155 Helping Patients with Borderline Parents | Surviving a Borderline Parent

this episode was pre-recorded as part of a live on-demand continuing education webinar CEUs are still available for this presentation across all CEUs register for all CEUs comm slash counselor toolbox you I would like to welcome everyone to the presentation today on treatment for people with

borderline

parent

s and you know it's a little ironic that in Tuesday's presentation the question came up when we talked about fears of abandonment, whether fears of abandonment could be triggered by growing up in a family with a father limit and you know that yes, it can and we. I'm going to talk about some of that in this presentation.

This is based pretty closely, but not exactly, on

surviving

a

borderline

parent

, how to heal childhood wounds, and building boundaries of trust and self-esteem. I love using this book in a group, it's one of my favorite types of two when working with someone who may have borderline tendencies or who grew up with a parent with borderline traits and you know, I often say borderline traits, not personality disorder. because there are a lot of people who have characteristics that may not meet the clinical definition of BPD, but it's still harmful to the child and the person, so you know you can check it out on Google Books or whatever, see what's here and we're going to talk about how to do it. use this as part of a complement to group work with clients who have a borderline parent or a parent with borderline tendencies, so we'll review the characteristics of BPD very quickly, compare and contrast BPD with addictive behaviors to some extent.

We're not going to dwell on that because we did that a couple of weeks ago and we'll be looking at ways to implement the activities presented in the book in a group format, so we'll talk about the purpose of the activities and how you can use them not just individually. , but you also know that if everyone has a copy of the book, it will be a great little workbook to review, so BPD characteristics have an underdeveloped or unstable self-image often associated with excessive self-criticism, so think on Tuesday. When people are afraid of abandonment, this happens all too often because they look for other people to tell them that they are okay and how they need to be to be okay.

Those conditions are worth it. Difficulty recognizing feelings and needs. of others and themselves interpersonal hypersensitivity so they are prone to feeling belittled or insulted they don't feel very good about themselves so they are looking for and listening to any inclination that you may be critical and then they will take advantage of that because that fits or fits , so to speak, with their self-esteem, so they hold on to that. It's also something that develops from growing up in a home where the parent had an unstable sense of self because the child learned to be extremely hypersensitive to knowing cues. that the parent could activate in an instant the perceptions of others tend to focus on negative attributes or vulnerabilities and this is true in the case of the person with borderline personality disorder, but how are we going to talk if you are growing up in an integrated environment or immersed in that environment, then guess what you are probably going to acquire some of these characteristics and those are some of the things we can work on when advising intense, unstable and conflictive close relationships, marked by mistrust, need and fears of abandonment, ready, so Many times relationships are seen in terms of extremes in which all Arnon thinks about idealization or devaluation and the person also goes between getting too involved and then, if he starts to feel rejected, he resorts to devaluation , devaluation and withdrawal, you can see how this can be protective.

From a survival point of view, let's take a closer look, so what are the effects of these behaviors if you have a parent who has an unstable self-image and is always seeking rejection and is unable to attend to the child's needs? what will happen the effects on others feeling inadequate despite the best efforts to appease the parent cannot identify their own feelings and needs or address their feelings and needs as a child, so the person the child is like me I can't fix this on my own and I have no one to go to because of the lack of emotional boundaries, they feel responsible for the

parents

' happiness.

Remember we talked about how children, especially those under seven years old, are very self-centered, so if mom or dad are not happy and they have moved on to that withdrawal and devaluation, the child will often take it personally, what did I do to cause this or what should I do to make this go away or get better? And they may feel guilty about their personal happiness. because they see that their caregiver is very unhappy and they feel happy and they are trying to figure out if that is okay and generally in a home with a borderline parent that is not okay, so don't talk, don't trust, don't feel and those These are also the characteristics of an addicted home: don't talk, don't trust, don't feel, because it is important to do whatever and align yourself with whatever the person with the characteristics of BPD may need at that moment to feel safe. difficulty trusting. people also alternate between feeling appreciated and condemned, you know, one day you can come home all rosy and the next day you can come home and the bases fall and you don't really know what happened or what you did differently and for adults this is confusing, let alone for a child who has difficulty thinking abstractly and looking for alternative explanations, which creates anxiety because the parent was unpredictable.

You don't know if you'll come home to Jekyll or Hyde, so they become hypervigilant and look for clues. They're trying to figure out what might trigger the change that makes them hypervigilant in subsequent relationships and they're also always looking for things, so the first thing we start doing is

helping

people realize that this behavior isn't normal. These behaviors may have served a surgical purpose for the father while the father was growing up, but these are not healthy behaviors for someone to have, so we analyzed and discussed the function of each symptom for the father and you know, alternating between idealization and devaluation , this is one of the most important ones, so what is the function?

