3 Ways the Family Affects Borderline Personality Disorder (& Vice Versa)

[Music] I'm Kyle Kittleson with med circle this is Callie the lab and I'm joined here today with clinical psychologist dr. Romany thanks for being back we're talking about borderline personality disorder both how the family system affects BPD and how BPD affects the family but stay tuned to the end of this video because dr. Romney is going to share what she believes borderline personality disorder should actually be called to better represent what it entails so let's start how does BP air how does the family system affect the individual with BPD number one through communication that many times communication and families families use shortcuts families you know can be passive-aggressive those little communication ruptures can be pretty catastrophic for a person with borderline personality disorder who may misinterpret that and that can escalate into arguments and anger and hostility and volatility that sort of leaves the entire family system depleted the second is tone and while we could put that under communication I really think it deserves its own place or borderline personality is concerned a lot of people say I didn't say anything wrong I said go go ahead I support your decision and they'll say but it's how you said it it's like oh my gosh no I have to know but tone actually does matter because if somebody said you know what I think absolutely you should take that class that's a great idea that's very different than go go take the class you know so tone delivery they matter we know that all of us are affected by that now that does mean that there can often be a bit more monitoring you know in terms of how a the family has to monitor how they communicate but I don't know that that's ever a bad thing that if we all watched our tone we would probably be better parent I salute leave that our partners we'd be better friends we'd be better family members Sarg things like sarcastic tone our classic example of something that can be misinterpreted by somebody with borderline traits or a borderline personality disorder which can then escalate to a much larger argument okay and then number three I would say is its awareness and especially awareness around the key issue of abandonment abandonment is a key theme and borderline personality and when we think of abandonment we actually literally think of abandoning someone like leaving them and disappearing and never getting them in touch with them again well obviously that's an extreme example of it but for a person with borderline personality it might be somebody abruptly leaving a room during an argument gets experiences abandonment a person says I've had it I'm out of here that gets experiences abandonment even psychological distance in the room gets experienced as abandonment many people at borderline personality disorder and sometimes this may likely be a downstream effect of having been experienced at having been exposed to trauma or abuse become very acutely aware of the temperature in the room at all times they hyper monitor around themselves a hyper monitor what everyone's doing saying and feeling and so when they sense someone has pulled back a little bit they experience that as an abandonment to so I tell families whatever it is you do do ensure that even if you feel like you need to step outside the room to safeguard yourself which is totally fine make sure you set it up like you let the person say you know right now I'm having a little trouble I'm simply just gonna go to another room for just to think this out for a little while I'm right there don't worry about it but I just need a moment for myself you do have sort of if you will the right to ask for that so what did you call that distance psychological distance I collage achill distance yeah yeah and you and the other med circle educators are so good at giving that example of the correct tone if you guys watch the series dr. Romani dr. judy dr. dom when you guys give those examples I always feel much calmer I think you guys do too that you deliver this in such a way that I can see why it would resonate with the person on the receiving end go but that takes practice yes and that's where people miss it they watch you do it and you do it so flawlessly they go oh that's easy I'll do it next time not in my life I don't though I mean there's a day I come home from a 14-hour workday you can tell you I'm anything but elegant and my tone is way off that's right so even as I say that these are things at work I'm not saying that they always come easily yes yes of course yeah all right now let's talk about three ways that BPD can affect the family system number one we'll call it that the hyper sense the hyper sensitizing of a family system what we call the walking on eggshells the family starts getting so nervous with the hyper monitoring and if I say this the wrong way and if I don't do this even the monitoring the tone they feel like if I get one thing wrong that there's going to be an explosion and that kind of hyper monitoring starts to exhaust the family system the second is anxiety the people in borderline family systems are worried when is an excellent blowup going to take place what is it going to be like next time what if they're unsafe I'm so scared that they're going to harm themselves I never know the right thing to say you know I feel like a failure because I can't help my own family member there's a real anxiety that emanates from that and that anxiety may