier for a man to carry. When this happens, I need you to understand, you do not need a smaller crown— you need a man with bigger hands.

Michael E. Reid, “Dear Woman”

#q #poem #Michael E Reid #Dear Woman #Woman

delta-breezes

Five common mistakes made by Supporters of people with Borderline Personality Disorder.

by Bon Dobbs - July 2009 Based on the book “When Hope is Not Enough: a how-to guide for living with and loving someone with Borderline Personality Disorder” Mistake #1: Setting up “boundaries” and “limits” that are really rules for their behavior. Boundaries are the most misunderstood concept in the BPD supporter community (sometimes called the Non‐BPD community). The problem with boundaries is that most people do not understand to whom the boundary applies. Boundaries are about you and can only be applied to your own behavior. Your boundaries are for you, the supporter of a person with BPD, not for the person with BPD. A popular book on Non‐BPs uses the example of telling the person with BPD that you will not take phone calls after 9 PM. This “boundary” (or limit as it’s called in this book) is supposed to be “respected” by the person with BPD. However, when emotional dysregulation gets a hold of the person with BPD, it is unlikely that the boundary will be remembered and respected. The problem with this boundary is that it really a rule that governs the other person’s behavior. With BPD, rules are made to be broken. Only you can respect your own boundaries. If you decide not to answer the phone after 9 PM then that is a boundary, because you are applying it to your own behavior, not expecting the person with BPD to comply with your rule. The misunderstanding of boundaries and to whom they apply causes much confusion and leads to frustration. The frustration is born out of trying to control another person’s behavior with a rule, which is impossible. Likely reactions to “boundaries” that are really rules includes rage, saying ”you are trying to control me” and impulsive behavior, such as running away at times when it is unsafe or having unsafe sex. Mistake #2: Judging them as ‘Crazy’. People with BPD are not crazy, despite their reactions and behavior that might indicate that they are. The name “borderline” is a vestige from an earlier time of psychotherapy that connoted that a person with BPD was on the “borderline” between neurosis and psychosis. Today, most researchers consider BPD to be primarily a disorder of emotional dysregulation and impulse control.

Unfortunately for the person with BPD, the word “personality” is also in the current name of the disorder. Many supporters of people with BPD interpret that word as one of either a character flaw (just bad behavior) or that the person with BPD has a certain personality that is fixed and cannot change. Neither of these situations is correct.

People with BPD are more emotional sensitive and more emotionally reactive than other people. I like to compare their emotional re-activity to that of a heat sensing control: yours is set to go off at 80 degrees Fahrenheit; a borderline’s is set at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. It is not a question of “crazy,” merely one of more emotional re-activity (or a lower emotional “tolerance” as they say in the controls community). The lower the tolerance, the more times the alarm goes off (even if it’s a false alarm to you).

Judging a person with BPD as crazy actually contributes to the disorder. The reason comes down to shame. A person with BPD is likely to carry around much shame (see Mistake #4 below) and labeling them as crazy increases the shame. The biggest danger with shame is the option of suicide. If a person with BPD believes they are a broken/bad person (through shame), then what is the use in going on living? Other possible fallout from shame is the “giving up” on therapy, since shame makes a borderline believe that he/she can never be cured.

Mistake #3: Getting caught up in the content, rather than the context. I see this situation occur in many Non‐BPs. Getting caught up in content, rather than seeing emotional context, is common and natural. Most people feel that they have to listen to the words, rather than the feelings behind a conversation. In the case of BPD, the feelings matter much more than what is being discussed. When I hear Non‐BPs saying, “but she said…” or “what she did was…,” it is a sure sign of being caught up in the details, the content, rather than seeking the emotional context of the conversation. Instead of getting caught up in the details, it is more effective to look for the primary emotional motivation of the words and actions of someone with BPD. Defending against, negating and/or arguing the details and/or accusations of someone with BPD will typically lead to more dysregulation and to an escalation of emotional behavior. Discovering the primary emotional motivations behind the words and actions of someone with BPD can help the person with BPD know that they are understood and heard. This feeling alone helps calm the waters in the interaction.

