I get this question a lot in my emails: “I believe my friend has Borderline Personality Disorder how do I tell him so that he/she will get help. The simple answer is you don’t and if you do get ready for an attack. Borderline Personality Disorder is a condition where the person needs to figure it out themselves or it is going to go bad in a hurry. Borderline is not like Depression where a few trips to a therapist and the right medication may quickly put it in check (Yes I know I am minimizing depression but stick with me here) but a disorder that you literally have to go back to the beginning of your life and start over but this time with healthy choices and options. Everything that I was thought to believe was right was actually wrong and unhealthy, what I thought were normal everyday thoughts turned out that very few people actually experienced it and all of a sudden I am faced with the truth so what am I going to do? Am I going to pretend I never saw it and continue my life the way it was or am I going to take the opportunity to rewrite my history and work to be a healthier person. Now the readers of this blog are going to say that I chose the second option which I have but it came after a long time of putting up with that nagging little voice that kept telling me my life was a lie. If someone came to me before I reached that pinnacle and said “Untreatable you have Borderline Personality Disorder” I would have looked at you as if you said one plus one equals three. See from my perspective I can read all about how people with BPD have unsteady relationships or emotions that can change in a blink in the eye or whatever the current literature is saying about this disorder and none of it would apply to me because from my view what I see is the same patterns my life has always produced.
I seem to be running away from the answer here. The reason I have attempted to change is I realized everything in my life was wrong and I was tired of trying to convince myself that everything was fine so I went back to the textbooks and DSM until I found something that fit. Then once I reached that stage it took sometime before I ran it across the doctor and even when he agreed with the diagnosis it took more time to actually accept it. Some days I think and strongly believe my life would be easier if I stayed in the dark but I also know that it came to a point where either I fought the monster or it was going to kill me. Take care
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I wish I had read this a long time ago. The more I tried to help the person in my life who I thought might have BPD, the worse I made the situation. The disorder always seemed to work against the both of us.
I don’t know, I think you have to take this on a case-by-case basis. If the person really trusts you, thinks you are credible, and sees you as someone who cares about them, they may react with anger at first when you bring up the topic of their symptoms, but maybe over time (after the initial reaction subsides) they may see some truth in it?
HI, I HAVE BPD AND I DONT KNOW ITS HARD TO MAKE DECISIONS, & I CAN TELL YOU A FAMILY MEMBER BOUGHT A BOOK FOR ME CALLED "HOW TO HANDLE YOUR EMOTIONS" BY JOYCE MEYER . I LOVE JOYCE MEYER BUT I NEVER READ THE BOOK BECAUSE I CANT STOP THINKING THE PERSON THAT GAVE ME THAT BOOK THINKS I AM CRAZY AND NOT NORMAL AND SOMETHINGS WRONG WITH ME. SO, I HAVE NEVER READ THE BOOK. I SOUGHT HELP BECAUSE I KNOW I WAS NOT FEELING "RIGHT" I WAS DIAGNOSED 11 YEARS AGO. WHEN EVER SOMEONE WOULD COME TO ME I FELT STRANGE AND INHUMAN& ABNORMAL. I CAN TELL YOU THEY NEED HELP BUT I DONT EVEN KNOW HOW WOULD YOU APPROACH THEM … WE ARE FICKLE AND SENSITIVE I GUESS ALL I CAN SAY IS PRAY!
I agree with K. Salters-Pedneault. My dad told me yesterday that my therapist confirmed a short time ago what everyone has thought… that something was wrong with me. I knew something was wrong with me, but I didn't know that I was going to be told that the way I think and feel is totally wrong. At first I was angry until I did research and realized it fits. So my initial reaction wasn’t anger towards the person that told me, it is angered towards myself and my life. Now I only sit here and question if my whole life is a lie or not, then I wonder if it is, what is the point of going on? If I have to change everything about me, especially the way I feel, what is the point. I mean, have all of my relationships been a lie? If so, I am humiliated.
Your entire life has not been a lie it is just the illness makes you sometimes see and act a way that others would not. Your life and experiences has made you the way that you are. With the right treatment and a lot of work you can basically turn the volume down.
BPD can be related to abandonment as a child either physical or emotional abandonment. My parents were cruel to me emotionally, and did not offer love or support. It is no wonder I was insecure and timid. Eventually, I became angry after making bad choices in men and being abused and seeing my children abused. Then the anger started when my third husband also became abusive. He also has serious personal relating issues, so we were a pair, I'll tell you. He left me, and I am devastated. I am trying to keep it together because I know if I lose it, I will end up being hospitalized. And no one will visit me. My own family has deserted me, as well. My fears of abandonment have all been realized.
I told my closest friend a couple of days ago by email, after one of her irrational explosions, that I thought she should look for help and that in my opinion she probably had a BPD.
I did so in the most thoughtful and caring manner in the longest letter.
I did so because someone had to. Because I've proven to her along the time we've been together that I care for her like I've never cared for anyone. I did it because I love her and want her to be the full and beautiful person I now she has in her self to be. I did it because she will never be happy until she faces her problem and take responsibility for it and realizes how it affects her life. I did it in hope of saving our friendship. Because to be honest, I don’t how much more I can take.