last even outside the house it makes the the person may in might in fact impact work it might impact school because of living under that condition of having a family with borderline personality disorder that there is a lot of anxiety the third is I would say the other impact would be confusion it's just it's the not knowing what do we do what do we say families feel insanely helpless maybe even the third way I would say helplessness what do we do we don't know what to do anymore we don't know what to say we can sit here we could try this could try a different tone we could try a different approach sometimes people worried that they're enabling the person who's saying we're not making we're not making any adult asks of them anymore like we don't that we feel helpless one of the biggest things that contributes to that sense of helplessness Kyle is the fact that at least in you know and certainly in the United States you can't force a person into treatment so the family feels like we need to get our family member into therapy they may have the means and everything to do it but if a person doesn't agree to treatment you can't just drag them and deposit them in a waiting in fact I remember like that the office did a trope on this like with some they're trying to force someone into rehab remember Shelley yes and I was almost saying yeah I was I was yes exactly it was in and it's yes they were being farcical in that moment but they nailed it like the people at the clinic so and that's really what it is is that I get endless emails on a weekly basis I'm gonna make an appointment for my mother sister father brother friend no only under the age of 18 only if they're under the age of 18 and a lot of families don't realize I get 17 I'm like you're about to careening into a crisis you can still mandate treatment for them after 18 you cannot do that anymore and for many families they don't know what to do now there are techniques out there like motivational interviewing which basically is you're trying to enhance the person's motivation to get help you're not saying you need help but kind of almost mentally shifting them to realize to get them on board that treatments a good thing and that good things will come of it's not a familial manipulation because many times we will say oh I'm the problem I'm the one who needs to go and treat me maybe all you need to be in treatment you know you'll get that versus number one let's lift the stigma around therapy yeah it's not a punishment gang it right is it no it's a privilege I think it is a but I think a lot of people are terrified they're sometimes I look around my therapy room like what happens I don't like do you think I'm gonna take it like some giant eyeballs or no and like cut their head open you know so I think that but there's a sense of the family system is manipulating or doing something like that but to really make it that this is good for you this is about you but a lot of families feel deeply help us or like we've tried everything communication tone boundaries we're exhausted we're tired and we cannot get them into treatment I get I get that all the time and in some cases it really really burns a family system down so much so that the people and the family system start getting sick what you just said I know is resonating with people I mean that this is this is very very common because I know the number of emails I get so I can only imagine the number of emails you get if it's resonating with you if you have a family member who's living with borderline personality disorder and you feel like you're at wit's end and you feel like you don't know what to do or you feel like you don't know how to handle these situations go watch dr. Romney's series on living in a family when someone has borderline personality disorder it provides you with these actionable step-by-step tools and techniques that you can use to mitigate the situation and then if you're in a position where you go you know what this that this is a lot I need to step away how to take care of your self we're not just saying well now you have to adapt your entire life to another person's you know preferences we're taught also giving you the tools to take care of yourself and I think that's why it's so powerful not yeah just a selfless act there's also some some self-care in it self care self compassion is absolutely critical for families of persons living with borderline personality disorder I mean I think with any you know it with any mental health issue and but it is it is a reciprocal two-way street that there has to be attempts on both sides to understand the experience of the other yes that becomes really really critical and and it can sometimes be hard remember families are tricky because it's not like just like someone you've known for five or ten years it can be 30 40 50 years that's right you know or they shaped you or your children who shaped your parents adult life so these are very complicated deep deep relationships in an ideal world people who have borderline personality could have the opportunity maybe to go into therapy with their family system and keep in mind to Kyle that by the time people hit adulthood we the way we're talking about it almost one would think is like you're talking about mother father and siblings maybe in some cases but in others it's a person who may have a husband or a wife and they have kids so these kinds of patterns or it may very well be affecting children in a home and that brings up a whole nother