Border Personality Disorder symptoms

Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder, eating disorders, and self-harm, how do they relate?

Borderline Personality Disorder otherwise known as BPD, is easier to address. BPD is something that a lot of us struggle with. We may have been told by one person that we're diagnosed with it or we have BPD-like symptoms and a lot of us just wonder: "What the heck does that mean? "And if I do have it, "why does everybody act "like it's such a bad thing?" Right? Now, just to give you a little background on what Borderline Personality Disorder is. It's our mind's way of coping with things. And I'm going to read to you a little bit of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), so that you know when someone says you may have BPD-like symptoms or you have BPD, what they're talking about. And I'll try to make this very clear and concise 'cause a lot of times people throw words around that don't pertain to us. And I want to make sure you understand what BPD is.

So the DSM states that we have to have 5 or more of the following. And this is the older DSM 'cause the new one isn't quite out yet. So when the new one comes out, I'll get it and then we'll see if there are any changes, but I don't think there is to this.

So the first one is frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment and this one is probably the most common that I see in borderline patients. The second is a pattern of unstable or intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. Now, in the therapy world, we talk about people putting us on a pedestal or throwing us under the bus. So you either love me or you just hate my guts and you wish I go away. Right? It's that extreme up and down. That's usually... What people will notice first is that because they're in relationships with you. So if you're hating them and loving them in 2 days, they're like: "Oh!" You know? And that can be hard.

Now, the third one is identity disturbance markedly and persistently unstable

self-image or sense of self. Now we're all like: "Wow. Well, "that applies to a lot of people". And that's why you have to have at least 5 of these. But I think that one point

is why it's so linked to eating disorders. Okay? Because we don't think very highly of ourselves. We have a very distorted vision of who we are and what we're about.

That can lead to a lot of other things Like eating disorders, right? And the next one is impulsivity and at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging. This can be anything from spending habits, like we'll go on spending sprees or it could be sex where we have sex with a bunch of different strangers and it's not really,

we're not safe about it and we just act impulsively. Right? It can be any kind of thing like that. I think in here they say... Yes, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating. So again, connected to eating disorders. Right? Then the next one, the fifth one is recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behavior.

Now, this was my frustration with the new DSM 'cause self-mutilating behavior or self-harm doesn't just occur when we have Borderline Pers. Disorder but the DSM only puts it in here. So we'll work on that. Right? But a lot of us struggle with suicide

and It is found in Borderline patients, many of them use suicide and suicidal ideation as a way to work on that abandonment because they're afraid someone's gonna run away, so then we act out and they say: "Well, I'm gonna commit suicide

or I'm gonna hurt myself". And that gets people back in our lives. Right? And that makes sense. I can see the connection. Can't you? So that's kind of how that's used.

The sixth thing is effective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood. So this is like, you're intensely irritable or anxious. It usually lasts a couple of hours, so our mood is just unstable. It's all over the place. I might be really happy one minute and then really mad and sad the next. It's like: "Aaah!" It's all over and it feels crazy. So that, but it doesn't usually last more than a couple of hours, at the most a day. If it lasts longer than that, then it might be Bipolar.

So number 7 is chronic feelings of emptiness. And I know we're all thinking:

"Well shit, Kati. I feel like that. "That's me. Ugh!" But remember we have to have 5 of these. You may feel like a lot of these pertain to you. "Oh, I can connect with that". And that's why you may have heard: "Oh, you have Borderline tendencies.

Or Borderline-like symptoms". Right? 'Cause we don't meet all the criteria. So that was the seventh. There are 2 more. Now the eighth is inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger. Now this is, I feel like a lot of these kind of go hand in hand with eating disorders and self-harm. So we don't have a place to put it and we don't know why it's there, but we feel it and it's bad and, you know? So that's another way it relates.

The last one is transient stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. I'm trying to think of what I'd even talk about- My binge! When I talked about binging and Bulimia when you're kind of in an out-of-body experience, like:

"I can't handle this. I'm stepping out!" And you, like watch yourself doing stuff.

That's kind of what dissociation is because we're too intense. Everything is so intense that we can't even be present, like fully present in the moment. Okay? So that's what Borderline Pers. Disorder is and you can see how it ties into our self-harm behaviors and our eating disorders. But remember we have to meet 5 of those criteria to be properly diagnosed and we may go in and out. We may meet some sometimes and some, not the other times, but that gives you an idea of what it is.

Now the dirty little secret of therapy and kind of something that I think is important for you to know. I feel like many therapists might be like: "Oh, thank God! Somebody's finally "telling people this" because I know a lot of you tell me all the time: "Yeah! I keep getting passed around". And people will say: "I don't deal with that". And we don't know what to do! We're like: "Holy moly! I've been looking "for therapy forever "and I finally get to see somebody "and then you're like 'I don't see you' "Great! Thanks for nothing!" Right? And it's frustrating. That can happen a lot. And that even perpetuates our struggle with abandonment if we are Borderline. Right? We're like: "Holy moly!" So why does that happen? Why? Why do we feel like we're so like the black sheep? And that's really because even in school as a therapist they tell us how difficult it is to treat someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. I almost feel like, yeah, they should let us know. But instead of saying that and just making it like: "You don't want "a lot of Borderline patients!

"They're hard to deal with!" And yeah, because you're volatile. Your mood's all over the place. You feel completely out of control. You're afraid people are gonna hurt you and you want to hurt yourself. I mean, it makes sense. Right?

But It's not that hard to deal with and that's why, to be honest, I tell you all to get a DBT workbook. Join a DBT group.  DBT which stands for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is the best thing. It's the saving grace for people who struggle with Borderline because it helps us get in control of our emotions a little bit more instead of feeling like they control us. So that extreme fear of abandonment, the mood volatility, the suicidal ideation, and all of those characteristics, that intense anger, can all be calmed. We recognize it coming in. We can feel it. We use our Mindfulness. There's a lot of techniques that they use and it can kind of bring us back down. So that's why people avoid Borderline and people get a bad stigma,

and it's not so bad. We just have to work together. We need to get our DBT workbook. We need to start working on it. I know it's hard and it's intense.

You feel it and ah! Right? But then we're calmer. We feel better. And therapists will be more willing to work with you. I just hate that it's given such a bad rep

but people don't talk about it. They don't let us know. They don't tell you other than:

"We won't see you anymore" or "I need to refer you out". That just makes us feel like shit. Right? So that's kind of a little insight into why that happens. So I hope that makes sense and I hope that that kind of clarifies what BPD is, why it's given a bad rep, how we're diagnosed with it and how we can work on it.