Well, let's think about what caused that parent to develop BPD characteristics. They were probably growing up in a similar situation where there was addiction or personality disorder behaviors in the home and the child didn't learn to walk the middle path, so there were always extremes: you either love me or you hate me, and there were extreme conditions of courage, so alternating between ideals was the way to align yourself with that parent and say yes, you. You are the best thing in the world or not, you just suck, looking back at some of the other characteristics, neediness and fear of abandonment, well if the person with BPD has an unstable self image, then they need to keep other people around, they need to make them feel guilty to let them stay being around if necessary is important because if other people leave and that external validation disappears or that safety net disappears, then the person with BPD feels empty and nothing because they are not able to identify who or what they are or any kind of ya You know, sense of self, we also look at difficulty recognizing the feelings and needs of others, you know, this is something that develops as we get older, but it's not something that necessarily develops automatically, most of us, you know, we get along well as we go, but again we think. about if you have a person, if you have a parent who has BPD characteristics, they don't come from a healthy situation one way or another, whether it's their family of origin or whatever, we know that BPD characteristics often develop in early childhood, so we'll stay primarily with that family of origin, but we have a child who never grew up being able to identify his own feelings and needs and was very attentive to the feelings and needs of a person from his family of origin who They had dysfunctional behaviors, so they were not able to realize what was happening to other people, they never learned to label their own feelings or be aware of themselves because they are always very worried about pacifying and keeping peace with them. . the person with the borderline characteristics, we then move on to having the participants identify any behaviors they have that may also resemble that symptom, so at this point I start asking them to take a look at their relationships and look at some of their current problems and let's see how you are recreating or how you are presenting these behaviors now because it is important to understand that we learned what we experienced, remember that a couple of weeks ago, so if when you were little you were taught that your feelings didn't matter, let's have to do it. reassure the person, the borderline parent, then you know it's one of those things that stuck with you, so we start talking about what you're doing and then we start talking about what you could do differently, so we review and refute the conclusions they provide. practical cognitive and interpersonal skills so that we begin to look at self-image and one of the things that I really start with is mindfulness so that they begin to learn to recognize the feelings and needs of themselves and they begin to learn to be aware of the feelings and needs of others.

Other people, many times people who grew up in families with a borderline with a parent with borderline characteristics have no limits, they were so concerned with trying to keep the peace trying to avoid rejection from the primary caregiver who was so important in their lives that they did not develop no limits, so they can't say no to something, they can't ask for what they need, so we thought about some of Linda's hands working and looking at effective interpersonal skills, asking for what. you need it and saying no and being able to set boundaries, then we talk about stopping and thinking so that they learn that they start to be able to identify some of the things that they do in their own lives and how those things are causing them.

You know they may have been protective growing up in a home with a borderline parent, but now that they don't live in that home, how could they modify those behaviors? Do those behaviors still serve them in a way that is helpful and helpful to us? examines the effects of borderline personality on living conditions, so we start talking about chaos. You know, if you never know if your parents are going to change in a moment, you don't know if they will value you or devalue you today. I don't know if it's laughter or yelling, you know, it's very stressful to come home, it's stressful to be around in any situation, there's usually abuse and neglect, whether it's physical or emotional abuse or just the parent has withdrawn and can't.

If they are not there, they are not aware of their own needs and feelings, much less can they even begin to imagine what the needs and feelings are of the child who, in the grand scheme of things, is the least threatening person in their life. part of the time. At this time there are often boundary violations as the parent cannot calm themselves and there is also a lot of need for other people to do well for them and they demand that other people do whatever they want to maintain control, invalidation to satisfy the needs and desires of the child.

They are often overridden in favor of whatever the person with borderline tendencies needs role reversals, you know, sometimes the parent becomes the child and the child becomes the caregiver and that's really scary and confusing for a child. small, it's scary and confusing for a teenager, but it's really scary and confusing for a six or seven year old who has to tuck in mom or dad because they just can't function right now, they start to think that in some cases the appearance or the entire limit may have some small histrionic tendencies, but he gives it a lot of importance. in making sure that the façade of the family is one of perfection because they need the approval of other people, it is not okay to be imperfect and they are hypersensitive to any type of criticism, so whether the child in that family has any type of weakness or not something wrong that is taken as a huge affront to the family and there is a keen perception that people are very attentive to everyone's once you know everyone's rhythms, so to speak, they may not know exactly what they need or what their feelings are, but many times people in the family are very attentive to what happens to the person with borderline characteristics because they do not want the explosion, the explosion is usually devastating, it is not just a little firecracker, okay, then That's what happens, that's what we're seeing when you have a person growing up in a family with a borderline parent, but what do we do about it so that the six seeds grow up as a healthy child?

