 This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on treatment for people with borderline parents. And, you know, it's kind of ironic that the question came up in Tuesday's presentation when we were talking about abandonment fears, whether abandonment fears could be triggered by growing up in a family with a borderline parent. And, you know, yes, it can. And we're going to talk about some of that in this presentation. Now this is based pretty closely, but not exactly on surviving a borderline parent, how to heal your childhood wounds and build trust boundaries and self-esteem. I love using this book in group. It's one of my favorite kind of go-tos when I'm working with someone who may have borderline tendencies and or who grew up with a parent with borderline characteristics. And, you know, I often say borderline characteristics, not personality disorder, because there are a lot of people who have characteristics that may not meet the clinical definition of BPD, but it's nonetheless damaging to the child and the person. So, you know, this is one that you can check out on Google Books or whatever, see what's in here. It makes, and we're going to talk about how to use this as part of, as an adjunct for group in working with clients who have a borderline parent or a parent with borderline tendencies. So we're going to review the characteristics of BPD really quickly. Compare and contrast BPD with addictive behaviors to a certain extent. We're not going to belabor that because we did that a couple of weeks ago. And we'll examine the ways to implement activities presented in the book in a group format. So we're going to talk about the purpose of the activities and how you can use them, not only an individual, but also, you know, if everybody has a copy of the book, it makes a great little workbook to go through. So characteristics of BPD, poorly developed or unstable self-image often associated with excess self-criticism. So thinking back to Tuesday, when people have abandonment fears, they have this going on too oftentimes because they're looking for other people to tell them that they're okay and how they need to be in order to be okay, those conditions of worth. Difficulty recognizing the feelings and needs of others and themselves. Interpersonal hypersensitivity, so they're prone to feel slighted or insulted. They don't feel very good about themselves. So they're looking and listening for any inclination that you might be critical. And then they'll seize onto that because that sits or fits, if you will, with their self-esteem. So they grab onto that. It's also something that develops growing in, growing up in a household where the parent had an unstable sense of self because the child learned to be extremely hypersensitive to cues knowing that the parent could turn on a dime. Perceptions of others tend to focus on negative attributes or vulnerabilities. And this is true of the person with borderline personality disorder. But as we're going to talk about, if you're growing up a meshed in or immersed in that environment, then guess what? You're probably going to pick up some of these characteristics. And that's, those are some of the things that we can work on in counseling. Intense, unstable and conflicted close relationships marked by mistrust, neediness and fears of abandonment. Voila. So a lot of times relationships are viewed in terms of extremes that all are none thinking the idealization or devaluation. And the person also goes between being over involved and then if they start to feel rejected, they turn to devaluation and withdrawal. You can see how this might be protective from a survival standpoint. We're going to look more closely at that. So what are the effects of these behaviors? If you have a parent who has an unstable self image is always looking for rejection and is unable to attend to the needs of the child. What's going to happen? The effects on others feeling inadequate despite best efforts to appease the parent can't identify his or her own feelings and needs or attend to your feelings and needs as a child. So the person, the child is just like, I can't fix this on my own and I don't have anybody to go to lack of emotional boundaries, they feel responsible for the parent's happiness. Remember we talked about how children, especially under the age of seven are very egocentric. So if mom is or dad is unhappy and they've switched on to that withdrawal and devaluation, the child will oftentimes take that personally. What did I do to bring this on? Or what do I need to do in order to make this go away or make it better? And they can have guilt for personal happiness because they see their caregiver being so unhappy and they feel happy and they're kind of trying to figure out if that's okay. And generally in a household with a borderline parent, that's not okay. So don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. And those are the characteristics also of a addicted household. Don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. Because it's important to do whatever and align with whatever the person with the BPD characteristics may need at that point in order to feel safe. Difficulty trusting people due to alternations between feeling appreciated and condemned. You know, one day you may come home and all roses and the next day you may come home and the bottom's fallen out and you don't really know what happened or what you did differently. And for adults, this is confusing, let alone for a child who has difficulty thinking abstractly and looking at alternate explanations, which creates anxiety because the parent was unpredictable. You don't know if you're coming home to Jekyll or Hyde. So they become hyper vigilant. They look for clues. They try to figure out what might trigger the switch, which makes them hyper vigilant in later relationships as well. They're always looking, always on alert for things. So the first thing that we start out by doing is helping people realize that this behavior is not normal. These behaviors may have served the parent, served a purpose for the parent as the parent was growing up, but these are not healthy behaviors for somebody to have. So we go through and discuss the function of each symptom for the parent and, you know, alternating between idealization and devaluation. This is one of the big ones. So what's the function for that? Well, let's think about, you know, going backwards. What caused that parent to develop BPD characteristics? Probably they were growing up in a similar situation where there was either addiction or personality disorder behaviors in the household and the child didn't learn to walk that middle path. So it was always extremes. You either love me or you hate me and there were extreme conditions of worth. So alternating between ideals was the way to align with that parent and say, yeah, you're the greatest thing on earth or no, you just suck. Looking back at some of the other characteristics, neediness and fear of