Early evidence indicated that outpatients with BPD, compared to non-psychiatric controls, have crucial deficits in the important domains of emotional intelligence including self-awareness, control of emotions, motivating oneself, and empathy [4,5,6,7,8].
Many individuals with BPD are highly intelligent and are aware that their reactions may seem strong. These individuals often report feeling that emotions control their lives or even that they feel things more intensely than other people.
Also, like individuals with ID, individuals with BPD also have neuropsychological deficits including lower verbal, performance, and full-scale IQ scores compared to controls [10].
People with BPD score low on cognitive empathy but high on emotional empathy. This suggests that they do not easily understand other peoples' perspectives, but their own emotions are very sensitive. This is important because it could align BPD with other neurodiverse conditions.
Intuition – High sensitivity to surroundings learned from childhood means people with BPD are more aware of other people's emotional states.
Narcissistic personality disorder can exist on its own but can also co-occur with borderline personality disorder. It's vital to understand the BPD and NPD relationship because some of the symptoms of both disorders overlap.
BPD is considered to be one of the most serious mental illnesses, as it causes a great deal of suffering and has a high-risk for suicide.”
One of the Most Painful Mental Illnesses: Living with BPD Pain. Borderline personality disorder is one of the most painful mental illnesses since individuals struggling with this disorder are constantly trying to cope with volatile and overwhelming emotions.
The scans revealed that in many people with BPD, 3 parts of the brain were either smaller than expected or had unusual levels of activity. These parts were: the amygdala – which plays an important role in regulating emotions, especially the more "negative" emotions, such as fear, aggression and anxiety.
People with BPD need validation and acknowledgement of the pain they're struggling with. Listen to the emotion your loved one is trying to communicate without getting bogged down in attempting to reconcile the words being used. Try to make the person with BPD feel heard.
Separations, disagreements, and rejections—real or perceived—are the most common triggers for symptoms. A person with BPD is highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone, which brings about intense feelings of anger, fear, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and very impulsive decisions.
For someone with this type of BPD relationship, a “favorite person” is someone they rely on for comfort, happiness, and validation. The relationship with a BPD favorite person may start healthy, but it can often turn into a toxic love-hate cycle known as idealization and devaluation.
The term borderline intellectual functioning describes a group of people who function on the border between normal intellectual functioning and intellectual disability, between 1 and 2 standard deviations below the mean on the normal curve of the distribution of intelligence, roughly an IQ between 70 and 85.
The ability to feel and express intense passion for a person, art, literature, music, sports, food, dance and other areas of interest comes naturally to a person with BPD. In fact, they know no other way of living other than to engage fully in their craft.
Borderline intellectual functioning (BIF), that is to say, tested IQ levels in the range of 70–84/85, is prevalent, affecting about 12%–14% of the population depending on the exact level for “diagnostic” cutoff.
Many people who live with borderline personality disorder don't know they have it and may not realize there's a healthier way to behave and relate to others.
A person with BPD will go to great length to avoid rejection or abandonment as their memory fails them and they only feel calm when their support person is present. The distress from fear of separation may lead to falling into dissociation.
The effects of untreated borderline personality disorder (BPD) can be devastating. For example, the physical and mental health impact of this disorder is so severe that life expectancy among people who have BPD is about 20 years less than the national average.
The actions of people who have BPD can indeed feel manipulative. However, the word 'manipulative', with its pejorative suggestions of malicious scheming, does not capture the true nature of BPD-spurred behavior.
A person with BPD typically has an unstable self-identity. Sometimes, lies help them bridge the gap between their true identity and the one they've adopted for the time being.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is one of the most damaging mental illnesses. By itself, this severe mental illness accounts for up to 10 percent of patients in psychiatric care and 20 percent of those who have to be hospitalized.
It's a technique often used by those with narcissistic and/or borderline personality disorders to deflect any responsibility from themselves.
According to Elinor Greenberg, PhD, “Borderline and Narcissistic individuals often fall in love because they are at approximately the same level with regard to their “Intimacy Skills.” They both are likely to be in the early stages of learning how to successfully maintain intimate relationships.
For both loved ones, and indeed those with BPD a toxic relational dynamic emerges and is repeated in cyclical and patterned ways. This toxic relational dynamic revolves around the punishment and revenge sought by those who have Borderline Personality Disorder.