Practical Suggestions for Taking The First Steps to Healing

You are in a relationship with someone who has borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Perhaps you only suspect that this person has BPD.

Having an official diagnosis is not important now.

If the person demonstrates enough BP traits that you are concerned, then this applies.

You are likely feeing confused.

All of this new information can leave you feeling overwhelmed.

All too soon, you will understand as the light bulb turns on.

You have a lot of work to do.

It’s ok.

Work on the confusion first.

You need more information.

Read all the online information you can find.

Reading Stop Walking On Eggshells (SWOE) is great grounding for you at this time.

You’ve most likely lost touch with what is right and wrong, good and bad.

You are probably also isolated.

Aside from information, your greatest need is for validation and feedback.

There are several places you can go to get the validation you need.

Join and read the mailing list and ask for feedback from the people who post there.

Find some healthy people around you and TALK TO THEM.

Talk to family, friends, coworkers, neighbors - whatever you’ve got.

They will help you – and you’ll be surprised how supportive people can be if you let them.

Now with input you need to OUTPUT.

Start writing, and don’t shortchange it.

Again the lists are a great place to do it, but you can keep your writings private if you prefer.

Or, you can share them with just a close friend.

But the important thing is to WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU THINK.

Here is a link to a letter I wrote to my significant other when I realized how the disorder was effecting me.

Work on your emotions next.

They are real - they demand your attention, and you can’t shortchange them.

You need to EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS, and find people who will VALIDATE and SUPPORT your feelings.

You can talk about them, write them, scream them, or carve them in a tree, but whatever you do, spit them out!

This should include a professional, trained and effective counselor or therapist who understands the disorder.

This BPD411 mailing list is really good for this, but there are other avenues.

For example, if your BPSO has a drinking or drug problem you can attend Al-anon or Nar-anon meetings and you get loads of listening and validation.

Just like survivors who have lived a long time in a war zone, living with the disorder has done a lot of damage to you.

You need to figure out what that damage is for you and get some help.

As part of your healing you will need to learn how to set appropriate boundaries.

It is understood that you may not even know what a boundary is right now, that’s ok.

After you work on this for a while (I’d figure on 3-6 months if you’re like me) you WILL have the strength that you’re seeing in others here.

Then you’ll probably become a loud-mouthed, overbearing, over-opinionated poster like me!

Figure that!

Oh, and you’ll probably change some other things in your life too.

So take a number, pick up a shovel.

Join the rest of us.

We are all digging our way out of our respective holes and moving towards understanding, healing and recovery.

NonGuy

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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.