Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

[Guest Indiana]

What is borderline personality disorder (BPD)?

If you have borderline personality disorder (BPD), you probably feel like you’re on a rollercoaster—and not just because of your unstable emotions or relationships, but also the wavering sense of who you are. Your self-image, goals, and even your likes and dislikes may change frequently in ways that feel confusing and unclear.

People with BPD tend to be extremely sensitive. Some describe it as like having an exposed nerve ending. Small things can trigger intense reactions. And once upset, you have trouble calming down. It’s easy to understand how this emotional volatility and inability to self-soothe leads to relationship turmoil and impulsive—even reckless—behavior. When you’re in the throes of overwhelming emotions, you’re unable to think straight or stay grounded. You may say hurtful things or act out in dangerous or inappropriate ways that make you feel guilty or ashamed afterwards. It’s a painful cycle that can feel impossible to escape. But it’s not.

BPD is treatable

In the past, many mental health professionals found it difficult to treat borderline personality disorder (BPD), so they came to the conclusion that there was little to be done. But we now know that BPD is treatable. In fact, the long-term prognosis for BPD is better than those for depression and bipolar disorder. However, it requires a specialized approach. The bottom line is that most people with BPD can and do get better—and they do so fairly rapidly with the right treatments and support.

Healing is a matter of breaking the dysfunctional patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that are causing you distress. It’s not easy to change lifelong habits. Choosing to pause, reflect, and then act in new ways will feel unnatural and uncomfortable at first. But with time you’ll form new habits that help you maintain your emotional balance and stay in control.

Read more here: https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-disorders/borderline-personality-disorder.htm/

[Guest Indiana]

Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline personality disorder symptoms vary from person to person and women are more likely to have this disorder than men. Common symptoms of the disorder include the following:

• Having an unstable or dysfunctional self-image or a distorted sense of self (how one feels about one’s self)
• Feelings of isolation, boredom and emptiness
• Difficulty feeling empathy for others
• A history of unstable relationships that can change drastically from intense love and idealization to intense hate
• A persistent fear of abandonment and rejection, including extreme emotional reactions to real and even perceived abandonment
• Intense, highly changeable moods that can last for several days or for just a few hours
• Strong feelings of anxiety, worry and depression
• Impulsive, risky, self-destructive and dangerous behaviors, including reckless driving, drug or alcohol abuse and having unsafe sex
• Hostility
• Unstable career plans, goals and aspirations

Many people experience one or more of the above symptoms regularly, but a person with borderline personality disorder will experience many of the symptoms listed above consistently throughout adulthood.

The term “borderline” refers to the fact that people with this condition tend to “border” on being diagnosed with additional mental health conditions in their lifetime, including psychosis.

One of the ironies of this disorder is that people with BPD may crave closeness, but their intense and unstable emotional responses tend to alienate others, causing long-term feelings of isolation.

Borderline Personality Disorder and Suicidality

Around 80 percent of people with borderline personality disorder display suicidal behaviors, including suicide attempts, cutting themselves, burning themselves, and other self-destructive acts. It is estimated that between 4 and 9 percent of people with BPD will die by suicide.

https://www.psycom.net/depression.central.borderline.html