abandonment. Well, if the person with BPD has an unstable self image, then needing to keep other people around, needing to guilt them into staying around if necessary, is important because if other people leave and that external validation goes away or that safety net goes away, then the person with BPD is left feeling empty and nothing because they aren't able to identify who or what they are or any sort of, you know, sense of self. We also look at difficulty recognizing the feelings and needs of others. You know, this is something that develops as we get older, but it's not something that necessarily develops automatically. Most of us, you know, get along as we go through. But again, thinking about if you have a person, if you have a parent that has BPD characteristics, they did not come from a healthy situation. One way or another where whether it was their family of origin or their whatever, we know that BPD characteristics often develop in early childhood. So we're going to stick primarily with that family of origin. But you have a child who never grew up being able to identify their own feelings and needs and they were hyper vigilant to that, the feelings and needs of the person in their family of origin who had the dysfunctional behaviors. So they weren't as able to notice what was going on to other people. They weren't, they never learned to label their own feelings or become mindful of themselves because they are always so worried about pacifying and keeping the peace with the person with the borderline characteristics. Then we move on to have participants identify any behaviors they have, which may also resemble that symptom. So at this point I start asking them, let's look back at your relationships and let's look at some of your presenting issues and see how you are recreating or how you are presenting these behaviors now because it's important to understand that we learned what we lived. Remember that from a couple weeks ago. So if you when you were growing up, you were taught that your feelings didn't matter you had to pacify the person, the parent with the borderline characteristics then you know that's one of those things that stuck with you. So we start talking about what they're doing. And then we start talking about what you could do differently so we review and refute the takeaways providing practical cognitive and interpersonal skills. So we start looking at self image. And one of the things I actually start with is mindfulness. So they start learning how to recognize the feelings and needs of themselves. And they start learning to become aware of the feelings and needs of other people. A lot of times people in who grew up in families with a borderline with a parent with borderline characteristics. They have no boundaries. They are they were so concerned about trying to maintain peace trying to avoid rejection by the primary caregiver who was so important in their lives that they didn't develop any boundaries so they're not able to say no to something they're not able to ask for what they need. So thinking to ourselves about some of Linda hands work, looking at effective interpersonal skills, asking for what you need and saying no, and being able to set boundaries. Then we talk about stopping and thinking. So they're learning. They're starting to be able to identify some of the things in their own life that they do and how those things are causing them problems. You know they may have been protective growing up in this household with a borderline parent. But now that they're not living in that household, how could they potentially modify those behaviors and are those behaviors still serving them in a way that that's useful and helpful. We examine the effects of the borderline personality on the living conditions. So we start talking about chaos. You know if you never know if parent is going to turn on a dime, you don't know if you're going to be valued or devalued today. You don't know if it's going to be laughter or screaming. You know that's really stressful to come home to. That's stressful to be around in any situation. There's generally abuse and neglect, whether it's physical or emotional abuse, or just the parent has withdrawn and can't, can't be there. They're not aware of their own needs and feelings, let alone can they even begin to imagine what the needs and feelings are of the child, who is in the big scheme of things. The least threatening person in their life most of the time. There are often boundary violations, since the parent can't self soothe as well. There's a lot of needing other people to make it okay for them and demanding other people do what they want in order to maintain control. Invalidation. So the child's needs and wants are often invalidated in favor of whatever the person with the borderline tendencies needs. Roll reversal. You know sometimes parent becomes child and child becomes the caregiver and that's really scary and confusing for a small child. It's scary and confusing for a teenager, but it's really scary and confusing for a six or seven year old who has to tuck mom or dad in. Because they just can't function right now. They start to think in some cases that looks or everything. The borderline may have some little histrionic tendencies in there, but puts a high premium on making sure that the facade of the family is one of perfection. Because they need approval from other people is not okay to be imperfect and they're hypersensitive to any sort of criticism. So if the child in that family presents any sort of weakness or does something wrong, that is taken as a huge affront to the family. And there's keen perception people are hyper vigilant of everybody's wants you know everybody's rhythms, if you will. They may not exactly know what they need or what their feelings are, but a lot of times the people in the family are very hyper vigilant to what's going on with the person with the borderline characteristics. Because they don't want the explosion. The explosion is usually devastating. It's not just a little firecracker. Okay, so that's what happens. That's what we're looking at when you've got a person growing up in a family with a borderline parent. But what do we do about it? So the six seeds to grow a healthy child. Now, a lot of our clients are our adults. So that ship has done sailed. What do we do about it? Well, I tell them they need to reparent themselves. It's not fair. And, you know, it can kind of suck sometimes. But they are able to reparent themselves and give themselves the love and support that they need now that they wish they would have gotten when they were younger. They can't change the person with the borderline characteristics. You know, that person may want to change and that's cool, but they can affect how that parents behaviors are impacting them today, and they can reparent themselves in a way that's healthy. So they need support. Everybody needs support. That's just human nature, respect and acceptance. They need to have a voice. They need