Now many of our clients are our adults, so that ship has sailed, what do we do? Well I tell them they need to fix it themselves, it's not fair and you know sometimes it can be adisgusting, but they are able to repair themselves and give themselves the love and support they need now and wish they had received when they were younger, they cannot change the person with borderline characteristics. You know that person may want to change and that's great, but it can affect how the parenting behaviors are impacting them today and they can reparent themselves in a way that is healthy, for what they need. support everyone needs support that's just human nature respect and acceptance they need to have a voice they need to feel that their feelings and thoughts are important unconditional love and affection, consistency and security, well those things are really basic things, but they are things that are completely absent in a family where there are one or more borderline people, so let's talk very quickly about how you could start to develop them in terms of repair, so that we can Ask clients what it means to have support.

Knows? Does that mean someone gives you money every time you need to pay bills? or what the support is like and how you could do it yourself. Who in your life can do it for you and for a Many times the clients we work with have people in their social circle who can provide support, but because they are so hypersensitive to negativity and are always looking for that rejection, they are always looking for that criticism, sometimes they push that. The person walks away without realizing that there is support there, so we start talking about what support looks like when they have been supported, what they would like when they are having a bad day or when something bad happens, what they need and off we go. through each of these respect and acceptance, what does that look like, what would you like, you know, we know that you probably didn't have much when you were a kid or that it was inconsistent at best, so what does that look like? that today? you need to be the CEO of a company or respect and acceptance means someone keeping their promises and you know, going home and maybe remembering your birthday or something, how about that?

So we started talking about each of these things. Great meta concepts to post, but if customers can't define what they look like, then they can't put them into practice. You know, consistency. I would love to have consistency. What does that mean for you? Who do you need to be consistent? What does that mean? Then you can start to make a plan, so another activity you can do is examine each effect of borderline personality, such as making people feel inadequate, discussing how this was present in the client's family of origin, what happened that made you made you feel inadequate, how each manifests in the client's current life, what things are happening now that make you feel inadequate, and how you can eliminate those dysfunctional patterns.

So if there are people or things going on that make you feel inadequate, let's look at why that is, because a lot of it is probably due to those fears of rejection and failure and the need for stronger self-esteem, so we'll look at that and also We will identify the fact that there is a difference between you being inadequate and some of them. your skills are inadequate because no one is perfect at everything and if some of the things that make you feel inadequate are the fact that you know you don't know how to change a tire, not everyone does.

Yes, my father showed me how to change. a tire when he was 16, that was a 10 minute lesson 30 years ago, could he change a tire today? Never in a million years should he be able to do it, maybe, but you know, we want to help people identify what's important to them. to feel adequate how it seems appropriate for them to go through the lack of boundaries how is this present in their family of origin and this requires talking a lot about what boundaries are not just physical boundaries not just people invading your room or stealing your clothes or doing whatever what they were doing but emotionally invading your emotional boundaries or ignoring your emotions and simply telling you to get over it what in your family of origin made you feel responsible for the happiness of others and this is not right all of this I want to look at current life and say what you are doing in your current life where you feel responsible for the happiness of others whose happiness you feel responsible for and why you know it's one thing to feel responsible for the happiness of your children and we can't do that all the time.

I mean, if you have kids, you know, you try to give them the best life, you try to help them be happy, but sometimes there will be pain in life, we just have to accept that, so what? Does it mean being responsible for the happiness of others? Who is it really important that you try to help them be as happy as possible? How can you do it when life gives you lemons? And we'll start talking about radical acceptance in this point six. seeds we are going to discuss how to use those six principles and I put them here in the corner for you to support respect and acceptance voice unconditional love and affection consistency insecurity how can you use these seeds to reparent and nourish yourself ?

What can you do? this weekend to support yourself to feel loved and accepted what can you do to give yourself a voice? You know, maybe you go out on the weekends with your family and you always agree with whatever they want to do, but you really want to do something or you have an opinion, how can you make your voice heard? Unconditional love and affection, this is easy to teach but difficult to implement, separating what you do from who you are, but how can you be compassionate and love yourself despite your mistakes I am more verbal, imagine a lot of people and you know that I can make memes, I can make collages, those are things I like to do, not everyone likes to do them, so think about it or ask your clients to think about it. about ways that they can journal or create a collage that represents for them the good thing about them, that unconditional love, and to remind themselves what you can have, what you can look at every day to remind yourself that you are lovable for who you are.

It's not what you can do, but being a kind person, being a human being, what can you do to nurture your healthy relationships? So again, that goes back to these things because yes, we need to first develop that relationship with ourselves and nurture ourselves, but in our relationships with others, we need to provide support, respect, voice, unconditional love, consistency and , to a certain extent, security, and you know that goes with trust. The third thing we talked about is preventing vulnerabilities and remember that vulnerabilities are those things that make you more likely to get angry because you are exhausted for whatever reason you are too tired you are not eating well you are not eating the right diet and you are not you're giving your body enough building blocks you've just worn yourself out from burning the candle at both ends whatever the case may be, you want to look at that and say what can you do using these six characters, six things, what can you do to prevent vulnerabilities in yourself. and sometimes that comes down to being willing to love yourself enough and be compassionate if you want to. use that instead of affection, be compassionate enough with yourself to say you know what I can't do that today or what I need to take I need to take a couple of days off because I just can't do it and I'm going to go back down a bad hole if or a bad path if I continue this way Group Three I use stopping and thinking about resilience builders what helps you bounce back when you've had a bad day what helps you bounce back when You've had a setback for some reason You've broken up a relationship You had a fight with your best friend What can help you recover?

