Advice from Significant Others to People with the Borderline Personality Disorder

If you have some helpful advice to people with the BPD, you can send your letter to   with "sigtbpd" in the subject.

TO OUR DAUGHTER, OUR SISTER, OUR FRIEND WE CAN'T WAIT TO KNOW YOU!

You have moved to live elsewhere. May it be a peaceful, loving, and comfortable place for everyone. May you feel good about your choices while you are there. May it be a step toward healing and knowing yourself.

There have been so many times we've had glimpses of you - a caring, compassionate, intelligent, creative, and humor-driven girl - a gift from God who deserves to enjoy her giving and her living and her loving in this unpredictable struggle called earthly life. There have been so many times we've watched a neurological "something" get in your way, distort your thoughts and feelings about others' intentions, make you suffer, grieve, blame, and rage with an intensity beyond description. No one deserves to suffer like you have suffered. With treatment we know the day will come when you suffer less, view people and events in a way which will not destroy you or alienate you, and know who you really are. We trust this day will come. We can't wait to know you when you are free to know yourself! Like a person with diabetes or epilepsy is not "free" to enjoy life without medications, you also are not "free" without medications.

Our love for you is greater than the ability of this "something" to stop you. It disables you again and again from feeling good about all the goodness you are capable of. It disables you from realizing your goals, from knowing who you are and what goals you'd like to have. Our love will outlast the time, patience, hard work, frustrations, and disappointments required to "fix" the neurological problem which stops you from being you. We hope you will start the hard work soon. You have for some reason been given more challenges than most. Because your illness has the potential to destroy you and others, please start finding YOUR medications and a therapist YOU really like - very soon. We will be so proud of you - your commitment, your courage, your decision to find the happy and peaceful life you deserve.

We believe that God loves you and understands your pain. Please listen! We love you, too, and can only try to understand your pain. There are "angels" here in Patty's sanctuary who have experienced your pain and now have good, solid, practical advice about how to get help and what to expect while getting it. We hope you remember that you have a medical problem which can be treated with action from you. (It was YOU who recognized, correctly, that you had a medical problem in the first place! Why not continue insisting on the best for yourself?) YOUR commitment, individualized treatment, willingness to be patient with medication trials, and more knowledge may help you to get to know yourself. Meanwhile, we can't wait to know you! We'll be here loving you, and waiting. . .

Those ceramic dolls break way too easily, don't you think? First you don't have the right glue handy, and you wait to shop. When you do shop, you buy a glue which at first seems to work okay but the pieces fall apart again. Then you wait to shop. The doll is not herself until you ask, read, get the right stuff, apply it properly, stick with the repair plan, and allow plenty of time for drying. The pieces don't stay together unless you put in all this effort and then take special care not to throw the doll around in a thoughtless manner. Her cracks and breaks are hers and hers alone. After all the effort, though, she is so, so beautiful, and the effort makes her more so. (Pretty cliché attempt at an analogy, huh?) Please remember that YOU are the only one who can shop and glue for you, and you are more precious and fragile than any ceramic doll. You are loved, and none of us want you to sit broken in some lonely, uncomfortable place, or move from place to place without the right glue in your suitcase. Find the right glue to keep that heart and soul of yours safe, okay? How can you possibly "know" your heart and soul if some neurological break or shake keeps making it unsafe for them?

As you have said before, it's not easy for you. You have the difficult job of doing, not waiting. Treatment is available. We are ready and WANT to help in all areas related to TREATMENT!  (transportation, insurance, research, finances, etc.) Take care of yourself, please. (We know that that is not as easy as it sounds, but it IS up to you and not up to someone else.) We want to support and encourage you. . .We can't wait to know you!

• From Mother to Daughter

I love you--I truly do--but I find myself so tired, and so angry, hurt, confused and defensive so much of the time. Sometimes things seem to be going so well, and I believe that there is finally light at the end of the tunnel--and then you get that look in your eyes, and I know there will be a rumble tonight. I feel so boxed in--I feel like you would swallow me whole if you could, completely possess me all for yourself, like a god over me, making foul or fair weather--and you are always so enraged against me because I have any life outside of you. I remember holding you as a newborn--you were so precious to me! As a toddler, you were the light of my life, and all your terrible temper tantrums were excused as "just a phase". With every new age, others would try to encourage me by calling it "just a phase"--only the phases became more and more aggressive, your words more and more hurtful. 

Others began to label you as "manipulative". No one could understand how such a beautiful girl, so intelligent, so kind with children--could turn in a moment into some kind of monster. I love you--oh, I do--but now I find myself drawing back. I feel like someone who has too often stuck their hand in the fire--fearful of being burned. Your name has dominated almost all conversation in our home, so much combined energy has been expended in trying to understand you--to the detriment of other members of the family. Try to be understanding if we all seem a little cold, a little removed--we are shell shocked.

I am angry--at you and myself--why do I allow myself to get caught up in your moods? And I am sad--oh, so sad--for having to give up the illusion of a loving, peaceful family.

But I will heal--I'll lick my wounds, and get up and start again, and I will never, ever stop being your mother--I will always be on your team--and I will always love you.

I am writing to give to hope to BPD's, MPD's and the significant others. I am a 63 year old Mother of a BPD/MPD who was diagnosed in 1991. She has had extensive therapy since then and been fortunate enough to have three good counselors who really helped us all. There has been great improvement in the past 20 months and after 8 years I am the most hopeful I have ever been. My daughter is learning many new coping skills and has successfully held a good job for two years and made regular monthly payments to me since January 1998. She is out of debt and paying her own bills. She recently moved closer to us and as our relationship heals I have very happy to be able to see her again on a regular basis. She is a wonderful person and daughter and I thank God for all the good that is coming our way. PLEASE all BPD's and significant others, don't ever give up hope. There are good counselors out there and once you find one, there is help.

Sincerely - One Happy Mom!