How is it to live with someone with borderline?

People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) tend to have major difficulties with relationships, especially with those closest to them. Their wild mood swings, angry outbursts, chronic abandonment fears, and impulsive and irrational behaviors can leave loved ones feeling helpless, abused, and off balance.

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Is it safe to live with someone with BPD?

Know that you can live a normal life with BPD.

People with BPD often have risk-taking behaviors, such as overspending, drug use, reckless driving, or self-harm due to a lack of inhibition. Although these behaviors can be dangerous, and potentially life-threatening, many people with BPD are high-functioning individuals.

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What it's like living with someone with BPD?

People living with BPD often have an intense fear of instability and abandonment. As a result, they have problems being alone. The condition is also known for anger, mood swings, and impulsiveness. These qualities can dissuade people from being around someone with BPD.

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Is BPD the hardest to live with?

BPD in particular is one of the lesser-known mental illnesses, but all the same it is one of the hardest to reckon with. (Some people dislike the term so much they prefer to refer to emotionally unstable personality disorder.)

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What is it like living with a BPD spouse?

Living with someone who has borderline personality disorder (BPD) can feel confusing and cause anxiety in your relationship. It often leads to rifts in personal relationships and even poses problems in maintaining employment, which can lead to further turbulence due to financial woes.

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Living With Borderline Personality Disorder

30 related questions found

Is it worth being in a relationship with a BPD?

Anyone living with BPD can still lead satisfying lives and take pleasure in long-term relationships and even life partnerships. With the proper treatment and support, people with BPD can and do have healthy and happy relationships.

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What are the red flags of BPD?

Persistently unable to form a stable self-image or sense of self. Drastically impulsive in at least two possibly self-damaging areas (substance abuse, reckless driving, disordered eating, sex). Self-harming or suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats. Instability often brought on by reactivity of mood (ex.

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At what age does BPD get worse?

Borderline personality disorder usually begins by early adulthood. The condition seems to be worse in young adulthood and may gradually get better with age.

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What does a BPD meltdown look like?

For many folks with BPD, a “meltdown” will manifest as rage. For some, it might look like swinging from one intense emotion to another. For others, it might mean an instant drop into suicidal ideation. Whatever your experience is, you're not alone.

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What not to say to someone with BPD?

What Not to Say to Someone With Borderline Personality Disorder
  • “You seemed fine earlier.”
  • 2. “ Stop trying to make me feel guilty” / “It's not a big deal” / “You're overreacting”
  • 3.“ Don't be upset” / “Don't be so sensitive” / “Don't worry about it”

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Why do borderlines hurt the ones they love?

BPD splitting destroys relationships because the behaviour can be impulsive or reckless in order to alleviate the pain, often hurting loved ones in the process. It can feel like everyone abandons or hurts them, often causing them to look for evidence, and creating problems from nothing.

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Do people with BPD love differently?

People with BPD have a lot of difficulty in relationships, but that doesn't mean they're incapable of love. Unstable emotions often lead to unstable relationships, while black-and-white thinking may make a person with BPD push people away when there is evidence their partner has flaws.

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Do people with BPD feel real love?

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) isn't a personal choice. It's a mental health condition, and it can be managed. Can a person with borderline personality disorder feel love? Absolutely!

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What not to do when someone has BPD?

Don't point out how you feel that they're wrong, try to win the argument, or invalidate their feelings, even when what they're saying is totally irrational. Do your best to stay calm, even when the person with BPD is acting out.

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Can people with BPD be toxic?

Often, the person with BPD will react towards loved ones as if they were the abusers from their past, and take out vengeance and anger towards them. When the person with BPD feels abandoned, they can become abusive or controlling as a way to defend against feelings of abandonment or feeling unworthy.

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How does BPD behave after breakup?

The individual with BPD tends to blame themselves for the breakup and may experience an increase in depression, anxiety, anger and self-harming behaviors.

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Why are people with BPD so angry?

BPD Anger Triggers

Anger that is intense, uncontrolled, or inappropriate can be a devastating symptom for someone struggling with borderline personality disorder. They may be driven by a desire to be connected to others, yet loss of emotional control frequently drives others away.

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How do you snap out of a BPD episode?

You could:
  1. Wrap up in a blanket and watch your favourite TV show.
  2. Write all your negative feelings on a piece of paper and tear it up.
  3. Listen to music that you find uplifting or soothing.
  4. Write a comforting letter to the part of yourself that is feeling sad or alone.
  5. Let yourself cry or sleep.
  6. Cuddle a pet or a soft toy.

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What is the hardest mental illness to live with?

Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPDs) become overwhelmed and incapacitated by the intensity of their emotions, whether it is joy and elation or depression, anxiety, and rage. They are unable to manage these intense emotions.

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Do borderlines end up alone?

Loneliness may be common with BPD, but it's not impossible to overcome. There are many strategies you can use to feel less alone, such as joining a support group, taking classes, caring for an animal, and finding new ways to communicate with your loved ones. You may also want to consider engaging in therapy.

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What is the best job for someone with BPD?

Many people with BPD feel emotions deeply and find working in a caring role fulfilling. If you are an empathetic person, consider jobs such as teaching, childcare, nursing and animal care.

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What are the strange behaviors of BPD?

A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones. A distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self. Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating.

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What is the biggest symptom of BPD?

People with borderline personality disorder may experience intense mood swings and feel uncertainty about how they see themselves. Their feelings for others can change quickly, and swing from extreme closeness to extreme dislike. These changing feelings can lead to unstable relationships and emotional pain.

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What are the biggest signs of BPD?

The 9 symptoms of BPD
  • Unstable relationships. ...
  • Unclear or shifting self-image. ...
  • Impulsive, self-destructive behaviors. ...
  • Self-harm. ...
  • Extreme emotional swings. ...
  • Chronic feelings of emptiness. ...
  • Explosive anger. ...
  • Feeling suspicious or out of touch with reality.

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