Let's deal with the name Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) first. The name is incorrect. In the 70s psychologists believed people with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) were on the border of psychosis and neurosis. This was later found to be incorrect, but the name stuck. It does not describe the condition accurately.
BPD is more prevalent in women. One in fifty men compared with one in fifteen women. This is easily explained when you consider that women have been physically and mentally oppressed for tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years.
In a nutshell BPD is a genetically inherited and/or environmentally caused mental health condition where you lack self confidence, assume the role of victim, potentially or actually self harm and fear real or imagined abandonment; and then you spin stories, idolise/demonise loved ones and use anger/violence in an attempt to achieve equilibrium/security.
If you live with a BPD Sufferer (BPDS) it feels like your treading on eggshells the whole time and you may well blame yourself for the BPDS's (BPD Sufferer's) erratic behaviour.
The main thing to remember is it's not your fault!
The second thing to remember is that you must protect yourself first. You must remain calm when discussing (even if the BPDS wants to argue, scream and shout) and you must establish very clear boundaries as to what is acceptable to you and what is not acceptable to you (e.g. you will not accept being shouted at, insulted, abused or violent behaviour).
Mindfulness can help both the person living with a BPDS and the BPDS. Getting the BPDS to admit they have a problem can be a very long road and it may only be when you can literally show them their own behaviour and discuss it rationally in comparison with an emotionally stable 'normal' person's behaviour that the BPDS starts to realise they are not like other people.
Mindfulness treatment for BPD is proven to be effective. It uses the idea of the 'wise mind' being the perfect balance of the 'rational mind' and the 'emotional mind'. Regular readers will know, mindfulness allows you to differentiate keenly and in-the-moment what type of thinking you are experiencing and to manage your process and your actions in response to your process.
If the BPDS is a regular mindfulness practitioner, if they seek therapeutic help (for free on the NHS in the UK), if they have the support of a loved one, if they are strong and brave, they can more or less walk out of most of the behaviours associated with BPD by the time they are forty.
We thoroughly recommend the following book and it's associated workbook:
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