I asked them to think about what they had done before and it may just help them. for 10 minutes, I may only help them for 30 minutes, but that's 10 or 30 minutes more than anything, so we start there, we also look at vulnerabilities and improve and accept acronyms in DBT for distress tolerance because a lot of times, if Customers can pass. that emotional mind, when they're just freaking out, they can calm down and get into their wise mind, then they can figure out what to do to recover, but as long as they're still emotionally dysregulated, they're going to have a hard time thinking. about that, so we use distress tolerance techniques to help them reduce the intensity of another activity that, and I'm reviewing the way the book describes it, doesn't necessarily have to follow in the same order, which is grieving. loss.

Wouldn't most people who grew up in a family forged with addictions or borderline characteristics have director June Cleaver as parents? Hell, I don't think most of us who come from pretty good families had Principal June Cleaver like many of our clients. They're going to say that she didn't have the parents she wanted. She didn't have the family relationships she wanted. They watch TV and you have all these idyllic TV families and you look at that and you go, wow, my family would never do that. I see blue blood and they have Sunday dinner together every Sunday and it's very civilized and I see him thinking, wow, what would that be like, but we want to help people understand that whatever their ideal is in their head for a childhood, you know.

People didn't have that idyllic childhood, so they need to grieve what they didn't have and start moving on because you can't go back and be a kid again. You can be better with yourself in the present, but you can't walk away. in high school or whatever, review messages received in childhood about dealing with loss, now think about clients you've worked with with borderline tendencies, are easily emotionally dysregulated, an unstable self-image, really unstable relationships, so when there are losses, they tend to get out of control very, very quickly, so the message that many people received in childhood growing up with someone with borderline characteristics was that loss is intolerable and losses can kill you and losses They are dangerous, so the person gets very, very nervous, so help them.

Finding out how they feel about loss is important and you know this can be a good group activity, put it up on the board when we talk about friend losses or job losses and I look at different types of losses to try to help them identify them. The messages they received we want to identify the losses they had and the feelings associated with dysfunctional childhood. Now remember that losses are not just a joke. Losses can be lost. They are losing that dream of having that perfect childhood. They are losing that dream. that their parents will ever be the kind of parents they want, they are losing that dream.

Now fill in the blank, so we want to help you start to identify that and figure out how to, as I like to say, write. If you incorporate it into their narrative, you know that that character in their story will not spontaneously become the ideal father. It's not going to happen, so how do we rewrite history? How do we change the plot a little bit to integrate this person in a way that's not like that? detrimental to the main character and identify ongoing issues with parents who have borderline or addiction issues because that parent is probably stealing their life and they probably don't want to excommunicate, then when that parent calls, when that person becomes needy, when that person starts playing the blame card, what can they do?

Do you know when this comes up? It comes up more frequently during the holidays and things like that, what's happening and what they should do to protect themselves in the group, you can have them. Describe how they would have liked their childhood to be. This is also an amazing collage activity. I know I go into collages a lot, but they are easy because most of the time you can find pictures online or magazines that you can donate. Find kids jumping rope or whatever they want and you can cut and paste so you don't have any kind of artistic skills, but this gives people time in a non-threatening way to do it and I draw a line through the middle of the first half, what you would have liked your childhood to be like and the second half, how can you translate that to today?

We all have a little child inside us. Mine tends to be a little louder than many other people's. That's ok. and I'm okay with that, so what can you do in the present to validate yourself, have fun, and be silly? You know, I'm all for watching cartoons and eating grilled cheese on a Saturday morning, if you're up for it. It catches my attention and even though my kids don't do it with me, I do it alone, but it's one of those things that I enjoy doing and it makes me happy, so

helping

clients see that it's okay to have fun and take care of themselves.

Guilt, responsibility and forgiveness are going to be important, forgiveness is ours, that's the F word when we talk to clients with a borderline parent, often, so we want to help them identify possible guilt triggers for the child. adult now that he has moved away. from mom and dad's house, you are no longer in that environment, there may still be guilt triggers and you can look back and see what triggered guilt when you were younger and made you feel like you couldn't go out with your friends . either you couldn't be happy or you couldn't do this because it would be bad in thePresent what your guilt triggers are and what your guilt triggers are from that particular parent.

We also talked about how guilt works and what the motivations behind it are. Guilt can be like that, guilt is anger towards yourself, so if someone makes you feel or tries to make you feel bad about yourself then you can get angry at yourself for not living up to their expectations, that's how guilt works. blame, but if they try to make you feel bad. about yourself and you can evaluate and go, you know I'm a good person, I just can't do that right now for my own safety, sanity, whatever it is, that's not something I can do and I need to be able to take care of myself and that's huge. .

