How to live with a «border guard»

Life with a «border guard» is often compared to a «roller coaster» — ups and downs, then good periods filled with love and happiness, then emotional outbursts, fits of rage or attempts at tight control. This causes confusion, helplessness, despair and the obvious question: “How to deal with this?”

Stop walking on eggshells!

Authors of Stop Walking on Eggshells. Living with someone with borderline personality disorder Paul Mason and Randy Kroeger answer this question and more. They created a kind of instruction, a guide for those who live with the «border guards».

Reminding that making diagnoses is the task of doctors, psychiatrists, Paul Mason and Randy Kroeger provide useful information about this type of disorder, which is not fully understood by specialists.

“The definition of a personality disorder implies that it causes suffering both for the person himself and for those who interact with him. The description of BPD seems so negative that people with this diagnosis often feel stigmatized.

It is extremely important to remember that borderline personality disorder and its owner are not the same thing. If you live with a borderline person, it can be difficult to separate the diagnosis from them. In fact, only a person with BPD can control his thoughts, feelings and behavior. And this is important to understand for the recovery of SPs and for yourself.”

In the following clearly structured chapters, one can find information about BPD itself and about the inner world of a person with this disorder. The writing of the book was preceded by a long period of communication with the «border guards» and their relatives, the collection and systematization of information shared by real people.

That is why the «manual» covers such a large layer of problems — and every question is given a clear answer. In addition, the reader has the opportunity to look at the described situations from different angles — through the eyes of the people with BPD themselves, their parents, children or partners and experts.

How to regain control over your own life if there is a “border guard” next to you? How to resolve many specific issues? How to be guided in the search for a psychotherapist, what other literature on the topic can be read? And what exercises will help to cope with their own experiences and maintain balance? All the answers are in the book by Paul Mason and Randy Kroeger.

Here is a fragment of the text of chapter 2 “The inner world of the “border guard”: the definition of BPD. PRL Criteria».

«Desperate attempts to avoid real and imagined situations in which they will be abandoned»

Imagine the horror you would experience if you were lost as a child in New York’s Times Square. A second ago, mom was there, holding your hand — and suddenly she was carried away by the crowd. You look around, panicking, trying to find her.

This is how people with BPD feel most of the time—isolated, anxious, terrified at the thought of being alone. Caring, supportive people are like friendly faces in a crowd.

But take a careless step, which can be interpreted as a sign of an impending departure, and the SPs will panic and react. For example, an explosion of rage or a plea «Just don’t leave!». It doesn’t take much to trigger this reaction: One borderline woman stopped her neighbor from leaving her apartment to take her clothes to the laundry.

The fear of abandonment can be so strong that it literally overwhelms the SP: when one man told his SP wife that he probably had a deadly disease, she lashed out at him for going to the doctor.

If your SPs experienced neglect as children or grew up in a highly dysfunctional environment, they may have learned to deal with fear by denying or suppressing it. They had plenty of opportunities to practice, so the original emotion might not be felt.

If SPs get frustrated or angry, try to remember if some circumstance could have triggered the fear of abandonment.

Armin (non-borderline)

If I’m five minutes late on my way home from work, my wife will call me. She constantly sends messages to the pager. I can’t go out with my friends anymore because she reacts so strongly to it. Messages on the pager came, even if we were going to the movies. It was so stressful that I stopped seeing my friends without her.

Sometimes people with BPD will immediately warn about their fear of being abandoned. However, no less often this fear is expressed in other forms, for example, through rage. Feeling vulnerable and out of control provokes anger.

Tess (borderline personality)

If I feel like I’ve been abandoned, a whole range of feelings arise: isolation, horror, loneliness. I panic. I think that I was betrayed, used. I think I will die. One day I called my young man, and he replied that he would call back later, as he is now watching TV.

I took up ironing to pass the time. But he didn’t call. I waited. He didn’t call. And the terrible feeling that I was abandoned returned. It hurt so much, because just the day before, I caught myself thinking that I believed in his love for me.

By the time the phone rang at XNUMX:XNUMX p.m., I had already made the decision that we needed to break up, wanted to leave him before he left me. And all this time he was just watching the movie. I felt so stupid; but the pain, the fear like a knife in the heart — it was all real.