Can you be friends with someone with borderline personality disorder?

It requires assertive communication skills and sufficient self-awareness to understand when it is time to pull back a bit. However, it is possible to have a long-term, rewarding friendship with someone with BPD if you work at it.
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Should I be friends with someone with BPD?

As the friend of someone with BPD, it's helpful to be as consistent as possible with what you say and do. If you make plans, try to keep them, or offer a clear reason why you can't. Make sure you're not blowing hot and cold.
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How do you interact with someone with borderline personality disorder?

How to Help
  1. Be patient.
  2. Be realistic.
  3. Try to separate facts from feelings.
  4. Validate feelings first.
  5. Listen actively and be sympathetic.
  6. Seek to distract when emotions rise.
  7. Do not allow yourself to be the product of the intense anger; attempt to diffuse it but sometimes you may have to walk away.
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Why do borderlines have no friends?

People with BPD enter into emotional interactions in a very consuming way. This is less acceptable in friendships than it is in intimate relationships. It becomes too much in an intimate relationship as well.
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Is it hard to be in a relationship with someone with BPD?

Dating someone with borderline personality disorder can be challenging. Your partner may have major difficulties with strong emotions, drastic mood swings, chronic fear of abandonment, and impulsive behaviors which can strain your relationship with chaos and instability.
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Borderline Personality Disorder: 4 Things We Want You To Understand



Is dating someone with BPD worth it?

A romantic relationship with someone with BPD can be, in a word, stormy. It's not uncommon to experience a great deal of turmoil and dysfunction. However, people with BPD can be exceptionally caring, compassionate, and affectionate. In fact, some people find this level of devotion from a partner pleasant.
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Can you trust someone with BPD?

People who suffer from BPD show erratic mood-swings and find it difficult to trust and understand the motives of others. As a result, they suffer from fraught personal relationships with friends, colleagues and partners.
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Do people with BPD struggle with friendships?

The disorder is 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.
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Do borderlines get worse with age?

Borderline personality disorder usually begins by early adulthood. The condition seems to be worse in young adulthood and may gradually get better with age. If you have borderline personality disorder, don't get discouraged.
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How do you spot a quiet borderline?

What are the symptoms of quiet BPD?
  1. mood swings that can last for as little as a few hours, or up to a few days, but no one else can see them.
  2. suppressing feelings of anger or denying that you feel angry.
  3. withdrawing when you're upset.
  4. avoiding talking to others who have upset you and cutting them off instead.
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Do borderline people like to argue?

People with BPD may feel a great deal of anger and may make heavy insults in a fit of rage to loved ones. Although it is unfair to listen and get hurt, arguing suggests that you believe the other person's anger is uncalled-for and this will lead to greater rage.
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Do borderlines cry a lot?

Compared to non-patients, BPD patients showed the anticipated higher crying frequency despite a similar crying proneness and ways of dealing with tears. They also reported less awareness of the influence of crying on others.
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Do borderlines have empathy?

Previous research has demonstrated that patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are more sensitive to negative emotions and often show poor cognitive empathy, yet preserved or even superior emotional empathy. However, little is known about the neural correlates of empathy.
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What is a favorite person with BPD?

For someone with BPD, the favorite person is deemed the most important person in their life. This person can be anyone, but it's often a romantic partner, family member, good friend, or another supportive person (like a coach, therapist, or teacher). This person may become the source of all happiness and validation.
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How do borderlines think?

People with BPD also have a tendency to think in extremes, a phenomenon called "dichotomous" or “black-or-white” thinking. 2 People with BPD often struggle to see the complexity in people and situations and are unable to recognize that things are often not either perfect or horrible, but are something in between.
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What triggers a person with borderline personality disorder?

being a victim of emotional, physical or sexual abuse. being exposed to long-term fear or distress as a child. being neglected by 1 or both parents. growing up with another family member who had a serious mental health condition, such as bipolar disorder or a drink or drug misuse problem.
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Do borderlines end up alone?

Across the 20 years of the study, the rates of social isolation in the borderline participants ranged from 22 percent to 32 percent, with 26 percent remaining isolated at the end of the study period.
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Can someone with BPD be a good parent?

People with borderline personality disorder can be very effective and nurturing parents, but because the symptoms of BPD can be very intense, for many people this does take some work.
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Is BPD bipolar?

People with bipolar disorder tend to experience mania and depression while people with BPD experience intense emotional pain and feelings of emptiness, desperation, anger, hopelessness, and loneliness. Time: In BPD, mood changes are often more short-lived. They may last for only a few hours at a time.
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Who do borderlines attract?

Those who have BPD tend to be very intense, dramatic, and exciting. This means they tend to attract others who are depressed and/or suffering low self-esteem. People who take their power from being a victim, or seek excitement in others because their own life is not where they want it to be.
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Do borderlines get jealous?

In close relationships, a person with BPD may appear jealous, possessive, or hyper-reactive. These individuals often fear being left alone and have deep feelings of worthlessness. In many cases, this disorder is the direct result of childhood trauma, abuse, violence, or neglect.
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What does a BPD episode look like?

Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving and binge eating. Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting. Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days.
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Do borderlines regret the loss of a quality partner?

When they break up, they often forget the positive things about their partner, until the partner has gone. Relationships fall apart as splitting causes the borderline to say things in the heat of the moment and regret saying them afterward.
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Do borderlines love bomb?

This is the most serious motive and it encompasses the love bombing that is done by the narcissist, the sociopath, or the person with borderline personality disorder. Although each of these personalities is distinct, the form of love bombing is similar.
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How do you make someone with BPD feel loved?

The following 9 strategies can help you support a person with BPD:
  1. Learn about BPD. ...
  2. Show confidence and respect. ...
  3. Be trustworthy. ...
  4. Manage conflict with attachment. ...
  5. Encourage Professional Help. ...
  6. Identify strengths. ...
  7. Have fun together. ...
  8. Take suicide seriously.
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