What You Need to Know, So You Can Heal

If you were raised by a parent with borderline personality disorder (BPD), chances are your relationship with them as an adult is still complicated. Maybe you’ve tried to maintain contact and constantly find yourself overwhelmed, exhausted, or hurt. Or maybe you’ve stepped away entirely in an attempt to reclaim your peace.

Regardless of where you are in the process, what matters is this:
The emotional toll is real—and it deserves your attention.

While BPD can be managed with consistent therapy (especially through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT), many parents with BPD never seek treatment—or only engage inconsistently. And if that describes your experience, you’re not alone. So many adult children of BPD parents are left picking up the pieces on their own.

What is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)?

Borderline personality disorder is a mental health condition characterized by a chronic pattern of instability in relationships, emotional regulation, self-image, and behavior. While symptoms can vary from person to person, BPD often involves:

• Intense fear of abandonment—real or imagined

• Highly unstable, love/hate relationships

• Identity disturbance

• Impulsivity (often in harmful or risky ways)

• Chronic emotional volatility

• Recurrent suicidal behavior or self-harm

• Deep feelings of emptiness

• Intense or inappropriate anger

• Paranoia or dissociation under stress

Important note: Only a licensed mental health professional can diagnose BPD. If your parent hasn’t been formally diagnosed, but you recognize these patterns, you’re still allowed to seek support and set boundaries.

Growing Up With a Parent Who Has BPD

Being raised by a parent with borderline personality disorder is often confusing and traumatic. One moment, they may seem loving, generous, and engaged. The next, they might explode in anger, withdraw completely, or accuse you of betraying them—over something you can’t even make sense of.

This kind of emotional unpredictability wires children to walk on eggshells. It teaches you that safety is conditional and love can vanish without warning.

Many adult children of BPD parents grow up feeling:

• Hyper-responsible for others' emotions

• Terrified of setting boundaries or saying no

• Paralyzed by conflict

• Unsure of how to trust themselves

• Stuck in relationships that mimic old family patterns

And often, they were parentified at a young age—forced to take care of their parent emotionally or even physically during the time their parent should have been caring for them. What some people praised as being “mature for your age” was, in reality, a survival strategy that cost you your ability to truly be a child.

What It Looks Like Now

If you’re still in contact with your BPD parent, the relationship likely still feels one-sided or emotionally overwhelming. You may find yourself:

• Sacrificing your time, energy, or peace to avoid setting them off

• Avoiding boundaries altogether out of fear of their reaction

• Walking back your boundaries once they become upset

• Apologizing for things you didn’t do

• Comforting them when you were the one hurt

If you’ve gone no-contact, you may still carry guilt, grief, or self-doubt around your decision—even when it was the healthiest option.

Healing From a Parent With Borderline Personality Disorder

Healing from a relationship with a parent who has BPD is possible. But it takes more than simply limiting contact or setting boundaries. It requires processing the emotional complexity of your upbringing—and learning how to stop internalizing someone else’s instability as your responsibility.

Working with a therapist who truly understands borderline personality disorder can be life-changing. You need someone who not only sees the trauma you’ve experienced, but also understands the nuances of how BPD impacts a family system.

It’s especially important to work with a therapist who can help you navigate:

• Guilt and fear around setting boundaries

• Your parent’s potential for emotional retaliation

• Safety concerns if your parent engages in self-harming or suicidal behaviors

• Communication strategies that are effective with a parent with BPD

• Grief over the parent-child relationship you deserved but didn’t get

Today, I specialize in working with adults who were raised by a parent with borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder. I understand the chaos, the guilt, the grief, and the resilience it takes to even contemplate breaking the toxic cycle you grew up in.

If you’re ready, I’d love to be a part of your healing journey.

I am a therapist who specializes in online therapy for the adult children of parents with borderline personality disorder. Schedule a consultation to see how online therapy can help you.

Healing from a toxic relationship with a parent who has borderline personality disorder.

In order to heal from your relationship with a parent who has BPD, you have to allow yourself the opportunity to heal. That means taking the time to really process how this dynamic impacted you during your childhood and as an adult. Therapy is one way you can do this in a safe and supportive environment. If you’re seeking therapy to process this complicated dynamic, I highly encourage you to work with a therapist who has experience working with clients who have borderline personality disorder.

This is because it’s incredibly important for the therapist you’re working with to really understand how this disorder impacts your parent and you, as well as understand how to help you effectively establish healthy boundaries with someone who has BPD. One of the common symptoms of BPD is recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-harming behavior. So, taking into consideration your safety as well as your concerns about how your parent might react is extremely important.

I spent over half of my career working with clients with borderline personality disorder, and I now I focus the majority of my private practice on working with the adult children of parents with BPD.

As an adult, if you still have a relationship with your BPD parent, it is almost certainly a complicated one. You may find yourself constantly putting your own life and relationships on the back burner in attempts to appease your parent with BPD. You may be so fearful of their reaction to you setting boundaries that you just don’t even try to establish them. Or maybe you do try, but their reaction is so destructive and upsetting that you immediately walk them back. You may actually find yourself comforting them when you were initially trying to express how their actions hurt you.