Living with BPD: How to Manage

At times, living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) can be an overwhelming, confusing, and frightening experience. Anger, depression, and fear of abandonment by loved ones can be unmanageable feelings for someone with BPD that, if not addressed proactively, can lead to extreme emotional dysregulation and trigger events that cause further distress and interpersonal crises.

Borderline Personality Disorder is a diagnosis that can cause stress in and of itself. It is a difficult disorder to treat, and treatment for BPD is often an intensive process. However, it is possible to recover from BPD and begin living a more balanced, emotionally healthy life.

Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder

To begin the process of making living with BPD manageable, you must first receive a proper diagnosis from a mental health professional in order to receive specific treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD therapy can offer invaluable lessons about coping with the emotional rollercoaster that those with BPD experience on a regular basis. If you are living with BPD, controlling your emotions can be next to impossible without the skills taught through BPD therapy.

In conjunction with BPD therapy, medications are often prescribed to help mitigate the negative effects of such BPD symptoms as depression or anxiety. By effectively treating some of BPD’s most problematic symptoms with medications, therapists can help give you relief from some of the fears, anxieties, and negative emotions that interfere with your ability to cope with life’s ups and downs. This can create the space necessary for you to get the most out of your BPD therapy.

Committing to Change

Attending BPD therapy on a regular basis and committing to the process of healing is the single most important thing one can do to help manage living with BPD. People with Borderline Personality Disorder experience emotional extremes on a regular basis, causing them to act out in destructive ways to relieve overwhelming negative emotions. Until you learn new ways of coping with emotional distress, you will continue to live in a world of endless emotional triggers and struggle to maintain your most important interpersonal relationships. In order to overcome this cycle of pain, you must learn new ways of processing emotions and develop coping skills that lead to solutions.

Support of Loved Ones

In addition to treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder, managing BPD is much easier with the support of family, friends, and significant others. Like any serious illness, mental or physical, recovery can be an intensive, challenging, and sometimes lengthy process. If you are seeking treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder, have a frank conversation with the most important people in your life and ask them to support you on your journey to recovery.

BPD can make relationships extremely strained, regardless of who has BPD and who doesn’t. Communication is a two-way street. If you can get your loved ones involved in the recovery process, they too can learn how to facilitate better communication and problem solving with you.

Even if your family is reluctant to participate fully in your treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder, you will find that there are many support groups and websites that represent a community of people invested in their own BPD recovery or that of their loved ones.

With proper diagnosis, medication, BPD therapy, and support, there is no reason to doubt that you can overcome the worst aspects of the disorder and go on to a life where healthy relationships can be achieved and personal goals can be reached.