When you have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), you quickly learn that relationships with others can be tricky to navigate. You may desperately want intimate connection with someone only to fear abandonment, that is if you ever do let them get that close to you. Perhaps, you experience a cycle that might sounds something like, “Please love me. I need you. You’re the best. Actually, you’re awful. Get away from me. I don’t need you. Please come back. Please stay.” In many ways, this cycle can get replayed time after time, especially, with intimate relationships. There are additional ways that BPD traits can negatively impact your relationships and what to do to manage them:
1. Deep Desire for Emotion Support
You may at times feel like you are giving, giving, giving in your relationship and not getting enough in return, or you may find that you feel your value is wrapped up in the opinion of someone else. These behaviors/feelings come from a deep desire to share your life with someone because all you want is to be loved. One way to navigate through this is to learn to identify something that you enjoy and get a sense of personal satisfaction and/or empowerment from doing things on your own. You can experience significant joy with exploring activities that promote development of your own identity. Moreover, this will help you learn to set boundaries between where you end and where the other person begins. Confidence grows when you can try something new and learn that you can do it.
2. Maintaining Safety
If you have BPD, you might have a history of self-harming behaviors in order to gain a sense of regulation for the intense feelings, thoughts, or memories that you carry inside. Often the internal sensations you feel may stem from severe abuse or neglect in childhood, and self-harming behaviors through cutting, burning, pricking, or scratching may provide a temporary sense of zoning out, control, or relief. However, this behavior only causes you to feel shame and guilt, and a need to hide your actions from others so as not to be rejected. Individual counseling, you can learn replacement behaviors which will help you to heal in ways that are not harmful to yourself and yet can help you to better manage your thoughts and emotions via healthier means.
3. Emotional Reasoning
Emotional reasoning is the belief that because something “feels true” that it actually “is true.” This is a common thinking pattern that is easy for any person to fall into, but when you suffer from BPD, it is even harder to recognize that your feelings may not be telling you the actual truth. This is because you feel the emotions so deeply, at your very core. When it’s hard to trust others, you feel like you need to trust what you yourself are telling you from your gut feelings. The tip for overcoming the impact of emotional reasoning is to identify it. Tell yourself, “Just because this feels true does not mean it is true. I can choose what I will believe about this situation rather than be ruled by my feelings, which may not be accurately assessing the situation.”
4. Moods that Cycle from Love to Hate
As noted up above, the negative cycling nature of the intensity with which you feel love and hatred toward another can be a pattern, and that pattern can be exhausting to both you and your loved ones. Through the use of mindfulness activities, that you can learn here at Omaha Trauma Therapy, teach you to take control over the extreme fluctuations and bring yourself to more frequent states of calm.
5. Making Suicidal Gestures
When you suffer from BPD, you may experience a feeling of chronic emptiness, periods of impulsivity, and perhaps want to try to escape the pain through substance use. Any of these factors by themselves can heighten ideas of suicide or suicide attempts. Yet, when any of these combine together, the mixture can increase the risk of suicide. If you see yourself in this description, please reach out.
My therapeutic approach aims is to help you gain the tools to healthy self-regulation. Reaching out is the first step to a better future. Through the use of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), an effective treatment method for BPD, we can help you to better regulate your thoughts and feelings as well as to better express them so that you can experience healthier and more connected relationships. Contact me here to schedule your first appointment, and you will be well on your way to living a healthier life.