Understanding How Someone With BPD Uses Splitting and Silence
One moment, they’re your everything. And the next, it’s like the world has come crashing down around you. You text, call, and reach out with no response. This form of emotional whiplash can leave you desperate for answers on why it’s happening and what you can possibly do to convince your loved one to start speaking to you again.
When someone is struggling with borderline personality disorder (BPD), it’s much more than silence. There’s a storm brewing beneath the quiet. The BPD silent treatment is a defense mechanism for emotions they can’t manage. And, when you react the wrong way, it only reinforces that what they are doing is okay.
Learning how to handle symptoms of borderline personality disorder is one of the best ways that you can help your loved one have healthier, happier relationships and finally start to heal.
Keep reading to learn what causes splitting, how to manage it, and when to encourage them to reach out to Catalina Behavioral Health for help managing borderline personality disorder.
What is BPD Silent Treatment?
For someone with borderline personality disorder, the silent treatment describes the action of becoming emotionally distant or cutting someone off. It looks like ignoring phone calls and text messages and refusing attempts to talk through issues.
The silent treatment might be used as a punishment or a defense mechanism, as a person with BPD pushes away someone they fear will eventually abandon them.
What is Splitting?
Splitting is another common behavioral symptom experienced by people struggling with borderline personality disorder. Splitting is a form of irrational thinking. Often, it involves viewing people and situations as 100% good or 100% bad.
You either idolize your partner or you no longer trust them or feel good about them, often resulting from a small disagreement.
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What Are the Potential Causes of Silent Treatment?
People who have a severe form of borderline personality disorder who use silent treatment might fall into this negative coping mechanism for a few reasons. It can be a form of passive-aggressiveness. Instead of discussing things that upset them, the silent treatment indirectly expresses frustration. It may be used as emotional manipulation or punishment.
Sometimes, the silent treatment is a form of emotional shut-down. Someone struggling with borderline personality disorder might stay silent after experiencing intense emotions they cannot regulate.
Last, silent treatment may be caused by fear of abandonment. They may push someone they love away as a form of testing them or to see if the relationship is strong. While they push you away, when this is the cause, they are secretly hoping you’ll pursue them.
How Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Affects Interpersonal Relationships
Living with borderline personality disorder is difficult. Troubles with intense emotions come on as suddenly as a tidal wave. Love can transform into disdain and fear of rejection, joy turns to despair, and minor inconveniences can ignite the fire of rage. You may watch yourself spiraling out of control, even recognize what is happening, but it feels impossible to control. BPD takes a serious toll on your quality of daily life.
It can also be hurtful to be on the receiving end of silent treatment or other BPD traits. The emotional turbulence that comes along with loving someone who has BPD is often outwardly obvious. Without treatment, unstable relationships and unhealthy patterns continue, making it hard for either party to be truly happy.
This can lead to stress, troubles with conflict resolution, and unhealthy breakup patterns. It’s also possible to feel like you must walk on eggshells when you are in a relationship with a person who has BPD. You find yourself in a constant state of anxiety over how your actions will affect them and whether you should engage when they are angry or withdrawn.
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What Causes BPD?
Understanding what causes BPD can be helpful for seeing the correlation between experiences, symptoms, and why people with BPD may struggle with healthy boundaries, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation.
There are a combination of factors in play and the cause of BPD is not fully understood. There are some genetic factors and neurological biofactors, including dysregulation of important neurotransmitters and abnormalities in the area of the brain that control decision-making, impulsivity, and emotional regulation.
What many people with BPD share, however, is trauma. Chaotic family environments, childhood trauma, abandonment, and neglect, all play a significant role in the development of BPD. When violence, abandonment, abuse, or other traumas occur in early childhood, it can cause difficulty in handling dysfunctional emotions and harmful attachment patterns.
BPD and Co-Occurring Mental Health Conditions
People who have borderline personality disorder may also struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance use disorder, and other conditions alongside BPD. BPD does not cause these conditions, but mental health and addiction share similar risk factors.