I mean, that's a long way to go for clients who grow up and come from that type of background to be able to set boundaries and say, you know what? For my own mental health, I need to draw this boundary right now and say no, we identify and discuss different origins of guilt and again this goes back to looking at what your parents did to you as a child, when you feel guilty and sometimes , I encourage you to do so. Spend a week keeping a guilt journal even about things you feel a little guilty about, like for example, I threw a plastic container the other day and I felt guilty about it because I didn't get out. to the garage and put it away. recycling guilt is sneaky, it comes up a lot, so I want to know what all the things that trigger your guilt are and then we'll start talking about them.

I also want them to understand what and who can and who cannot control themselves because most of the people in our lives we cannot control and the person with borderline characteristics is among the most uncontrollable people, they have to be able to learn to control themselves, they are emotionally dysregulated, You know, interpersonal relationships, so the adult child probably can't do it. control that person and they need to be able to set that boundary or be able to recognize that you know what I am. I'm NOT responsible for how you feel explores the issues of guilt and responsibility you know like I just said what are you? responsible for if you make a promise you are responsible for keeping it sure you are responsible for that person's happiness you are responsible for being a parent to that whole person you are responsible for taking care of that person what you are responsible for and then we look at in terms of you, are you? what are you responsible for and that goes back to preventing vulnerabilities, taking care of themselves and trying to work on themselves and then we move on to forgiveness?

And you know, many times they say that forgiveness is for you, not for the other. person is being willing to accept that what happened happened and let go of the anger because staying angry at that person is not going to change anything holding on to that anger eats you up inside there are a lot of memes, I mean that's a good thing If you go to the Internet , you can find many good memes about anger and forgiveness that help clients come to their own definition and understanding of what forgiveness is because most clients come and say that forgiving means saying that what happened was okay , you know maybe not.

Be okay, but that's how it was and you can't, you know it happened and you can't change the past, so if you can't change it, what are you going to do about it so it doesn't eat you alive from the inside out? the present is usually a whole group or maybe two about forgiveness and they also need to learn to forgive themselves because they have probably done some things that they are not so proud of or they have not been able to do some things that they are not so proud of . proud, so it's important that they can learn to forgive themselves and not feel guilty for every mistake, every misstep, every sneeze in the wrong direction, we completed an ABC worksheet that explores beliefs about guilt, as well which I usually start by just using the main one. on the board and I write the ABCs and say: okay, what makes you feel guilty?

We'll put it in there and work on the ABC. A is the triggering event. What do they feel guilty about? are the automatic beliefs that led them to feel guilty, then we analyze, discuss and evaluate using the prompts found in the book, but you can guess what the prompts are, why you feel guilty, in what way, what happened in your past that makes you feel guilty about this now another way to look at it is using concepts about personal responsibility as group discussion starters because many times clients feel guilty because they are too responsible they feel responsible for their parents' happiness they can It doesn't make their parents happy parents, so they feel guilty, so we start going back to those things and people that you can and can't change and identifying what things in life you are responsible for and often it's not a very long list once you get down to it. you get to work.

You start out and people throw everything in the kitchen sink and then you can go back and dispute that and say, are you really responsible for this or is it totally your responsibility or does some of this fall on one or more people who are encouraging the customers? Taking ownership of the things you feel you want and need is really important. There are some statements found in the book on taking ownership that you can post on flipchart papers and refer to when people are feeling helpless or not taking responsibility and many of them are statements that would be used to address distress-intolerant thoughts, like instead of I can't handle this saying, I've handled things like this before or this is hard, but you can't do this so you take ownership of what you need, you take ownership of what's under your control, but you also identify those things. that they are out of control and that they cannot hold on to another activity that I do here. have them do the serenity prayer and when something happens, I say, well, let's see what things you can change, what things you can't change in this situation and how you develop acceptance that this is the way things are and the courage to do it. change the things you need to make it a different cognitive way of helping people take ownership but not be too responsible and the f word why forgive, so we look at the reasons why it's important to forgive other people, for For example, as we talked about if you stay angry, it drains your energy.

Staying angry isn't going to change anything. You know it will probably just drive a wedge, a bigger wedge between you and that person, but it won't change their behavior, so there are a lot of questions. the book you can read or you can make up your own questions that identify the reasons why it is important to forgive other people, not just the parent with borderline tendencies, but anyone else in your life and yourself, why is it so harmful holding on to anger, guilt and resentment we examine the function of a function of anger and how it works, protective fight or flight, it is there for a reason and we talk about the many phases of anger, anger is anger, guilt, resentment, anger, envy, jealousy, yes, envy and You have jealousy because you are angry at someone else for having something you want or you are angry at yourself for not having something that someone else has, so anger is something sneaky, it comes in many different phases, discuss ways that people deal with anger and this is another one that I like to use just on the main board that everyone throws away or how they deal with anger when they start to feel angry, then we talk about what it means to let go anger and this is a really scary question. concept for many people because they have held on to anger for so long because it protects them, if they stay angry at this person and keep them at a distance, they cannot hurt themselves as much as if they stopped being angry and you risk letting that person come back to come in, so we discussed what the difference is between letting go of anger and maintaining healthy boundaries versus letting go of anger and becoming a doormat.

