What Attachment and Control Reveal About BPD
There is a question many carers ask themselves quietly, often in moments of exhaustion or heartbreak: why can’t my loved one take control of their life? Why do they seem stuck in cycles of emotional chaos, broken relationships, or risky decisions even when they know the consequences? A 2021 study by Talia Hashworth, Samantha Reis, and Brin Grenyer offers part of the answer. It suggests that in Borderline Personality Disorder, difficulties with personal agency and insecure attachment may be deeply connected, shaping how people see themselves, how they relate to others, and how trapped they feel in their own lives.
The study looked at control, relationships, and BPD symptoms together
The researchers compared ninety-six people who met clinical thresholds for Borderline Personality Disorder with ninety-six people in a control group matched for age and gender. They measured three things in particular. First, they looked at personal agency using a locus of control scale. This is a way of asking whether people tend to believe they can influence what happens in their lives or whether they feel life simply happens to them.
Second, they looked at adult attachment style. Attachment styles describe how people tend to experience closeness, dependence, and trust in relationships. The categories included secure, fearful, preoccupied, and dismissive attachment. Third, they measured the severity of BPD symptoms.
What they found was clear. People with BPD had significantly lower personal agency and far higher rates of insecure attachment. In particular, fearful and preoccupied attachment were much more common. In the control group, people were more likely to have higher personal agency and secure attachment. This means they were more likely to feel both worthy of love and able to trust others.
For carers, this is extremely important because it helps explain why someone with BPD may appear unable to act, unable to trust support, and unable to hold onto stability even when help is available.
People with BPD were far more likely to feel that life was outside their control and that relationships were unsafe, unreliable, or full of threat.
What personal agency really means
Personal agency is the sense that your actions matter. It is the belief that you can make choices, influence outcomes, solve problems, and shape your own future. It does not mean feeling powerful all the time. It means believing that your effort has some effect and that you are not completely at the mercy of events.
This sense of agency is central to everyday functioning. It helps people set goals, tolerate setbacks, keep trying, and recover after mistakes. When personal agency is strong, a person may still feel upset, disappointed, or frightened, but they can usually hold on to the idea that something can be done.
When agency is low, life can feel very different. Problems feel bigger because the person does not believe they can change them. Support may feel less useful because they assume nothing will really help. Even simple steps can feel pointless if the person believes the outcome is already out of their hands.
For someone with BPD, this low sense of agency can become especially dangerous because it combines with emotional intensity, fear, shame, and unstable relationships. The result may be a person who does not merely struggle to act, but genuinely feels powerless to create a different life.
Why low agency is not the same as laziness or manipulation
One of the most useful parts of this research is that it changes the meaning of behaviour carers often struggle with. When a loved one does not follow through, seems unable to take responsibility, or repeatedly returns to the same painful patterns, it is easy to think they are refusing to help themselves. Sometimes carers are even told this directly by others.
But the study suggests that for many people with BPD, the problem may not be unwillingness as much as a deep belief that their actions will not work. If someone feels that every effort ends in failure, rejection, chaos, or collapse, they may stop trusting their own ability to change anything. In that state, even a well-meaning suggestion can feel like pressure rather than support.
This does not mean harmful behaviour should be excused. Accountability still matters. But it does mean that underneath apparent resistance there may be profound helplessness. The person may not be saying, “I won’t.” Internally, they may be living in the belief, “I can’t,” or even, “There is no point trying because it will all fall apart anyway.”
Low personal agency can look like avoidance or resistance, but underneath it may be a painful belief that nothing the person does will make any real difference.
Attachment helps explain why low agency becomes so powerful in BPD
The study found something especially important: attachment style helped explain the link between low personal agency and BPD symptoms. In other words, insecure attachment seemed to mediate the relationship. This means that low agency did not simply predict symptoms on its own. The way people related to others and to closeness played a crucial role in how those feelings of helplessness became part of BPD.
This makes sense when we think about attachment theory. Early relationships help shape whether we feel lovable, safe, and able to rely on others. If those relationships are inconsistent, frightening, rejecting, or emotionally confusing, a person may grow up believing both that they are not worthy of care and that others cannot be trusted.
When this kind of attachment insecurity combines with low agency, the result can be deeply destabilising. The person does not believe they can change their situation, and they also do not feel safe depending on other people. That leaves them trapped between powerlessness and mistrust.
For carers, this is a powerful lens. It suggests that what looks like refusal to engage may actually be the collision of two painful beliefs: “I can’t influence anything,” and “other people are not really safe enough to help.”
Fearful and preoccupied attachment were especially common
The researchers found that people with BPD were much more likely to report fearful and preoccupied attachment styles. These two patterns are especially relevant to carers because they shape the push-pull dynamic so often seen in borderline relationships.
Preoccupied attachment tends to involve feeling unworthy and desperately needing approval, reassurance, or closeness. The person may seek constant signs that they matter, and any distance may feel threatening. Fearful attachment is different but closely related. It combines a longing for closeness with mistrust and fear. The person wants connection but also expects rejection, betrayal, or pain.
This creates a painful relational dilemma. The person may crave support intensely while simultaneously fearing it. They may reach out and then pull away. They may ask for help and then react angrily or suspiciously when it is offered. They may fear abandonment while also struggling to tolerate intimacy.
When these attachment patterns are combined with low personal agency, relationships become even more complicated. The person may feel unable to manage life alone, but also unable to feel safe with others. That tension can fuel the instability carers so often witness.
Many people with BPD want closeness and fear it at the same time. When that is paired with low personal agency, relationships can feel both necessary and dangerous.
