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 Tough Love and BPD Tough Love is not an effective approach with children and teenagers with Borderline Personality Disorder. Although some therapists and self-help authors recommend tough love as what should be done with BPD, it is ultimately detrimental to the borderline and to your relationship with the borderline. The problem comes in regarding the nature of the disorder. While behavioral therapies can work, those based on reinforcement and shaping, those therapies usually include acceptance strategies and non-judgmental approaches. The nature of BPD is that the individual with the disorder is in deep emotional pain because of the dysregulation of the emotional system. They are exquisitely sensitive to emotional experiences and many of these experiences are physical in nature, especially with children. There is intense physical pain and social rejection (to which borderlines are also intensely aware) causes more pain. The borderline will then seek to end the pain in any way they can, including substance abuse, casual sex, thrill-seeking and other dangerous methods. While these methods will stop the pain temporarily, the pain always comes back.
OK, now back to why tough love doesn’t work. A person with borderline personality disorder wants more than anything to communicate his/her pain with those with whom he/she has an attachment relationship. Understand that BPD is not just a case of the person “behaving badly”. The behavior has a function and generally that function is to either stop the pain or to communicate the pain. If you try to deal with behavior with tough love (rules, contracts, boundaries, punishments, etc.), the person with BPD will feel more rejected, more abandoned and unable to communicate the pain. This causes MORE pain and requires more pain-quelling behavior. It causes more of what made you start using tough love to begin with.
A little while ago, I was speaking with someone about a friend of my daughter’s. This girl probably has BPD. Her behavior was totally off the charts – drugs, turning tricks, running away, cutting herself, suicide attempts, etc. When the person I was speaking with expressed sympathy for the girl’s mother, I responded like this: “I think what happened with [girl’s name] was that she was in a lot of pain and didn’t know why. All she really wanted was for her mother to see her pain. All she ever wanted was for her mother to understand her and her pain. But her mother only saw bad behavior and tried to deal with that. So, the girl tried anything and everything to stop her pain.”
The word compassion actually means “to suffer alongside” (or co-suffering). If you’re a parent of a person with BPD, are you seeing and understanding their pain? Or are you fed-up with their “bad behavior”? Developing non-reactive compassion is the answer, not tough love. Tough love sends a message that the borderline can’t communicate their pain. Are you co-suffering? Or are you punishing the borderline for doing anything to stop the pain?
 Tough Love Not too long ago I wrote an article on why tough love is not the answer for BPD. I still believe that ONLY tough love is not the answer; however, I have come to reconsider tough love and BPD.One of the reasons was that the TIME article said that DBT is a combination of emotional validation and tough love.
One of my list members has moved from the techniques that I provide in “When Hope is Not Enough” – which is basically a non-judgmental attitude plus validation and normalization – to a combination of those techniques plus “tough love.” What is tough love? In my opinion, tough love is the application of PERSONAL boundaries on a relationship. These personal boundaries need to be understood. Often, people don’t understand personal boundaries. Even popular books about BPD for Non-BPs (such as SWOE) get this concept wrong. In fact, even books that are ABOUT boundaries get this concept wrong. The other day I posted a link to a video of a part of the film “The Basketball Diaries” in which Jim Carroll’s mother (Jim Carroll is played by Leonardo DiCaprio BTW and the film is based on the book by Jim Carroll and is true) denies her son money for drugs (he is a heroin addict). She enforces her own boundary (I will not give my son money to buy drugs). She does not enforce a “rule” which is the way that someone tries to control the behavior of another person. Rules and boundaries differ significantly. With a rule, you try and control another person’s behavior – such as telling a child “you have to go to bed at 8:30 PM.” That is a rule, not a boundary, because it has to be enforced. Rules have to be enforced, boundaries do not (except on yourself).
Back to tough love… how does one use tough love with BPD? Well, first of all I have to say you can’t START with tough love, because first emotional trust has to be established. If you start with tough love and use ONLY tough love, that is a recipe for disaster with someone with BPD. The problem is that tough love hurts too much for them. They feel “different” and “broken” and tough love reinforces these feelings. However, tough love can be used once the trust is established. Tough love is something you can use FOR YOU to establish your own boundaries with someone with BPD. But you have to make sure that it’s your boundaries that are being applied and not rules for another person’s behavior.
 When Hope is Not EnoughGet the Non-BPD book that is designed for staying and working on the relationship
Many people when they find out about BPD, read “Stop Walking on Eggshells”. Just about everyone in the “non” community has read it. I read it AND read the workbook. At the time I thought, “Yes! Someone who understands!” I thought, “Finally, a method for dealing with my wife’s crazy behaviors.”
Well, folks, I was wrong. This book is about nons and ways for the nons to handle the BP’s behavior. Unfortunately, for the BPs, it does nothing to help them heal. In fact, the idea of setting limits and boundaries for BPs only serves to pissd them off more. Let me tell you why:
BPD is a disorder in which the sufferer feels emotions more strongly that a normal person.
When they are in the throes of a deep feeling, they cannot think logically. The limit that you set merely acts as a judgement of their behavior and boundary to be stepped over. They need to feel that they are OK. They live in a state of shame. If you tell them, through boundaries, that they are not OK, the message merely serves to fuel the deeply-felt emotion of shame. The behavior will get worse and you will get even angrier. This cycle of shame-anger between you and the BP serves to make you feel even more like leaving, like they can’t be “cured” and distances you from them even more. That is the real BP “dance” or “merry-go-round”.
When talking recently to the BP in my life, she had been reading a post on the Internet about “boundaries” and “limits” when dealing with borderlines. The post said this man’s ex-wife was a borderline – a nigtmare and a total abuser of him and the relationship. So, he left her. I wonder how that made her feel? Shamed further, perhaps?
I’m not saying that everyone should stay with their BP partner. What I am saying is: if you decide to stay, you should help that person heal, rather than set limits, sign contracts, be angry, etc.
Remember, borderlines suffer a lot of internal pain. All day, everyday. And they will do anything to stop the pain, including cutting, starving, raging, spending and attempting suicide.
Buy the book that can make your relationship last and grow:
When Hope is Not EnoughGet the Non-BPD book that is designed for staying and working on the relationship
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