Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is an intense mental health condition where someone experiences heightened emotional responses to everyday situations that are long-lasting and hard to manage. Perceived or real abandonment is particularly hard on people with BPD; anything from a simple missed phone call to a breakup can feel emotionally overwhelming.
If you’ve been diagnosed with BPD, you’re likely all too familiar with the stress and upset that come with a deep fear of abandonment. You may be asking yourself why? Why are you so scared of being abandoned? Why do small, neutral interactions—ones that other people consider to be everyday experiences—trigger panic and extreme emotional reactions in you?
Despite these heightened emotions, being diagnosed with BPD does not mean that you are unable to live a full, meaningful life, but it does mean that you’ll need to “do the work”—often with the support of a BPD specialist trained in DBT therapy—to achieve that vision.
Fear of abandonment is a treatable symptom of BPD
When you’re in the thick of a reaction to perceived or real abandonment as someone with BPD, it’s important for you to know that many others share your experiences and that mental health treatment can help you manage your intense fear of abandonment. You aren’t alone, and you’re not stuck living this way forever, even if it feels that way right now.
How does someone with BPD react to perceived abandonment?
People with BPD may have seemingly opposite and sometimes extreme reactions to real or perceived abandonment, including:
- Needing frequent reassurance
- Giving people the silent treatment
- Suddenly breaking off relationships
- Trying to create or ensure as much closeness as possible
- Picking fights, especially over little things
- Emotional reactions to perceived slights like changed plans, a missed phone call, or a delay in texting back
- Threats or actions of self-harm
- Feelings of worthlessness, self-loathing, self-blame
- Intense separation anxiety
- Agreeing to things you don’t want to do
- Extreme sensitivity to neutral disagreement, constructive criticism, or even another person’s “wrong” tone of voice.
- High-pressure interactions with friends, partners, family members to try to prevent abandonment
- Paranoid thoughts
- Suddenly deciding you hate your friend/partner/family member
Sounds tough, right? It is! This kind of relationship upheaval is very hard on someone with BPD and can often be a major motivator for seeking mental health treatment. Now that we’ve looked at the “how?” of fear of abandonment, let’s answer your question of “why?”
Why is fear of abandonment so common with BPD?
There is still emerging research on the “why?” for everything to do with borderline personality disorder, but there are some promising leads when it comes to understanding this difficult mental health condition. Fear of abandonment is a common symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD), and it is likely the result of a combination of learned relationship behaviors from traumatic experiences in childhood like abuse, neglect, and loss, as well as untreated BPD symptoms, creating a landscape of relationship difficulties for people with BPD.
People diagnosed with BPD are 13 times more likely to report childhood trauma than people who don’t have BPD. Childhood trauma is closely linked to teen and adult fear of abandonment; when your earliest relationships aren’t stable, your life depends on not being abandoned. You’re taught that you can’t trust relationships to stay consistent, and you may subconsciously connect changes in relationships to the experiences of abuse or neglect. This can create a fear of abandonment that endures into adulthood.
When BPD symptoms and learned behaviors interfere with your adult relationships, it can reinforce this fear of abandonment, creating a toxic cycle that can feel permanent for friendships, work relationships, parent-child relationships, and romantic relationships. Thankfully, mental health treatment like DBT can help!
How does DBT address the fear of abandonment?
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) includes a variety of skills that can help people with borderline personality disorder manage the intense emotional experiences that come with real or perceived experiences of abandonment.
The goal is to create a sense of stability within yourself, so no matter what happens in a relationship, even if it doesn’t work out how you want it to, you’re still secure and feel safe. Within the DBT framework, you can give yourself space to feel sad, angry, or unhappy, while also maintaining enough distance from these emotions to make choices, instead of being driven to reactions.
Mindfulness skills, including Loving Kindness
In DBT, mindfulness asks you to direct your attention to the current moment instead of dividing your attention between now and the worries of the past or fear of the future. A mindfulness skill in DBT that helps with the fear of abandonment is Loving Kindness.
