Loading ...I haven’t read this book yet, but I plan to. Validation is very important, which is why I talk about it so much.
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   When Hope is Not Enough WHINE now available on the Kindle to US customers!  When Hope is Not Enough Get the Non-BPD book that is designed for staying and working on the relationship |
An ATSTP list member responds to a question of whether another’s borderline wife will ever change because of emotional validation:
Emotional Validation and why it is vital for an effective relationship with a borderline. Q: Why do you emphasize emotional validation so much? A: Emotional Validation is a very powerful skill, or set of skills, for any relationship with an emotionally sensitive person (ESP), including those with BPD traits. There are a number of reasons that emotional validation is important for a family member of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. Emotional Dysregulation is a core feature of BPD. Another core feature is shame. If you invalidate a BP’s feelings, you are likely to fuel more shame, because they actually feel those emotions, whether or not they seem right or appropriate to you. Validation is a tool that verifies that the other person’s feelings are valid, but doesn’t necessarily condone or agree with their behavior. Remember, the behaviors come from feelings, beliefs and “action impulses” so they can be separated from behaviors. You are not “giving into” the BP if you learn to validate their feelings. With validation, you are basically saying, “Your feelings matter. It is OK to feel that way. It is normal to feel that way.” The way in which you validate someone else’s feelings is important. Many people believe that saying “It’s OK. I love you” or “You are safe with me” is a form of validation, but it is not. Those statements are about your attitudes toward the other person, not about his/her feelings. Validation is always about the OTHER person’s feelings, not about our own feelings. Validation is not giving advice. In fact, if you do give advice when the other person is emotional, they are likely to get angry with you. People don’t like to feel that they are being told what to do about an emotional situation – that is quite invalidating. It feels like you are telling them how they should feel and they can’t control the emotions. The process of Emotional Validation can be summarized as follows: I-AM-MAD 1. Identify the emotions. It’s best to do this with “feeling” words, like “look”, “see”, or “sound”, rather than “know” or “understand”. Examples:
2. Ask a validating question. This encourages them to share their feelings about whatever triggered them. Do not use “what’s wrong?” If you use “what’s wrong?” they will hear “what’s wrong with YOU?” Also, don’t assume you did anything wrong. Remember, IAAHF (It’s All About His/Her Feelings). Examples:
3. Make a validating statement about their emotion. Validate the feelings expressed in step 2. This helps reinforce that it is natural and valid to feel what they are feeling in the situation. Again, remember IAAHF. Don’t defend against blaming or projecting. And don’t apologize at this point, even if you are guilty. (Apologies for things you are actually guilty of can come later… after they have returned to their emotional baseline.) Examples:
4. Make a normalizing statement about their emotion. By relating the situation as common to all people or “normal” for them, this helps alleviate their stress about feeling judged or unaccepted. Examples:
5. Analyze the consequences of their behavior. By examining the consequences of both negative and positive behavior with the person, you help them to separate their emotional reaction from their behavior. The behavior may need to be changed, but the emotions are natural and should not be punished for. Examples:
6. Don’t solve the problem for them. Solving one’s own problems helps to build self-confidence. Empower the person by getting them to come up with a solution themselves. When given the opportunity in a non-judgmental setting, most people will find that they can come up with solutions to their problems. You can guide them through this process by asking helpful questions to ascertain what they need or want. Examples:
(Note: Sometimes you have to go back and forth to help them find the most effective solution. They may say, “I don’t know” or “I don’t care.” This can be tough. Go back to step one to deal with any additional emotions that become apparent.)