Why carers often feel they are walking a tightrope
This research helps explain a common experience among carers. Many feel they are constantly balancing between helping and triggering. If they step in, they may be accused of controlling. If they step back, they may be experienced as abandoning. If they offer solutions, the loved one may feel criticised. If they simply listen, they may worry that nothing is changing.
The study suggests that this tension is not imaginary. When someone feels powerless and also fears relationships, even loving support can be interpreted through a lens of threat. A calm boundary may feel like rejection. A practical suggestion may feel like proof that the person is failing. A delay in response may feel like emotional abandonment.
That does not mean carers are doing everything wrong. It means the emotional meanings attached to ordinary interactions may be heavily shaped by low agency and attachment insecurity. The person may not be reacting only to what is happening now. They may be reacting through old beliefs about helplessness, rejection, and danger in closeness.
Understanding this can reduce blame and confusion. It does not remove the pain, but it makes the pattern more understandable.
The hopeful side of the findings
Although the study describes serious difficulties, it also points toward hope. If insecure attachment helps explain why low personal agency becomes linked with BPD symptoms, then recovery may involve strengthening both. In other words, helping a person feel more effective in their life and more secure in relationships may reduce suffering over time.
That is important because both of these areas can change. Personal agency is not fixed. People can gradually learn that their choices matter, that small actions can lead to different outcomes, and that setbacks do not mean total failure. Attachment patterns can also soften when a person has repeated experiences of relationships that are steadier, more respectful, and less frightening than those they may have known before.
This change is usually slow. It does not happen through lectures or pressure. It happens through repeated experiences of collaboration, predictability, and emotional safety. For carers, that means the relationship itself may become part of the healing process when it is grounded in consistency, realistic boundaries, and respect.
Low agency and insecure attachment are painful, but they are not permanent. With safe relationships and repeated experiences of effectiveness, both can begin to change.
What carers can do in practice
Carers cannot rebuild a loved one’s agency or attachment history by force. But they can support conditions that make both more possible. One helpful step is collaboration. Instead of taking over or giving orders, it often helps to offer choices, invite participation, and break tasks into smaller steps. This helps the person experience themselves as part of the solution rather than as someone being managed.
Language matters too. A phrase such as “Would it help to think through the first step together?” can support agency better than “Why don’t you just do it?” The first recognises overwhelm and offers partnership. The second may trigger shame and helplessness.
Validation is also crucial. When the person feels stuck, beginning with understanding often works better than jumping straight to problem-solving. If they feel seen rather than judged, they may become more able to act. At the same time, carers can model secure attachment by being as consistent as possible, repairing misunderstandings, and showing emotional steadiness without becoming controlling.
These are small relational acts, but over time they can matter deeply. They help the person experience both that another human can be safe and that their own choices can still have value.
Why therapy should focus on both autonomy and relational safety
The study also has important implications for treatment. Therapies such as Mentalization-Based Therapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy already address relationship patterns, emotional understanding, and self-regulation. This research suggests that those goals may be even more foundational than many people realise.
If low agency and insecure attachment sit near the core of BPD experience, then therapy needs to do more than reduce symptoms. It needs to help the person feel more capable of shaping their life and more secure in trusting the therapeutic relationship. The person needs not only coping tools, but also repeated experiences of being respected, listened to, and involved in decisions.
For carers, it can be reassuring to know that these therapeutic aims are closely aligned with what they may already be trying to do at home. Supporting agency and relational safety are not separate from treatment. They are part of the same healing direction.
Therapy in BPD is not only about managing emotion. It is also about helping the person feel that their choices matter and that relationships can become safer.
Compassion changes when we understand the deeper pattern
One of the most powerful messages in this research is that many behaviours in BPD make more sense when viewed through the combined lens of agency and attachment. Emotional chaos, relationship instability, avoidance of responsibility, and resistance to help are not always signs of defiance or bad character. They may reflect a person who feels both powerless and unsafe.
This does not mean carers must accept being harmed or abandon boundaries. But it does mean that understanding the pattern can change the emotional tone of support. Instead of asking only, “Why won’t they take control?” we can also ask, “What has led them to feel that control is impossible?” Instead of seeing every rejection of help as ungratefulness, we can ask whether the help itself has triggered fears about dependence, criticism, or abandonment.
That kind of shift matters. Compassion grows when behaviour is understood not only at the surface level, but at the level of fear, helplessness, and attachment pain beneath it.
Conclusion
This 2021 study offers a deeply important insight into Borderline Personality Disorder. People with BPD were found to have significantly lower personal agency and much higher levels of insecure attachment, especially fearful and preoccupied attachment. These patterns were closely linked to symptom severity, and attachment appeared to help explain how low personal agency becomes part of the disorder’s emotional and relational difficulties.
For carers, this provides a more compassionate and practical framework. A loved one who seems stuck, powerless, reactive, or hard to help may be living with two painful beliefs at once: that their own actions cannot change things, and that relationships are not safe enough to rely on. That combination can fuel enormous distress.
But the findings also point toward hope. By supporting small experiences of choice, collaboration, steadiness, and emotional safety, carers can become part of an environment where agency and trust slowly begin to grow. Recovery does not come from pushing someone to take control before they believe they can. It begins when they start to feel, often with help, that change is possible and that they do not have to face it alone.
What attachment and control reveal about BPD is simple but profound: people struggle not only because they feel too much, but because they often feel powerless and unsafe at the same time.
Source note
This article is based on Hashworth, T., Reis, S., and Grenyer, B. (2021), published in Frontiers in Psychology, examining how personal agency and adult attachment styles interact in people who meet criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder.
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