How to handle my child with Borderline Personality Disorder? 04-03-2020
By: César A. Fernández
Do you live with a family member with BPD or do you think your family member has Borderline Personality Disorder? We have created a workshop for you. Click here to see more
Living with children with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) can be a demanding, complicated, and sometimes tiring task for parents. BPD affects not only the individual who suffers from it, but also their direct environment.
People with BPD tend to experience emotions more intensely than average, are hypersensitive to situations of rejection and abandonment, can be impulsive, irritable, often have conflicting interpersonal relationships, are sometimes unstructured, and show higher rates of self-injurious behaviors and suicidal ideations than others.
If you want to see the most characteristic symptoms, click here
All of this makes it challenging for parents to handle children with this particular condition. It is important to take into account the following:
- Remember that your child has a Personality Disorder, and that many of the behaviors he/she manifests are due to his/her high emotional reactivity and difficulty controlling his/her impulses. Try to understand them and not judge them.
- You may find their reactions exaggerated or more intense than appropriate, but it is because their interpretation of the situation and their emotional response to the situation are also as intense or exaggerated. In each conflicting interaction seek to find out what their triggers have been, so that you can address them directly.
- It is vital that you validate what your child is feeling and saying. Validating does not mean agreeing with what he says; it means making him/her understand that in some way you understand what they feel, that you understand that it is difficult for them, that you imagine how angry they can feel under the circumstances.
- Validating can be as simple as saying, “I see you're upset with what I just told you. Is there anything you wouldn't like?", "I know it's frustrating for you to accept that you won't be able to go out today", "I imagine it's not easy for you that your friend has answered you that way".
- Perhaps more important than validating is not invalidating. We must at all costs avoid phrases such as "You have no reason to be like this", "You have everything and you do not know how to appreciate it", or "Stop exaggerating, that is silly".
- If the situation is very tense, it is important to avoid a direct confrontation, to ask directly that we lower the tone (likewise, let's "lower" in plural), signals that in those conditions you cannot speak, and to direct attention so that the conversation resumes when the mood has dropped
- It is important to keep the home structure and rules clear. You can't give in to things you don't want for fear of your daughter's emotional outbursts.
- Don't be shocked by your child's intense emotions or marked expressions of emotion, catastrophic ideas, and threats. While it is true that you must learn to recognize, with the help of a specialist, the alarm and risk guidelines, you must also learn to tolerate conversations about negative emotions and even sporadic suicidal ideations, without needing to be alarmed.
BPD is a demanding, complicated, and exhausting disorder. But it is possible to work on it in therapy, to learn to understand and manage it, and to achieve important improvements in the individual and his family.Don't wait to get help!
Do you live with a family member with BPD or do you think your family member has Borderline Personality Disorder? We have created a workshop for you. Click here to see more
