Quotes About Relationships

You must understand that you do have the power to change your relationships and your life, but it is likely going to be frightening at first.

Almost universally, non-BPs say they feel manipulated by the BPs in their lives. If the non-BP doesn't do what the BP wants them to do, the BP may threaten

When you set and observe personal limits, you are also benefiting the person in your life with BPD. In fact, when you let the BP violate your boundaries, or do not set any for him or her, you may be making the situation worse.

Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook)

The back and forth dance of "keep your distance a little closer" is incredibly frustrating for friends and family.

In fact, if you are generous, or have a caretaking personality, they may treat you the worst.

Enlisting allies: The blackmailer asks other people to pressure you. This seems to be most common when the person with BPD is a parent. In one case, a mother with BPD showed up at her daughter's door with four relatives to back her up.

folks with NPD have shallow emotional lives because so much must remain hidden, both from themselves and from others. This shallowness makes them hard to get to know, because there doesn't seem to be much of a real person beneath the façade. This is the opposite of most people with BPD, who feel and express a very wide range of emotions.

This lack of empathy also means that someone with NPD has no capacity for intimacy. This is a hard message to take in, we know. But we encourage you to become honest about what's not beneath your loved one's veneer of superiority.

It's useless to debate whether you "should" feel angry, because the fact is that you do. It's your job to tell Sue how you feel. It's Sue's job to tell you how she feels. You don't have to—nor should you—feel it necessary to convince Sue that your way of thinking is best. Instead, you simply need to protect yourself in the future now that you know Sue's attitude about tardiness.

The holy grail of the life of someone with BPD is to find that caring, compassionate person who will magically fill their empty insides, take care of them and their needs, and never leave them feeling alone again.

Keep seeing shades of gray. Often, loved ones pick up the borderline defense mechanism of splitting, or seeing things in black and white. Keep in mind the subtleties inherent in all situations. Don't get drawn into the other person's extreme reactions; trust your instincts and form your own judgments.

Vulnerability opens us up to being shamed. To someone with BPD, controlling others is a way to ensure that no one can ever shame them. In practice, however, people with BPD often attempt to control others by putting them in no-win situations, creating chaos, or accusing others of trying to control them.

According to MaryBelle Fisher, Ph.D., when a parent has BPD, the normal formation of the child's identity may be derailed. In our interview with Fisher she said, "The child's 'self' becomes a mechanism to regulate the borderline parent rather than an internal, cohesive event.

Unfortunately, many adults grew up with damaged, trampled, or nonexistent boundaries. In many cases, parents routinely violated their children's boundaries and rights or forced them into inappropriate roles. Different kinds of boundary violations cause different kinds of problems for children when they become adults:

When we're lonely, most of us can soothe ourselves by remembering the love that others have for us. This can be very comforting, even if these people are far away—sometimes even if they're no longer living. This ability to hold others close, even in their physical absence, is called object constancy.

Many people we talked to for this book told us that the person with BPD in their life seemed to be aware of their triggers.

Every day, we teach people how to treat us by showing them what we will and won't accept, what we refuse to confront, and what we let slide. We may believe that we can make another person's troublesome behavior disappear if we don't make a fuss. But the message we send is, "It worked. Do it again.

According to the highly emotional logic of BPD, if they do something terrible to you, and you accept it without complaining or becoming upset, that shows that you care about them. But if you respond in the way that most people would, by expressing your anger or displeasure, that means that you don't really have positive feelings for them.

Realizing you can't control what people choose to think: You can't make everyone happy—least of all someone who is projecting their own unhappiness onto you. Stop taking responsibility for your loved one's inner world and start taking responsibility for your own.

Borderlines with abusive backgrounds may be replaying scripts from the past.

Many distortion campaigns seem to revolve around either real or perceived abandonment, loss, and rejection

For the person with BPD, feeling separated from someone else can be frightening. It makes them feel rejected, abandoned, and alone. So, consciously or unconsciously, they may discourage independence or independent thinking in people close to them.

Matrimony. The Devil's first attack on the human race was focused on a married couple.