Familiärer Support: Leben mit Borderline: Wie Angehörige Unterstützung zeigen

Living with a family member who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder can be challenging for relatives. Borderline Personality Disorder is a mental health condition characterized by emotional instability, mood swings and troubled interpersonal relationships. Parents, partners or siblings play a crucial role in the recovery process, but how should they best support their loved one?

Therapist Steffi Kohl-Pott from the Schön Klinik Bad Bramstedt works with both Borderline patients and their families and explains what is important. Understanding rather than condemnation is the first step. "Knowledge is the most important aspect," Kohl-Pott says. Recognizing that people with Borderline often feel emotions intensely and have difficulty regulating them allows relatives to better understand and respond to over-the-top reactions.

Self-harm should also be understood by relatives. Such behavior can appear extreme and be misinterpreted. Self-harm serves various purposes, such as self-regulation and dealing with inner tension. Kohl-Pott explains that self-harm is not meant to generate attention, but rather to help individuals cope with emotional distress. While relatives can support patients, they cannot heal them or take responsibility for their emotional experiences.

"It's not the primary task of relatives to treat the patient - that requires professional help," Kohl-Pott emphasizes. Knowledge of the problem can help relatives provide valuable support, but they should also take care of themselves and seek help if needed.

Validating the other person's perspective is a helpful communication approach when dealing with Borderline individuals. "I accept your view of the world as it is right now, completely. This does not mean I have to agree with you," explains the therapist. This means acknowledging the other person's feelings during a crisis discussion and then gently offering alternatives, rather than reacting with confusion or solely focusing on the issue at hand.

Avoiding extremes is key; neither should relatives coddle the patient nor constantly demand that they work on themselves. The dialectical approach recommends striking a balance between demanding change and acknowledging the difficulty of change.

Establishing clear rules and taking conscious breaks in everyday life also helps. For example, scheduling timeouts when stress levels are high. Such moments allow for proximity to be restored and positive experiences to be shared, beyond stress and conflict. If the patient still lives at home with their parents, it can also be beneficial for the parents to reflect on their own behavior.

"It's not just the patient who needs to work on themselves," Kohl-Pott notes. Encouraging parents to examine their own behavior, such as expressing emotions and responding to criticism, can help restore closeness and create positive shared experiences.