How to Care For Your Loved Ones with BPD (2024)

FAQs

How do people with BPD treat their partners? ›

Their wild mood swings, angry outbursts, chronic abandonment fears, and impulsive and irrational behaviors can leave loved ones feeling helpless, abused, and off balance. Partners and family members of people with BPD often describe the relationship as an emotional roller coaster with no end in sight.

Despite its many challenges, the prognosis for BPD is good. This means that while most people with BPD do experience residual symptoms even after time and treatment, in the long term, recovery and healthy relationships are possible.

Often, the borderline person is unaware of how they feel when their feelings surface, so they displace their feelings onto others as causing them. They may not realise that their feelings belong within them, so they think that their partner is responsible for hurting them and causing them to feel this way.

Results found in a 2014 study found the average length of a BPD relationship between those who either married or living together as partners was 7.3 years. However, there are cases where couples can stay together for 20+ years.

Those who have BPD tend to be very intense, dramatic, and exciting. This means they tend to attract others who are depressed and/or suffering low self-esteem. People who take their power from being a victim, or seek excitement in others because their own life is not where they want it to be.

Offer emotional support.

Someone with BPD may feel very isolated because of their past. Offer your partner understanding and patience. It is possible for them to learn and have better behaviors.

Passionate and emotional – When a person with BPD loves, the love is deep, highly committed and loyal to the relationship. Even though there may be struggles with attachment and fears of abandonment, these are ultimately manifestations of love.

Knowing your loved one's triggers, alerting them, and helping them avoid or cope with those triggers may prevent a splitting cycle. Understand your own limits. If you feel unequipped to help your loved one cope with their BPD splitting episodes, be honest. Tell them when they should seek professional help.

These results suggest that patients with BPD report becoming more accepting and forgiving over time. Additionally, recovery status is significantly associated with increasing time in these states.

Is relationship with BPD toxic? ›

Codependency in a relationship usually occurs when one of the partners has a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). If your partner has either one of these personality disorders, you might find yourself stuck in a toxic codependent relationship.

You and your partner seeking guidance from a mental health professional can help support the possibility of positive change in your relationship. BPD isn't a determinant for lack of love or toxic relationships. It just may offer challenges to some people.

People with borderline personality disorder usually have a hypersensitive reaction to rejection. This means that they may not react to rejection as well as someone who does not have this condition. This can lead to unstable relationships, self-image, and behaviors.

If you are friend or a loved one with a mental health condition reading this now, please do not give up on them. People who have a condition such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) will most certainly have issues maintaining relationships which can make it hard to stay with them at times.

Only remorse leads to a real apology and change. One of the hallmarks of people with Borderline Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (BP/NP) is that they often do not feel truly sorry. Even though a BP/NP may say he or she is sorry, there is often something lacking.

MD. People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often rotate between idolizing and devaluing others. In the case of the “favorite person,” the individual with BPD prefers one person and wants to spend all their time with them.

Borderline personality disorder usually begins by early adulthood. The condition seems to be worse in young adulthood and may gradually get better with age. If you have borderline personality disorder, don't get discouraged.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) isn't a personal choice. It's a mental health condition, and it can be managed. Can a person with borderline personality disorder feel love? Absolutely!

The Attraction

They're amazed by their confidence, as they recognise its absence in their own life. They find being involved with them validates their character, boosting their self-esteem. It provides a sense of completeness they have never experienced before in the initial stages of the relationship.

Dating someone with borderline personality disorder can be challenging. Your partner may have major difficulties with strong emotions, drastic mood swings, chronic fear of abandonment, and impulsive behaviors that can strain your relationship with chaos and instability.

What is BPD mirroring? ›

“One of the biggest and most challenging aspects of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is often 'The Chameleon Effect' – or 'mirroring'. This is the constant, unconscious change in the person's 'self', as they struggle to fit in with their environment, or the people around them.

One of the most common ways of characterizing patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder is that they are manipulative. Clinical usage of the term varies widely but clearly carries a pejorative meaning.

People with BPD score low on cognitive empathy but high on emotional empathy. This suggests that they do not easily understand other peoples' perspectives, but their own emotions are very sensitive. This is important because it could align BPD with other neurodiverse conditions.

These individuals often report feeling that emotions control their lives or even that they feel things more intensely than other people. In close relationships, a person with BPD may appear jealous, possessive, or hyper-reactive. These individuals often fear being left alone and have deep feelings of worthlessness.

Separations, disagreements, and rejections—real or perceived—are the most common triggers for symptoms. A person with BPD is highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone, which brings about intense feelings of anger, fear, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and very impulsive decisions.

Sometimes it only lasts a couple hours, but one time it lasted two months.” — Raylene C. If you “split” because of your BPD, or even your childhood trauma, know that you're not alone and your thoughts do not define you. Splitting is a very real and common part of living with BPD for many people.

Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving and binge eating. Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting. Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days.

Borderline personality disorder causes a broad range of reactions that can be considered self-destructive or self-sabotaging. It influences thoughts, emotions, behavior, and communication, adding a degree of volatility and unpredictability to daily living that can be unsettling for BPD sufferers and their loved ones.

Many people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) will report that they spend a lot of time and energy suppressing emotions. If you have ever had an intense thought or feeling that you couldn't handle in the moment and tried to push away, you have experienced emotional suppression.

Background. Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) may experience a qualitatively distinct depression which includes “mental pain.” Mental pain includes chronic, aversive emotions, negative self-concept, and a sense of pervasive helplessness.

At what age does borderline personality show up? ›

According to the DSM-5, BPD can be diagnosed as early as at 12 years old if symptoms persist for at least one year. However, most diagnoses are made during late adolescence or early adulthood.

Splitting is a common behavior among people with borderline personality disorder (BPD). It means that a person has difficulty accurately assessing another individual or situation. Instead, they see something as completely good or completely bad, and their assessment may switch back and forth rapidly.

Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or those with BPD who may not even know they have it, are more likely than the general population to be verbally, emotionally/psychologically, physically abusive.

Living with Someone with Borderline Personality: Challenges and Coping. Living with someone with borderline personality may involve being falsely accused, dealing with changes in mood, and facing love and rejection cycles. Understanding these behaviors aren't personal may help.

Participants with BPD had more frequent, intense, and sudden experiences of aversive tension than did control participants; moreover, rejection, being alone, and failure were identified as triggering events for nearly 40% of the BPD group's increases in aversive tension.

People with borderline personality disorders are aware of their behaviors and the consequences of them and often act in increasingly erratic ways as a self-fulfilling prophecy to their abandonment fears.

Can you have a healthy relationship with someone with BPD? Yes, it is possible. Living with BPD doesn't mean you can't establish stable and healthy relationships. Still, relationships are a significant challenge to most people with BPD.

People with BPD score low on cognitive empathy but high on emotional empathy. This suggests that they do not easily understand other peoples' perspectives, but their own emotions are very sensitive. This is important because it could align BPD with other neurodiverse conditions.

Separations, disagreements, and rejections—real or perceived—are the most common triggers for symptoms. A person with BPD is highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone, which brings about intense feelings of anger, fear, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and very impulsive decisions.

Living with borderline personality disorder (BPD) poses some challenges. Intense emotional pain and feelings of emptiness, desperation, anger, hopelessness, and loneliness are common. These symptoms can affect every part of your life.

Should you marry someone with BPD? ›

“Clinicians should know that people with BPD can successfully marry or live with a partner in a stable relationship and become parents.