The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder by Randi Kreger

Author:Randi Kreger [Kreger, Randi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781592853632
Publisher: BookMobile
Published: 2009-06-02T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Power Tool 2:

Uncover What Keeps You Feeling Stuck

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

• Albert Einstein •

What you avoid controls you.

• Elizabeth B. Brown •

Consider the following questions:

• Do you feel unable to move because danger lies in every choice, yet you feel compelled to do something?

• Do you and your BP have an unspoken agreement that his needs are more important than yours?

• Does your satisfaction with this relationship depend on your BP making significant changes—yet he hasn’t demonstrated a lasting desire to do so?

• Have you made compromises you realize you can’t live with in the long term, but have no idea how to go back and change things?

• Is this relationship too good to leave but too bad to stay in?

If you answered “yes” to most of these questions, chances are you’re stuck.

Psychotherapist Barbara Cowan Berg, author of How to Escape the No-Win Trap, says, “Double-bind situations often build up slowly and catch you off guard. They can be subtle and insidious, wrapping you up in a web of confusion. Most often, you don’t recognize situations that have the ability to make you crazy until you’re deeply involved.”1

Non-BPs hold their borderline family member responsible for their entrapment. But after spending some time in Welcome to Oz, many come to realize that some inner need of theirs keeps them tied to the turbulence. This is mostly true of non-BPs who choose to be in a relationship with someone who has BPD; in fact, their inner needs may be one reason why they chose their partner or friend.

Berg says that interpersonal double binds can appear to be about what is going on with the other party. But when you look more closely at the underpinnings of the conflict, the story is more about you.2 The longer you have been stuck in a chosen relationship, she says, the more likely it is that the solution to the problem lies within you.3

Uncovering and resolving the source of your feelings of entrapment is the most essential element that determines not only the course of your relationship, but the degree of distress you will experience from having a borderline family member. This is because feelings of helplessness and lack of control can cause just as much suffering as the presence of the personality disorder itself.

Study after study has found that in different types of situations—at work, in relationships, in nursing homes, when facing terminal illness, while playing sports—the urge to feel in control of your own destiny is a universal motive. With it, we gain an inner sense of mastery and feelings of satisfaction. Without it, we are at risk for hopelessness, stress, and depression.4

What Keeps You Stuck?

Most non-BPs feel stuck for one or more of the following six reasons:

• unhealthy bonds forged by emotional abuse

• feelings of fear

• obligation, roles, and duty

• guilt mingled with shame

• low self-esteem

• the need to “rescue”

Unhealthy Bonds Forged by Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse, according to therapist and author Beverly

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