Can you live with someone who has borderline personality disorder?

Know that you can live a normal life with BPD. People with BPD often have risk-taking behaviors, such as overspending, drug use, reckless driving, or self-harm due to a lack of inhibition. Although these behaviors can be dangerous, and potentially life-threatening, many people with BPD are high-functioning individuals.

How do you talk to a loved one with borderline personality disorder?

Here are a few basic pointers for communicating with someone with borderline personality disorder in a healthy and productive way:

1. Be patient.
2. Be realistic.
3. Try to separate facts from feelings.
4. Validate feelings first.
5. Listen actively and be sympathetic.
6. Seek to distract when emotions rise.

How do you set boundaries with borderline personality disorder?

How to set and reinforce healthy boundaries

1. Calmly reassure the person with BPD when setting limits.
2. Make sure everyone in the family agrees on the boundaries—and how to enforce the consequences if they’re ignored.
3. Think of setting boundaries as a process rather than a single event.

What to say to someone with BPD to make them feel better?

Calmly reassure the person with BPD when setting limits. Say something like, “I love you and I want our relationship to work, but I can’t handle the stress caused by your behavior. I need you to make this change for me.”

What happens when you live with someone with borderline personality disorder?

People with BPD have difficulty regulating their emotions and behaviour and that can cause a lot of problems for those around them. Fortunately, living with someone with borderline personality disorder means you can help them (and yourself) by setting healthy boundaries, improving communication, and by stabilizing the relationship.

What are healthy boundaries in a relationship with someone with BPD?

Healthy boundaries are also extremely important when it comes to living with someone with borderline personality disorder, because they make behaviour and expectations predictable within the relationship. At the same time, these healthy boundaries in a relationship reduce the chance that people with BPD feel confused, annoyed, angry, upset or sad.

How can I help someone with borderline personality disorder at home?

Anything that draws your loved one’s attention can work, but distraction is most effective when the activity is also soothing. Try exercising, sipping hot tea, listening to music, grooming a pet, painting, gardening, or completing household chores. Talk about things other than the disorder.

What does a borderline need in a parent?

What the person with a borderline disorder needed was a calm, strong parent who did not give in to them, but provided support for their real self to develop, so they could build confidence in themselves, and not cling to others for comfort. Previously published here and reprinted with the author’s permission. What’s your take on what you just read?