The Shame Storm: Why the Tools Disappear in BPD
One of the most frustrating parts of BPD - for both teens and parents - is that all the work done in therapy doesn’t seem to translate to the moments where it matters most.
When the emotional storm comes, there’s no room for clarity. The part of your child that knows how to pause, breathe, name their feelings, or walk away goes offline. And what takes over is raw emotion: the rage, the fear, the desperation.
And when they come back online - when they “surface” - they’re met with wreckage, damage, and overwhelming shame when they realize what they’ve done.
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I remember one time in high school, I wanted my mom to drive me to a friend’s house. I was glad to be invited somewhere, and have an escape from lying in bed and scrolling. It was also someone I really wanted to be friends with, someone cool, whose approval would have meant something to me. I was eager to go and work against the way I felt - uncool, worthless, pathetic. She said no. She wasn’t angry or mean, just tired.
I lost it. Why didn’t she understand how much this meant to me? Why didn’t she get this could be the difference between me crying myself to sleep tonight, or feeling kind of okay? I feel so horrible all the time, I deserve this! I deserve to go! Full screaming, slamming doors, calling her names. I said things no one should say to another person. Things that, even now, I can’t write down. Things that I knew would hurt her.
And then I saw her face. Eyes brimming with tears. It was like the wave pulled back and I could finally see the destruction. Her expression - the way she looked at me, or maybe the way she couldn’t look at me - wrecked me. I felt the shame rush in like a tide. I wanted to take it back. I wanted to erase what I had done. I knew “I’m sorry” wouldn’t be enough, and honestly, it made me feel worse just to say it. Because what would it fix? The damage was already done.
And the worst part wasn’t that it had happened - it was that it had happened again. Not the third time. Not the fifth. Not the tenth. It had been too many times to count. And deep down, I knew it would happen again. That’s when the self-hatred comes in.
What is wrong with me?
Why do I always do this?
I’m a monster.
Why the Tools Don’t Show Up in the Heat of the Moment
I had done an intensive outpatient DBT program twice. I had been in years of weekly therapy. I was on five different meds. But even with therapy, DBT skills, and support, when the nervous system is hijacked, the tools disappear. “Wise Mind” can feel a million miles away. When we’re overwhelmed and upset, we don’t want to reach for TIPP (holding ice etc). In the storm, it can feel impossible to remember what we practiced in calmer moments.
That doesn’t mean the tools don’t work. It means we need to practice in a different way.
What Finally Helped
Track the signs of dysregulation.
For me, the shift started with awareness - learning how to notice when I wasn’t calm within myself. My signals looked like this:
Everything feels urgent.
I feel alarmingly misunderstood and unsafe.
Rage or shutdown floods in, and I want to escape or lash out.
Those signs became my cue to step back. If I felt myself gearing up - heat rising in my chest, vision narrowing, everything seeming black - that was my signal to pause. Instead of going into a screaming match, I would go for a walk and only return when I felt different.
One framework I use for this is Coping State vs. Growth State. When I’m in a coping state, it’s not the time for conversations or problem-solving. My only job is to survive the wave. Once I’m back in a growth state, then I can reflect, repair, and connect.
I encourage the young people I work with to develop their own language for this awareness. Some say, “I’m offline,” or “I’m in the cave,” or “I’m underwater.” The words don’t matter as much as the practice of naming what’s happening inside - because naming creates space. And that space can be the difference between escalation and calm.
Practice the skills when calm.
Another teen I work with told me something brilliant: “I need to practice my skills when emotions aren’t high.” She was right. Getting the reps in when the stakes were low made her more fluent in the techniques that worked for her. Then, when the waves did rise, her body and mind already knew the motions.
Hold onto the possibility of change.
Perhaps the hardest and most important piece is hope. When you live with BPD, it can feel like you’re permanently out of control, broken beyond repair. Shame convinces us not to even try. We’re so afraid of facing the wreckage we’ve caused that we double down, retreat, or shut down. Because healing means confronting everything that’s happened, and looking at it bravely. We’re so afraid of that, we can avoid the process for years.
But real change begins with the willingness to believe that things can be different. That we can feel differently. That repair is possible. And in those moments, self-forgiveness becomes the bridge. When we look, we must do so with courage, and also with compassion in our hearts.
A Word for Parents
If you’re a parent watching your child struggle, the discouragement you feel is real. It can be heartbreaking to be years into this journey - after so much time, energy, and investment - and still feel like you’re struggling. That’s often when the narrative creeps in that there is no hope, that change isn’t possible. That is certainly how I felt as a young person.
But we must believe it is. We must trust that healing is possible, even if the path looks different than we imagined. Sometimes it isn’t about working harder - it’s about finding something different, something that truly works for your child in this season.
Therapy isn’t wasted, even if the skills don’t always show up in the storm. Every practice round matters. Every pause, every attempt, every repair is a brick in the foundation. Over time, those moments of awareness begin to build a new pathway forward.
My hope is that these ideas give you fresh ways to support your child - and, most of all, remind you that healing is possible.
