Most patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) live constricted lives that offer few opportunities to engage in activities and relationships that are satisfying or offer opportunities for personal growth and fulfilment. The struggle with painful emotions causes patients to shut down and their behavioural horizons to shrink (see Chapter 15), and even when distress subsides, this constricted way of living often continues. For treatment to be successful, patients need to build a life worth living. This requires both a coherent sense of self and an environment that supports the changes they have made and provides opportunities for further growth. This chapter considers the second requirement – how to help patients create a personal world that supports a more adaptive and rewarding life.

The Idea of a Personal Niche

Although the environment is an important part of a person's life, it is often neglected in therapy because it is implicitly assumed to be independent of the person. But this is not the case. Healthy individuals do not react passively to the environment. Instead, they actively shape their world over time to create a personal niche that is congenial to them. They seek out situations and individuals to establish a niche that organizes their lives; offers outlets for needs, abilities, talents, and aspirations; supports their interests; and provides opportunities for personal satisfaction and a contented way of living. Successful niches enable people to act in accordance with their basic nature, thereby promoting feelings of authenticity, cohesion, and integration.

The idea of a personal niche also draws attention to the intimate relationship between the self and the environment. We saw earlier the importance of the social environment in constructing the self and how self-knowledge and self-understanding are acquired through interaction with others. However, as discussed in the previous chapter, the self is not a static structure: once formed, the self is actively involved in coordinating the internal conditions of the person with the external environment and in managing the relationship between the individual and his or her world. Healthy individuals gradually create a personal space that supports adaptive activity and provides opportunities for self-expression.