Q: How do I balance validating somebody’s feelings with protecting myself or my children from emotional abuse? A: This is an excellent question and one that I have grappled with for years. My wife’s behavior before I started down the path to effectiveness was off-the-charts and was affecting my children’s feelings of safety in our household. Numerous times I felt the only solution to protecting my children was to leave my wife and apply for full custody of our children. When my wife was “acting out” and/or in a rage around the children, I would take the kids to the library or to events around town. I worried that they would associate going to the library (a nice quiet place) with my wife’s raging. However, once I understood the reason for her raging, I also understood that there was a more effective solution to my wife’s behavior. The reason my wife was raging was because she had dysregulated emotional states that were painful for her, yet out-of-line with the evidence of the world around her. Still, these emotional states seemed quite real and justified to her. All of her life she has felt that her very being is under threat from those around her. This situation causes fear in her, but the fear quickly turns to rage and no-holds-barred behavior toward others, even those she supposedly loved. In fact, this dangerous and confusing behavior was worse with the immediate family. The reason is that she felt that her emotional states were not understood, not accepted and judged by those with whom she had the most at stake. If your immediate family doesn’t accept you, who will? This judgment and rejection was seen as a prelude to abandonment, rejection and confirmation of her shame. This situation made her frightened, desperate and angry. The anger then translated into rage from which much of the emotional abuse arises. Behavior is most often conditioned and based on previous beliefs, reactions and conditions. I found that if you, as a loved one of someone with BPD, change the conditions, the behavior will change. If the emotions are accepted and validated, they don’t typically spiral out of control and trigger dangerous abusive behavior. It is not a question of right and wrong, like many people believe it is. It is a question of effective reactions and behavior on your part versus continuing to react ineffectively and, essentially, throwing gasoline on a raging fire. Better to put out the fire with water, which is a soothing elixir. Punishing a person for their feelings becomes translated into more shame since “all feelings all the time” is how they “are”. Rejection confirms that to the borderline that he/she is a bad person, which, in turn, causes more and more rage. Remember, however, that emotions and behavior are not synonymous. You can validate emotions without condoning the resultant behavior. What about past abusive behavior? When will my borderline take responsibility for that? Should I let that go? If I’ve learned anything about borderlines in the past five years, it’s that they generally know what they’ve done “wrong” in life, whether or not they will admit it to you. The shame component causes a “deepest, darkest” reflection about who they really are. When a borderline identifies with a particular role in life – such as being a mother – anything that threatens that identity is usually met with fire. Yet, on the flip-side of the defense of their very being, there’s shame, unworthiness and self-flagellation. It is most likely that your borderline will punish herself for the discretions she has committed. Of course, sometimes, the emotion-fueled behavior is not even remembered. It’s sometimes an emotional vomit session to get all the bad feelings out, to purge the nasty sickness of the painful emotions – of course, those around them can get spewed on. When I said that it might not be remembered some time ago on the ATSTP list, I got a response from a recovered borderline that went “oh, we remember it. We just can’t run to the toilet when it is occurring. And we almost always see the mess that has been made and feel bad about it afterwards.” My suggestion about “balance” between validation and protecting the children from emotional abuse boils down to the belief that, if the borderline doesn’t let the emotions run away with them, the abusive behavior will (almost) cease entirely. I still get raging from my wife every once in a while – maybe once every 4-6 months. It used to be once every 2-3 days, then it was 2-3 weeks, then once a month and so on. What I changed was the environment for my wife’s emotional expression. I stopped judging her. I validated her when she felt bad. I built a safe, accepting environment for her emotional life. One that she has never experienced before. It was not my “fault” that she felt that way – it was merely how is actually was in her life. I had to accept the reality of the situation and do what I could do to change it. Several members of the ATSTP list have reported that once they “turned their mind” (and behavior/reactions) toward what I purpose in WHINE, the raging in their borderlines ceased. The Buddha said of dependent origination: “When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be. With the cessation of this, that ceases.” My suggestion to each of you is to cause the “ceasing of this” (the non-accepting, judgmental, invalidating environment) to insure that “that ceases” (the abusive, dysregulated behavior). NOTE “Ask Bon” is a new category within this blog in which Bon answers burning questions about being a non-BPD from his perspective and with the skills an attitudes with which he was able to rebuild his relationship with his borderline wife. The opinions are Bon’s alone. The other day I received a review on Amazon about my book When Hope is Not Enough from an individual who identified himself as a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Here’s the text of the review:
