Borderline Personality Disorder

By definition: ”A personality disorder with severe mood swings, impulsive behavior, and difficulty forming stable personal relationships.”-Oxford Dictionary. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) also “impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life.”…It includes self image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior…”-Mayo Clinic 7/17/19.

Other possible symptoms:

•Self harming.

•Suicidal thoughts and attempts.

•Feeling empty.

•Dissociation: feeling of being disconnected from your own body or feeling disconnected from the world around you.

•Feeling paranoid or depressed.

•Hearing voices or noises when stressed.- rethink.org.

BPD is also called emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD) and emotional intensity disorder (EID). -rethink.org.

One person’s observation who has BPD: ”BPD is like the emotional version of being a burn victim. Everything hurts more than it seems to, for everyone else, and any ”thick skin” you’re supposed to have, just isn’t there.”-mind.org.uk.

•BPD affects 5.9 % of adults at some time in their life.

•BPD affects 50% more people than Alzheimers disease.

•BPD affects 20% of patients admitted to psychiatric hospitals.

•BPD affects 10% of people in outpatient mental health treatment. -borderlinepersonalitydisorder.org.

•”It occurs equally as often in women and men.”- mcleanhospital.org.

What causes BPD ?

•experiencing abuse.

•experiencing long term fear or distress as a child.

•being neglected by one or both parents, care-givers, as a child.

•growing up with a family member who had a serious mental health condition, or a problem with drugs or alcohol.-rethink.org.

You may have grown up in an environment where your emotions, thoughts, feelings, were dismissed by those around you…that a parent told you, you had no right to feel sad, or whatever you were feeling. You were told that you were just ”being silly,” or some other kind of put down, that minimalized your feelings. This parental shut down damaged your ability to feel, think, express, exhibit emotions, which is so necessary in a childs/ teens development.-nhs.uk.

If a child/ teen learns that its bad or unacceptable behavior to express yourself, whatever you’re feeling, then the child/ teen won’t know how to react, process, digest, normal feelings, emotions as they grow. Won’t know how to reign in their emotions, when the emotions then overwhelm their entire being.

As a result, when you “experience intense and upsetting emotions, you feel guilty and worthless for having these emotions. Because of your upbringing, you think having these emotions makes you a bad person. These thoughts then lead to further upsetting emotions.”-nhs.uk.

Treatments for BPD: There are no medications approved to treat BPD.-mhanational.org. Psychotherapy for BPD (also called Dialectic Behavior Therapy, DBT), is deemed the best way to proceed. DBT’s goal is to break the cycle using 2 concepts:

•Validation: accepting your emotions are valid, real and acceptable.

•Dialectics: says, most things in life are rarely black or white, and its important to be open to ideas and opinions that don’t agree with yours…”A DBT therapist will use both concepts to try to bring about positive changes in your behavior.”-nhs.uk.

The therapist can accept, validate your feelings of intense sadness that cause you to do self harm, that behaving in such a way does not make you a terrible and worthless person. The therapist would attempt to challenge the assumption that self-harming is the only way to cope with feelings of sadness….the ultimate goal of DBT is to help you break free of seeing the world, your relationships, your life, in a very narrow, rigid way that leads you to harm yourself, or self-destructive behavior. -nhs.uk.

Conclusion: As with many mental disabilities, BPD seems to originate in the household of the affected child/ teen. Children learn, are affected by parents behaviors; good, bad or somewhere in between. The average child/ teen, needs a healthy, normal relationship with their parents. They are the ones that children look to first and foremost, to learn the ways of the world; and when a parent just minimalizes, insults, yells, hits, plays stupid mind games because of their own mental instability, obviously it affects the child for a very long time.

“There are many facets to BPD…BPD is now considered a highly treatable condition and many affected people lead happy and productive lives.”….”By 30-35, most people are better, even if they’re untreated.”….”Although treatment probably makes that go faster.”-psycom.net. / Done