How can I help my friend with BPD?

[MagicalBee]

Hello everybody,

I hope that somebody here might be able to help me and that you are all safe and well during this time!

I have a friend who I am relatively close to who I am very concerned about at the moment. She is 30 and diagnosed with BPD - something which I am trying to understand more about and be aware of.

Over the past few years that we have been friends, she has started relationships with several men that have seemed to end in similar ways - they are heavily interested early on, she trusts them almost instantly and then after a little while they show emotionally abusive and manipulative traits. It is deeply hurtful to see this happen, as I fear my friend has poor self-esteem and it seems that with each relationship that happens, her view of herself gets worse and worse.

I don’t like to interfere with my friend’s relationships but the advice I am looking for relates more to how I can offer support and help in the best way possible. I know that a lot of these issues come from within (I used to have bad self-esteem and even when others complimented me, it wasn’t a long-term fix) and I have suggested maybe she spends some time on her own to figure out what she wants in a partner and to practice self-care, but I’m worried about ever coming across as unintentionally patronising.

If any of you ladies have any advice for me in this situation, I would really appreciate it. I would love to support her but am just not sure how. It is really hard to see her beat herself up over undeserving men, but also to see the same thing happen over and over again.

Sending best wishes to you all,

L (aged 22)

You can't.

Not the answer you were looking for, sorry.

Ultimately you must decide where your boundary is in offering support.

The demand will be endless until she decides to engage fully on changing herself. For most people that involves medical help including medication and therapy.

With all the best will in the world you are not responsible for her and you are also not a mental health professional.

BPD is generally a response to childhood trauma, there's a great book called The Body Keeps The Score that explains what happens to us and why we react like we do. It may not directly address relationships, but it may give her a good insight into her own psychology and emotional responses.

Otherwise, maybe gently pointing out patterns, and also helping her to understand that she's coping with strong emotions that may be really painful at the time but will pass like any other pain. People with BPD need to learn better emotional regulation, which they can do over time from just being with people who are good at it, so you just hanging out with her will help, you don't have to do anything else. It's also fine to set boundaries in a kind way if it feels too much.

You sound like a lovely friend.

I recommend your friend goes to her GP and tries to be referred to have Dialectical Behavioural Therapy or DBT, which teaches emotional regulation which as PP says is really important for people with BPD. Some areas offer DBT skills groups as part of their mental health provision. From NHS website- “The ultimate goal of DBT is to help you "break free" of seeing the world, your relationships and your life in a very narrow, rigid way that leads you to engage in harmful and self-destructive behaviour.”

I was diagnosed in my late 20s and DBT turned my life around. BPD can be treated or alleviated more than some other diagnoses, although people often act like there’s nothing that can be done for people with BPD.

Carry on being a good and supportive friend, like you are. Maybe gently say something about the guys not being good enough for her if you want to open up a conversation, but it really may be something she needs to work through with a therapist as she probably has very entrenched low self esteem.
Please do mention DBT, it did me so much good and hopefully could for your friend too.

People with Borderline are particularly prone to get involved with people with Narcissistic personality Disorder.

She (like all of us) needs to learn to identify Red Flags and times she's being manipulated; the Freedom Programme can help with this.

I have BPD traits and what was groundbreaking recently for me is to cut ties with someone with narcissistic traits, who was very manipulative and coercive.

He would play on my fear of abandonment (a BPD trait) to get me to do what he wanted.

She needs (speaking mostly from my own experience) to realise that it's not worth putting up with any old bollox due to avoid losing someone, esp. if the person is a crap person to have around anyway, who's just using her, using her for both an emotional response and the consequent ego boost and more.

It gave me a trememdous boost to my self esteem to get rid of the user, the player- affirming to myself that I was worth more.

EMDR therapy was also useful in getting at the underlying causes of low self esteem and lessening them.

Mumsnet helped tremendously in helping me realize what he was like when I made a thread.

It doesn't often get somewhere to tell someone their relationship is destructive, the person they're with a user, abusive etc, but it's worth a go.
I would advise that you say to her to make a thread here if she has doubts about a guy.

You can also play the same role yourself- when the bloke has done something to hurt her, tell her that the way he's treating her is not ok and she needs to cut contact etc.

IDK if it helped me when friends did that, but it didn't do any harm.

Best wishes. xxx

Oh and I did try DBT and it didn't really help me but it does for some people. It did help to see a therapist, just to affirm to myself that I was determined to look after myself and do better. Spending a lot of money on therapy meant I had to show myself I was doing better, or I'd wasted thousands of pounds (I'm not earning BTW- I spent my disability money on it. It was worth it.))

What I eventually found helpful in general was the EMDR (all BPD is based on childhood trauma of some kind- in my place mostly bullying/rejection at school, so EMDR can help as it addresses the trauma. I was really skeptical, but it's been excellent.)