In late 2022, I ended a nearly 7-year-long relationship with the person I thought I’d marry and start a family with. Like anyone in this position, many issues culminated in the seemingly rational decision for me to call it quits. However, the impulsive way I chose to go about it, as an emotionally cold phone call from the other side of the world, remains one of my biggest regrets in life. In the moment, it felt like my emotions were on a different plane of existence and I was completely void of empathy. This was followed by a four-month streak of euphoric mania saturated with irresponsible and impulsive life decisions…and then, I crashed. Harder than ever before. So hard that it landed me in the biggest psychiatric hospital in my province, where I was given an expedited Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) diagnosis.
I always knew that I had trouble regulating my emotions. The slightest annoyance from a loved one would fill me with a fiery rage and, subsequently, I would oscillate between lashing out and shutting down, feeling disembodied. When my therapist first suggested that I exhibited many symptoms of BPD, generously describing it as “my tendency to feel big feelings,” everything seemed to click into place.
How Does a Person with BPD Feel After a Breakup?
To make matters simple, Borderline Personality Disorder’s primary symptom is the inability to regulate and manage your emotions, characterized by unstable mood swings and, consequently, a pattern of unstable relationships—romantic or otherwise. It is hypothesized that at the root of it all, the primary driver for folks with BPD is an intense fear of abandonment, often resulting from childhood trauma, which may have included abuse and/or neglect.
People with BPD will do everything in their power, whether rational or irrational, to avoid abandonment. Paradoxically, it’s not uncommon for individuals with BPD to leave their partners out of the blue so that they feel like they have more control over the potential of being abandoned, making it a voluntary choice. As I experienced it, all my actions ultimately had no consequences, or quite frankly if they did, I couldn’t regulate or care about what they were.
To complicate things further, people with BPD often have a favourite person—a person they are extremely emotionally dependent on and attached to. The “favourite person’s” availability to spend quality time, mood, and tone of voice all impact people with Borderline. Usually, it is a partner or close friend. Losing a favourite person is an absolutely devastating blow. To quote one paper:
“Findings from two studies revealed that there was an association between BPD criteria and tendency to employ less adaptive dissolution strategies when terminating a relationship.”
In other words, BPD and breakups are a BAD mix.
I know what you’re thinking: breakups aren’t easy for anyone. It’s completely normal to feel like you’ve lost a part of yourself when you and a partner, especially a long-term one, decide to split. However, the characteristic chronic feelings of emptiness associated with BPD can make periods spent alone feel torturous, riddled with feelings of guilt, shame, self-hatred, and grief.
To absolve this, you may feel a deep urge to try to repair things at any cost, even if the method or outcome is completely illogical just to avoid the infinite absence of that person from your life. These destructive patterns may cause you to act on impulses that land you in trouble at work or school. Due to these potentially dire consequences, it’s essential to find suitable strategies for coping with breakup grief when you have Borderline Personality Disorder.
3 Strategies for Coping with BPD After a Breakup
Spend as much time as you need with loved ones
Like most personality disorders, Borderline Personality Disorder’s symptoms are incredibly complex and can manifest slightly differently from person to person. However, one symptom with a solid “psy-entific” consensus is that folks with BPD do not have stable views of the people around them or themselves.
One of the biggest struggles during this dark period of my life was being left completely alone with my thoughts, which conjured like a storm throughout my body, convincing me that I deserve to cease existing if I’ve hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. This manifested not only mentally, but physically. Even doing something as simple as the dishes, left me berated with intrusive, impulsive thoughts. I couldn’t bear to be alone, so I spent nearly every day of that grey Canadian winter at a friend’s apartment.
Of course, the goal is to reach a point where being alone is not an agonizing endeavour. However, it’s perfectly normal for people to want support from loved ones after a breakup, and for those of us with BPD, we may need a bit of extra support, and there is no shame in that.
Consider Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
Did you know that a type of therapy was specifically designed for Borderline Personality Disorder, called Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)?
The main goal of DBT is to collect and develop tools to cope with challenges without self-destructing. During a crisis like a breakup, therapists may give you a Distress Tolerance manual, which has three aims:
1) Survive crises without making them worse.
2) Accept reality and replace suffering with ordinary pain and the prospect of moving forward.
3) Free yourself from your desires, urges, and intense emotions.
DBT is difficult and very sobering, as you’re forced to confront the impact of your emotions and behaviours. But for many, DBT completely transforms their life for the better and allows them to break free from their destructive patterns, enabling them to foster healthy, stable relationships in the future.
Explore the philosophies of absurdism and Stoicism
During my experience with Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, I saw enormous parallels between some of the tenets of DBT and absurdism, Stoicism, and particularly, Friedrick Nietzsche’s concept of Amor Fati. The framework of Amor Fati and DBT’s concept of “radical acceptance” are mirrors of each other: the practice of accepting that regardless of how painful or unfair a situation is, it has happened and cannot be amended. Instead of scrambling to undo your mistakes, embrace what is out of your control. I hear you: this may sound unfathomable or unappealing at first, but try to keep an open mind, as it’s a pathway to true emotional peace.
Whether you are interested in exploring a therapeutic framework or a philosophical one, I encourage you to seek what is most accessible and right for you. For an introduction to philosophy, I recommend watching video essays on YouTube, which break down long, complex ideas without the inaccessible vocabulary often imbued in the literary classics.
Final Takeaways for Navigating Breakup Grief with Borderline Personality Disorder
Due to the nature of the disorder and its inherent quality of complicating or jeopardizing the relationships in your life, breakup grief can be even more challenging for someone with BPD than the average person.
During this time, use all the resources you have at hand, whether it’s relying on loved ones, psychological intervention, or an exploration of philosophies you may have never considered. Most importantly, give yourself as much grace as you can. Yes, you do deserve it. Yes, things do get better.
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