APA Citation
Mason, P., & Kreger, R. (2019). Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder. New Harbinger Publications.
Summary
Therapist Paul Mason and author Randi Kreger provide a comprehensive guide for people in relationships with someone with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The book explains BPD symptoms, the intense emotions and fear of abandonment that drive behavior, and why partners often feel like they're "walking on eggshells." It offers practical strategies for setting boundaries, communicating effectively, and protecting yourself while maintaining (or ending) the relationship. Though focused on BPD, the strategies apply broadly to dealing with emotionally dysregulated individuals.
Why This Matters for Survivors
While focused on BPD, this book resonates with survivors of narcissistic relationships because both involve emotional volatility, boundary violations, and the "walking on eggshells" experience. The overlap between BPD and NPD—and the frequent co-occurrence—means strategies for one often help with the other. If your relationship involved intense emotional swings, fear-driven behavior, and constant vigilance, this book offers practical strategies.
What This Work Establishes
‘Walking on eggshells’ is a recognized experience. Living with someone with BPD (or NPD) creates a pattern of constant vigilance and self-monitoring that has identifiable features and consequences.
Family members need support too. Beyond clinical treatment for the person with BPD, those affected by their behavior need their own understanding, strategies, and community.
Boundaries are essential. Setting and maintaining clear boundaries protects the non-BPD person while creating structure that can actually help the relationship.
Informed decisions require understanding. Understanding BPD helps family members make better decisions about staying, changing the relationship, or leaving—without either demonizing or enabling.
Why This Matters for Survivors
Your experience has a name. If you lived in constant vigilance, monitoring every word for potential triggers, the “walking on eggshells” framework validates your experience—whether the person had BPD, NPD, or both.
Strategies transfer across disorders. BPD and NPD overlap significantly. Boundary-setting, communication techniques, and self-protection strategies designed for BPD relationships often work for narcissistic ones too.
You couldn’t have fixed them. A core message is that you can’t control another person’s emotional dysregulation or personality disorder. Your job is to manage yourself and make decisions about what you will and won’t accept.
Deciding is in your control. The book helps you assess your situation and make informed decisions—staying with changes, staying as-is, or leaving—rather than feeling trapped without options.
Clinical Implications
Support affected family members. People in relationships with those with personality disorders need their own treatment focus—not just secondary attention to “the identified patient.”
Teach specific skills. Boundary-setting, communication techniques, and self-protection strategies can be explicitly taught to family members dealing with emotionally dysregulated loved ones.
Address guilt about boundaries. Family members often feel guilty about setting limits. Normalize boundaries as self-protection that may actually benefit both parties.
Help with decision-making. Many patients are stuck between staying and leaving. Help them assess their specific situation rather than prescribing either course.
How This Work Is Used in the Book
Mason and Kreger’s framework appears in chapters on Cluster B overlap and boundaries:
“The ‘walking on eggshells’ experience—constant vigilance, self-monitoring, trying to avoid triggering explosions—occurs in both BPD and narcissistic relationships. Mason and Kreger’s strategies for setting boundaries, communicating during emotional crises, and protecting yourself while making decisions about the relationship apply across Cluster B dynamics. Understanding that you can’t fix the other person’s emotional dysregulation—you can only manage yourself—is essential whether you’re dealing with BPD, NPD, or both.”
Historical Context
First published in 1998, Stop Walking on Eggshells became a landmark resource as BPD was becoming better understood and family members sought practical guidance. The book helped establish the perspective that those affected by personality disorders also deserve support, not just the diagnosed individual.
Randi Kreger’s work extended beyond the book to create BPD Central, an online community supporting family members. The 2019 third edition incorporates updated understanding of BPD and new strategies. The book remains the standard resource for family members, though some clinicians have critiqued its focus on the family member’s perspective at the expense of empathy for the person with BPD.
Further Reading
- Kreger, R. (2008). The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder. Hazelden.
- Chapman, A.L., & Gratz, K.L. (2007). The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide. New Harbinger.
- Linehan, M.M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Guilford Press.
- Porr, V. (2010). Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder. Oxford University Press.
About the Author
Paul T. Mason, MS is a therapist specializing in personality disorders. Randi Kreger is an author and advocate who founded the BPD Central website and has written extensively on living with BPD family members.
The book, first published in 1998 and updated through multiple editions, became the standard resource for family members of people with BPD. Kreger's work as both author and community builder created a support network for people in these relationships.
Historical Context
First published in 1998, *Stop Walking on Eggshells* appeared as BPD was becoming better understood and family members were seeking practical guidance. The book helped establish the perspective that people affected by someone's BPD also deserve support and strategies—a complement to clinical approaches focused on the person with BPD.
Frequently Asked Questions
Walking on eggshells describes the constant vigilance of living with someone whose emotions are unpredictable and intense. You monitor your words and actions constantly, trying to avoid triggering an explosion. You lose spontaneity and authenticity as you focus entirely on managing the other person's emotional state.
BPD involves intense fear of abandonment, emotional instability, and often self-harm. NPD involves grandiosity, entitlement, and lack of empathy. However, they overlap significantly and can co-occur. Both involve boundary violations, emotional manipulation, and difficulty in relationships.
The 'walking on eggshells' experience occurs in both BPD and NPD relationships. Strategies for setting boundaries, protecting yourself, and communicating assertively apply broadly. Many relationships involve features of both disorders, making this resource valuable.
Splitting is seeing things as all-good or all-bad with no middle ground. One day you're idealized; the next you're devalued. This occurs in both BPD and NPD (the idealize-devalue cycle), creating the disorienting experience of being treated as wonderful then terrible without apparent reason.
Key strategies include: setting and maintaining clear boundaries, using specific communication techniques (SET-UP system), understanding that you can't fix the other person, taking responsibility only for your own behavior, building a support network, and making decisions about staying or leaving.
The book recommends: stating boundaries clearly without justification, focusing on your behavior not theirs ('I will leave if you yell'), maintaining consistency, accepting that they may not respect boundaries initially, and following through with consequences. Boundaries protect you; they don't control the other person.
It depends on many factors: whether they're in treatment, your own resources and limits, the presence of abuse, and whether improvement is occurring. The book helps readers assess their situation and make informed decisions without prescribing a particular outcome.
SET-UP stands for Support (showing you care), Empathy (acknowledging their feelings), Truth (stating reality), Understanding (showing you get why it's hard), Perseverance (maintaining your position). It's a framework for communicating during intense emotional moments without either caving or escalating.