Talking to a Loved One with Borderline Personality Disorder: Communication Skills to Manage Intense

In this compassionate guide, Jerold Kreisman—author of I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me—offers a powerful set of tools to help you express yourself, set boundaries, and cultivate healthy communication with a loved one who is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD).

If you have a loved one with BPD, you need real, proven-effective strategies to help you navigate the intense emotions and conflict that can arise in daily interactions and conversations. People with BPD often feel anger, pain, and hurt from a history of invalidation and disappointment, and their difficulty in regulating emotions can lead to moments of lashing out that can confuse and upset those around them.

Written by a psychiatrist with more than 40 years of experience in treating BPD, Talking to a Loved One with Borderline Personality Disorder offers a breakthrough, compassionate approach to communicating with a loved one who has BPD. The SET (support, empathy, truth) method outlined in this book is a powerful and simple tool that will allow you to honestly address your loved one’s demands, assertions, and feelings while still maintaining appropriate boundaries. Each step builds on the last, helping you build up a consistent and reliable communication process.

In this book, you’ll find a review of BPD and the common communication problems inherent in the disorder. You’ll learn how SET can address these issues. And finally, you’ll find detailed examples of specific scenarios that can arise when talking to a loved one with BPD.

Remember—validation isn’t the same as agreement. You can help your loved one feel validated while still maintaining your own boundaries. This essential guide will show you how.

• Sometimes I Act Crazy: Living with Borderline Personality Disorder
• The Borderline Personality Disorder Workbook: An Integrative Program to Understand and Manage Your BPD (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)
• The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook: Practical Strategies for Living with Someone Who Has Borderline Personality Disorder (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)
• When Your Daughter Has BPD: Essential Skills to Help Families Manage Borderline Personality Disorder
• Borderline Personality Disorder Toolbox: A Practical Evidence-Based Guide to Regulating Intense Emotions
• When Your Mother Has Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide for Adult Children
• I Hate You--Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality
• Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder: How to Keep Out-of-Control Emotions from Destroying Your Relationship
• Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder
• The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New Tools and Techniques to Stop Walking on Eggshells