Can Family and Loved Ones Help Borderlines?

Can a non borderline help a borderline? Can a nonbp rescue a borderline? From my experience as both someone who had BPD and as a non borderline in a relationship with someone who had BPD (after my recovery) my answer is - NO. Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder must take responsibility for their own lives, personality disorder, abandonment wounds, abandonment fears, abandonment depression, and more to the point, they must take responsibility for their actions, words, and their own recovery.

---

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Audio Programs on BPD for Non Borderlines specifically and about BPD Generally by A.J. Mahari sold separately or packaged together with Mahari's Ebooks and Life Coaching Services.

---

Can a Non-Borderline help a Borderline?

This article explores the question of the non-borderline and his or her ability to help someone with BPD in his or her life. The issues of self-care versus taking care of someone who is not able to (or refuses) to take care of themselves.

I have received, over the last 14 years, so many questions from many people who are in relationships with people with Borderline Personality Disorder. I continue to not only receive countless emails on this aspect of the challenge of having someone with BPD in one's life but it is also often a central issue that leads many to seek me out as a mental health and life coach. The question most asked is: "Can I help the Borderline in my life?" My answer is, for the most part - no. Not in the way that most on the other side of someone with BPD mean when they ask this question.

There is a difference between support and help. If it is possible, that is to say, you are not being abused, to support the borderline in your life, by all means, do. However, as far as actual “help” goes, each person with BPD has to want to choose to take personal responsibility, get help and create the change necessary to be healthier.

As I talk about in my audio program, "Breaking Free From the BPD Maze - Non Borderline Recovery" family members and loved ones of those with BPD really will benefit from examining what their efforts to help - often efforts that end up in effectively trying to control someone else and have them change. No matter how well-intentioned your efforts may be they are still efforts to control someone else. Family members and loved ones of those with BPD will benefit from exploring what for many becomes not only an over-focus on the person with BPD but also addictive-type behaviour that traps them in this unhealthy and painful dynamic in ways that threaten their own mental health.

The biggest problem with this dynamic of the "non-borderline" (for lack of a better term) trying to help the borderline is that with very few exceptions (rare exceptions) any attempts made to "help" the borderline will not be in the best interest of the "non-borderline." It is also a tricky place to be with anyone. Whenever we think that we can change someone else, or that our "helping" them is dependant upon their changing we are setting ourselves up in codependent/enmeshed styles of relating.

Most borderlines (until a certain amount of healing takes place) do not see "other", they do not see you, they see only themselves. You, if you exists, emotionally to your borderline are likely just a mirror reflecting back what the borderline chooses to see about him/herself. More often than not,the borderline will not accept what is in this reflection and will transfer on to "other" what is unacceptable to him/herself about him/herself.

In my opinion, you, the non-borderline, cannot "make" a borderline see anything, understand anything or "get it". The changes necessary for any borderline to "get it" (to emotionally grow up) and be able to relate in an age-appropriate way -- consistently must come from within. The borderline has to want to first recognize that change may be necessary in order for him/her to be able to build and sustain relationships. The borderline has to come to an understanding of how he/she effects those around them. Then he/she has to learn how to be in touch with their conscience and ability to hear what others say, to appreciate how others feel etc, aside from oneself. The borderline is often caught in a very self-absorbed trap which itself is a defense mechanism by which the borderline seeks to not feel annihilated. (That is to say it is a protection against any perceived or real threat to what is already a fragmented and vulnerable ego)

When I was in the worst throes of BPD, no one could help me. I know this first hand. Many people tried. I would just use them and turn everything on them. I didn't know any other way to relate. I didn't know I was doing that for a long time. Whatever I felt those around me had better feel too or there would be hell to pay. If I felt something that no one else felt then it left me feeling unreal because my existence was dependant upon and defined by "other" and not from within myself. I had no identity all on my own. This is one of the major reasons why you can't help a borderline. It takes a lot of dedicated work in therapy over time to unwind the defense mechanisms that operate in BPD.

---

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Audio Programs on BPD for Non Borderlines specifically and about BPD Generally by A.J. Mahari sold separately or packaged together with Mahari's Ebooks and Life Coaching Services.

---

The people who tried to help me were played with and manipulated in my past. Sometimes it was calculated. Other times it was just habit. It was one of the toughest things to heal and to learn to STOP. Until a borderline takes personal responsibility for his/herself the games, manipulations and lies will not stop. Until a borderline learns how to feel their own feelings, cry, and take care of themselves emotionally there is just nothing anyone else can do to help them or to change how they relate to anyone else, or themselves for that matter.

