Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder QUOTES

1 " It's important that you don't continue to ignore or accept rages. Realize that extreme rage directed at you or your children is verbal and emotional abuse. Even if you think you can handle it, over time it can erode your self-esteem and poison the relationship. Seek support immediately. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

2 " Children who experience abuse also learn to deny pain and chaos or accept them as normal and proper. They learn that their feelings were wrong or didn't matter. They learn to focus on immediate survival - on not getting abused, and miss out on important developmental stages. As a result, they have problems developing their own identities. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

3 " bargaining This stage is characterized by the non-BP making concessions in order to bring back the “normal” behavior of the person they love. The thinking goes, “If I do what this person wants, I will get what I need in this relationship.” We all make compromises in relationships. But the sacrifices that people make to satisfy the borderlines they care about can be very costly. And the concessions may never be enough. Before long, more proof of love is needed and another bargain must be struck. depression Depression sets in when non-BPs realize the true cost of the bargains they’ve made: loss of friends, family, self-respect, and hobbies. The person with BPD hasn’t changed. But the non-BP has. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

4 " loss of self-esteem Beverly Engel, in The Emotionally Abused Woman (1990), describes the effect of emotional abuse on self-esteem: Emotional abuse cuts to the very core of a person, creating scars that may be longer-lasting than physical ones. With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim’s self-esteem until she is incapable of judging the situation realistically. She has become so beaten down emotionally that she blames herself for the abuse. Emotional abuse victims can become so convinced that they are worthless that they believe that no one else could want them. They stay in abusive situations because they believe they have nowhere else to go. Their ultimate fear is being all alone. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

5 " Consider a lighthouse. It stands on the shore with its beckoning light, guiding ships safely into the harbor. The lighthouse can't uproot itself, wade out into the water, grab the ship by the stern and say, "Listen, you fool! If you stay on this path you may break up on the rocks!" No. The ship has some responsibility for its own destiny. It can choose to be guided by the lighthouse. Or, it can go its own way. The lighthouse is not responsible for the ship's decisions. All it can do is be the best lighthouse it knows how to be. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

6 " The techniques of brainwashing are simple: isolate the victim, expose them to consistent messages, mix with sleep deprivation, add some form of abuse, get the person to doubt what they know and feel, keep them on their toes, wear them down, and stir well. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

7 " While others might feel manipulative, I feel powerless. Sometimes I just hurt so bad from the mean things that people do to me, real or perceived, or I’m so desperately feeling abandoned, that I withdraw and pout and go silent. At some point people get pissed off and fed up with that crap and they go away and then I’m left with nothing all over again. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

8 " When you travel to another country, it’s important to know the local customs. When you’re interacting with someone with BPD, it’s crucial to understand that their unconscious assumptions may be very different from yours. They may include: I must be loved by all the important people in my life at all times or else I am worthless. I must be completely competent in all ways to be a worthwhile person. Some people are good and everything about them is perfect. Other people are thoroughly bad and should be blamed and punished for it. My feelings are caused by external events. I have no control over my emotions or the things I do in reaction to them. Nobody cares about me as much as I care about them, so I lose everyone I care about—despite the desperate things I do to stop them from leaving me. If someone treats me badly, then I become bad. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

9 " There is nothing wrong with leaving if you feel attacked. In fact, there are times when it’s a good thing to do (see chapter 8). The damage comes from remaining passive and silent, absorbing the other person’s criticism while your sense of personal power and self-esteem deteriorate. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

10 " Before I got better, if people didn’t have any protection in place for themselves I would aim right at them. Who doesn’t want a target that they can sink? But what I was doing, and what a lot of borderlines do, is not a game or a way to get kicks. It’s about survival. People who had healthy boundaries in place left me feeling too defective, too out of control, and too vulnerable. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

11 " You must understand that you do have the power to change your relationships and your life, but it is likely going to be frightening at first. The alternative is to live a fairly unhappy and unsatisfying life in which fear dictates your choices and their relationships. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

12 " Imagine feeling empty, virtually without a self. Now think about admitting that what little self you can recognize has something wrong with it. To many people with BPD, this is like ceasing to exist—a terrifying feeling for anyone. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

13 " targets of emotional blackmail may become guarded about certain subjects and stop sharing major parts of their lives, "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

14 " You must understand that you do have the power to change your relationships and your life, but it is likely going to be frightening at first. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

15 " When their feelings don’t fit the facts, they may unconsciously revise the facts to fit their feelings. This may be one reason why their perception of events is different from yours. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

16 " They may vacillate between over-involvement and neglect, depending upon their moods and emotional needs at the moment. They may only pay attention to the children when the kids are doing something to meet the borderline parents’ needs. Some parents with BPD try to cope with their own feelings of inadequacy by demanding that their children be perfect. Children may then feel worthless when something goes wrong. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

17 " Be a mirror, not a sponge. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

18 " Essentially, people with BPD look to others to manage their feelings for them. Someone with BPD wants others to provide them with things they find difficult to supply for themselves, such as self-love, stable moods, and a sense of identity. Most of all, they are searching for a nurturing caregiver whose never-ending love and compassion will fill the black hole of emptiness and despair inside them. Rachel Reiland, author of Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, had BPD for many years, but has fully recovered. In an email, she describes the conflicting feelings "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

19 " There’s another key aspect to this splitting: people with BPD also split themselves, often into victim or hero—or into someone capable or someone incompetent. "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

20 " The only thing that helps me get less angry is when my husband says to me, “I know you are scared, not angry” and gives me a "

― , Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder