Borderline Personality Greiving, advise please

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My youngest brother has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Also, as some people know, my mother died very suddenly and unexpectedly about 4is months ago (end of July/beginning of August).

My question for everyone is how to help my brother with his grief. He seems to be avoiding his grief, and self-inhibiting the grieving process. He actively avoids any triggers that remind him of our loss, and this has led to him refusing to talk to me or my family and currently he has decided to go against the plans that have been made for Thanksgiving by refusing to come.

I do not know if it is better to leave him alone as he stated is his desire, or if it would be better to force him to confront his loss and how life is different now. I know the emotions of pain he feels are super intense and that is one reason he avoids them, but I also know that if he does not face those emotions and express them in some manner it will never get better. The pain does not magically get better one day if all you do is avoid it. If you confront the pain, it will with time grow less.

Any advise would be appreciated.

Hi, from a variety of posts here at WP I gather there is overlap between being borderline and being on the spectrum, either in the diagnosis and/or the actual conditions.

No, I would not advise trying to force your brother to interact over Thanksgiving. Go sideways. Try and do something else. Maybe invite him to something the week after the Holiday weekend or sincerely ask for his help if there is such a project where you really need his help.

I kind of like the idea of paying respects to the loss of a loved one, which your brother may have already done, without trying to demand one experience certain emotions. You know, the whole Kubler-Ross model of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, well, some researchers have done studies and have found that it just does not apply to everyone.

One of the problems with inviting him to do something after the holiday is we live in different cities, five hours apart, and I have work during the week most of the time. Most of the time he ignores my messages when I ask for help.

I am also all for alternative ways of grieving. The way I grieved was very different than most of my family, but it was still away for me to confront my loss. My denial and anger might have looked a bit different, but they were still there. Bargaining- not so much, it never made sense or seemed logical. My worry is that my brother is not engaging in any form of grieving, he is only avoiding. I would be thrilled if he was doing something, anything to grieve.

Why grieving is important does not seem to be very clear. But there is still a high correlation of the necessity of going through some part of the grieving process instead of inhibiting it, and that way each time you have a reminder or trigger of your loss, you are again at point 1 with acute grief.

I do not really think that it is a good idea to confront my brother, but I do not know what to do.

At the end of the day, it is your brother's life, even though he is a younger brother. And it is his decisions to make.

One thing I was thinking of, there is the possibility of doing a one year anniversity celebration of your mother's life. And if things are not getting better, maybe you could move this up to a six month anniversity?

And also maybe something as tangible and as practical as a facebook page raising money for a charity. And this could either be something which might help other people from what caused the death of your mother. Or, it could be a completely different charitable cause, but one which your mother believed in. This second path in some ways might be the better way.

We called the service for my mom a celebration service, this made my brother very angry. We are supposed to use Christmas as a celebration of my mom's life, but my brother is resistant to this idea. we have done several activities to support causes my mom cared about, but my brother has gotten incredibly angry when these activities have been brought up.

What I would really like to know is from a person with borderline personality, how they worked through grief.

My brother does not think like a person on the autism spectrum, nor does he think like a normal person.