We highlight the consequences of anger, the good and the bad, using the quadrants of your motivational interviewing, guess what? what are the benefits of staying angry what are the drawbacks of staying angry what are the benefits of forgiving and what are the drawbacks of forgiving and then we talk about each of them because if you don't identify the benefits of getting angry and find a way to satisfy those needs, people will want to hold on to it. Anger is a natural emotion and I want clients to understand that feeling angry for a few minutes is normal, healthy and protective.

Feeling angry for hours, days or months. That probably won't work for you, it'll probably burn you from the inside, so we want to see the consequences, but understanding anger is protective and that's what we usually come back to, so how can you protect yourself and at the same time let go? of your anger that becomes a question to reflect on and then obviously in this group we are going to provide some tools to start managing anger, mindfulness, distraction techniques, radical acceptance, anything we can do to help the people to get over it, you know, imagine their feelings and their impulses like a wave coming in and out, imagine their feeling like a cloud floating and they just watch the clouds float, they don't have to hold on to them, they just let them flow in and out. , so there are many different tools that we can use.

Give them to start dealing with their anger and their impulse to self-destruct, so to speak. We want to reframe the triggers for anger and resentment. Many times those triggers come from things you learned in the past, so identify the triggers in your present life. Triggers from the past aren't really that important. You can go there if you want, but in your present life, what triggers your anger and resentment and how can you reframe that? How can you walk the middle path if you get angry because someone said? not to help you move, that feels like rejection, you know your friend is supposed to help you, so if that is a trigger for your anger or resentment, how can you reframe that?

And you know, look at both sides, look at the other positive things they've done, etc., so we want to talk about looking at both sides walking the middle path, solving problems. Another activity that we will do is identify the different manifestations of anger and I mentioned a lot before and the effects of each one, so let's continue with jealousy for a moment because it is not something that we talk about a lot in anger when you are jealous, what are the effects of that on you and your relationships? And you know, going through that quadrant again, what are the benefits of jealousy and how those needs can be met.

What are the benefits of acceptance or forgiveness? different phrase to use, but help them identify something else that counteracts envy and jealousy here, the opposite of that would be fill in the blank, help clients find the right balance between what they need to do and what they feel they need to do. should do when interacting with the parent with borderline tendencies because the guilt will come up again and you know that if you say you can't, maybe the client is an adult and married now and they celebrate Thanksgiving every other year with the parent with borderline tendencies. borderline tendencies or maybe They're not even doing it with the family this year.

They are doing something that only they know about and not their spouse. How do you handle that when interacting with the borderline parent? How do you handle it when the borderline parent calls and asks for something that is unreasonable? or something that may be reasonable but the person just isn't, isn't able to handle it at the moment. Help clients develop practical tools to control the flow of communication and interaction. Remember when the parent with borderline tendencies suddenly begins to spiral. The text messages are going to go from 0 to 150, the emails are going to start arriving and many times the text messages and emails are as if the person is talking to you or the adult child, but that is not the case. you're like this that's how it's going to be when you're going to respond to me okay then you're not going to respond to me so you're never going to respond to me again okay and you know, we joke about these text messages in In terms of you, you know how teenagers can behave, but you'll also see this in adults with borderline tendencies and how they interact with other people in their life, so we want to help them figure out how to control the flow of communication, maybe just checking their email once a day or you know it's going to be a brainstorming session depending on how they interact with their parent limit uses the metaphor of changing the dance from a waltz to a tango you need to be able to take control of that relationship, you know, you think of the tango in which a partner guides very strongly each other across the dance floor instead of just gently going with the flow, the part that the adult child needs in order to be a strong leader is to be present and accept and lead and validate, but also know how to set those boundaries and encourage them to write a personal bill of rights.

What are you entitled to? You have the right to be happy. Do you have the right not to answer the phone at 2? :00 in the morning, do you have the right to? Yes, whatever they think they are entitled to. Sometimes this works best as an individual activity. I found that it can be a lot of fun to do as a group activity.We write the account. of rights on the board and then people choose the ones they think are right for them, but you know it can be quite a joyful activity, sometimes they identify the ways in which the parent with borderline personality violates the boundaries and discuss ways to deal with them . this and the associated feelings of anger and guilt, so the borderline parent calls and starts freaking out because you're not going to be here for Thanksgiving, you must not love me anymore.