host of issues because I pay a person with borderline personality disorder absolutely can be a parent and a very effective parent not it requires treatment yeah and so if there are concerns about on behalf of the other parent that this this parent is unpredictable it's really interesting I've worked with more than a few clients who had parents well particularly mothers with borderline personality those there were moments that were like you had the magic mom it's like she did everything short of like pull fairy dust out of her ear and then there were moments that were terrifying yeah you know and so if that's the case that in that family system that it'd be addressed because really the only person who can then talk to the the borderline adult and home is likely the other spouse especially if the children are young yeah so it gets quite complicated and that you know we can't mandate treatment and in the absence of being able to do that a lot of people sort of do feel deeply deeply helpless what to do well I want to give our youtube viewers a sneak peek at your series so take a look at this but when we come back we're going to hear dr. Romney's opinion on what BPD should actually be called but right now here's an inside look really for the viewers I get a lot of emails from people who say they have BPD and they email me and I can I can feel the frustration they have absolutely because when their therapist or even if they just research themselves which is even more dangerous online and self diagnosed them with BPD there's so much stigma online oh yeah about those with be absolutely deep and so if you are supporting some with BPD it's likely they have felt of that stigma yes even outside the family and I can't imagine what it'd be like to read about how the whole world has the stigma against you and then go into a family where you feel like there's more of that stigma right or even because they don't get it or they don't get you yeah it is if you really really talk with the person was borderline personality they'll say I don't want to be like this but and you know what we've all been there Kyle there is a moment when we are feeling irrationally about a stressor in our life literally and saying okay there's a different way I can think about this I can't go there any like five times a day yeah I can and so when we think about that we all struggle with this you really almost like you can there's a multiplier there and that's how the person with borderline personality feels is in fact they're not even setting out to wreak havoc in their family system but there's such a psychological storm and that for a family sometimes to step aside and say you know what this isn't about me she's struggling the people who often have the hardest time with this are the parents because the parents who are going to take responsibility say something I did must have caused this and sadly they may not be entirely wrong so they have their own form of grief that they're struggling with but at this moment in time that person can only take responsibility for their feelings and even if they're letting them lash out at you it's not really about you you can watch that full series at Med Circle calm dr. ramin in your opinion what would you call borderline personality disorder I would probably call it emotional and interpersonal dysregulation disorder I think it lists some of the stigma at least tells us what's really happening is that because then it's actually just a dysregulation and emotion and that you know we have other regulation disorders one could argue substance abuse is a dysregulation disorder eating disorders are dysregulation disorders intermittent explosive disorder is a dysregulation disorder so I mean in that way it could actually slide in with into other patterns that we also have a research base in and the treatment we have for borderline personality what I'd like to call emotional and interpersonal dysregulation disorder those treatments might be able to be applied to those other patterns as well yeah I do think that borderline personality has far greater stigma than those other patterns especially by clinicians but even by as soon as people get into knowledge of it they're like oh you know and we don't ever want people to recoil yeah if you like dr. Romney's name go ahead and give us that thumbs up I'm gonna count the votes to see what you guys prefer and make sure you go to med circle comm to learn more about borderline personality disorder and other mental health topics I'm Kyle Kittleson remember whatever you're going through you got this thanks for watching if you liked what you just saw then why not subscribe click right here for new episodes and new series every week and to access exclusive mental health videos that we only release at Med circle com check out the links below you [Music]

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 249,114

Rating: 4.9577608 out of 5

Keywords: borderline personality disorder, family, mental health, borderline, mental illness, psychology, bpd treatment, bpd symptoms, borderline personality disorder treatment, anger, therapist, dr. ramani, personality disorder, ramani durvasula, borderline personality, relationships, personality disorders, kyle kittleson, dr ramani, personality, disorder, psychologist, discussion, medcircle, psychiatry, conversation, ramani, self improvement, behavior, thoughts, suicidal, emotion, mood, fear, self harm

Id: xDz4CGN-Mnk

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020