Hi suzikaye73
Welcome to our online community Dealing with a BPD sibling can be quite challenging indeed. Has your brother been officially diagnosed with BPD? Has he ever gotten any kind of treatment or therapy for his issues?
We have several resources here about communication skills that I think might help you talk to your brother. We for instance have some articles here about validation and things you can do yourself to end the cycle of conflict. Here's an excerpt from the article about validation:
When it comes to emotional intelligence, one of the most advanced skills is knowing how to better validate others. Validation opens people up and contributes to the feeling of comfort and safety when communicating with you. Conversely, if you are experiencing a communication breakdown, if there is a wall between you and someone else, it most likely has been built with the bricks of invalidation.
If you are effective at validation, and learn not to be invalidating, you will have better relationships with people. This is a powerful tool. Mastering it will elevate your emotional intelligence and your "people skills".
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Nowhere is the communication skill of validation more important than in interfacing with highly sensitive individuals, individuals with low self esteem or individuals who are easily intimidated. This is a very valuable tool for dealing with people with Borderline Personality Disorder.
To validate someone's feelings is first to accept someone's feelings - and then to understand them - and finally to nurture them. To validate is to acknowledge and accept a person. Invalidation, on the other hand, is to reject, ignore, or judge.
Validation of feelings is vital to connecting with others. The mutual validation of feelings is important in all phases of relationships including building, maintaining, repairing, and improving them.
Here are the links to the articles I mentioned:
Communication Skills - ValidationA 3 Minute Lesson on Ending ConflictThere are also techniques specifically developed for communications with a person with BPD that could possibly help you communicate with your brother. One of them is called S.E.T. which stands for Support Empathy and Truth:
The S.E.T. communication pattern was developed by Jerold J. Kreisman, MD and Hal Straus for communication with a person with BPD (pwBPD). It consists of a 3 step sequence where first Support is signaled, then Empathy is demonstrated and in a third step Truth is offered.
Few tools are easier to learn as S.E.T. and are as effective in getting across to a pwBPD. Few tools are as universal in everyday life with anyone. It is sort of an walking-on-eggshell antidote.
S.E.T. minimizes the chance of further escalation while maximizing the chance of getting through to the other person. We have a workshop about S.E.T. that you can find here:
S.E.T. - Support, Empathy and TruthI hope that these tools will help you in your relationship with your brother.
Take care
