Path to a Brighter Future

Understanding Your Own Triggers

Interacting with someone who has traits of borderline personality disorder is maddening. Those with the disorder have an incredible ability to find your buttons, and when the mood strikes, they are only too willing to push those buttons.

This exercise is about determining your triggers. Once you know what your triggers are, you can put your own buttons away. If they can’t push your buttons, then you will be more resourceful, and be able to enforce the boundaries that you choose to enforce with them more effectively. If you are inappropriately angry with your significant other, they will use your anger and strength against you.

Think about the last time your significant other made you angry. Really think about it. Write down the interchange if that helps. What was it that they did that made you angry? Did they violate you in some way? Did they question you in a demeaning fashion? Did they treat you like a child? What about the way that they interacted with you specifically made you angry?

Keep a journal of interchanges. If you get angry or are unresourceful in some other way, review the exchange and make a new script for what you would do next time. In this case, Monday morning quarterbacking is an excellent thing to do. Once you have figured out what went wrong with YOUR side of the exchange, make a movie in your head of you acting differently. Rehearse in your mind doing better next time. Maybe in your rescripted movie, you take a geographic solution to an intractable problem. Maybe you don’t react in the same way to your significant other pushing a particular button.

If you put your buttons away, in a place where they can’t be pushed, then you will be able to more resourcefully deal with your significant other. Picture your significant other as a two year old. They can rage, be petulant, be impossible to deal with. Do you lose your cool with a two year old that acts like that? Why do you need to lose your cool with your significant other. Once you understand your buttons, you will be able to react better.

Many people with borderline traits have a "list" of character flaws that you the Non supposedly have. You may be "inconsiderate", "uncaring", "unavailable", "cold" or whatever. When you are alone, write down the complaints that you’ve heard from your BPSO. You’ve most likely heard them many times. Write them down one per page, leaving space at the bottom. When you’ve compiled as many of these complaints as you can remember, go back through them and write down YOUR own view of the reality of the situation. There will be some complaints that are pure projection. That is, the problem isn’t about you, it’s really about them. Some complaints will be valid weaknesses on your part. Whatever the situation is, write down your view at the bottom of each page. Do this as dispassionately as possible. Take yourself out of your self, and look at the situation as a third party observer. What would a dispassionate third party observer with all the facts say was your part in each complaint.

Getting this grounding over each complaint is helpful when those complaints come up in the context of a rage. Once you have taken the emotion out of it by looking at your part, your significant other will not be able to as easily provoke you by bringing up those subjects. If your significant other does provoke you with a new complaint, go back when you have time and add another page to your pile of complaints.

Here’s an example:

Complaint:

My husband says that I’m fat, that I don’t take care of my health and that I’m an "ugly pig".

My Reality:

While I do weigh thirty pounds more than I’d like to weigh, there is a lot of stress in my life right now. I eat to relieve this stress. I can choose to acknowledge this fact without getting emotional. My husband creates most of this stress in me. I can acknowledge that I am overweight without blaming my husband, after all, he isn’t shoving food down my throat. I can work on other ways of managing my stress. I can choose to set boundaries around this complaint if I choose. I am still a valuable human being even if I am a little overweight. I don’t have to get angry when this is brought up. If my husband doesn’t find me beautiful, that’s his issue, not mine.

By taking the complaint apart, and dispassionately addressing it in your own reality, you can own the parts that are yours. You can disregard the parts that are projections and decide appropriate responses beforehand. Most importantly though, you remove the emotional ties that have allowed this complaint to "hook" you in the past. If the only time you consider these complaints is during the heat of the moment, you’ll not be able to be resourceful about them.

This is a continuing exercise that can be revisited whenever you feel your buttons are being pushed in a new way.

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Disclaimer: The information on this site (http://www.bpd411.org) is based on personal experiences of the authors and members of our e-mail mailing list. It is NOT meant to replace professional advice or take the place of counseling, therapy or additional personal research.