Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. How to Survive Your Borderline Partner (Clip: Narcissism Summaries YouTube Channel)

1. 00:05 Teach her to externalize her emotions behaviorally to show that she’s angry, to demonstrate her envy or jealousy, to act appropriately other negative emotions or positive emotions. Teach her to externalize behaviorally her emotions, but also teach her to talk about her emotions.
2. 00:28 And you can do this by using a variety of techniques. One of the most powerful is known as chair work. Chair like what you sit on chair work. You can ask her for example to put her anger on an empty chair and then to talk to the anger in the empty chair to have
3. 00:46 a dialogue with her own anger. You can ask her to put her envy, her hatred, her fear on the chair. Talk to her abandonment anxiety. Interrogate the abandonment anxiety. Ask the abandonment anxiety for help. Chair work. Dialogue with the emotions via the
4. 01:06 the methodology and instrument of an empty chair. And finally, you can use techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy or you can attend cognitive behavioral therapy in order to negate in order to uh counter negative thoughts. Thoughts. The borderline has
5. 01:24 negative automatic thoughts which leads lead to catastrophizing and lead to despair and depression and anxiety. The borderline assumes the worst. And because she assumes the worst, the worst outcomes, the worst. Because of this, she sinks into anxiety and
6. 01:42 depression. Anxiety and depression are very strong conccommittance of borderline. They are com co com co com co com co com co com co com co com co com co com co comorbid with borderline very often and they are usually the outcome of these negative automatic
7. 01:53 thoughts which are uh which CBT is very successful at eliminating learn the techniques of eliminating automatic negative thoughts or simply attend a few therapy sessions with her having learned to control her negative thoughts having learned to label her
8. 02:13 emotions having dialogued with her anxieties and fears. Having verbalized what’s happening inside her, having externalized her emotions via behavior, the risk of acting out the risk of emotional dysregulation and the risk of the compensation. These risks are much
9. 02:32 reduced using these techniques. One of the main problems with borderline is that she cannot as she cannot regulate her emotions, she cannot control her anger. Border lines are very angry and they’re ve they’re angry in a very violent and aggressive way. You need to
10. 02:50 to learn anger management techniques. You need to teach your borderline to cognitively restructure. Cognitive restructuring is a major anger management technique. It is simply teaching the borderline to think about things in a different way to consider triggers, stimuli,
11. 03:12 um provocations, fears, frustrations to consider all these in a totally different way. Maybe as positive opportunities for growth and learning. For example, cognitive restructuring, establish communication protocols, very rigid and strict communication protocols. If she wants to
12. 03:31 say something, she has to say it according to the protocol. No personal attacks. No attacks on the other. Like if you want to say something, for example, if you want to say what you’re doing is hurting me, don’t blame. Don’t accuse. Don’t say the way
13. 03:48 you’re misbehaving is is really bad. Instead, say I’m in pain. Talk about yourself. Don’t talk about her. Describe your own reactions, your own internal state rather than attacking her. That’s an example of a communication protocol. Establish communication protocol and
14. 04:06 adhere to them religiously. Communication protocols are very powerful tools which prevent a lot of misunderstanding and pain down the road. Finally, introduce humor. Humor is the best antidote to anger. Whenever she’s angry, don’t mock her. Don’t invalidate her anger.
15. 04:28 Don’t minimize her anger. Don’t minimize her. That’s not what I’m saying. But say something humorous that suddenly exposes the whole situation as irrational. And if she’s amenable to humor, this will diffuse the anger. The borderline has what we call mood
16. 04:47 liability. Moodability. She’s her mood is as disregulated as her emotions. Mood ability can be countered with physical activity, a sleep schedule, a series of rigid routines. The routines provide structure, provide a skeleton, so rigid routines and with stress management
17. 05:09 techniques. Again, I encourage you to go online and look for stress management techniques. So, mability in the borderline is a serious problem. Mood swings, very serious problem. Anyone who had lived with a borderline knows what I’m talking about. This is not like 3 days of of fun
18. 05:26 and three days of depression. This is like 1 hour of of fun and 2 hours of depression and then 2 hours of fun and 3 hours of anxiety and then 3 hours of rage and 2 hours. The mood swings are enormous and they are they are never ceasing. And so if you want to survive
19. 05:43 with a borderline, you need to regulate this. You you need to control her moods. She needs to control her moods. And these are the this is what I’ve mentioned physical activity, sleep schedule, routines, stress management techniques. The the moods of the borderline are reactive.
