What To Do If Your Loved One Has Borderline Personality Disorder? – OpEd

Living with a person who has Borderline Personality Disorder can seriously drain one’s energy and question the future of a healthy relationship. The problem exacerbates when the person has traits of a high conflict personality. 

The Borderlines explicit emotional dysregulation, have highly unstable relations and suffer from fear of abandonment. These are, but a few, maladies which make the Borderlines suffer in their lives. 

People who have close relation with borderlines ascend to hymns of praise at one time and face extreme emotional outbursts at the other. This is, however, not a mood disorder like Bipolar Disorder; but a Personality Disorder.

The borderlines always think in binary — either one is a loved one or an adversary. There is no grey area in their lives for people. They are extremely meticulous about the envisaged abandonment by a loved one. Therefore, they try to control the lives of their loved ones which makes it difficult to bear with them. Failing to do so, they use slander and libel to take revenge of the purported misdoing of others. These actions emanate from the extreme thinking pattern about others.

Life can be really hard while living with such individuals. Your mental health matters the most, therefore, remember these things while dealing with such people:

It is not about you or them, it is about BPD

Like any physical disorder, mental disorders can affect the lives of people. One must remember that the person with BPD is afflicted with a psychological disorder just like any other physical disorder. The self and other schemata play a major role in maintaining a good perspective of life. Living with someone who has BPD, might alter these perspectives. Therefore, it is indispensable to remember that it is not your loved one, but the BPD that has made them behaving like this.

Empathy

Empathy requires putting one’s own agenda aside and listen, understand and recognize the thoughts and feelings of others. One might use the thought empathy and feeling empathy statements outlined by David Burns in Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work. 

Another way to recognize the feelings of a BPD high conflicting personality is the EAR concept of Empathy, Attention and Respect. However, whilst dealing with them one might morph this into Empathy, Assertiveness and Respect which is a tantamount to Empathetic Assertiveness. 

Forgiveness

One must enlarge one’s heart and mind while dealing with a person with BPD. With some hiatuses, the person with BPD and high conflict personality will show emotional outbursts toward others. One must have a forgiving heart while living with such personalities, otherwise one might be prone to certain psychological maladies. One must use mindfulness as a technique and not judge the other person negatively. Forgiveness is a panacea in these situations.

Sometimes, BPDs with controlling tendencies want to keep up with you and go an extra mile to help you out. They cannot keep up with their emotions while doing so, therefore, it is pertinent to make them believe that they have carried enough burden on their shoulders and that the goal is common.

People often find themselves in a dilemma while empathizing with or continuous exposure to emotional outbursts of a person with BPD — they become prone to compassion fatigue also called secondary trauma. One must remember all along that, per se, it is the problem of the person with BPD not one’s own.

Your mental health is equally important

Being with someone who has BPD and not receiving proper treatment can be a challenge for the people closely attached with the person. One must not immediately efface one’s presence from the person with borderline personality disorder, but slowly detach and build boundaries with them. 

Borderlines are very serious when it comes to abandonment. They engage in erratic behaviors and think in extremes. Therefore, one must not explicitly show signs of detachment or resentment; but keep a façade and set boundaries behind it. 

It is pertinent to set limits with high conflict BPDs and equally important not to abandon relationship completely in one go. This must be done after completely forgiving them by heart. Any virtue or goodness done to them must not be suspended even after setting limits.

*Asad Yaseen is a columnist based in Lahore