The best thing to do if you love someone who has BPD is to put your energy toward suggesting that they get professional help. Even this can cause explosions and difficulties.

Each and everyone of you who loves someone with BPD the single-most important thing I want to convey to you, is this:

Take care of yourself first. By taking care of yourself and by staying out of the borderline dance of intimacy, dance of anger, dance of.......etc etc -- you can send a clear, honest, and loving (tough love, but loving) message to the person with BPD.

---

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Audio Programs on BPD for Non Borderlines specifically and about BPD Generally by A.J. Mahari sold separately or packaged together with Mahari's Ebooks and Life Coaching Services.

---

What helped me to change the most when I had BPD, aside from therapy and a dogged-determination to work through the thoughts and behaviour was beginning to realize what I was doing to myself and to others. It was the honest mirroring back of people, therapists first, people in my life, secondly, as I slowly began to let more people know me (and as I came to "know me") that made all the difference in the world for me. If people had continued to try to please me (which was IMPOSSIBLE anyway) I might never have suffered the heart-wrenching losses that I had to suffer and learn from in order to grow and to grow up.

Central to the foundation of my recovery from BPD were the people in my life who refused to make excuses for me anymore. The people who made it clear to me that certain ways I treated them and chose to act when I had BPD were not acceptable and would not be tolerated. The people who not only developed necessary boundaries for themselves but who did not waiver in insisting that a condition of continued communication with them meant I had to learn to respect their boundaries. When I had BPD, there were many people who left my life because I hadn't yet learned how to respect their boundaries. There were many others I dismissed when their boundaries frustrated me in ways that I did not know how to tolerate.

Anything less than defining and up-holding your own boundaries as a non borderline can be tantamount to enabling someone with BPD in ways that increase the pain of the person with BPD and that will only increase your experience of that person with BPD in your life.

Each of us must take care of ourselves. It is nice to be able to care about someone else and to have some positive impact in their life. However, when it comes to personality disorders, and especially to BPD, the only savior that exists is the individual borderline, him/herself.

Try to be supportive but in taking care of yourself you will have to give clear messages and stick with your boundaries even when they are challenged by the borderline in your life.

I can honestly say that after all I have gone through with this personality disorder one of the hardest things to reconcile and live with is how I treated people in the past and how my closer relationships unfolded, and blew apart. It was only my own willingness to look at my role in these life experiences that enabled me to make changes. I had to heal my past, let go of old-patterned maladaptive ways of coping. I had to change to fit into what is deemed "healthy relating". Anything short of this and I would still be being emotionally abusive. The line between "appropriate" and "abusive" can get very blurry when one is in a relationship with a borderline. I urge anyone in this situation to keep that line in sharp focus at all times.

If you feel stuck and you know that you are in too much pain and you are not sure what to do and you feel confused by it all you might want to think about contacting me for some life coaching. I can help you to come to some clarity and understanding that can help you to identify what it is that you need and how you can actually achieve your goals in ways that can and will free you from the suffering that you may well be experiencing.

Not a popular answer, not the answer that most want to hear, but, NO, you cannot help a borderline. Each borderline has to help him/herself. Even if you could lead the "horse" to water you can't necessarily get him/her to drink.

I think it is important to care. But, if in the process of caring for yourself you have to put space, time, distance, etc between you and a borderline -- most of which many borderlines find totally intolerable and will experience as abandonment, then do it. Do what you have to do for yourself and or any children involved.

In the case of BPD, it is cruel to be kind to the extent that you enable abuse of any kind. It is cruel to insist on anything less than acceptable adult behaviour.

© Ms. A.J. Mahari, September 6, 1999 with up-dates April 10, 2009

---

Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.

Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

Audio Programs on BPD for Non Borderlines specifically and about BPD Generally by A.J. Mahari sold separately or packaged together with Mahari's Ebooks and Life Coaching Services.

---

---

3 Non Borderline Audio Programs Package $42.00

---

A.J. Mahari is currently writing a memoir about her life and experience as a person who had two parents with Borderline Personality Disorder, as a person who was diagnosed herself with BPD at the age of 19 and from her perspective as someone who has recovered from BPD. There is a new section on her BPD Blog called The Diary - My Borderline Years where A.J. Mahari shares snipets of experience from her own life that will give you just a small peak into what her memoir will include.

---

• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES
• Non Borderlines - You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

---

Visit Mental Health Matters for information about Depression, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, and Anxiety, or to help Find a Therapist.