to feel like their feelings and thoughts are important. Unconditional love and affection, consistency and security. Well, those seem like really basic things, but those are the things that are completely absent from a family where there's one or more borderline people. So let's talk real quick about how you could start developing those in terms of reparenting. So I ask clients, what does it mean to have support? You know, does that mean somebody gives you money every time you need to pay the bills? Or what does support look like? And how could you do that for yourself? Who in your life can do that for you? And a lot of times the clients that we're working with do have people in their social circle who provide support. But since they are so hypersensitive to negativity and they're always looking for that rejection, they're always looking for that criticism. Sometimes they pushed that person away, not realizing that there's support to be had there. So we start talking about what support looks like when they've gotten support, what they would like when they're having a bad day or when something bad happens, what do they need? And we go through each one of these, respect and acceptance. What does that look like? What would you like? You know, we know you probably didn't have a lot of it when you were growing up or it was inconsistent at best. So what does that look like today? Do you need to be the CEO of a company? Or does respect and acceptance mean somebody keeping their promises and coming home and maybe remembering your birthday or something? What does that look like to you? So we start talking about each one of these things. These are great meta concepts to put out there. But if clients can't define what they look like, then they can't operationalize them. You know, consistency. I would love to have consistency. Okay, what does that mean to you? Who do you need to be consistent? What does that look like? Then you can start making a plan. So another activity you can do is examine each effect of the borderline personality, such as making people feel inadequate. Discuss how this was present in the client's family of origin. So what happened that made you feel inadequate? How each is manifested in the client's current life. What things are going on now that make you feel inadequate? And how can you eliminate those dysfunctional patterns? So if there are people or things going on that make you feel inadequate, let's look at the whys of that. Because a lot of that probably comes back to those fears of rejection and failure and a need for a stronger self-esteem. So we'll look at it. And we're also going to identify the fact that there's a difference between you being inadequate and some of your skills being inadequate. Because nobody's perfect at everything. And so if some of the things that make you feel inadequate are the fact that, you know, you don't know how to change a tire, well, not everybody does. Yes, my father showed me how to change a tire when I was 16. That was a 10-minute lesson 30 years ago. Could I change a tire today? Not in a million years. Should I be able to? Well, maybe. But, you know. So we want to look at helping people identify what's important for them in order to feel adequate. What does adequate look like to them? Go through lack of boundaries. How was this present in your family of origin? And this requires a lot of talk about what boundaries are, not just physical boundaries, not just people invading your room or stealing your clothes or doing whatever they were doing. But emotional, invading your emotional boundaries or ignoring your emotions and just telling you to just go get over it. What in your family of origin made you feel responsible for the happiness of others? And this is another, well, all of these. I want to look at the current life and say what are you doing in your current life where you feel responsible for the happiness of others. For whose happiness, whose happiness do you feel responsible and why? You know, it's one thing to feel responsible for your children's happiness. And we can't do that all the time. I mean, if you've got kids, you know, you try to give them the best life. You try to help them be happy. But sometimes there's going to be pain with life. We just have to accept that. So what does it mean to be responsible for the happiness of others? Who is really important that you try to help them be as happy as possible? And how can you do this when life hands them lemons? And we'll start talking about radical acceptance at this point. Six C's. We're going to discuss how to use those six principles. And I put them over here in the corner for you, support, respect and acceptance, voice, unconditional love and affection, consistency and security. How can you use these seeds to reparent and nurture yourself? What can you do this weekend to support yourself, to make yourself feel loved and accepted? What can you do to give yourself a voice? You know, maybe you go out on the weekends with your family and you just always go along with whatever they want to do. But you want to really want to do something or you have an opinion. How can you make your voice heard? Unconditional love and affection. This is one that is easy to teach but hard to implement, separating the what you do is from who you are. But how can you be compassionate and love yourself despite your mistakes? I'm more verbal, go figure, than a lot of people and, you know, I can do memes. I can do collages. Those are things I like to do. Not everybody likes to do those. So think about or ask your clients to think about ways that they can create a journal or create a collage that represents for them what's good about them, that unconditional love and to remind themselves. What can you have that you can look at every day to remind yourself that you're lovable for who you are? Not what you can do, but for being a kind person, for being a human being. What can you do to nurture your healthy relationships? So again, that goes back to these things because, yes, we need to first develop that relationship with ourselves and nurture ourselves. But in our relationships with others, we need to provide support, respect, voice, unconditional love, consistency, and to a certain extent, security. And, you know, that kind of goes with trust. The third thing we talk about is preventing vulnerabilities. And you remember, vulnerabilities are those things that make you more likely to get upset, to get angry. Because you're worn down for whatever reason. You are overtired. You're not eating the right diet and giving your body enough building blocks. You've just gotten worn down from burning the candle at both ends. Whatever the case may be, you want to look at that and say, what can you do using these six things, what can you do to prevent vulnerabilities in yourself? And sometimes that comes back to being willing to love yourself enough and be compassionate if you want to use that instead of affection. Be compassionate enough with