What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
Borderline personality disorder is a serious mental disorder marked by a pattern of ongoing instability in moods, behavior, self-image, and functioning. These experiences often result in impulsive actions and unstable relationships. A person with BPD may experience intense episodes of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last from only a few hours to days. Some people with BPD also have high rates of co-occurring mental disorders, such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders, along with substance abuse, self-harm, suicidal thinking and behaviors.
What are the signs & symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder?
People with BPD may experience extreme mood swings and can display uncertainty about their own identity. As a result, their interests and values can change rapidly. Other symptoms include:
- Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
- A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
- Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self
- Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
- Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior such as cutting
- Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
- Chronic feelings of emptiness
- Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
- Having stress-related paranoid thoughts
- Having severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality
- Seemingly ordinary events may trigger symptoms. For example, people with BPD may feel angry and distressed over minor separations—such as vacations, business trips, or sudden changes of plans—from people to whom they feel close.
Tests & Diagnosis
Unfortunately, BPD is often under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed. A licensed mental health professional experienced in diagnosing and treating mental disorders—such as a Psychologist, Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Licensed Social Worker (LCSW) or Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT)—can diagnose BPD based on a thorough interview and a comprehensive psychological assessment, which can help rule out other possible causes of symptoms. The licensed mental health professional may ask about symptoms as well as personal and family medical histories, including any history of mental illness. This information can help the mental health professional to make diagnosis and decide on the best treatment.
Treatments & Therapies
BPD has historically been viewed as difficult to treat. However, with newer and proper treatment, many people with BPD experience fewer or less severe symptoms and an improved quality of life. One of the most effective treatments for BPD is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, which we offer at New Horizons Counseling. People with BPD can fully recover and go on to live healthy lives.