Treating any co-occurring disorders is important for managing relapse.
What to Do to Manage Splitting, the Silent Treatment, and Other BPD Symptoms
If you love someone with BPD, you may be wondering what you can possibly do to help them feel loved and secure in your relationship. Should you chase them and provide constant attention or give them space and risk them feeling that you abandoned them? How should you handle it if they hurt you?
Unfortunately, there is no magic pill or medication that will permanently fix borderline personality disorder. The best thing that a person with BPD can do is seek help from a mental health professional who understands the intricacies of BPD behavior. For that, they must have a desire to change and do better.
Often, a comprehensive approach involving different types of therapy, medication, and holistic treatments works best. Medications commonly prescribed for BPD include antidepressants, anxiety medications, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers.
How to Have Healthier Relationships with BPD
Like many mental health conditions, with proper support and a willingness to change, healing from a diagnosis of BPD is possible. It is possible for a person with BPD to overcome feelings of abandonment and intense emotions that might influence how they react. Therapy can become a big part of that.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Dialectical behavior therapy is considered one of the best approaches for treating BPD. You’ll be encouraged to identify behaviors you want to change and then learn coping strategies to help you overcome them. This includes mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotional regulation, and distress tolerance.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive behavioral therapy emphasizes the relationship between negative thoughts and emotions and how they might cause someone with BPD to react. By being aware of negative thinking fallacies, you can begin to understand how thoughts impact emotions and behaviors.
It also allows you to analyze your feelings about yourself and the people around you, eventually overcoming triggers.
Other Therapeutic Approaches for Borderline Personality Disorder
While DBT and CBT are considered “gold standards” for treating BPD, there are several other therapies with benefits. The best approach will be adjusted to your needs.
- Trauma-based therapies are ideal for people whose fear of abandonment and other feelings stem from trauma, Processing what happened to you can help identify triggers and where emotions are coming from. This might involve Schema-Focused Therapy or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy.
- Transference-focused therapies focus on patterns in relationships that a person who has BPD might struggle with. Identifying these attachment patterns can help you learn which are healthy and which contribute to BPD symptoms.
- Family therapy works well for teaching family members how to support their loved one with BPD.
- Couples therapy is ideal for people who have BPD in relationships. Couples therapy offers a safe, supportive environment to learn conflict resolution, set boundaries, and address issues.
- Mentalization therapy gives people with BPD a chance to reflect on feelings and intense emotions. You’ll learn how to manage relationships and regulate emotions.
Therapy for BPD has several treatment goals, including learning to recognize symptoms and triggers, overcoming trauma that may lead to intense feelings, emotions, and fear of abandonment, and learning coping strategies to handle situations better when you are triggered.
When to Consider Professional Help for BPD
Even though therapy can help with navigating the emotional turmoil associated with borderline personality disorder, it’s not uncommon to experience crises. This might look like extreme emotional outbursts, self-harm, or suicidal ideations.
During these moments, it’s hard to know how someone struggling with borderline personality disorder will react. They can be a danger to themselves or even the people around them.
Some borderlines also struggle with co-occurring substance use disorder. Managing emotional dysregulation through drinking or drug use can worsen the risk of unpredictable, irrational behaviors.
Scenarios like these benefit from professional help like you’ll find at Catalina Behavioral Health. We use an integrated, individualized approach that makes it possible to heal even from complex conditions like BPD.
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Get Help Managing BPD Symptoms at Catalina
Before you get help, managing the mood swings and emotional dysregulation that accompany BPD can feel exhausting. These symptoms make it hard to develop healthy relationships, from friends and family to romantic relationships. At Catalina, however, you won’t have to navigate these murky waters alone.
Catalina Behavioral Health specializes in the personalized, comprehensive help that is necessary to treat complex mental illnesses like borderline personality disorder.
As you learn the skills necessary to heal your inner child, you’ll find yourself able to identify when you’ve been triggered, find healthier ways to cope and start to heal fractured relationships. Reach out today.
References
- https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/borderline-personality-disorder/causes/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6007584/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3138327/