yourself to say, you know what, I can't do that today. Or I need to take a couple of days off because I just, I can't do it and I'm going to go down a bad hole if or a bad path if I keep on this way. Group three, I use the stop and think resiliency builders. What helps you bounce back up when you've had a bad day? What helps you bounce back up when you've had a setback for some reason? You've had a relationship break up. You got into a fight with your best friend. What can help you rebound? And I asked them to think about what they've done before and it may only help them for 10 minutes. It may only help them for 30 minutes, but that's 10 or 30 minutes more than nothing. So we start there. We also look at vulnerabilities and the improve and accepts acronyms in DBT for distress tolerance. Because a lot of times if clients can get through that emotional mind when they're just, you know, freaking out, they can calm down and get into their wise mind. Then they can figure out what to do to bounce back. But while they are still emotionally dysregulated, they're going to have a hard time thinking about that. So we use the distress tolerance techniques to help them kind of deescalate. Another activity, which, you know, I'm kind of going through the way the book goes through it. You don't necessarily have to go through in the same order is grieving the lost childhood. Most people who grew up in a family that was wrought with addiction and or borderline characteristics did not have Warden June Cleaver as parents. Heck, I don't think most of us who came from pretty good families had Warden June Cleaver. A lot of our clients are going to say I didn't have the parent I wanted. I didn't have the family relationships that I wanted. You see TV and you have all these idyllic TV families and you look at that and you go, wow, my family would never do that. I watch Blue Bloods and they have Sunday dinner together every Sunday and it's so civil. And I'm looking at that going, wow, what would that be like? But we want to help people understand that whatever their ideal was in their head for a childhood, you know, most people didn't get that idyllic childhood. So they need to grieve whatever they didn't have and start moving on because you can't go back and be a kid again. You can be better to yourself in the present, but you can't go back through high school or whatever it was. Review the messages received in childhood about dealing with losses. Now think about clients you've worked with with borderline tendencies. They're easily emotionally dysregulated, unstable self-image, really unstable relationships. So when there are losses, they tend to spiral out of control really, really quickly. So the message is a lot of people received in childhood growing up with someone with borderline characteristics was that losses intolerable and losses can kill you and losses are dangerous. So the person gets very, very nervous. So helping them figure out how they feel about losses is important. And, you know, this can be a good group activity putting it up on the board when we talk about losses of friends or losses of jobs and I go through different types of losses to try to help them identify the messages they received. We want to identify the losses that they had and feelings associated with the dysfunctional childhood. And I remember losses aren't just tangible losses can be lost. They're losing that dream of having that perfect childhood. They're losing that dream that their parent is ever going to be able to be the type of parent that they want. They're losing that dream, you know, fill in the blank. So we want to help them start to identify that and figure out how to as I like to say, write it into their narrative. You know, that character in their story is not going to spontaneously become the ideal parent is not going to happen. So how do we rewrite the story? How do we just change the plot a little bit to integrate this person in a way that's not harmful to the main character and identify continuing issues with the parent that has borderline or addiction issues. Because that parent is probably still in their lives and they probably don't want to excommunicate. So when that parent calls when that person becomes needy when that person starts to play the guilt card. What can they do, you know, when does this come up. Does it come up more. It often does around the holidays and stuff. What's going on and what do they need to do in order to protect themselves in the group. You can have them describe what they would have liked their childhood to be like. This is also an awesome collage activity. I know I go to collages a lot, but they're easy because most of the time you can find images online or magazines you can get donated. So you can find kids skipping rope or whatever it is they wanted and you can cut and paste so you don't have to have any sort of artistic abilities. But this gives people time in a non-threatening way to do that. And I draw a line down the middle. First half, what you would have liked your childhood to be like. And the second half, how can you translate that to present day. All of us have a little kid inside us. Mine tends to be a little bit louder than a lot of other people's. That's okay. And I'm good with that. So what can you do in the present day in order to validate yourself in order to have fun in order to be silly. You know, I am totally for watching cartoons and eating grilled cheese on a Saturday morning if the mood strikes me. And no, my kids don't do it with me. I do it all by myself. But it's one of those things that I enjoy doing and it makes me happy. So helping clients see that it's okay to have fun and it's okay to nurture themselves is going to be important. Guilt responsibility and forgiveness. Forgiveness is a that's the F word when we're talking about clients with a borderline parent often times. So we want to help them identify potential guilt triggers for the adult child. Now that you've moved out of mom and dad's house, you're not in that environment anymore. There may still be guilt triggers and you can look back to the past and see what triggered guilt. When you were younger that made you feel like you couldn't go out with your friends or you couldn't be happy or you couldn't do this because it would be bad. In the present, what are your guilt triggers and what are your guilt triggers from that particular parent as well. We talk about how guilt works and what the motivations behind guilt might be. Well, guilt is self anger. So if somebody makes you feel or tries to make you feel bad about yourself, then you can get angry at yourself for not living up to their expectations. That's how guilt works. But if they try to make you feel bad about yourself and you can evaluate and go, you know, I'm a good person. I just cannot do that right now for my own safety, sanity, whatever. That's not something I can do and I need to be able to take care of me. And that's huge. I mean, that's that's like way down the