BPDFamily.com

Hello,

I know there's a lot of discussion going on about how to think twice before suggesting your upwBPD that she's having a BPD. And I will think! Just now I think it would be hard to hide in a long term what I have learned about my mother, and not very just for her as some people have called her crazy and lots of nasty names throughout her life. I don't want myself to suggest that she's a mental nut. I want to suggest her that she's an emotionally troubled person and that is ok to feel those feelings that she has, but that there are maybe other ways of expressing them.

I'm almost certain that my mom doesn't know what BPD is. If she'd go to wikipedia or another source to check out the symptoms I'm sure she'd deny it, as I did it myself at first! Because at first glance it seemed that my mother didn't meet the criteria. Only after some more profound reading (and thanks to meeting my now ex BPDbf who reassembled a lot of my mother) I understood that there's no doubt: she is pwBPD.

I feel like you guys have read many books about BPD by now. Is there any gentle book for a pwBPD for the first-time reading? Maybe including some exercises to work? Not devaluing the pwBPD ? Not judging them ? And most importantly, validating their feelings?

I would like to read such a book myself at first... .Thank you for any suggestions :)

My uBPD sister recently got hold of a copy of Stop Walking on Eggshells that I brought home for my mom (also a non). Sis read it through and concluded that our brother might have the disorder... .Um, no. Anyway, probably not a book written for family members.

Hi FoxC,

*welcome*

I'm going to assume that your goal is to get your mother to get help? BPD is a heavily stigmatized mental illness, you'd think that we'd be a little further ahead but it shows how much work is left to do. Anyways, if someone were to approach you and told you that they think that you suffer from one of the most difficult and stigmatized disorder?

Many pwBPD have an underlying clinical depression, in fact therapists usually want to treat that first, if you get depression and anxiety under control it helps with BPD symptoms. Depression and anxiety is widely accepted in today's society, there's a lot of awareness about it.

You could suggest that you think that she may have depression / anxiety and she may go and see someone to treat it, at least her foot would be in the door. There's guarantee that this will work but depression is an easier pill to swallow than BPD.

The depression and anxiety angle might indeed be a better angle.  My mother admitted to me she had BPD, but she told me one of her therapists maybe 20 years ago gave her a book on BPD to understand her father.  My mother realized it was a subtle and gentle way of suggesting that she had BPD herself without giving a formal diagnosis.

We say this on all of the boards here, in so many words: focus on the behaviors and symptoms and how we can deal with them,  rather than a diagnosis.  A diagnosis,  after all,  it just a summery of behaviors.