I still don't know if I did the right thing. I think in the end it depends on each case. On what kind of friendship and level of trust you have.
I also think it's very important to ask your self if you’re doing it for the right reasons. It’s a very delicate matter. You need to be very careful.
In her answer, I've realized she had been doing some research on her own. Although she didn’t accept it immediately, she didn’t exclude the possibility either.
I can only hope this might be the beginning of something good for her. And I hope I did the right thing.
And by the way, from all I've read, Borderline is treatable in the majority of cases. Given that you do get them to do therapy in the fist place, which they tend to avoid. And that therapy is something they have to want to do. The biggest obstacle is the patient it self. Since they tend to abandon treatment. It’s difficult, but possible.
I have been married for just over two years and I have been researching BPD in relation to my wife. She has not been diagnosed with BPD so my comments are purely subjective. She will regularly tell me that all my sibblings apart from one of two are horrible insensitive people. She will tell me that my mother is a lying evil bitch. She will binge drink on occassions and finds it very difficult to stop smoking. She has on three separate occasions lashed out at me punching and biting. She tells me that I have never loved her and that I am dysfunctional in that my close relationship with my family is not normal and that all my other relationships with girls have been abnormal. I have been told that I need to take a step back from my family and not talk to them and see them as much so as to concentrate on 'Our relationship'. We got to the point a few months ago when we discussed separation and divorce, her view was that I would have to divorce her and she would contest it. She also said that she would make it hell for me if I divorced her and that she would be around for the two years of separation, 'Don't think for one minute that you can just erase me, I'm not going to just dissapear'. She has even said that she could kill me and probably get off on grounds of dinished responsibility. All the symptoms of BPD seem to be there, also from things she has told me about her childhood. I would like to help her, I am a calm rational person and never react back to her violent moods or verbal abuse, I just sit there and take it all. How can I help her and ultimately me, as I cant carry on living like this, treading on eggshells all the time. A friend of mine gave me the book by the same name a week ago and has led me to do more research in helping to understand this problem.
I wish anonymous September 3, 2009 9:01 PM would come back and tell us what happened. I am facing a very similar situation and I have similar emotions about the person.
When I read about people who say they want to tell someone in their life that they have BPD, it makes me think that person also has a problem. After all -the people who are usually drawn to those with BPD traits are Narcissistic. And parents and family members also have personality disorders, which helped to bring about the BPD in the first place. Narcissistic people create many problems themselves without the help of BPD's. Just remember if you are disturbed by someone with BPD then get a hold of yourself! You can't control the person with BPD or force "help". Take Care of your narcissistic, antisocial, dependent, borderline traits! If all you do is think about how you can "help" the BPD person, then you are like the codependent that can only blame the alcoholic.
I was told my wife might have BPD by a theripist who was helping me after I was admited into the hospital for suicidal thoughts. I thought I was going insane, I didnt know which direction to turn because every direction was wrong. I also learned from this theripist that I was co-dependent, working my hardest to buy her love at every turn. Needless to say its been a bad mix.
Its been a year since then and i have stayed with my wife. I have worked very hard on my co-dependencey and with the help of a motivational hynotheripist I have beat it. I still struggle every day with her illness and know that my sweet wife is sick, I know that I may be the only person who could trully support her should she decide she had a problem.
I am now setting bounderys which are beeing assulted and insulted every second of every day, and let me tell you, it is not easy to watch the woman you love have a dramaticlly broken heart every time you can't budge on a boundery.
I am the "bad guy" now, the "jerk" and of course its "my fault" shes so depressed and sleeps all of the time. I can see where this is coming from because my co-dependent love buying ways have stopped, however I need to create these bounderies for both of our sakes and for our childerens.
what can I do to buffer her feelings while not budging?
Aaron – Sorry it took me so long to respond it has been a complicated week.
The person with BPD is looking for a reaction. Whether the result is negative or positive it strengthens their created self (which is extremely important. The best thing to do and the hardest as well is just to not give them what they are seeking. Answer the question and basically walk away or just say you are not willing to participate in their games. It is not easy but eventually the person will go somewhere else to get what they are looking for
My wife has BPD and when I separated recently after months and months of criticism, blamings and ragings she initially agreed to therapy then later changed her mind telling a friend that she would have gone but I had asked her in the wrong way so yet again I was to …
I am writing to complain that many "proffessionals" dismiss bpd a's something you can never bring up to your partner that has the disorder because they will reject it and throw it back in your face. I was very scared bringing this up to my spouse that meets almost all the criteria for this disorder because of the stigma put on it. When I did however, she was incredibly receptive and was actually appreciative that I cared enough about our relationship to try and find a solution to our problem. It turns out she was relieved to find out she had a problem because when we weren't fighting, she recognized that she behaved irrationally when we did fight. To people in this situation: the people you love that suffer from this sometime really do want help. They are people too and don't necessarily benefit from you giving up on them.