road for clients growing up coming from that kind of environment to be able to set boundaries and say, you know what, for my own mental health, I need to set this boundary right now and say no. We identify and discuss different origins of guilt. And again, this goes back to looking at what did your parent guilt you for when you were growing up. When you feel guilty, and sometimes I encourage them to spend a week keeping a guilt journal about even the things that they feel just a little bit guilty for. Like I threw away a plastic container the other day and I felt guilty for it because I didn't walk out to the garage and put it in the recycling. You know, guilt is is sneaky. It comes up a lot. So I want to know what are all the things that trigger their guilt. And then we'll start talking about those. I also want them to understand what and who can and cannot be controlled because most people in our life we can't control and the person with borderline characteristics is among the top uncontrollable people. They have to be able to learn how to control themselves they emotionally dysregulate they have problems with, you know, interpersonal relationships. So the adult child is likely not going to be able to control that person, and they need to be able to set that boundary, or be able to recognize that you know what, I am me, I am not responsible for how you feel. What are the issues of guilt and responsibility, which you know, like I just said, what are you responsible for. If you make a promise, you're responsible for keeping it. Sure. Are you responsible for that person's happiness. Are you responsible for being that person's parent fill in. Are you responsible for caretaking that person. What are you responsible for. And look at in terms of you, what are you responsible for. And that goes back to preventing the vulnerabilities, taking care of themselves, and trying to work on themselves. And then we move on to forgiveness. And, you know, a lot of times they say forgiveness is for you, not for the other person. It's being willing to accept that whatever happened happened, and let go of the anger because staying angry at that person. It's not going to change a thing. Holding onto that anger eats you up inside. There are a lot of memes. I mean, that's one good thing about the internet. If you go you can find a lot of good memes about anger and forgiveness. Helping clients come to their own definition and understanding of what forgiveness is, because most clients come in and say forgiveness means saying that whatever happened was okay. You know, it may not be okay. But it was and you can't, you know, it happened and you can't change the past. So if you can't change it, what are you going to do about it so it doesn't eat you alive from the inside in the present. That's usually a whole group right there or maybe two on forgiveness. And they need to also learn to forgive themselves because they probably have done some things that they're not so proud of or failed to do some things that they're not so proud of. So it's important for them to be able to learn how to forgive themselves and not feel guilty about every mistake, every misstep, every sneeze in the wrong direction. We complete an ABC worksheet exploring beliefs about guilt. So I usually start out just by using the main whiteboard, and I write down the ABCs and I say okay what's one thing you feel guilty about. And we'll put it up there and we'll work through the ABCs. A is the activating event what they feel guilty about C is they feel guilty. What are the automatic beliefs that led them to feel guilty. Then we go through and dispute and evaluate using the prompts that are in the book, but you can pretty much guess what the prompts are for why is it that you feel guilty. In what ways what happened in your past that makes you feel guilty about this now. Another way you can look at it is using concepts about personal responsibility as group discussion starters, because a lot of times clients feel guilty, because they're overly responsible. They feel responsible for their parents happiness they can't make their parent happy ergo they feel guilty. So we start going back to those things and people you can and cannot change. And identify what things in life, are you responsible for. And oftentimes it's not a really long list once you get down to it you, you start out and people are throwing in everything in the kitchen sink. And then you can go back and dispute those and go, are you really responsible for this, or is it wholly your responsibility, or is some of this falling on one or more other people, encouraging clients to take ownership. For things that are that they're feeling that they're wanting and their needing is really important. There are some statements that are in the book on taking ownership that you can post around on the flip chart papers and refer to them when people are feeling powerless or not taking ownership and a lot of them are statements that you would use to address distress intolerant thoughts, such as, instead of, I can't handle this, saying, I have handled things like this before, or this is difficult, but I can do this so they take ownership of what they need to, they take ownership of what is in their control. But they also identify those things that are out of control, that they can't hang, hang on to another activity I kind of do in here, I have them go through the serenity prayer. And when something happens, I go, okay. Let's look at what things. Can you change what things are you unable to change in this situation. And how do you develop an acceptance that this is the way things are and the courage to change the things you need to. So that's kind of a different cognitive way of helping people take ownership, but not be overly responsible. And the F word, why forgive. So we look at reasons why it's important to forgive other people. For example, like we talked about, if you stay angry, it drains your energy. Staying angry isn't going to change anything. You know, it's probably just going to drive a wedge, a bigger wedge between you and that person, but it's not going to change their behavior. So there are a lot of questions in the book that you can go through or you can make up your own questions that identify reasons why it's important to forgive other people, not just the parent with the borderline tendencies, but anybody else in your life and yourself. Why is it so detrimental to hold on to anger and guilt and resentment. We examine the function of anger and how it works. It's protective fight or flight. It's there for a reason. And we talk about the many faces of anger. Anger is anger, guilt, resentment, rage, envy, jealousy. Yeah, envy and jealousy. You got it because you're angry at somebody else for having something you want or you're angry at yourself for not having something that somebody else has. So anger is kind of sneaky. It comes in a lot of different, different faces. Discuss ways people cope with anger. And this is