There is no doubt that a person struggling with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) experiences a high degree of emotional pain and psychological instability. While family and loved ones generally feel compassion and desire recovery and lasting mental well-being for the person in their lives with Borderline Personality Disorder, the disorder can also cause great stress in your own life.
Being in the presence of someone whose world is a rollercoaster of emotions can be taxing. In order to cope with the presence of a person with BPD in your life, it is important to figure out what you need to do to deal with what you’re feeling and how you react.
Identify the Impact of Their Behaviors on You
Rather than being drawn into the instability of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, it is essential that you identify how their behaviors impact you. If your own self-worth is being affected because, for example, your loved one’s extreme abandonment issues make you feel indispensable one day and terrible the next, you are in danger of allowing the disorder to alter how you behave and feel.
Keep Your Emotions in Check
Make every effort to not wear your heart on your sleeve. A person with Borderline Personality Disorder is typically consumed with their fear of abandonment and issues of distrust, self-worth, and emotional dysregulation, and will be highly reactive should you lead with your emotions.
You must remember to maintain a degree of intellectual detachment when confronted with the seemingly illogical behavior of someone with BPD. For people with Borderline Personality Disorder, their emotions are based on what they are feeling from moment-to-moment. This explains the crushing emotional effect of being loved one minute and hated the next. Try to not allow this to affect your relationship with your loved one or how you feel about yourself.
Get Them Needed BPD Treatment
You must first acknowledge that someone with Borderline Personality Disorder has a serious emotional disorder that requires professional BPD treatment. Getting your loved one into a BPD outpatient or residential treatment program is essential.
However, merely removing the individual “out of the house” may do little to reduce their effect on you and your relationship. In fact, any good BPD treatment program should include family therapy that allows all of you to address issues and concerns brought on by your loved one’s BPD symptoms.