Additionally, understanding and validatingthe emotional motivations can help facilitate meta‐cognition (or thinking about feelings) in someone with BPD, which in itself can build toward self‐mastery of his/her emotional states. That is, one can’t be all feelings and perform meta‐cognition at the same time. Each time meta‐cognition occurs makes it easier for it to reoccur.

Developing mastery over the poorly‐regulated emotions is a goal unto itself, since, if the skill can be generalized, the person with BPD will almost automatically feel better without the intervention of the Non‐BP. If they feel better, the attacks, raging and manipulation that are motivated by feeling badly will subside, since they are no longer need to quell the negative emotional states. Mistake #4: Invalidating their Emotions. Everyone experiences emotions, and people with BPD experience them in spades – that is the very nature of emotional dysregulation. Dr. Marsha Linehan, the inventor of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), contends that BPD is caused by the “bio-social model” in which there are both biological and social factors that contribute to the development of BPD. The social component or “nurture” in this model is called the “invalidating environment.” When a loved one of a person with BPD invalidates the emotions of someone with BPD, the result is shame and mistrust in expressing their emotions. The shame comes from thinking of the borderline that: “My loved one tells me I shouldn't be this way, but I feel this way anyway, so I must be broken.” What is invalidation? Invalidation is essentially the expression of the idea that it is not OK to feel particular emotions, especially primary ones, like fear, anger and sadness. One should not do any of the following in an emotional conversation with a borderline at risk of being invalidating: • Make it about you. “I hated it when that happened to me.” • Try to one‐up the person. “Oh, you think you have it bad…” • Tell them how they should feel. “You should feel blessed…” • Try to give them advice. “What you really should do is…” • Try to solve their problem. “I’m going to call that girl’s parents and…” • Cheerlead (there is a time for this, but not now). “I know you can do it…” • Make “life” statements. “Well, life’s not fair…” • Make judgmental statements. “What you did was wrong…” • Make “revisionist” statements. “If you had only…” • Make it about your feelings. “How do you think that makes me feel?” • Make “character” statements. “You’re too sensitive…” • Rationalize another person’s behavior. “I bet they were just…” • Call names. “You’re such a baby.” • Use reason or the “facts.” “That’s not what happened…” • Use “always” or “never” statements. “You always get yourself into these situations…” • Compare the person to someone else. “Why can’t you be like your sister?” • Label the person. “You’re nuts.” • Advising to cut ties or ignore the situation. “Just ignore him.”

Instead, learning to validate the person’s emotions is a very powerful tool and essential to relating positively with someone with BPD. Mistake #5: Thinking that their Behavior is about You Most Non‐BPs come to my support list thinking something along the lines of “how is it possible that this person with BPD, who supposedly loves me, can behave toward me in such an abusive and disrespectful fashion?” In other words, the underlying feeling among “newbie” Non‐BPs is: “what about me?”

In reality, little of a person with BPD’s behavior is directed at the Non‐BP, whatever the appearances. In my book, “When Hope is Not Enough,” I have developed a concept called “It’s all about his/her feelings” or IAAHF. Many people misinterpret this concept – they think it has a negative connotation. In other words, Non‐BPs think IAAHF means “it is never about my feelings,” yet that is not the intention of this formulation. No, instead, the actual intention for the Non‐BP is quite a positive one. What it really means is that all of the behavior, words and actions of a person with BPD are motivated by his/her feelings. In other words: “it’s not about you.” Most of it is instead intended to quell the negative feelings experienced by the borderline. Once this concept is fully understood, it can lead to more freedom for the Non‐BP emotionally. When someone with BPD behaves in a way that seems to be intended to harm you, think IAAHF and realize that the behavior is completely motivated by the desire to stop the negative/stormy emotions experienced by the person with BPD. She/he is doing anything to stop the pain.

#BPD #Borderline Personality Disorder #Borderline #Do's & Don'ts #Advice #Help