We complete this series of pearls from Beyond Borderline with the authors’ experience of close relationships. Some may find these perspectives both challenging and validating. Some may find comfort that it is indeed possible to support healing in relationship.

Helping others, validating one’s own pain and fears, persevering, having a life worth living, work with the treatment team, express your needs are among the recommendations for those with BPD from the authors who are making the climb out of hell.

The authors of Beyond Borderline describe how they are making their way, respectively, along dark, twisted roads, coping with life’s hurdles, through the complex, messy process. No matter how long it takes.

The authors describe how they participated in DBT treatment, as well as the effect and the hard-earned results that came from their commitment and efforts.
DBT taught me the skills I needed to help manage my illness. I deal much better with stressful life events. I am able to stop and think before acting on impulses.

Marsha Linehan emphasizes that “the therapeutic relationship and therapist self-disclosure” is essential to DBT (DBT Skills Training Manual). She gives equal importance to “treating therapy-interfering behaviors of both client and therapist.” This is an example of the dialectical stance that recognizes and works with the transactional nature of the therapeutic relationship.

The authors describe their experience of using Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) in the treatment of BPD. They offer their firsthand account of how DBT works with their emotional pain–acknowledging the time, effort, and practice needed for the skills to become effective in reducing their suffering.

Borderline Personality Disorder is a disorder of emotional dysregulation. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) was developed by Marsha Linehan to treat severe emotional dysregulation. While DBT is now recognized as a multi-diagnostic treatment, it was the first and remains the most researched evidence-based treatment for BPD.

The authors of Beyond Borderline share their experience in facing a variety of judgments and stigma associated with having a BPD diagnosis. We all know there is stigma around all mental illnesses, but the stigma around people with BPD is off the charts. Below are a few examples …

The next blogs of pearls from Beyond Borderline: True Stories of Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, edited by John Gunderson and Perry Hoffman, asks those with BPD to describe what it was like for them to be given this diagnosis and if they faced stigma associated with BPD.

What is it like to be a borderline?
 
Lonely. Deep-space lonely, even when in a crowd. I want friends. I want someone to understand me. I want that bond that humans can have with one another but I have never had. Author 23 (p. 165)