Building Resilience – Self Validation and Boundaries

If you attend meetings or training about how to help a family member with BPD, you will hear many times that the key is to “Validate, Validate, Validate!”

But have you also been told to self-validate? If you are like most of us, probably not often.

We concentrate so hard on validating the emotions of our loved ones, yet carers also experience difficult feelings, like sadness, disappointment and grief. It can be overwhelming and there are times when it impacts us, and our caring role.

At Sanctuary in June, we watched this video, by Susan Davidson, a Family Connections Leader from NEA.BPD: 
Self Validation and Observing Limits

Self-validation is an important part of our BPD journey with our loved ones. It helps lessen our own distress, and that can help us communicate with them and have a better relationship.

• What is self-validation?
• How it can help us better cope with the ups and downs in our life of supporting someone with BPD?
• How to set boundaries and observe limits
• Avoiding Carer Burn Out

Image by Daniel Watson on Unsplash