Listen actively and be sympathetic and focus on emotions rather than the words. Ensure that you demonstrate that the person with BPD feels heard. When someone is upset or angry, it's easy and understandable to reciprocate, but it is not helpful.
With borderline personality disorder, you have an intense fear of abandonment or instability, and you may have difficulty tolerating being alone. Yet inappropriate anger, impulsiveness and frequent mood swings may push others away, even though you want to have loving and lasting relationships.
Often, the borderline person is unaware of how they feel when their feelings surface, so they displace their feelings onto others as causing them. They may not realise that their feelings belong within them, so they think that their partner is responsible for hurting them and causing them to feel this way.
Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or those with BPD who may not even know they have it, are more likely than the general population to be verbally, emotionally/psychologically, physically abusive.
Intense and sometimes inappropriate rage is a characteristic of borderline personality disorder (BPD). A person with this condition has difficulty regulating their emotions or returning to their baseline. Extremes of rage and other intense emotions may last longer than might be expected, from a few hours to a few days.
Borderline rage, or borderline anger, is more than just a standard emotional reaction. In the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), anger in BPD is described as "inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger."
They may get frustrated by your inability to understand and may think you've distorted what they have said. This can be extremely frustrating for everyone involved; you may all end up defensive and argue over something that is misunderstood.
Setting boundaries for your relationship is important for you and the person with BPD. However, you should not expect your limits to fix the relationship quickly. The person with BPD may feel like these boundaries are a form of rejection, which may cause them to lash out.
Borderline/dependent: A person with borderline personality disorder (BPD) is well-matched with a person who has a dependent personality disorder (DPD). The BPD has an intense fear of abandonment which is a good match for the DPD who will not leave even a dysfunctional relationship.
With treatment and continual support from family and partners, people with BPD can have successful relationships.
Dating someone with borderline personality disorder can be challenging. Your partner may have major difficulties with strong emotions, drastic mood swings, chronic fear of abandonment, and impulsive behaviors that can strain your relationship with chaos and instability.
People with BPD may move quickly from feelings of idealization to devaluation regarding their partner and are more likely to terminate relationships than people without BPD. If you are dating someone with BPD, you may find it easy to blame yourself for your partner's erratic actions and symptoms.
Splitting is a psychological mechanism which allows the person to tolerate difficult and overwhelming emotions by seeing someone as either good or bad, idealised or devalued. This makes it easier to manage the emotions that they are feeling, which on the surface seem to be contradictory.
Validate Your Friend's Experiences
The most important thing you can do to help a friend with BPD is to just listen and validate their feelings. Understand that strong emotional reactions are part of the disorder.
BPD features are highly represented in subjects with psychopathy as well as psychopathic traits are highly prevalent in patients with BPD.
People with Borderline Personality Disorder are 13 times more likely to report childhood trauma than people without any mental health problems, according to University of Manchester research.
Narcissism is not a symptom of BPD listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). However, as many as 40% of people with BPD may also have narcissistic personality disorder,4 so people with BPD may also show signs of narcissism.