I’m posting it here for more than just shameless promotion of my book (click here for the post on “Why I Bothered to Write a Book”). I’m posting it to point out that people with BPD generally like my work and approach to BPD. That’s more than can be said of Stop Walking on Eggshells which I know from the borderlines who I know despise SWOE. The reason seems to be that in WHINE, I promote something that one of my list members calls the “Platinum Rule” of interpersonal behavior. The platinum rule states “treat others like they wish to be treated” (as opposed, of course, to the Golden Rule “treat others as you wish to be treated”). People with BPD and other emotionally sensitive people wish to be treated in a particular way. They respond positively to a certain way of treatment. Sometimes I get people comment on my methods as being too “easy” on the borderline, “letting the borderline win”, “giving into the borderline” or “not holding the borderline responsible for their actions”. The reality is that when a person is being treated like they wish to be treated, most of the poor behavior will fall away. When someone feels heard and accepted, there’s no need to scream and yell to be heard and accepted. I heard a borderline daughter once tell her mother “you only listen to me when I’m screaming at you”. That sort of thing goes away when you actually listen and accept the person and understand what they are really saying. I believe that much of the trouble between borderlines and their loved ones is due to a communication problem. Borderlines speak one language, their families speak a completely different language. WHINE really seeks to give you the tools to be fluent in the borderline’s (or any emotionally sensitive person’s) language. Several people on my list have reported that when they started speaking the borderline’s language, the raging, yelling and abusive behavior ceased – in some cases almost immediately. I like to sell books as much as any other author. Yet, sales is not the reason I write or continue to write, here and on the ATSTP list. In reality, I continue because I discovered something that worked really well for me and wanted to share it with other people who were in the same predicament I was in a few years ago. And, of course, this review also demonstrates that even borderlines like WHINE, so the dread that you may have experienced when your BPD partner finds SWOE might be mitigated if your BPD partner finds WHINE (and actually reads it).
In the post “When Your Partner Says They Are In Pain, Validate” Kate Theda of the “Partners in Wellness” blog specifically used my I-AM-MAD communication skill to teach her readers about validation. Here is the intro for the log post:
I could not agree more with that statement. Pain hurts even if he seems to you (the partner) as if it shouldn’t. I wanted to thank Ms. Theda for sharing my tool with her readers. I’d encourage my readers to read her post. I’d also encourage you to check out the Emotional Validation Spotlight. Today is the 5th anniversary of the Anything to Stop the Pain support list. After over 50,000 messages and 600+ members, it is still going strong. The ATSTP list is offered for free to non-BPDs. In honor of this momentous occasion, I will clip a response from me to a list member. Any personal details have been removed. The only thing blog readers need to know is that this man’s wife has been diagnosed with BPD and is asking him for a divorce. We also have a couple of recovered borderlines on this list and they are a valuable resource (as is noted here):
 Sometimes Love Hurts I’m currently reading the book ‘The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder’ by Randi Kreger. This is the first book I’ve read on the subject & I’m finding it really helpful. I started to research other books and found the one I’m ‘reviewing’ on the US Amazon website. There are lots of reviews of the book there and it made me decide to buy it as the reviews are very positive. So, if you want to read reviews before you buy this book, have a look on the American site. I’ve now read the book! Just this minute finished reading it in fact. I have found it so very very helpful, not just with the tools Bon Dobbs gives you for improving your relationship with your BP loved one, but for improving their experience of life. It’s a book for being a kinder, more understanding, more enlightened person in all relationships I think. The first book I read by Randi Kreger (mentioned above) was more about looking after yourself when in a relationship with a BP. Bon Dobbs’ book is about looking after them too. He says “a BP’s brain is working against them by upsetting the emotional regulation system. It is impossible for a BP NOT to feel those emotions. The emotions are not right or wrong, they just ARE. It is the behaviours that arise from the emotions that can be changed, and that is where we will focus our attention.” The book is very practical and very intelligently and insightfully written, based on years of experience of