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Ask Bon: Why is this person so sensitive to rejection?
Rejection Sensitivity is the tendency to “anxiously expect, readily perceive and overreact to social rejection.” Someone with BPD will almost certainly have this feature. Have you ever had your loved one ask you: “Are you mad at me?” Or has your loved one asked you: “Do you like me?” over and over again? Or have they said, “You could do so much better than me. Why are you even with me?” These questions and others like them are indications that your loved one is suffering from rejection sensitivity. Someone with rejection sensitivity will also avoid tasks, meetings or other social interactions if there is any sense of rejection implied. She…
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Ask Bon: Why does this person idolize me one day and call me “the devil” the next?
Black-and-white thinking is the tendency for a person to believe that events or other people are either “all-good” or “all-bad” in any given situation. People with BPD will often vacillate between these two polar ways of thinking, sometimes about the same event or person. This way of thinking is also known as “splitting.” In the support community, loved ones of BP’s will say that they have been “split-white” (meaning, they are thought to be all good) or “split-black” (thought to be all bad). A person with BPD who thinks in this fashion will have an inability to see “shades of grey” in a situation or relationship. This approach can be…
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Five things you can do as a supporter of a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Five of the first things you can do when you discover that someone you care for has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I often have “newbies” or beginning non-BPD family members ask me some things they can do to get acclimated to the world of BPD. I have thought about this long and hard and have come up with these five things: 1. Watch “Back from the Edge”. This 48 minute documentary was made by New York Presbyterian Hospital and includes some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the treatment and understanding of BPD, including Dr. Marsha Linehan, the inventor of DBT. The video is available here: Back from the Edge…
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Quote from “Back from the Edge” Documentary
The mother of one of the young women with BPD says this: “What really helped me was when I realized that it wasn’t about me, that I wasn’t necessarily what she was angry at and the target of it, that I was just there to be somebody that she could vent all of this feeling that was about something else.” (at 39:30 in the documentary). This is the very thing that helped me too – and lead to the “it’s all about his/her feelings” thing that I wrote about in WHINE. Watch the documentary. No related posts.
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Chennai’s family courts grapple with poorly qualified counselors – India and BPD
The U.S., Canada and U.K. are not the only countries that deal with borderline personality disorder (BPD). I can only image the numbers in India. Here’s an article about Indian courts dealing with a woman whose husband was diagnosed with BPD: Chennai’s family courts grapple with poorly qualified counsellors Ekatha Ann John, TNN Oct 1, 2012, 05.23AM IST CHENNAI: Every scar on 32-year-old Veena’s* body tells a story. When the mother of two approached a family court in the city to seek a divorce from her abusive husband, she was referred to a counsellor who advised her to go back to her tormentor and come to terms with the situation.…
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Bad Amazon Reviews and what they reveal about people (and about me)
About 2 weeks ago, I got another 1 star review on Amazon for my book When Hope is Not Enough. When I read that review, I realized that many people don’t understand my book well. Perhaps it’s my writing or perhaps it’s in their reading. I certainly know that my book will not just tell you what you want to hear about your loved one with borderline personality disorder (BPD). If you want to be validated and hear what you’d like to hear about being a victim of someone with BPD, I’d suggest you read Stop Walking on Eggshells. That was the book I read at the beginning of the…
