Objective

This memo is a glossary of terms for things related to Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

Subjective

Glossary

• Abandonment Sensitivity - An extreme fear of being left, ignored, or rejected—real or imagined. Even minor acts like being late or ending a phone call may trigger panic, rage, or despair.

• Boundary Testing - Behaviors that provoke or challenge established boundaries, often to confirm whether the relationship or person is safe, consistent, or abandoning.

• Devaluation - Seeing someone as all bad, often after a perceived failure or slight. Can follow immediately after idealization and is often not remembered or acknowledged afterward.

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) -

  The gold-standard treatment for BPD, focusing on skills like emotion regulation, mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance

• Distortion Campaign - A systematic effort to discredit or smear a person who has attempted to set boundaries or leave the relationship—often involving lies or exaggerated claims

• Emotional Dysregulation - Inability to manage intense emotional responses, leading to extreme mood swings, anger, or despair, often out of proportion to external events.

• Emotional Hemophilia -

  A metaphor describing the lack of an emotional “clotting” mechanism. Borderlines may experience deep psychological pain from small emotional “pricks”

• Enmeshment -

  A relationship in which boundaries between individuals are blurred, and identity becomes intertwined. Often presents as codependency or “fusion” in BPD dynamics.

• False Emergency -

• fawning - One of the four trauma responses (alongside fight, flight, and freeze). Characterized by people-pleasing, appeasement, and self-sacrifice to prevent emotional volatility or abandonment.

• Flying Monkey - A term borrowed from The Wizard of Oz—refers to third parties the person with BPD may manipulate into doing their bidding, spreading rumors, or pressuring someone to return or apologize

• Hoovering - Attempts by the person with BPD to “suck you back in” after a breakup or boundary has been set, often through dramatic gestures, self-harm threats, or love-bombing.

• Idealization -

  Seeing someone as perfect, savior-like, or all-good. Typically occurs in the honeymoon stage of a BPD relationship. It often flips to devaluation with a single perceived slight.

• Identity Diffusion -

  A hallmark trait of BPD: the absence of a stable and consistent self-image. The person may rapidly change careers, identities, values, or even sexual orientation

• Projection - Attributing one’s own unacceptable feelings or traits to someone else. For example, accusing you of lying when they are the one concealing something.

• Projective Identification -

  A more advanced form of projection in which the person unconsciously induces the other to feel or behave in ways that confirm the projection. This dynamic can trap non-BPs into roles that reflect the BPD person’s inner world

• Radical Acceptance - A DBT practice that emphasizes accepting things as they are—without resistance, even if painful—as a means of ending suffering.

• Reactive Abuse - When a victim lashes out in desperation or defense after prolonged emotional or psychological abuse—only to have their reaction used as “proof” that they are the abuser.

• Rescue Triangle (Drama Triangle) -

  A relational dynamic in which people shift between the roles of victim, rescuer, and persecutor. Often maps onto BPD relationships where all three roles may be played by each person in the same interaction.

• Splitting -

  A defense mechanism in which people are viewed as all good or all bad. A person with BPD may idolize someone one day and demonize them the next. This creates unstable and chaotic relational dynamics

• Walking on Eggshells - A metaphor used to describe the experience of being in a relationship with someone with BPD—feeling like any misstep could trigger an emotional explosion

Contexts

• #borderline-personality-disorder-lexicon (this is the Root Memo)

• ️#borderline-personality-disorder (See: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD))

• #glossary