another one I like to use just on the main whiteboard. Everybody throws out suggestions or how they deal with anger when they start feeling angry. Then we talk about what does it mean to let go of anger. And this is a really scary concept for a lot of people because they've held on to the anger for so long because it's protected them. If they stay angry at this person and keep them at arm's length, they can't be hurt as badly as if they quit being angry and risk letting that person back in again. So we discuss what the difference between letting go of anger and maintaining healthy boundaries versus letting go of anger and becoming a doormat. We highlight the consequences of anger, the good and the bad using your motivational interviewing quadrants. You know, what are the benefits to staying angry? What are the drawbacks to staying angry? What are the benefits to forgiveness and what are the drawbacks to forgiveness? And then we talk about each one of those because if you don't identify the benefits to anger and find a way to kind of meet those needs, then people are going to want to hold on to it. Anger is a natural emotion. And I want clients to understand that feeling angry for a few minutes, that is normal and healthy and protective. Feeling angry for hours or days or months, that's probably not going to work for you. It's probably going to burn you out from the inside. So we want to look at the consequences. But understanding that anger is protective. And that's generally what we come back to. So how can you protect yourself while still letting go of your anger? That becomes a question for pondering. And then obviously in this group, we're going to provide some tools to start managing anger, mindfulness, distraction techniques, radical acceptance. Anything we can do to help people go through, you know, imagine their feelings and their urges as a way to come in and go out. Envision their feeling as a cloud floating by and they just watch the cloud float by. They don't have to grab on to it. They just let it flow in and out. So there are a lot of different tools we can give them to start dealing with their anger and their urge to self destruct, if you will. We want to reframe triggers for anger and resentment. A lot of times those triggers come from things they learned in their past. So identifying triggers in their present life, you know, and triggers from the past aren't really all that important. You can go there if you want. But in your present life, what triggers your anger and resentment? And how can you reframe that? How can you walk the middle path? If you get angry because somebody said no to helping you move, that feels like a rejection that, you know, they're your friend, they're supposed to help you. So if that's a trigger for your anger or resentment, how can you reframe that? And, you know, look at both sides of it. Look at the other positive things that they've done, etc. So we want to talk about looking at both sides, walking the middle path, problem solving. Another activity we'll do is identify the different manifestations of anger, and I rattled off a bunch earlier, and the effects of each. So let's stick with jealousy for one for a moment, because that's not one we talk about a lot with anger. When you're jealous, what are the effects of that on you and on your relationships? And, you know, going through that quadrant again, what are the benefits to jealousy? And how can you get those needs met? What are the benefits to acceptance or forgiveness? Or what is even the opposite of jealousy? If you're jealous of someone, being happy for them is kind of the opposite, but clients may choose to find a different phrase to use. But helping them identify something else that counters, you know, envy and jealousy is over here. The opposite of that would be filling the blank. Help clients find the right balance between what they need to do and what they feel like they should do when interacting with the parent with borderline tendencies, because guilt, again, is going to come out. And, you know, if you say you can't, maybe the client is an adult and is married now, and they do Thanksgiving every other year with the parent with borderline tendencies. Or maybe they're not even doing it with family this year. They're doing a, you know, just them and their spouse. How do they handle that when interacting with the borderline parent? How do they handle it when the borderline parent calls and asks for something that's unreasonable? Or something that may be reasonable, but the person just is not, they're not able to handle it right now. Help clients develop practical tools for controlling the flow of communication and interaction. Remember when the parent with borderline tendencies starts to spiral, all of a sudden those text messages are going to go from zero to 150, the emails are going to just start coming in. And a lot of times, the texts and the emails, it's like the person's having a dialogue with you or with the adult child, but they're not. They're like, so that's how it's going to be. When are you going to respond to me? Okay, so you're not responding to me. So you're never going to answer me again. Okay. And, you know, we kind of joke about these text messages in terms of, you know, how teenagers may behave. But you'll see this too in adults with borderline tendencies and how they interact with other people in their life. So we want to help them figure out how do you control the flow of communication, maybe only checking your email once a day. Or, you know, that's going to be a brainstorming session, depending on how they interact with their borderline parent. Use the metaphor of changing the dance from a waltz to a tango. You need to be able to take control of that relationship. You know, think of the tango that one partner is very strongly leading the other partner across the dance floor, as opposed to just gently kind of going with the flow. The part, the adult child needs to be able to be a strong lead, needs to be present and accepting and leading and validating, but also be able to, you know, set those boundaries. And encourage them to write a personal bill of rights. What do you have the right to? Do you have the right to be happy? Do you have the right to not answer your phone at two in the morning? Do you have the right to whatever it is that they think they have the right to? Sometimes this does better as an individual activity. I found that it can be really fun to do as a group activity. We write the bill of rights on the whiteboard and then people pick and choose the ones that they feel fit for them. But, you know, it can be a pretty lighthearted activity sometimes. Identify the ways that the parent with the borderline personality violates boundaries and discuss ways to deal with this and associated feelings of anger and guilt. So if the parent with borderline tendencies calls and starts freaking out that you're not going to be here for Thanksgiving, you must not love me anymore. I don't know