Identify the impact of growing up in a family with a parent with borderline traits and how to help adult children break the cycle and recover.

1. Treatment for People
with Borderline Parents
Instructor: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
Executive Director, AllCEUs.com
Podcast Host: Counselor Toolbox and Happiness Isn’t Brain Surgery

2. Based On
Surviving a
Borderline Parent
How to Heal Your Childhood
Wounds & Build Trust,
Boundaries and Self-Esteem

3. Objectives
 Review the characteristics of BPD
 Compare and contrast BPD with addictive
behaviors
 Examine ways to implement the activities
presented in the book in a group format

4. Characteristics of BPD
 Poorly developed, or unstable self-image, often
associated with excessive self-criticism
 Difficulty recognizing the feelings & needs of
others
 Interpersonal hypersensitivity (i.e., prone to feel
slighted or insulted)
 Perceptions of others tend to focus on negative
attributes or vulnerabilities.

5. Characteristics of BPD
 Intense, unstable, and conflicted close
relationships, marked by mistrust,
neediness, and fear of abandonment
 Close relationships
Viewed in extremes of idealization and
devaluation
Alternating between over involvement and
withdrawal.

6. Effects on Others
 Feeling inadequate despite best efforts to
appease
 Lack of emotional boundaries
 Responsible for the parent’s happiness
 Guilt for personal happiness
 Difficulty trusting people due to alternations
between feeling appreciated and condemned
 Anxiety because the parent was unpredictable
 Hypervigilance

7. I Never Knew It Had A Name
Group Activity 1
Discuss the function of each symptom for the
parent
Have participants identify any behaviors they
have which may also resemble that symptom
Review and refute the take-aways providing
practical cognitive and interpersonal skills
Group Activity 2
Stop & Think: The Lessons are Clear—Review
and Refute
• Poorly developed self
image
• Difficulty recognizing
feelings and needs
• Hypersensitivity
• Unstable Relationships

8. All Grown Up
Examine the effects of the borderline
personality on the living conditions
 Chaos
 Abuse and Neglect
 Boundary Violations
 Invalidation
 Role Reversals
 Looks are Everything
 Keen Perception

9. All Grown Up
6 Seeds to Grow a Healthy Child
Support
Respect and Acceptance
Voice
Unconditional Love and Affection
Consistency
Security

10. All Grown Up
 Group Activity 1
Examine each effect of the Borderline
Personality
Discuss how each was present in the family of origin
Discuss how each is manifested in the client’s
current life
Identify methods to eliminate those dysfunctional
patterns
• Feeling inadequate
• Lack of boundaries
• Responsible for
happiness of others
• Anxiety due to
unpredictability
• Hypervigilance

11. All Grown Up
 Group Activity 2
6 Seeds: Discuss how to use those 6 principles
to
Reparent/nurture self
Nurture healthy relationships
Prevent vulnerabilities
 Group Activity 3
Stop and Think: Resiliency Builders
• Support
• Respect/ Acceptance
• Voice
• Unconditional Love &
Affection
• Consistency
• Security

12. Grieving a Lost Childhood
 Understand the grieving process
 Review messages received in childhood
about dealing with losses
 Identify losses and feelings associated
with the dysfunctional childhood
 Identify continuing issues with the
borderline/addicted parent

13. Grieving a Lost Childhood
Group Activity
Describe what you would have liked
your childhood to be like
As a group, identify ways to translate
that to present day.

14. Guilt, Responsibility & Forgiveness
 Identify potential guilt-triggers for the adult child
 Discuss how guilt works, and what the
benefits/motivations for guilt may be
 Identify and discusses different origins of guilt
 Encourage identification of what can & cannot be
controlled
 Explore the issues of guilt and responsibility
 Encourage participants to examine their beliefs
related to forgiveness

15. Guilt, Responsibility & Forgiveness
Group Activity 1
Complete an ABC worksheet exploring beliefs
about guilt.
Dispute and Evaluate using the prompts in
Stop and Think: Am I Guilty
Group Activity 2
In the Reframing section, use the concepts
about personal responsibility as group
discussion starters

16. Guilt, Responsibility & Forgiveness
Group Activity
Stop and Think: Taking Ownership--Post these
statements on the wall in the group room
and refer to them when people are feeling
powerless or not taking ownership
Group Activity
The F-Word: Under the section Why Forgive,
there are 7 questions. Have the group
process these questions.

