Both my sister and I are diagnosed with BPD stemming from childhood neglect. My parents worked really hard to afford a roof over our heads/food on the table, so they were rarely home, I don’t blame them at all, they were doing their best and are extremely loving and supportive. I’ve been doing therapy for a few years now and am happy with my progress. I want to encourage her to do the same as it’s changed my life, but she’s refused to after her first 2-3 sessions earlier this year, and I don’t want to push her to do something she doesn’t want to.

Our symptoms are very different, though we both fear abandonment more than anything. I’m constantly finding myself walking on eggshells around her since she has a habit of assuming how I feel. She says she’s extremely empathetic and therefore can sense my thoughts/feelings. I’m uncomfortable with being confrontational so I slowly ask her to please not put thoughts in my head, but she ends up going on a rant and shouting at me. She also does this with her friends, romantic partners, and coworkers.

She’s in so much pain, but I can’t help her. She often comes to me for advice about how people in her life are gaslighting her, but if I bring up inconsistencies in her stories (or even events I’ve witnessed myself), she starts shouting at me too.
I feel I can’t leave her, because my family and her close friends have set boundaries away from her, she feels extremely abandoned and has threatened suicide if I do the same (she has also done this to her boyfriends). I feel like nothing I do is right - she asks me why can’t people understand she has a personality disorder, and that people are fake when they act like they care, they abandon her the moment she slips up (but people have feelings too and shouldn’t deal with someone lashing out on them or blowing up their phones with insults right?). She’s so charming, so she has no trouble making friends, she just struggles keeping them.

She says my BPD was never bad, because I’ve always had really healthy, stable, long-term friendships/relationships, it makes me feel so invalidated in because it dismisses all the other ways BPD has inflicted pain on me.

I feel this community is the only place I can share this without her being demonized, she has BPD and exhibits very common symptoms, but it’s so hard to be by her side despite us sharing the same disorder. I think I need to set boundaries too, but I don’t want to cause her more hurt.