Two-Part Secret to Healthy Communication in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

For anyone who has ever struggled with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), or ever been in a relationship with someone who has BPD, a painfully obvious truth is that communication can quickly and easily deteriorate and turn into conflict/drama. There are reasons for this communication difficulty, although not the types of reasons that people without a knowledge of mental health might tend to believe, such as insisting that the suffering person simply wants to be difficult or create drama.

A more likely reason for repetitious communication difficulties in cases of BPD has to do with being unable to recognize and manage difficult emotions as they are happening at the moment, resulting in ineffective/impulsive reactions. Communication problems are also strongly influenced by being on the receiving end of responses from others that increase (rather than decrease) the emotional challenge. Thankfully, these types of patterns can be noticed and adjusted when both the suffering person and the people she associates with are open to learning new approaches that account for emotional challenges.

A typical pattern of toxic communication that happens between persons with BPD and their significant others involves persistently skipping over emotional experience and more or less forcing logic. In these types of situations, both the suffering person and significant others are both probably ignoring the need to address emotions skillfully, meaning that both parties are in need of learning more about honouring and managing emotions. Instead of working together to solve problems, relate, and be mutually supportive, the emphasis is instead often placed on winning (“being right”).

Unfortunately, this kind of emotionally neglectful approach to communication tends to activate emotional sensitivities that a person with BPD cannot yet manage alone. With each exchange of ideas and opinions that do not acknowledge emotion when emotions are relevant, layers of emotional pressure can multiply and fester. As the pattern of emotional neglect continues, the person with BPD usually appears more and more “out of control” and “irrational” because of the building internal pressure, and therefore, seems to be “the problem”… the sole cause and creator of conflict and drama. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The chaos of BPD is a co-created blend of emotional neglect and ignorance between interacting individuals.

One thing people seem to have a very hard time doing – whether they suffer from intense emotions and BPD, or not – is to trust others with their emotions and make themselves vulnerable. This means, for instance, saying what you are feeling out loud during communication and even asking for emotional support. It is as though this sort of being human has become too dangerous (or too risky) to include in communication, and so the futile attempt is now made over and over to leave emotions out of communication. To exclude emotional openness and support from communication, however, leaves only cold calculating insensitivity and rationality, and so it becomes like a war of wills to see who can stand living the longest in this – arguably – less than human/half-human way.

To function well in the midst of being a human with emotions, it is essential to develop a healthy balance between emotional understanding (validation, empathy) and the use of logic/reason, both within self and while in communication with others. This is what is meant by saying that healthy communication involves “two parts”, and is especially important to remember when communicating with people who have emotional sensitivities and emotional needs that don’t just disappear as a result of cultural norms.

Indeed, we can’t be skipping over our emotional need areas and simply “push logic,” and then expect good results in our health and relationships. If emotions become part of a communication experience, then making them a priority to process is wise. To continue “pushing logic” while ignoring emotion is biologically obtuse – It just doesn’t work well for information exchange between humans, and in the long run may result in mental health, relational, and even physical dysfunction.

Even so, you will notice as you attempt to integrate ideas like this into your life, that it is easier said than done. Humans are creatures of habit and programming, and these parts of ourselves tend to die hard, even when we want them to die. Western culture in particular seems to favour logic and reason over emotion to fulfill its purposes, even when this unhealthy balance sets the conditions for mental illness. I believe it is a priorities/balance issue that is an inevitable consequence of living in a free market system (being so insistently outcome, product, and profit-driven), and so the only thing we can do is to become (and remain) mindful of it.

Since humans are usually so well-versed in their use of logic and reason, this is why I tend to focus on the topic of validation in my writing (to encourage more balance in the communication) – see validation article one and validation article two. Without attempting to create a balance between skillful attending to emotions and the typical use of logic and reason in our communication, the time and energy spent attempting to be logical may in fact be wasted. I say this because, in addition to sparking conflict and drama, ignored emotions also increase the odds of entirely ignoring the other information we share with each other.