I was writing a response to another poster when I came up with an analogy I wanted to share with you guys:

Imagine you are driving a car. One other person is in the back seat. Together, you have decided to go on a road trip. The first leg of this trip is roughly 8 hours.

The other person could be anyone you've known for the entirety of your life, perhaps a sibling or a childhood friend. You've known them forever. And you love them--after all, they're practically family. But unfortunately, this person has a few personality traits that can make them difficult to deal with at times.

When you first embarked on this road trip, the other person was some incoherent form of intoxicated. And so for the greater majority of this trip, your friend continuously tries to jump from the back seat to the front and steal the wheel from you. 

As the sober driver, at first you are terrified. Your friend is out of control and gripping the wheel erratically, causing you to swerve into oncoming traffic. They are in no shape to drive whatsoever, hence why you agreed to drive in the first place. After numerous attempts, you are faced with a challenging decision. What do you do with your friend? You can't throw him or her out--you're in the middle of nowhere and they would have no way to get home. Additionally, you love them like family and can't do that to someone you care about. 

So you pull over, have a serious talk with your friend, offer him or her water and/or food to help with the sobering up process, and ask him or her to keep themselves strapped in for the remainder of the drive.

You may have to pull over once or twice more and have this conversation again. Eventually your friend falls asleep. A few hours later, they awake and apologize for their behavior. From there, the rest of your trip goes well.

In this scenario, you (the driver) are the wise mind. Your friend is your emotional mind. In this situation, allowing your friend to take the wheel would be dangerous and potentially life-threatening. At the same time, denying your emotions altogether would be the equivalent of throwing your friend out. Pulling over to the side of the road, talking with your friend, giving them food and water, and allowing time to pass are DBT skills. These skills help lessen the intensity of your emotional mind and allow your wise mind to do what it needs to.


Living with BPD is about striking a balance between these two forms of thinking so that you can embark on the ultimate road trip of living your life healthily and sustainably.

