Borderline Personality Disorder – Challenge for Others

Transcript

And also going back to treatment. One of the key things about borderline personality disorder, why treatment is so needed, is that because of this massive sense of feeling inadequate, they project this feeling onto others. So it’s very difficult to live with a person with a borderline personality disorder. It’s very difficult for the children who have a parent that suffers from borderline personality disorder. It’s very difficult for the co-workers to work with a person with a borderline personality disorder. It can be challenging to be the friend of a borderline personality disorder. So hence, and part of that is the emotional manipulation that people with borderline personality disorders tend to exhibit to help mask their fundamental insecurity. So, a person that’s dealing with a person with borderline personality disorder, I’ve often said that dealing with these people is like as if you’re walking on eggshells, but by the same token, you have to be very wary of demonizing these individuals.

You have to be able to protect yourself, but you also have to understand, you have to be empathic to the point that these are individuals that are working with a lot of pain. Hence, it’s very important that individual with the borderline personality disorder really get the treatment that they need. And the people around them understand that the importance of really maintaining boundaries, because they actually appreciate individuals, people that are able to maintain boundaries, because part of the diagnosis, part of this behavior will have, is to try to basically push the boundaries, constantly touch that individual. So hence, once you see yourself dealing with a person with a borderline personality, is being able to maintain the boundaries. And this is one reason why the relationships can be so tumultuous, because the boundaries are constantly being challenged. And again, part of the treatment is being able to recognize and respect the boundaries of others. And this is one of the reasons why individuals with borderline personality disorders, their children tend to have a lot of difficulty because boundaries are not always respected. There’s a lot of psychological abusive behavior that the borderline personality disordered individual engages in.