20. 06:02 They are not produced internally. They most of the time they are reactive. Regrettably, she her reality testing is impaired. So what she perceives is very often wrong, very often deformed, very often um inappropriate, inaccurate. So by restoring reality testing, you’re
21. 06:26 going to reduce mood ability considerably. But because it’s mostly reactive, you need to eliminate the triggers and the and the stimuli and the provocations in the environment. And you need to structure her life. You need to help her to structure her life so that she can
22. 06:41 reduce stress. And the stress leads to anxiety. Anxiety leads to mood liability. Reduce stress and you solve an entire chain reaction. The borderline outsources internal functions internal what what is known as ego functions. She outsources these to you. The intimate partner of a
23. 07:05 borderline is her source of regulation. Is the one with the hand on the key. He is in control of how she feels, her emotions, her moods, her reactions, her explosions, her love. What the borderline does because she lacks an an inner a regulated inner
24. 07:26 world because her inner world is one gigantic gigantic twister. What she does is she she actually is telling you help me by regulating me. Be my external control. Be my external board of control. Be my user manual. I’m transferring my locus of control to
25. 07:48 you. The borderline says, “And from now on, you are my God. You are in charge of my moods, my emotions, my cognitions, my happiness, my unhappiness, my aggression. Everything I do, you are to blame. Everything I do, you’re responsible and accountable for. Even if
26. 08:06 I misbehave, I misbehave because of you. This of course outsourcing of course is extremely unhealthy. It’s extremely unhealthy first of all because it is counterfactual. It’s not true. A lot of the a lot many of the disregulatory behaviors and and emotions
27. 08:27 and moods of the of the borderline have nothing to do with you as her partner. So attributing everything to you is scapegoating you. Don’t let the borderline scapegoat you. Teach her to regain the locus of control. Transfer these responsibilities that she had
28. 08:45 given to you that she had abrogated. Transfer these responsibilities back to her. Do it incrementally. Do it gradually. Do not threaten her. Do not demand. Do not control. Do not chastise and castigate and criticize. Be nice. Be kind. She is not well. Help her to
29. 09:07 recover. Provide her with increasing control over herself, her circumstances, her choices, her decisions, and gradually her emotions and her moods. Remove this locus of control from yourself and help her to regain an internal locus of control. At the same time, help her
30. 09:32 to develop and reward what we call autotolastic defenses. Autoplastic defenses is accepting responsibility for your actions and for the consequences of your actions. Aloplastic defenses is when we blame other people for everything that’s happening to us. That
31. 09:51 implies an external locus of control. If you are to blame for what’s happening to me, then I don’t I’m not in control of my life. You are you want the borderline to regain control of her life also by accepting responsibility for everything she had done everything that’s happening
32. 10:10 to her and it can start with a very simple manipulation of language border lines often say this happened to me you should tell the borderline no this did not happen to you did it a very typical case is when the borderline comes and says I was drunk And I slept with another man. It
33. 10:31 happened. So it did not happen. You did it. You did. It restores a sense of responsibility, self-control, locus of control. Reward these defenses. Reward this um these behaviors when when it’s warranted. When she does something good, something nice,
34. 10:53 reward her. when she does something bad, refuse to accept responsibility. Reject any attempt to put it on you. You’re not responsible for her actions. You’re not responsible for her moods, for her emotions, for her cognitions, for her misbehavior, for her aggression, for her
35. 11:11 violence. Never ever accept responsibility, but do it lovingly because you love her. do reestablish a sense of control and and sense of personal responsibility and accountability lovingly. The borderline exactly like the narcissist tends to idealize and
36. 11:34 devalue. She idealizes you and devalues you on a daily basis. These are very rapid cycles as opposed to the narcissist. In borderline the cycling is very rapid. She can idealize you and devalues devalue you several times a day. The problem is if she when she
37. 11:47 idealizes you, you’re God. When she devalues you, you’re the devil. And she doesn’t feel bad when she is in the stage of devaluation. She doesn’t feel bad to betray you, to cheat on you, to harm you, to undermine your interests.