Loneliness and the need to self-isolate are common in borderline personality disorder. Here's how you can overcome these feelings. If you live with this condition, you might crave close connections with others — but you might also find it challenging to interact with them.
One of the key features of BPD is the push-pull dynamics, which occur when individuals have a strong urge for intimacy and deep connection with someone, but their fear of rejection and abandonment leads them to push the person away.
A person with BPD is highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone, which brings about intense feelings of anger, fear, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and very impulsive decisions.
It's characterized by unstable moods and emotions, which affect relationships and behaviors. As a result, friendships with people with BPD can be rocky. Sometimes, people with BPD engage in behaviors that can seem manipulative, mean-spirited, or destructive.
Sometimes, they may abruptly cut off these relationships, effectively abandoning their partners. Other times, they make frantic attempts to hold onto relationships. These overly intense or erratic behaviors, in turn, often push loved ones away.
It is important to remember that while having a relationship with a person with BPD can be challenging, they are not intentionally trying to hurt you. Rather, they lack the ability to understand and cope with their emotional pain, which causes them to act in ways that hurt others.
People who live with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have a hard time regulating their emotions, which can be very intense, and handling stress. This can lead them to lash out at the people in their lives.
However, if the favorite person does something that the individual perceives as abandonment or rejection, they may feel overwhelmed by negative emotions, such as anger, sadness, or anxiety. These emotions can be all-consuming, leading to suicidal ideation, self-harm, or impulsive behavior.
FP is someone who individuals with BPD often hold in the highest regard trust with their life, and are heavily emotionally attached to and dependent on [19]. They often unintentionally put their entire self-worth into the relationship with their FP, thereby making frantic efforts to prevent their FP from leaving.
So, what exactly does the BPD break up cycle look like? It can look like fear of abandonment, distrust of a partner, cheating, lack of communication and self-blame. It can look like idolizing a partner, confusing strong emotions for passion, anxiety and overreacting to interactions perceived as negative.
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.
People with BPD strongly desire a deep connection with those around them. This is partly because of their fear of abandonment but because they simply love people and crave deep connections. As a result, people with BPD tend to be very passionate partners.
The effects of untreated borderline personality disorder (BPD) can be devastating. For example, the physical and mental health impact of this disorder is so severe that life expectancy among people who have BPD is about 20 years less than the national average.
A favorite person frequently is expected (consciously or otherwise) to help resolve unmet needs for the person with BPD.” People with BPD feel firmly attached to their favorite person and may depend on them for comfort, reassurance, and guidance.
Borderline personality disorder is one of the most painful mental illnesses since individuals struggling with this disorder are constantly trying to cope with volatile and overwhelming emotions.
BPD makes people more likely to engage in impulsive or risky behaviors, such as: Speeding or other unsafe driving. Unprotected sex or sex with strangers. Binge eating.
People with BPD are very sensitive to rejection. They may lie or exaggerate to cover mistakes or to maintain an overly positive image so that others will not reject them.
Show confidence and respect.
It is important that support people approach the relationship in a way that promotes trust and respect, which can be helpful and healing to a person with BPD. Although you may feel you know what is best, provide the person with BPD the opportunity to make decisions for themselves.
The high-conflict people that are borderline have the mood swings with a target of blame. That's where you really see the biggest problems in the workplace and relationships, romance, et cetera, is they just focus all those intense emotions on you. They may tell the world that you're a horrible, evil person.
The destructive and hurtful behaviors are a reaction to deep emotional pain. In other words, they're not about you. When your loved one does or says something hurtful towards you, understand that the behavior is motivated by the desire to stop the pain they are experiencing; it's rarely deliberate.
If you are feeling perpetually anxious or depressed as a result of caring for your loved one with BPD, you might find it impossible to continue living in those circumstances. Caring for your loved one while maintaining the responsibilities of work, home, and family can erode your own mental well-being.
Individuals suffering from symptoms of BPD are likely to find empathy painful. Loved ones should communicate their feelings to the person with BPD. If the person can't acknowledge those feelings, a boundary should be set.
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.