re: 12 Year Old Girl with BPD

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What you need to do is get professional help. The root of bpd is a problem with emotional regulation. This is a brain problem, not a will power or personality issue. Her hormones and emotions are swinging wildly and she can’t control it any more than you can control the weather. She needs a professional to do a few important things:

1. Prescribe medication that can help keep the swings less severe. These can help to keep her from swinging from manic crazy to depressed suicidal 5 times a day.

2. Learn the fears and traumas underlying these emotions. While the emotions are irrational, they are often fed by real fears from actual childhood experiences. Exploring them and understanding them can take the power away from them and help heal wounds she didn’t even know were there. Imagine experiencing horrific pain that makes it difficult to walk, everyone telling you what a failure you are for not being able to run as fast as everyone else, only to finally go to a doctor and find out you have a tumor growing on your hip. Until she finds the root of the fear, those emotional swings will control her rather than the other way around.

3. Suicidal threats are often a manipulation technique or a cry for attention, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be taken deadly seriously. Through therapy, she can learn better ways to seek the attention and care she wants or achieve the desired outcome.

4. Being a tween is hard AF. It’s the most difficult age. It’s totally fine to be a weird kid when you’re little. As long as you’re somewhat positive, other kids will still be friends with you and play with you. When you hit 12, being weird becomes a HUGE problem. Kids start playing the popularity game and anyone the least bit outside the mainstream will be bullied unless they conform. For weird kids, especially introverted or mildly autistic ones, they will struggle because they’re not weird because they choose to. They don’t understand human behavior. They don’t know how to conform and no one is going to teach them. This can build up intense emotions of anger, self-loathing, resentment, rejection, and loneliness. A 12 year old brain often isn’t developed enough to really process all of this effectively. A professional can help them process these feelings, learn how to adapt socially without sacrificing their individuality, and channel those negative emotions into something positive.

My prayers go out to you. I was a really troubled kid at 13. I wish I had parents who took it more seriously. Maybe if I was as in-your-face about it as your daughter is, I would have gotten help for it at 13 instead of 28.

She needs to know you love her, that you’re worried about her, and that you just want to protect her, not change her.

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I take it back, this is the best advice in this thread. Extremely constructive, empathetic, and actionable advice.