Insuring Your Safety If you are to have a brighter future, you must take serious steps to be sure that you will be alive in the future to enjoy it. Even if this doesn’t seem necessary to you, you owe it to yourself to take your personal safety seriously.
If you feel as if you are in danger right now, stop reading and call 911 immediately.
If you are being physically abused, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY) for help immediately.
If you are currently contemplating suicide or the murder of your significant other (SO), log off the Internet now and call 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) immediately.
Whether or not you believe your personal safety is currently at risk, you must take steps to complete preparation of a safety plan. Like washing your car to insure rain, if you have a safety plan, you probably won’t need it. If you don’t have it, you leave yourself more vulnerable to potentially severe physical abuse. If you don’t think you need a safety plan, consider that the prison population in the United States has about five times the incidence of personality disorders as the general population. "With a team of over 350 doctoral-level psychologists and 650 mental health/substance abuse treatment specialists, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is one of the largest employers of psychologists in the United States." (http://www.bop.gov/cpdpg/cpdpsfaq.html) This is serving a population of around 150,000 individuals in that part of the prison system. That’s one mental health professional for each 150 prisoners. People with personality disorders can be very dangerous, oftentimes without any warning whatsoever.
Preparing a safety plan is not difficult, simply follow the instructions on the Safety Plan page. When you feel finished, you may contact us and we will help you review your safety plan with you.
Until you have begun to take steps to assure your safety, you cannot effectively implement the remainder of the Path to a Brighter Future program. The reason for this is that when you begin to change your reaction to the situation, your SO may react in unpredictable ways. If you enforce a boundary, for example, your SO may react violently even though they haven’t reacted violently in the past.
Because people with borderline traits are heavily triggered by real or imagined abandonment, your changing things may be perceived as a first step in your leaving the relationship. This triggers the most basic fears in those with borderline traits even if you don’t say anything to them. Many people with borderline traits are very intuitive almost to the point that they seem able to read your mind.
We have had cases in the online community where SWAT teams became involved, even though there was no prior violent history. You must be prepared for these unpredictable moves before implementing significant change, or you may risk your personal safety. At this point, we reiterate the disclaimer below that you should consult your own therapist, lawyers and other professionals before taking any significant steps.
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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.
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