17. Overcoming Anger & Resentment
 Examine the function of anger and how it works
 Explore the many faces of anger
 Discuss ways people cope with anger
 Encourage people to think about what it means
to them to let go of anger
 Highlight the consequences of anger
 Provide tools to start managing anger

18. Overcoming Anger & Resentment
 Group Activity 1
Stop and Think: Reframe Triggers—For each
statement, have group members identify an
example of when they have felt that way, and
use the reframing tools
 Group Activity 2
Identify the different manifestations of anger
and effects of each

19. Communicating and Setting Limits
 Help clients find the right balance between what
they need to do and what they feel like they
“should” do when interacting with the BP
 Develop practical tools for controlling the flow of
communication and interaction
 Use the metaphor of changing the dance from a
waltz to a tango to illustrate the concept of
changing the relationship
 Write a personal Bill of Rights

20. Communicating and Setting Limits
Group Activity 1
Controlling the Flow: Identify ways that the
BP (and others) may violate boundaries.
Discuss ways to deal with this and associated
feelings of anger, guilt etc.
Group Activity 2
Define what a healthy relationship with a
parent would look like, having each client
identify the aspects important to them. Then
learn to Tango.

21. Communicating and Setting Limits
Group Activity 3
Know Your Rights: For each right the author
listed (and any you add) identify what that
looks like; how to communicate these needs
and wants and how to handle it if those rights
are not respected.
Group Activity 4
Identify BP triggers and their functions and
ways to prevent triggering them without
sacrificing self

22. Communicating and Setting Limits
Group Activity 5
Coping with Resistance & Rages— Role play
using different validating phrases like those
suggested on page 115.
Process after the role play what self-
statements (also on page 115) were helpful in
retaining composure
Note: This is an especially helpful activity to
do and even re-do right before holidays or
family gatherings.

23. Reconstructing the Past:
Assessing the Present
 Examine the different roles people play in their
families and how those roles may be being
reconstructed in the present.
 Encourage people to write their autobiography
from a reporter’s lens to gain objective insight
 Present the concept that our parents directly and
indirectly communicate messages to us about
who we are and should be
 Challenge people to find positives in the pain
 Introduce the concept of mindfulness

24. Envisioning Change
Breaking Old Habits
 Begin by asking clients to envision the future, while
carefully avoiding simply choosing the opposite
because it is opposite
 Encourage people to start taking care of themselves
 Review thinking errors such as personalization and
polarized thinking
 Discusse how to develop a change plan, prioritizing,
maintaining motivation and including sufficient
rewards

25. Envisioning Change
Breaking Old Habits
Group Activity 1
Have each group member identify one change
they are going to make this week and how they
are going to do it.
Encourage the use of measurable goals and
objectives
Identify the motivation/reason for making that
change
Brainstorm and mitigate any obstacles.

26. Envisioning Change
Breaking Old Habits
Group Activity 2
Develop a thinking error journal and have
group members fill it out for a week, then
bring it back to group to process.

27. Trust Yourself, Set Boundaries
Build Self-Esteem
 Examine what healthy boundaries look like
and how to know if we have them
 Discuss how to enforce boundaries
 Begin to explore the concept of self esteem

28. Putting It All Together
 Encourages clients to remain aware of old behaviors
creeping in and/or new behaviors falling away
 Remind clients that change is a process that takes
not only time, but support
 Guilt is a powerful tool the person with BPD uses to
control people and prevent abandonment.
 Children who grow up with a borderline parent often
develop some of the same traits or behaviors.
 Children from homes with a borderline parent often
have difficulty trusting others & their own feelings.

29. Putting It All Together
 A vulnerability is something such as inadequate
sleep or being sick that increases the chances that a
person will be more prone to negative emotions like
anger, guilt and depression.

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