how I can go on. They start spiraling out of control. They get angry, start shouting that you're a good for nothing, ungrateful, blah, blah, blah. Wow, that's impactful. I don't care who you are and how good your boundaries are. That's going to be tough. So, okay, how do you set boundaries with that person? How do you not take verbal abuse? And then when you get off that phone call, how do you deal with those feelings of guilt? Because there's a little kid inside of you that still is cowering in the corner going, I'm sorry. I'll do it, whatever, just don't be mad. So it's important for people to be able to set, self-sude that inner child, if you will, and say, you know what, it's okay. That person is an adult and they're responsible for their own feelings, easier said than done. But these are things that you need to talk about. How do you handle it when you get off the phone or get an email from the borderline parent that kind of throws you off kilter and encourage people to discuss it when they get one, you know, how they handled it, what they wish they would have done differently, etc. And then guess what? We're going to define what a healthy relationship with a parent would look like and have the clients identify aspects that are important to them and learn to tango. They need to be their own parent. They need to be their own person that says, you need to do this and that's okay. Other people may get angry, but that's okay. Going back over that Bill of Rights, what you want to do is start identifying how to communicate those needs to the parent or to the borderline parent and how to handle it if those rights aren't respected. And if you've worked with clients with borderline tendencies, you know it can get ugly really quickly. And the client, especially if the parent spirals into some sort of suicide attempt or something, the client is going to feel very guilty and there's all kinds of legal issues and everything that gets ugly. But we need to help clients understand what they're responsible for versus what the other adult is responsible for. You know, might they need to call for a well-being check? Maybe. You know, I don't know that situation. But how do you handle it in a way that you can feel okay? Identify triggers for the borderline parent and their functions and ways to prevent triggering them without sacrificing yourself. So thinking back, what is it that throws your borderline parent into a rage or into a guilt onslaught? Alright, what's the function of that? To keep you from going away, to keep control over you, to get validation. What is the benefit to that behavior to that parent? And how else can you do it now in a way that keeps you from having to sacrifice yourself and your needs and your sanity? When there's resistance and rages, you want to probably role play these in class because a lot of times people coming from that environment, they grew up in it for 16, 18 years. So now when it happens, they're kind of thrown back into that childhood state and they're like, okay, just stop, stop being angry, stop screaming, stop doing whatever. So it's going to be important to role play these new strategies for boundary setting so it doesn't get into a screaming match or a power struggle or whatever. Process after the role play, what self statements were helpful in retaining composure because the person's going to be having to be talking to the parent with the borderline tendencies and at the same time going, you got this, you're a grown up now, she's responsible for her own feelings, whatever self statements that they need to tell themselves. I find with some of my clients, it's helpful to have them write it down on a piece of paper that they keep in front of or keep next to the telephone. So when they're talking to that parent, you know, a lot of times I keep my phone on my bedside table. So if I were going to have that list, I would keep it next to the bedside table where it was likely going to be accessible to me when I'm on the phone. This is one of those few things that you can't put on your phone, because you're going to be on the phone so you can't look at it and talk on the phone at the same time. So encourage them to have, you know, three or five self statements, it doesn't have to be huge. This is an especially helpful activity to do and even redo right before the holidays and family gatherings. Examine different roles people play in their families and how those roles might be being reconstructed in the present because, you know, we recreate what we came from oftentimes. I'll encourage clients to write their autobiography from a reporter's lens to gain objective insight into what they did. If they felt like they were worthless and they were always a screw up and they always let people down and always always always all are none thinking. I want them to go back and write an autobiography so I can see what happened so they can see what happened and maybe think about those self judgments in a different light. I also present the concept that our parents directly and indirectly communicate messages to us about who we are and who we should be. So, well, that's normal. Those conditions of worth that's just the way it is. We want people to look back now that they're adults and ask themselves, who are they and who should they be their adults they can make their own decisions now. Challenge them to find positives in the pain because it kind of sucked growing up in that environment. But what positives were there and how are you stronger now than you were when you were 12 or 15? And reintroduce, if you haven't already, the concept of mindfulness. Encourage them to stay in the present, recognizing the strengths and resources they have now as an adult. Ask clients to envision the future while carefully avoiding simply choosing opposite because it's opposite. So what is it that you want the future to look like? Encourage them to start taking care of themselves, preventing vulnerabilities. Review thinking errors such as personalization and polarized thinking, that all or none thinking. When you hear the always or I never or she always, then it's important to kind of gently point that out and look for exceptions or identify if it is a always sort of thing. How can you deal with that? And then discuss how to develop a change plan, prioritizing, maintaining motivation and including sufficient rewards because our clients are going to have behaviors to change too. They're going to have to start learning to like themselves, develop self-esteem, start learning how to interact differently, not only with the parent with borderline characteristics, but with everybody. Because growing up in that family, they learn to interact generally in dysfunctional ways with everyone else. Have each group member identify one change they're going to do this week and how they're going to do it. Encourage them to use measurable goals and objectives so you can look back and say yes it was done or no it wasn't. Identify the motivation or