I don't know how I can continue better, they start to spiral. out of control they get angry and start shouting that you are an ungrateful person who is good for nothing, blah, blah, blah. Wow, that has a big impact. I don't care who you are or how good your boundaries are. That's going to be difficult, so okay, how do you set them? boundaries with that person, how do you not take the verbal abuse and then when you end that phone call, how do you deal with those feelings of guilt because there's a little kid inside of you that's still curled up in the corner saying, I'm sorry?

I'll do it anyway, but don't get mad, so it's important that people can sit down, calm that inner child if you want and say you know what's right, that person is an adult and they're responsible for their own business. It's easier said than done, but these are things you need to keep in mind. Talk about how you handle it when you hang up the phone or get an email from a borderline parent that throws you off and encourages people to discuss it when they get one, you know. how they handled it, what they wish they had. do differently, etc. and then guess how we are going to define what a healthy relationship with a parent would look like and have clients identify the aspects that are important to them and learn to tango.

They need to be their own parents. They need to be their own parents. own person saying you need to do this and that's okay, other people may get angry, but that's okay, going back over that bill of rights, what you want to do is start to identify how to communicate those needs to the parent or the borderline parent and how to handle it if those rights are not respected and if you've worked with clients with borderline tendencies, you know it can get ugly very quickly and the client, especially if the parent falls into some kind of suicide attempt or something the client is going to do.

I feel very guilty and there are all kinds of legal problems and everything that gets ugly, but we need to help clients understand what they are responsible for and what the other adult is responsible for. You know, they might need to call for a wellness check. Maybe my baby. You know, I don't know that situation, but how do you handle it in a way that makes you feel good? Identify your borderline parent's triggers and functions, and ways to prevent them from triggering without sacrificing yourself, so think about what's bothering you. Borderline parent gets angry or feels guilty, what is the function of that in keeping you from leaving, in maintaining control over you and gaining validation?

What is the benefit of that behavior for that parent and how else can you do it now? in a way that prevents you from having to sacrifice yourself, your needs and your sanity, when there is resistance and anger, you probably want to interpret it in class because a lot of times people who come from that environment grew up in it for 16 to 18 years, so that now, when it happens, they are returned to that childhood state and there it bites them, it's okay, just stop getting angry, stop yelling, stop doing whatever, so it will be important to interpret these new strategies to set limits so that don't turn into a shouting match or a power struggle or any process after the role play, what personal statements were helpful in maintaining composure because the person will have to talk to the parent with borderline tendencies and at the same time you will understand this.

You are now an adult, you are now responsible for your own feelings, whatever statements you need to say to yourself. I find that some of my clients find it helpful to write it down on a piece of paper that they have in front of them or keep. next to the phone, so when they talk to that parent, you know, a lot of times I keep my phone on my nightstand, so if I had that list, I would leave it next to the nightstand, where it would probably be. to make it accessible to me when I'm on the phone, this is one of those few things that you can't put on your phone because you're going to be on the phone and you won't be able to look at it and talk on the phone. phone at the same time, so encourage them to make three or five personal statements – it doesn't have to be huge.

This is an especially useful activity to do and even redo right before holidays and family gatherings. Examine the different roles that people play in their lives. families and how those roles could be reconstructed in the present because you know we recreate where we come from. I will often encourage clients to write their autobiography from a reporter's perspective to get an objective view of what they did if they felt they were worthless. and they were always a disaster and they always let people down and they were always always always all Arnon thinking, I want them to go back and write an autobiography so I can see what happened so they can see what happened and maybe think about those judgments about themselves. themselves.

From a different perspective, I also present the concept that our parents directly and indirectly communicate messages to us about who we are and who we should be so well that it is normal those conditions are worth it that is how we want people to look back now that they are adults and you wonder who you are and who you should be you are adults you can make your own decisions now I challenge you to find positives in the pain because still it sucked growing up in that environment but what positives were there? and how you are stronger now than when you were 12 or 15 and reintroduce it if you haven't already the concept of mindfulness encouraged them to stay in the present recognizing the strengths and resources they have now as adults ask clients to visualize the future while carefully avoiding simply choosing the opposite because it is the opposite so what do you want the future to be like?

Encourage them to start taking care of themselves by preventing vulnerabilities review thinking errors such as personalization and polarized thinking you know that all or nothing thinking when you listen always or I never or she always, so it is important to gently point it out and look for exceptions or identify if It's always like saying how you can deal with it and then discussing how to develop it. a change plan that prioritizes maintaining motivation and includes enough rewards because our clients will have behaviors to change, they will have to start learning to appreciate themselves, develop self-esteem, start learning to interact differently, not just with parents with limits. characteristics, but with everyone because by growing up in that family they learn to generally interact in a dysfunctional way with everyone else.

