stop caretaking the borderline or narcissist

It describes the process of healing from being a caretaker using Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, also including three more specifically for Caretakers: Setting Boundaries, Letting Go, and Rebuilding all of this is director toward moving a Caretaker to Self-Care. In the middle section of the book, titled Letting go of Caretaking, Fjelstad provides readers with guidance on how to break free of the caretaker role even if they choose to continue their relationship with the BP/NP. She ends with saying that the BP/NP cannot be changed and so any improvement must come from the Caretaker’s side, starting with letting go of the hope that Caretaking will work.

By focusing on the emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and relationship distortions of Caretakers within their relationship to the BP/NP, she shows readers how caretaking inevitably leads to an endless cycle of relationship chaos, self-neglect, and despair. Fjelstad then helps the reader understand how well-meaning individuals can become Caretakers and continue to stay in this role out of fear, obligation, and guilt. Fjelstad then explains the Caretaker term, or someone who gives up their identity to meet the emotional needs of a borderline or narcissistic loved one, and points out some typical feelings of a Caretaker and the different types of Caretakers. She helps the layperson understand these disorders by using accessible terms, specific examples, and DSM IV criteria. In first section of the book, titled Understanding the Caretaker Role, Fjelstad provides the reader with the tools to identify whether he or she is or acts like a Caretaker (with a recommended Caretaker Test in the appendix), as compared to merely an altruist, and whether a loved one is a BP/NP, along with an overview of borderline and narcissistic personality disorders using a biopsychosocial and casework based approach from the author’s own experiences as a psychotherapist who specializes in the relationships of BP/NPs. Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get on with Life by Margalis Fjelstad is self-help book for those who are trapped in a dysfunctional and self-destructive relationship with loved ones who have borderline or narcissistic personality disorders. However, these defense mechanisms are extremely harmful to those who live with the BP/NP, and occasionally, those mechanisms will draw a well-meaning person into a degrading and crazy-making relationship, henceforth referred to as Caretaking. Those who suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder or from Borderline Personality Disorder (Henceforth to be referred to as NPD and BPD individually and as BP/NP as a group) tend to employ an array of both normal and abnormal defense mechanisms, which are automatic mental responses designed to protect the ego from stress, anxiety or conflict.

Stop caretaking the borderline or narcissist