living with 2 family members with BP (wife & young daughter). I am so grateful to the author for so generously sharing his experiences and the ways he’s found to improve life for his wife, daughter, the rest of the family & himself. I have learned so much about why my own loved one developed BPD in the first place and what I can now do to help alleviate some of the suffering that goes with this condition. The title ‘When Hope is Not Enough’ sounds a bit bleak, but what the book has given me IS huge hope! I now very clearly understand that my loved one needs validation of their feelings. The author has shown me that validating their feelings in no way compromises my own core value of acting with integrity – rather, it will enhance it. The reason I find this review interesting is two-fold (beyond the thank-yous and the nice words about me): 1) I believe that the reviewer is correct about the nature of my book – it is for the relationship, not for the non-BP exclusively and 2) The reviewer is also right about the fact that you can enhance the relationship, through validation and other tools, without sacrificing your own value or values. Excellent article about what BPD feels like: What BPD Feels like A lot of friends and family members want to understand what the BPD sufferer is going through, but they don’t have a proper understanding of what is actually happening. For the BPD sufferer it is hard to explain what it feels like when honestly, they don’t know exactly what it is that isn’t “normal”. People around the BPD sufferer know that something isn’t right with the person, but quite often the sufferer does not know there is anything wrong, which is why they can attack you when you suggest there may be. As a BP sufferer myself, I can say that there are definitely times when you can “cope” better than others. But then there are times when it is all you can do to get out of bed. Your emotions can be that out of control that you suffer an emotional pain that is similar to the experience one feels when a loved-one has died, but it doesn’t get better and there is no reason for it. Some people deal with emotional pain in various ways, such as drinking, using drugs, crying all of the time, or becoming angry. It can affect BPD sufferers in different ways, depending on how they usually deal with stressful situations. I know for me I have a strong belief in being non-violent as I know that if I don’t keep my anger in check it can verge on being out of control, so I work extra hard to avoid that. Unfortunately that means that I will do things like drink or drugs to distract myself, and so I have had addiction problems in the past that I have also had to deal with. This is quite common in BPD personalities, as they try to do whatever it takes to find a way to distract themselves, or ease their pain, for a little while. If they find something that works, even if it is for a little while, then they will latch onto it in the hope that if they do it all of the time the pain will go. This obviously doesn’t work, and provides the BPD sufferer one more thing they need to fix in their life. At my worst, the ability to think clearly or to make rational decisions is completely gone, and it is almost an impossible task. You can try your hardest to take your time to think about things to make the right choice, but this doesn’t happen. It is unclear whether this is a response to the overload of emotions on the brain or another cause due to this illness, but it is a fact. Then there is also the other part of BPD which can cause depersonalisation, which can cause huge problems in a person’s life. Depersonalization is when the person experiences a sense of detachment from the self. It is often associated with sleep deprivation or “recreational” drug use. It may be accompanied by “derealization” (where objects in an environment appear altered). Patients sometimes describe depersonalization as feeling like a robot or watching themselves from the outside. It may also involve feelings of numbness or loss of emotional “aliveness.” When I have experienced this it is almost like I have been tricked into thinking I have no feelings for certain things. For example, a few years ago I went through this phase of depersonalization in which I was convinced that I had no feelings (almost overnight) for my partner. Whilst in hospital after a suicide attempt I met someone there, and thought that because I felt something for them that my relationship with my partner must be over, so I split up with my partner. A few weeks later my feelings for my partner kicked back in and I realized that I had made a huge mistake. Luckily for me my partner took me back after this indiscretion, but I know it is the only chance I have. I now understand from this experience that I can’t always trust my emotions, because for me, as a BPD sufferer, they are not all real. BPD sufferers can also experience bouts of dissociation, which can lead to dissociative amnesia. This means that they will have no memory of what happens when they are in a dissociative state. Dissociation is the state in which, on some level or another, one becomes somewhat removed from “reality”, whether this be daydreaming, performing actions without being fully connected to their performance (“running on automatic”), or other, more disconnected actions. This can be a lot more serious than the usual “automatic pilot” that most people will experience, and can be as a result of depersonalization as