Have each group member identify one change they are going to make this week and how they are going to do it. Encourage them to use measurable measures. goals and objectives so that you can look back and say yes, it was done or not, no, identify the motivation or the reason for making that change because you have to keep them motivated so that they have it at the forefront of their minds and make a shower of ideas. and mitigate any obstacles, so if you have a group of eight to twelve people, each person shares a goal and you go and do this for each person's goal, it takes you most of the hour, but it gives you a lot of information and feedback and help each other get excited about each other's goals develop a thinking error journal and have group members complete it for a week and then bring it back to the group to process, so at the end of that week I will put the polarized thinking error Thinking on the whiteboard and I will say: share with me some examples of how you use this thinking error and what you did to counteract it.

How did you change that? Once you realized you were using that thinking error, examine what healthy boundaries look like and how. to know if we have them discuss how to enforce or set boundaries in a way that is assertive, not aggressive and begin to explore the concepts of self-esteem and simply learn to love, love or love themselves for who they are many times, if you say Me love it, customers are going to go now, they're not going to go there, but if you use the word like they're okay, I'm willing to see that, so let's put it all together, we want to encourage customers to stay aware of old behaviors. new behaviors appear and/or disappear we want to remind you that changes are a process that requires not only time but also support and, hopefully, you will receive support from the group, but also from who in your life could be there to help.

For them, guilt is a powerful tool that the person with borderline personality characteristics uses to control people and prevent abandonment. It's a security issue for them. Understanding that is a little helpful, but we want to help clients learn not to be controlled by it and not to be the puppet. For the puppeteer, children who grow up with borderline parents often develop some of the same traits or behaviors because that's what they learned, they can unlearn them. Children from homes with borderline parents often have difficulty trusting others and their own feelings, which is where mindfulness really begins. ring a bell and walk in, then we move on to the now that you are aware of what you are thinking and feeling how you meet those needs a vulnerability is something like getting little sleep or being sick increases the chances that a person You will be more prone to negative emotions like anger, guilt and depression.

Think about a person in your life who is a little difficult to deal with if you have to deal with that person and you feel bad or you didn't get enough rest. Is it as easy to deal with them as it is on days when you're well-rested and healthy and your game probably isn't? So we want clients to really start to understand, but there is a mind-body connection and they need to pay. Attention to this question arises: at what age can you start working with children in this sense? If the parents have borderline characteristics, it seems like it would be different for a ten year old versus a 20 year old and yes, it would be because cognitively they are extraordinarily different, one of the things I would point out is that many times a child with a borderline parent does not will be in treatment at that age unless it's me and I go to counseling, and even then I start with or would.

Start with mindfulness exercises and self-esteem exercises and help them learn interpersonal effectiveness skills. You should also look at what is safe in that environment if you live with a borderline parent and at what level, if there is any abuse, what your responsibilities are. that etc., the limit can be the elephant in the living room that no one talks about, at least outside the family. I have a client who has lived for a long time with a wife who has a borderline personality and is very concerned about the effects on her children who are Now the college age family looks good from the outside but there is a lot of internal chaos and that is true, It is smoke and mirrors and the same thing happens in addicted families, so it is important to observe the effects not only in this particular case in the children. but also on the husband and you know what you can do about it now for the safety and sanity of all the kids are college age and I assume they have moved out of the house or can move out of the house if you should absolutely have to so that speaking of Oh my gosh, looking at how to create those six seeds on the part of Oops, there we go on the part of the unaffected parent, so to speak, on the part of the parent, how can you provide support, respect and acceptance? expressing unconditional love consistency and security as college-aged adults children are more able to think abstractly and begin to understand that mom is not well and for some reason she is having a hard time tolerating these things and you know it's probably not important why those characteristics were developed, but it is important for children to understand what emotional dysregulation is and why when mom gets angry she goes from 0 to 250 in 2.3 seconds and can't seem to return to baseline like a normal person would. and why he has these triggers, but it would probably also be helpful for the parent if in this situation the parent can help identify the triggers and some kind of interference in the performance, if possible again to help the children feel and Get all the support and unconditional love you can from your parents. but again it caught the attention of college-age kids: they can begin to understand what BPD is;

It doesn't make everything go away and suddenly make them say oh, okay, I get it, it doesn't matter, you know, they still need to lament the fact that they didn't have the parents, they didn't have the mother or the childhood that they wanted, however. , you know, I think they can probably develop the skills they need, but yeah, it's one of those things that since BPD is so demonized. If you want, no one wants to talkof that and that's another reason why I use borderline characteristics because a lot of these things, if you look at the behaviors and look at why they developed in the person who has the BPD characteristics, they make a lot of sense.

This is about helping them learn self-regulation and mindfulness skills and staying in the present and not knowing when they kick in and not being that scared six-year-old again. Are there any other questions? Do you enjoy this podcast? Please subscribe and like it in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing to all CEU Communication Advisor tools. This episode has been brought to you in part by all CEUs providing 24/7 peace of mind. Multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training for counselors, therapists, and nurses since 2006. Use the Consular Toolbox coupon code to get 20% off your order this month.