Written by Cheryl Hamilton, LPCC, a therapist at Columbus Counseling Group with nearly 20 years in the field. Our practice specializes in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and borderline personality disorder, and we’ve been teaching these skills to loved ones in local classes since 2016.
Someone who took a class of mine told me afterward that for the first time, she really understood what was going on with her loved one. She realized her loved one wasn’t being manipulative or trying to hurt her on purpose, she simply didn’t have the skills yet to manage her emotions. That one shift changed how she showed up in the relationship from then on. It’s just one epiphany out of many I’ve watched people have in these classes over the years, but it’s one of the most common and one of the most life-changing.
If you love someone who struggles this way, you may already feel like you’ve landed in a foreign country. Nobody handed you a map. Nobody taught you the language. You’re doing your best to guess the customs, and you keep guessing wrong. Then, at some point, someone finally explains it in words that make sense and the relief is enormous. That’s what this guide is trying to do for you.
This isn’t a general mental health article. It’s built around the exact questions I hear over and over, in class after class, from people just like you.
This Is for You If You’re at Your Wit’s End
Over many years of doing this work, I’ve met with spouses, parents, siblings, and best friends of people who struggle with big emotions or with borderline personality disorder. Every relationship looks different. The feelings people bring in almost never are — shame, sadness, fear, embarrassment, and usually the quiet belief that they’re the only one going through this. You’re not. This guide is built for exactly where you are right now.
What Is Emotional Regulation and What Is Dysregulation?
Emotional regulation is the skill of feeling a big emotion without being completely taken over by it. A regulated person can feel angry, scared, or hurt, and still think clearly, speak calmly, and make good choices.
This matters because it changes how you respond. You cannot logic someone out of a state where logic isn’t currently working. That single idea changes almost everything else in this guide.
Remember that shift from the opening from “why would they do this to me” to “they don’t have this skill yet.” Same person, same behavior, completely different relationship once you see it that way.
“I Feel Helpless to Help My Loved One. How Do I Help Them?”
Helplessness usually comes from one thing: you’re trying to fix the emotion instead of ride it out with them.
Here’s the shift I teach in class: your job in the moment is not to solve, explain, or convince. Your job is to be a steady presence until the wave passes. That’s it. That is the help.
A few things that actually work:
- Lower your voice instead of raising it. Calm is contagious, but so is panic.
- Say less. In a dysregulated moment, a long explanation is just more noise.
- Stay in the room (or nearby) without demanding they talk to you right away.
- Wait for calm before you problem-solve. Timing matters more than wording.
You are not helpless. You’re just aiming the help at the wrong moment. Save the conversation, the advice, and the “let’s figure this out” for after the storm, not during it.
“I Feel Like Everything I Say Upsets Them. What Am I Doing Wrong?”
This is one of the most common things I hear, and almost every time, the answer is the same: you’re trying to help before you validate.
Validation is one of the core skills we teach in DBT, and it’s the art of letting someone know their feeling makes sense, before you say anything else, including advice, before you say “but,” and before you try to fix it. It sounds simple. In my experience, it is one of the hardest skills people ever learn, because it goes against instinct. When someone we love is upset, our instinct is to jump straight to solving it. Validation asks us to pause there first.
What validation is not: agreeing that their reaction was the right one, or that the situation is as bad as it feels in the moment. Validation only says: I see why you’d feel this way. That’s the whole job.
One thing I always teach: this has to come from real curiosity, not a script. If validation is used as a technique to get someone to calm down or to change their behavior faster, it usually falls flat. People can tell the difference between “I see why you feel this way” said with genuine curiosity and the same words said to manage them. The words only work when the curiosity behind them is real.
This is the pattern I’ve watched play out again and again in class: someone finally validates before they advise, and the reaction they get back is completely different, softer, calmer, more open. Same person. Same problem. Different result. That’s the power of doing it in this order.
A simple way to practice it:
- “That sounds really frustrating” before any advice.
- “I get why that would hurt” before any explanation.
- “Makes sense you’d be upset about that” before any fix.
If you skip straight to the fix, even good advice, it often lands as you don’t understand me. That’s usually the actual thing upsetting them, not what you said, but what you skipped. (When to Apologize Instagram Post)
“How Do I Help My Loved One Who Doesn’t Want to Accept Help?”
This one is hard, and I want to be honest with you: you cannot make someone ready before they’re ready. But you can make it easier for them to get there.
A few things that genuinely move the needle:
- Stop leading with the diagnosis or the label. Lead with the specific moment that’s hard for them, in their own words.
- Offer help as an option, not a demand. “I’m here if you ever want to talk to someone” lands very differently than “you need therapy.”
- Keep showing up steady and consistent, even when they say no. Readiness is often built slowly, through trust, not through a single convincing conversation.
- Take care of yourself in the meantime. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and burnout often pushes people toward pressure, which usually backfires.
Refusal today doesn’t mean refusal forever. In my experience, the shift toward accepting help rarely comes from one big talk. It comes from a slow accumulation of feeling safe enough to try.
One Last Thing: These Skills Aren’t Just for This Relationship
Something I want you to know, because I’ve seen it prove true again and again: these skills — staying calm, validating before advising, being patient with readiness — are not specific to one diagnosis or one relationship. They’re basic human skills for handling anyone in distress: a coworker, a friend, a parent, even yourself. Learning them for one relationship tends to make every relationship in your life a little steadier.
And one more thing worth holding onto: the goal here was never just to get through the next crisis. In DBT, we talk about building a life worth living — not just a life without a crisis in it, but one with real satisfaction. That goal applies to your loved one, and it applies to you too. You’re allowed to want a good life alongside them, not just a survivable one.
You didn’t get a map for this. Hopefully, this is a little bit of one.
View a free class on YouTube “Introduction to DBT Treatment” here to learn more!
This guide reflects patterns observed across many years of clinical practice and does not describe any single client or individual. If you or a loved one are in crisis, please contact a licensed mental health professional or local crisis line.
