How Families Can Support a Loved One with Borderline Personality Traits — Without Losing Themselves

You can shift from frustration to healing with trauma-informed strategies.

Photo by Eean Chen on Unsplash

Loving someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) or strong borderline traits can feel like being caught in an emotional whirlwind. One moment, they’re deeply connected and affectionate, and the next, they’re convinced you’re going to leave them — or worse, they push you away first.

If you’re a parent, sibling, or partner, you’ve probably felt exhausted, hurt, and unsure of how to help. You may have even started to doubt your own reality, questioning:

• Why do they see rejection where there is none?
• Why do simple conversations escalate into emotional explosions?
• Why does love seem to scare them as much as losing it?

These are painful dynamics, but they’re not about you. They’re about a deep, underlying fear of abandonment that shapes every relationship.

Mitch Y. Artman’s insightful article, Borderline Personality Disorder Needs a New Name: Abandonment Obsession Disorder, highlights how the heart of BPD isn’t just emotional intensity — it’s an obsessive fear of being left behind. This insight is…