reason for making that change because got to keep them motivated in order for them to even have it in the forefront of their mind. And brainstorm and mitigate any obstacles. So if you've got a group of 8 to 12 people, each person shares a goal and you go around and you do this for each person's goal. It takes the majority of the hour, but it gives a lot of good insight and feedback and helps each other get excited about each other's goals. Develop a thinking error journal and have group members fill it out for a week then bring it back to group to process. So at the end of that week, I'll put the thinking error of polarized thinking on the board and I'll say share with me some examples of how you use this thinking error and what you did to counter it. How did you change that once you realized you were using that thinking error? Examine what healthy boundaries look like and how to know if we have them. Discuss how to enforce or set boundaries in a way that's assertive, not aggressive. And begin to explore the concepts of self-esteem and just learning to like, love, like or love themselves for who they are. A lot of times if you say love, the clients are going to go no, no, not going there. But if you use the word like, they're like, okay, I'm willing to look at that. So let's put it all together. We want to encourage clients to remain aware of old behaviors creeping in and or new behaviors falling away. We want to remind them that change is a process that takes not only time, but support. And hopefully they'll be getting support from the group, but also who in their life might be able to be there to help support them. Guilt is a powerful tool. The person with borderline personality characteristics uses to control people and prevent abandonment. It's a safety thing for them. Understanding that is a little bit helpful, but we want to help clients learn how to not be controlled by it, not be the Marionette to the puppeteer. Children who grow up with borderline parents often develop some of the same traits or behaviors because that's what they learned. They can unlearn them. Children from homes with a borderline parent often have difficulty trusting others and their own feelings, which is where mindfulness really starts to ring a bell and come in. Then we move into now that you're aware of what you're thinking and feeling. How do you get those needs met? A vulnerability is something such as inadequate sleep or being sick that increases the chances that a person will be more prone to negative emotions like anger, guilt and depression. Think about a person in your life that's a little bit challenging to deal with. If you have to deal with that person and you're feeling sick or you didn't get enough rest, art isn't as easy to deal with them as it is on the days that you're well rested and healthy and on your A game. Probably not. So we want clients to really start understanding that there's a mind-body connection and they need to pay attention to that. Question comes in. At what age can you start working with children along these lines? If parents have borderline characteristics, it seems it would be different for a 10-year-old versus a 20-year-old. And yes, it would be because cognitively they're extraordinarily different. One of the things that I would point out is that a lot of times a child with a borderline parent is not going to present in treatment at that age unless they are mandated to counseling. And even then, I would start with mindfulness exercises and self-esteem exercises and helping them learn interpersonal effectiveness skills. You also have to look for what is safe in that environment if they're living with a borderline parent and what level, if any, abuses there, what your responsibilities are with that, etc. Borderline can be the elephant in the living room that nobody's talking about, at least outside of the family. I have a client who's lived for a long time with a wife who has borderline personality and is so concerned about the effects on their children who are now college age. Family looks good from the outside, but so much internal chaos. And that's true. It is smoke and mirrors and the same thing is true in addicted families. So it is important to look at the effects, not only in this particular case of on the children, but also on the husband. And what can you do about it now for everybody's safety and sanity? The children are college age, which I'm assuming they've moved out of the house, or are able to move out of the house if they should absolutely have to. So talking about, oh golly, looking at how to create those six seeds on the part of the, whoops, there we go, on the part of the unaffected parent, if you will, on the part of the father, how can he provide support, respect and acceptance, voice, unconditional love, consistency and security. As college age adults, the children are more able to think abstractly and start to understand that mom is not well. And for whatever reason, she has difficulty tolerating these things. And, you know, it's probably not important why those characteristics developed, but it's important for the children to understand what emotional dysregulation is. And why, when mom gets upset, she goes from zero to 250 in 2.3 seconds and can't seem to come down to baseline like a, quote, normal person would, and why she has these triggers. But it's all, would also probably be helpful for the father, for the father in this situation to be able to help identify triggers and sort of run interference, if you will. Again, to help the children feel and get as much support and unconditional love as they can from their parent. But again, as college age children, they can start to understand what BPD is. It doesn't make everything go away and all of a sudden make them go, oh, okay, I get it, never mind. You know, I, they still need to grieve the fact that they didn't have the parent, they didn't have the mother or the childhood that they wanted. However, you know, I think that they can probably develop the skills that they need to. But yeah, it's one of those things that since, since BPD is so demonized, if you will, nobody wants to talk about it. And that's another reason I use borderline characteristics. Because a lot of these things, if you look at the behaviors and you look at why they developed in the person who has the BPD characteristics, they make perfect sense. So part of it is helping them learn skills for self regulation and mindfulness and staying in the present and not, you know, when they get triggered not going back there to being that scared little six year old. Are there any other questions? If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allCEUs.com slash counselor toolbox. This episode has been brought to you in part by allCEUs.com providing 24 seven multimedia continuing education and pre certification training to counselors, therapists and nurses since 2006. You can use coupon code counselor toolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month.