well. The fear of abandonment is also a major issue in the life of a BPD sufferer, and this is what can cause most of the issues when it comes to personal relationships, either romantically or not. When starting a new romantic relationship, the BPD sufferer will usually test the potential partner to see whether they will stick around. If the partner passes this test, then the BPD sufferer will latch on and treat that person like they are a God/Goddess so that the other person will fall in love also. Once the BPD sufferer is comfortable with where the other person is at, they may then start to switch between intense bursts of love/hate that confuse the other person. This is not done consciously to torture the other person – in fact, the BPD sufferer has no idea that they are doing it. They are actually responding to perceived events in their own mind which causes them to act this way, even though these acts don’t exist. For example, there are times in my relationship where my mind makes the leap that my partner is cheating on me even when I know in reality that this is not the case. All it takes is for me to experience rejection one night when I make sexual advances, and my emotional response is out of control to try to figure out what the problem is. In my mind it couldn’t actually be that my partner is tired from work and our children – it has to be more than that. So I go into this emotional free-fall until it ends up in an argument where my partner has to defend themselves from something they haven’t even done. The BPD sufferer can not accept that things are good or happy or uncomplicated – they expect things to go wrong any second and are always searching for any sign of this occurring. It even gets to the point that if they can’t see one then they will make one up (sub consciously of course) so that they can prove themselves right. This can be very frustrating for those around them, as they constantly go through this dance of proving to their partner or loved one that they are not leaving. It eventually gets to the point where the BPD sufferer will push the other person that much that they will leave, and then the BPD sufferer is in some way validated for doubting the person in the first place. It is a no win situation. Another area in which BPD affects my life is in maintaining focus on areas in my life. For example, I will develop an interest in religion, so I will then have to read books, watch documentaries, live, talk and breath religion until a few weeks later when suddenly this obsession will pass. It also happens in things like career choice. I have started University study four times as each time I start a course I am 100% sure that this is what I want to do, but as soon as I start studying I lose interest so I stop. I have sunk money into so many ridiculous career choices and money making schemes that I guarantee I will commit to, only to have given up when my focus changes to something else. I can get so excited by something only to give up on it after a month or so, and it is just as frustrating for me as it is for those around me. A lot of BPD sufferers, including myself, have experienced episodes of self harm and suicide attempts. Luckily for me I have never been successful, but unfortunately 10% of all sufferers are. This number should indicate how hopeless, distraught and pained BPD sufferers are. Suicide is not something anyone takes lightly. I know for me, every time I have thought about it, it has been over a long period of time, until finally it gets to the point where it feels like I have no choice. It is not something I rush into. Suicide is only an option to sufferers because they are not thinking clearly, and are having inappropriate reactions (which they can’t control) to events and the environment around them. To a lot of non-BPD sufferers it can seem like the BPd sufferer is using suicide attempts as a form of manipulation. From my experience, although I can’t speak for everyone, this was never my intention although I can see how it has been interpreted like this. Normally to get the point where suicide is considered the BPD sufferer is experiencing an episode of immense pain for a long time, although sometimes if they can feel one of these episodes coming on they may consider it as a way to stop the torture they are about to sink into. When I have got to the point of actually attempting suicide, for me it has been more about preventing other people from being hurt by me than trying to hurt them by committing suicide. As I have previously said, I can not say that this is true for all sufferers, but I know the majority would feel this way. Episodes of self harm are also common for BPD sufferers. I have experienced these episodes on many occasions, but for me there is not always one reason as to why I do it. Sometimes it is because I feel so much emotional pain I want to let it out so I try to do it physically, other times it is because I am feeling absolutely no emotion that I want to feel pain so that I know I am still capable of feeling something. Some times it is even because I am almost in a psychotic state that for me it makes sense to cut myself if an angel tells me to. Whether this is what the doctors call true psychosis or not I am not sure, but it can seem real enough at the time. All I know is that the ability to think properly becomes that distorted that things that would normally seem stupid become really good and sensible ideas. You start believing things