Loving Kindness asks you to sit quietly and think about people in your life who you’re struggling to feel compassion or love for. You sit with your hands open and outstretched in your lap (called Willing Hands), and with your mind, send kind, compassionate well-wishes to people in your life. Include yourself in this exercise! It reminds you that the people in your life, including you, remain loveable even when you’re struggling with a deep fear of abandonment.
Emotional regulation skills, including Check the Facts
When your emotions become so strong that they’re interfering with your daily life, especially around fear of abandonment, the Check the Facts DBT skill for emotional regulation can help. It’s simple; often, large emotional responses depend on assumptions and interpretations, and looking at the facts can help you take a step back and recognize when your emotions are reflections of reality and when you’re getting ahead of yourself.
When you’re caught up in intense fear of abandonment, ask yourself:
- What emotions am I feeling?
- What’s happening that provokes these emotions?
- What are the basic facts of what’s happening, and what interpretations, thoughts, and assumptions am I adding in?
- Am I assuming there’s a threat or a catastrophe?
- Do my emotions, or their intensity, fit the facts?
Distress tolerance skills, including Turning the Mind
When fear of abandonment hits a distress level that interferes with you living the life you want, using the DBT skill Turning the Mind can help.
Radical acceptance is a state of mind where you recognize what’s happening, including all the things about it you’d like to change and cannot, and accept it as reality. You don’t have to approve, and you can take action on things you can change, but in most emotionally charged situations in life, there will be plenty you can’t change.
Each time you’re faced with a situation that feels like abandonment, and you’re struggling with the desire for things to have happened differently, gently turn your mind toward acceptance. You’ll find that your mind wants to turn back to non-acceptance; this is normal! You’re human, and we all struggle with acceptance. Simply gently and non-judgmentally turn your mind back toward acceptance each time it wanders back toward suffering through fighting reality.
Interpersonal effectiveness skills, including Interpersonal Cheerleading
When fear of abandonment has consistently disrupted relationships in your life, you may need to become your own cheerleader to keep trying when it comes to relationships. Interpersonal Cheerleading is a fun and encouraging DBT skill where you come up with statements that cheer you on in choosing healthy relationship behaviors. Some examples include:
- Boundaries are a sign of respect, and I deserve respect!
- If I don’t get what I want or need, I will still be okay!
- Someone else being unhappy with me doesn’t reflect on my value as a person!
- It’s normal to disagree with people!
- Saying “no” isn’t selfish, it’s important!
- Having wants or needs is normal and not selfish!
- I can take up space in my relationships!
Your relationship with your DBT therapist helps, too
It’s not uncommon for people with BPD to leave treatment programs that aren’t structured to specifically help with BPD. Because people with untreated BPD often struggle to relate to others in a healthy way, both because of learned patterns and BPD symptoms, a therapy approach that doesn’t offer enough interpersonal support can trigger symptoms and hurt more than it helps.
DBT programs are structured so you experience multiple healthy relationships in therapy, ensuring you are supported consistently. DBT therapists offer extra support to their clients, including both individual therapy and on-call support for real-life challenges between therapy sessions. Group therapy members also offer acceptance and support, as well as DBT skills practice opportunities, helping you practice healthy ways to relate to others that can ease your fear of abandonment.
How does DBT help with BPD?
DBT programs like the ones available at THIRA Health are intensive mental health treatment programs that can go beyond helping people with BPD overcome their fear of abandonment. When you’re grappling with symptoms of BPD and you feel stuck living a life that feels hopeless, DBT can help you heal.
DBT offers specific skills in emotional regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness, helping you build the possibility of choice when it comes to your responses to fear of abandonment. Developing a strong internal sense of self and building positive relationships within your DBT program also make perceived rejection and abandonment easier to cope with.
Connect with THIRA Health today to learn more about how DBT can help you ease the pain of fear of abandonment, making BPD easier to manage so you can build a life worth living!
