Borderline Personality Disorder - Other Treatment

Other Treatment

Professional counseling is an important part of treatment for borderline personality disorder. Other therapies, such as relaxation techniques, may also help you recover more quickly and improve your quality of life. Family therapy may help you and those who care about you to deal with borderline personality disorder.

Other Treatment Choices

Borderline personality disorder is often successfully treated with professional counseling such as:¹⁰

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which focuses on changing certain thoughts and behavior patterns to control the symptoms of a condition.
• Dialectical behavior therapy, which helps reduce destructive behaviors by teaching healthy ways to adapt to and cope with challenges and feelings of frustration or lack of power.
• Psychodynamic therapy, which focuses on uncovering or understanding your past to gain insight into your actions and current behavior. This technique assumes that problems with behavior are caused by internal conflicts that you are not consciously aware of.
• Family therapy, which can be helpful in educating your family about your condition and providing support to those who care about you and are also affected by your condition. For example, it is sometimes difficult for a parent with borderline personality disorder to be nurturing, even to his or her own child.
• Support groups, where you and people you care about are able to meet others who share similar challenges.

What To Think About

A critical part of the treatment of borderline personality disorder is long-term professional counseling. It is important that you build a stable relationship with your counselor to successfully continue treatment. Your condition may cause you to go from viewing your counselor as nurturing to cruel, especially when you are asked to try to change a behavior. Try to find a counselor who has special training in treating borderline personality disorder.