that could not possibly be true, and can even imagine conversations with people that don’t exist. BPD affects virtually every area of a sufferer’s life. It affects the decisions they make, how they respond to stimuli in their environment, how they behave towards themselves and other people, and their emotional reactions. I could not imagine anyone choosing to live this lifestyle, as it destroys virtually everything around them. Overcoming BPD is the biggest challenge a sufferer has, but it is possible with a lot of hard work. And to have any semblance of a normal life it is necessary. This feature is a new one that I have added to my “model” of BPD. I added it because I was attending the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ISSPD) and listened to Dr. John Gunderson present a detailed model of his experience with BPD. The purpose of the presentation was to present a “real world” clinical model of BPD from the viewpoint of someone with many years of experience treating the disorder. One of the features that Dr. Gunderson provided was this “preoccupation with attachments.” I believe this feature is born of an unstable sense of self. A person with BPD has difficulty “locating herself in the world.” While two of the other “core” features of BPD are “systems related” (meaning, those features are based on subsystems of the mind – the emotional regulation system, the impulsivity control system), shame and the preoccupation with interpersonal relationships are based more on a person with BPD’s view of herself. While it might seem that interpersonal relationships are outside of self, a more complex picture arises as we look more deeply into the mental configuration of BPD. A recent study showed that the number one trigger of systems dysregulation (like wildly swinging emotions and impulsive behavior) is interpersonal distress. This interpersonal distress is more important as a trigger of dysregulated behavior than sweeping/major life changes – in fact major life changes, such as changing jobs, getting married, having a child – were ranked last of nine factors that trigger BPD distress. The interpersonal, moment-to-moment perception of the state of an important relationship is the most important trigger. That can be bad news for someone in a close relationship with someone with BPD. The person with BPD will be continuously scanning the interpersonal landscape for threats. Since shame is involved, people with BPD are likely to use others to regulate their internal systems and their self-view. In other words, a person with BPD uses others as a mirror to view their self. Why is this so? I believe that a person with BPD’s lack of internal regulation causes her to internalize other people and use others to self-regulate. When someone has an inability to locate herself in the world, which very possibly arises from the emotional instability as a child, she seeks to have others locate her for her. She needs others to verify and validate that she’s “ok”. Unfortunately, because few of us are taught the language of emotional regulation, a person with BPD will likely learn that the interpersonal landscape is not safe; it is full of threats to their very self. It’s not an easy situation in which to live. If a person requires external validation and regulation, there develops a sense of a lack of control. Others are unpredictable, don’t understand how it feels and can damage the very core of her being. People with BPD have described this internal feeling of emptiness and lack of internal controls as feeling “dead inside,” which is in itself, tragic. Extending this feeling to others through this preoccupation with close interpersonal relationships leaves a person with BPD with the feeling that others contribute to this unpleasant internal feeling. In other words, “it’s your fault that I feel this way.” Many Non-BPD’s ask me why their loved ones with BPD don’t seem to trust them. To me, this aspect of BPD is a significant factor, along with other biological factors. All of that being said, let’s suffice it to say that interpersonal relationships play a huge role in BPD. Social connections and attachments, including parent/child attachments, are the focus point of a person with BPD’s sense of well being. When these trigger dysregulation and/or ineffective modes of thinking and behavior, a person with BPD is lost in the world, floating free in a threatening sea of feelings, thoughts and behaviors. One must understand that in order for the interpersonal tools to work properly, they need to be understood and applied in a step-wise fashion. I have often said to my list members that “you can’t boil the ocean” which means that you can’t jump to the end before you walk the path. You can’t do everything all at once. Instead, you have to take one small step at a time in a longer journey. The goal of all of my tools, attitudes, skills and approaches is (in my mind) a compassionate, trusting, respectful and two-way relationship in which both parties feel known, heard, understood and worthy. Achieving that goal is hitting a grand slam so to speak. Yet, I feel that a person must be given the fundamentals and practice those fundamentals before you can hit one out of the park. Emotions which are the first layer to unravel peel back from the onion that is BPD. Understanding emotions in oneself and others is vital to having a two-way relationship with someone with BPD. |
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