There’s a lot of stigma associated with borderline personality disorder. People with BPD are often categorised as reactive, angry, volatile, and manipulative, while their strengths, empathy, and courage are overlooked. This stigma can be internalised by those with BPD, damaging the self-worth of a group of people who already have very low self-esteem.

Internal family systems give us a way of understanding borderline personality disorder that appreciates each individual’s authentic self rather than reducing them to certain traits and behaviours. It understands BPD as the consequence of trauma (especially childhood trauma) whose deep wounds cause protective actions, such as rage, control, or self-harm). But alongside these parts is their authentic self that has the potential to lead the parts – and IFS seeks to restore this authentic self.

How Does Internal Family Systems Understand BPD?

IFS conceptualises every person as made up of many parts and an authentic self that can lead them. Every person has these parts – whether or not they’ve experienced trauma or have a mental health disorder. But when someone lives through trauma, their authentic self becomes separated from their parts. This means that their parts can start to dominate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours while the authentic self withdraws.

Wounded, Child-Like Parts

When someone experiences trauma as a child, certain parts of them ‘freeze’. These wounded, child-like parts have feelings and reactions that made sense at the time the trauma was experienced – but continue to exist in the same way years later, even when the source of harm has passed.

For example, someone with BPD may experience an intense fear of abandonment and make desperate (and sometimes harmful) attempts to avoid it. These thoughts and behaviours would have made sense during childhood experiences of abuse or neglect from a caregiver. But as adolescents or adults, it can cause anger, threats, or the preemptive ending of a relationship to avoid the expected abandonment.

Other wounded parts (also known as exiles) might include feelings of worthlessness, loneliness, or shame.

Protectors: Managers and Firefighters

Protectors are parts of us that try to protect wounds and stop pain. There are two types of protectors: managers and firefighters.

Managers manage pain and distress in more moderate ways. Anxiety can be a manager, thinking things over and over to try and find solutions to protect wounds. Over-control can also act as a manager, attempting to control situations so that pain doesn’t arise.

Firefighters protect wounds in more extreme ways. This might involve angry responses when they feel like a wounded part is being hurt. People with BPD may also use self-harm or suicide attempts as a way to stop intolerable pain.

BPD Symptoms, Wounded Parts, and Protectors

BPD symptoms develop when these parts dominate a person’s inner world and external behaviours. Some core BPD traits like feelings of emptiness and fear of abandonment are wounded, child-like parts. Child-like parts may also idealise and attach to people around them.

 Other traits, such as intense angry reactions or self-destructive behaviours are firefighters. Separated from the authentic self, these parts come to the forefront of their actions.

People with BPD often shift quickly between different moods and behaviours. These shifts can be seen as the interplay between their different parts. Their child-like parts can be vulnerable, open, attached, and idealise another person. When a firefighter takes over, it can suddenly turn to intense anger or dismissal. Their manager may come forward and try to control or coerce the other.

Friends, families, and even mental health professionals can start to see these parts as defining this person, forgetting about the authentic self that exists beside them. 

IFS helps us to approach BPD with compassion and care. People with BPD are not essentially different to other people: everybody has wounded parts, managers, and firefighters. For people with BPD, trauma has caused separation from the authentic self; but they can be brought together again.

Restoring The Authentic Self

IFS aims to restore a person’s authentic self, which has the capacity to lead the wounded parts. Self-energy and self-leadership have distinctive qualities, such as compassion, courage, curiosity, connection, creativity, calmness, and clarity.

IFS seeks to help the authentic self become the leader of a person’s parts. An IFS therapist’s role isn’t to manage these parts themselves; instead, their role is to help the parts feel safe to step back so that the authentic self can come forward.

One of the reasons that parts are so extreme is that they are separated from the authentic self and don’t trust it. When the self tries to treat the parts with compassion, curiosity, or calmness, the parts may only reject it. This is reflected in the inability of people with BPD to self-soothe.

However, the more the authentic self leads the parts, the more the parts can trust the self. The relationship between the self and parts grows stronger, trust builds, and the self can take more space.

Importantly, IFS doesn’t aim to get rid of our parts but seeks to transform them. Parts like rage that may currently harm the self can take on a new role, like helping a person challenge people or systems that have oppressed them. In this way, the parts begin to help the authentic self rather than damage it.

One key IFS technique involves working with specific parts. The therapist may guide the individual to find and focus on the part, with the aim of befriending and transforming it.

This might involve:

• Understanding the part – where they feel it, what it looks like, and where it began.
• Exploring the role of the part – what does it fear? This might include fears of abandonment, not being listened to, or being undervalued.
• Considering what the part could do instead – how could it be used differently?
• Befriending the part with curious and compassionate self-energy – how do they feel about their part? 

As self-leadership grows and develops, people with BPD become closer to their authentic selves. Instead of being dominated by their parts, they can think and behave with compassion, creativity, and curiosity, following the values that give their lives meaning.