Nourishing Relationships with Care: Honoring BPD Awareness Month Through a Relational Lens

May is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month. Individuals living with BPD often experience stigma around their condition, which can involve painful judgments and harsh criticisms about the way they interact in their relationships. 

At Lotus Counseling Group and as marriage and family therapists, we recognize relational healing as a path forward. BPD relationships may come with different challenges than other relationships, but there are strategies for nourishing through compassion for ourselves and others. This blog will focus on borderline personality disorder awareness, supporting loved ones with BPD, and strategies to strengthen relational mental health. 

Understanding BPD in a Relational Context

Borderline personality disorder is a frequently misunderstood diagnosis. Especially because individuals with BPD have symptoms which show up in their relationships and may cause distress to their loved ones, as well as the person with BPD. As a loved one of someone with BPD, you can learn to be curious beyond their behaviors. When we look beyond symptoms, we can often see a person’s history of unmet emotional and relational needs.

With BPD, individuals generally have a history of unmet needs and complex trauma. In the context of relationships, this means attachment injuries and living in invalidating emotional environments. For example, living with unstable caregivers, suffering from emotional or physical neglect, or having unsafe living situations. As teens and adults, these histories translate into a difficulty with relationships, deep fears of abandonment, and emotional dysregulation when those fears are triggered. 

Individuals with BPD have been trained to scan their relationships for signs of trouble and are deeply unsettled when they see any signs of abandonment. Unfortunately, sometimes they can smell smoke where there is no fire. These outbursts are not intentional; individuals with BPD have been wired through a history of attachment wounds and unsafe childhood environments to protect themselves against disconnection and rejection.

Relational healing is real. When loved ones begin to understand BPD through the lens of attachment and compassion, they can respond in ways which calm their loved one. Validation, consistency, and co-regulation can gradually build safety in the relationship, as both parties likely have relational injuries which may have occurred either pre-diagnosis or during reactive fears of abandonment. While BPD brings unique relational challenges, it also offers an invitation: to deepen emotional awareness, strengthen communication skills, and build relationships where both people feel heard, respected, and valued. 

Honoring Your Own Well-Being While Supporting a Loved One with BPD

Supporting someone with BPD can be both deeply meaningful and emotionally taxing. It is valid to let both these ideas intertwine. You can use reminders of the deep relational meaning to improve motivation to keep doing relational work, while still prioritizing and attending to your own emotional and physical needs. 

Caregiver burnout is a potential real problem when caring for someone with BPD; it does not have to show up if you know how to look for warning signs, build emotional resilience, engage in mental health support, and stick to assertive relational boundaries.

Here are some ideas for how to support your own well-being while caring for your loved one:

1. Create your own regulation strategies toolkit. Include mindfulness practices, breathing exercises, and opportunities for movement in whatever ways make you feel good. 
2. Have your own individual therapist to chat with and validate your needs as well as process any concerns without the pressure of feeling like you have to hold space for others.
3. Strengthen your own relational support system outside of your loved one. Utilize these supports when you feel you need space outside of your relationship to process or just have fun. 
4. Watch for signs of caregiver burnout such as emotional exhaustion, resentment, disconnection from your own needs. If these signs show up, normalize the need to fill your own cup. 

Conclusion: A Path Toward Relational Healing

Loving someone with Borderline Personality Disorder can be both deeply meaningful and uniquely challenging. It’s okay to give yourself the space to let both of those ideas co-exist. As we honor BPD Awareness Month this May, let this be a reminder that relational healing is possible. Your actions don’t have to be perfect. Small, consistent acts of care are enough to establish safety. 

By practicing emotional validation, slowing reactive cycles, and tending to your own well-being, you create a foundation where both you and your loved one can feel safer and more connected. We are here at Lotus Counseling Group to help you learn new relational dynamics, build secure attachments, and improve emotional attunement. 

You are not just managing challenges of BPD; you are creating space for relational growth. 

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Practical Ways to Nourish Your Relationship with a Loved One with BPD

Nourishing any relationship with someone who has BPD brings unique challenges, especially around emotional attunement – the ability to recognize and respond to emotional needs in others. Supporting someone with BPD means tending to both the relational dynamic, as well as your own mental health. Family therapy tools give us some insight into how to build strong relational support systems around BPD.

Here are some practical, MFT-informed strategies for BPD:

• Practice Validation and Emotional Attunement

• Utilize I-feel statements to describe your felt emotions in relation to BPD emotional storms. 
• Use examples of validating phrases, which acknowledge understanding their perspective. Some phrases might include “I understand this feels scary for you” or “I can see how what I said/did made you feel afraid or angry”. 

2. Set Boundaries with Compassion

• Boundaries as relationship protectors, not punishments. Only set boundaries when you are ready to do so with respectful, assertive, and compassionate language. Do not only set boundaries out of crisis or anger. 
• Encourage clear, consistent communication that also honors personal limits. Try phrases like, “I feel X when you do Y. If you do Y again, I will need to (example of a respectful consequence). This is done to protect myself and honor our relationship because I can’t help keep us stable if I feel dysregulated. Let’s work through this together.” 

3. Slow Down Reactive Cycles

• Pause-and-respond vs. react-and-escalate. Create space by using phrases such as, “Can we slow this down so I can understand what’s happening for you?” or “I need to slow our conversation down so I can stay attuned to what’s happening for you.”
• In BPD relationships, patterns like pursue-withdraw often show up, where the person with BPD may want to pursue a solution to the relational problem, while the other person feels overwhelmed by their approaches and continues to withdraw to protect themselves. By slowing down, you may be able to change this dynamic. 

4. Engage in Co-Regulation

• Offer soothing presence (calm tone, steady breathing) to help your loved one regulate. If you are unable to do this, clearly and respectfully state your boundaries that you need to self-regulate before helping with co-regulation.
• We can see offering a soothing presence as a “borrowed” nervous system regulation. This is powerful in secure attachment relationships because it shows the other person you are safe. 

5. Seek Relational Support

• Family therapy, couples therapy, or support groups for loved ones of people with BPD can be transformative.
• Healing happens best in relationships, not isolation. Understand that your loved one with BPD desperately wants to have secure attachment in relationships, even if that is not always the impact of their behaviors. A professional can help with validation skills, boundary-setting with compassion, and changing your relational dynamic.