Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Deal with Someone who has a Personality Disorder

Episode Date: May 2, 2018

When someone you love suffers from borderline personality disorder, it can cause chaos, trauma, and trust issues in your own life. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give tips and advice for how to cope with these highly combustible relationships. 

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome back. We're going to continue our talk with borderline personality, but this time we're going to do it from the perspective of someone, if you love someone with borderline personality. So I can only imagine how hard this is to be in a relationship with

someone like this. As I said in the last episode, I knew someone who had been, and he just could not trust. Like it was nearly impossible for him to trust again. And I have to tell you, just as someone who has known someone in the family who had these traits, it's really hard. So you grew up in a family with trauma, you learn how to cope with the trauma yourself, and then you're faced with somebody who has these characteristics that you talked about, pretty much all 10 of them. If you're someone like me and it's not a romantic relationship, you just shut it out.

Like there's no way this is coming in my house. Like it's- Bye-bye. Bye-bye, right. Which is sad, but it's true because it's really, really disruptive. I mean like not kidding disruptive. Not everyone's gonna do that.

Not everyone can do that. Not everyone wants to do that. I know, what if your mother's got borderline personality disorder? That's so common. Right. Or what if your wife has it and you don't want to get divorced? Right. It becomes chronically painful.

But there are clearly things you can do that are helpful. And there are clearly things you can do that are hurtful. But I want to talk about what it's like for the person on the other end. It's crazy, Maggie. Because the borderline person constantly blames you. And so if you don't have a strong sense of yourself, then you might become insecure. So some of the things I remember were the rages, like out of the blue, just like literally out of the blue, crazy raging. You don't even know it's coming because you thought you were having a good time.

And then all of a sudden this rage starts. And then it's, you did this to me. And you're like, I did what? You know you have a borderline in your life if you're driving 70 miles an hour and they try to get out of the car, right. I'm going to get out of the car, stop the car right now. You know, you're 30 miles from home or you're in a, in a crowded public place and they start screaming and raging. And you're just like out of literally like, but publicly trying to create a

scene, screaming at you that you're doing something to them. And you're just like out, literally out, like, but publicly trying to create a scene, screaming at you that you're doing something to them. And you're just like, what is going on? Like, this is like, okay, I'm on, I'm in Twilight Zone. It's, it really feels like Twilight Zone. Right. It's pretty crazy. You know, you have,

you're with someone who has borderline personality disorder when you have homicidal thoughts and you've never had them before in your life. I mean, they can just make you so mad. Or here's one. They'll call you and talk about how they're going to commit suicide and get you all wrapped up in this whole suicidal drama to get you to help. And you go out of your way. You like jump off of, you know, a cliff to try to help this person. And then you are trying to check on them and they're out partying and they're like what are you talking about right and that goes with the erratic mood swings where they're fine and then they're suicidal they recruit their support system to get upset

and then they go party right so it's it's very crazy making for the person on the other end. So you have lots of choices. You can shut them out completely if this is something you just can't cope with and it's someone who's that unhealthy in your life and you know that it's going to be disruptive to the rest of your family. Right, but they will just take the drama

and take it to someone else. Right. So may not be the best solution for a family system. Right. So it depends on your situation. The second thing is you can get them help. Right. You can encourage them when they're in a vulnerable state to say, you know, read this.

How many of these 10 criteria do you think apply to you? So sometimes in vulnerable moments, that can be really helpful to give it a name, to then say, there's help for this. And there's actually a psychotherapy called dialectic behavioral therapy, DBT, that has been shown over time to be very helpful for people with borderline personality. I think they should also get scanned because what's the underlying biology because you want to optimize that. It doesn't always fix it, but it can be super helpful in the process.

Now, one of the problems that I would anticipate is that just the name, borderline personality disorder has such a stigma attached to it. So you got to be careful with it. It's got such a stigma attached that when you try to approach this with somebody, it might be tricky because- Well, and it may be better to call it depression. It may be better to say, oh, we need to get you help for anxiety. I've not found using the term super helpful. In fact, I'm generally opposed to it because it sort of implies it's your fault and you're

not going to get better. Right, right. That's my thought. As we said in the last one. The important thing is boundaries are really critical. When you act like this, I am not going to respond. In fact, I'm not going to talk to you. Some boundaries can become really important. You have to assess the level of dangerousness. That's why having a professional who deals with people of borderline personality is really important. And many professionals won't deal with it because they can be fairly chaotic to their practices, if you will.

So medication can help. Optimizing brain function using the brain warrior way tools we've discussed psychological interventions can help like dbt as I talked about in dbt they actually use a lot of cognitive therapy so learning not to believe every stupid thing you think meditation deep relaxation social skills therapy is really important learning about forgiveness and not holding onto the hurts. Because when you have a borderline in your life, it's been so crazy that anytime they get just a little upset, a little upset, because you have all those memories,

you get triggered. So you always have to be asking yourself, well, that was then, this is now. And making sure you're checking your own behavior. Because I can tell you, many people who lived with someone who was borderline, they're so mad internally that any excuse they perceive, the person who has borderline personality disorder, any time they raise their voice or they're late can be a small thing. The person living with them who's been traumatized can overreact and really escalate the situation. And so forgiveness is really important. We've talked about it here. Using the reach method of forgiveness, recall what happened, have empathy. You know, borderline just didn't come from nowhere, right? Altruistically, give the gift of forgiveness, make a public commitment,

tell the person, tell someone. And H is hold on to forgiveness rather than hold on to the hurt. Excellent. Yeah. No, I mean, this is a tough topic. It's a very tough topic. There are some books on it that can be helpful. I'm just going to find them. But I like what you said. I do think it's okay. As somebody on the other end, not the person who is skilled at this and who has access to medications and scans and whatever it's, it would seem okay to me to be able to draw boundaries around it. Big time. notifications, um, and scans and whatever. Um, it's, it would seem okay to me, um,

to be able to draw boundaries around it big time, especially if you've got other people who are going to be traumatized by their behavior. So, I mean, obviously if this, if their problem is caused by trauma, the last thing you want to do is perpetuate that trauma to other children in your family, you know, that type of a thing so you don't want to have other kids be traumatized by them that would seem to make sense to me there's a book uh by valerie poor p-o-r-r overcoming borderline personality disorder a family guide to healing and change and you you're absolutely right. I mean, I'm thinking of a teenager who's being raised by a borderline mother.

And it's so painful. So you want to do whatever you can to support her, to let go, this is normal, this is not. To let her know that she's not crazy. But at the same time, she has to do the things she needs to do to be healthy and happy as much as is possible given this situation. This is not an easy thing. You're almost like a prisoner of war when you're married to or raised by somebody with borderline personality disorder. This is not an easy thing.

It's not an easy thing. It's not an easy thing. That's where professional help can be so important. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review

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