A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones. A 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.
People with borderline personality disorder may experience intense mood swings and feel uncertainty about how they see themselves. Their feelings for others can change quickly, and swing from extreme closeness to extreme dislike. These changing feelings can lead to unstable relationships and emotional pain.
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.
Someone with BPD may go to great lengths to feel something, as well as becoming increasingly withdrawn and avoidant during an episode. Paranoid thoughts of everyone being out to get them and hating them are also common during these times. Episodes can also be extreme highs, bursts of euphoria and positive emotions.
Often, the person with BPD will react towards loved ones as if they were the abusers from their past, and take out vengeance and anger towards them. When the person with BPD feels abandoned, they can become abusive or controlling as a way to defend against feelings of abandonment or feeling unworthy.
Often, the borderline person is unaware of how they feel when their feelings surface, so they displace their feelings onto others as causing them. They may not realise that their feelings belong within them, so they think that their partner is responsible for hurting them and causing them to feel this way.
If left untreated, the person suffering from BPD may find themselves involved with extravagant spending, substance abuse, binge eating, reckless driving, and indiscriminate sex, Hooper says. The reckless behavior is usually linked to the poor self-image many BPD patients struggle with.
Most personality disorders begin in the teen years when your personality further develops and matures. As a result, almost all people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder are above the age of 18. Although anyone can develop BPD, it's more common if you have a family history of BPD.
If someone has a borderline personality, they will always push people away, in fear of getting hurt. This is extremely difficult and painful for the people around them, as the sufferer can seem cold and angry, attention seeking, or not wanting help.
Wide mood swings lasting from a few hours to a few days, which can include intense happiness, irritability, shame or anxiety. Ongoing feelings of emptiness. Inappropriate, intense anger, such as frequently losing your temper, being sarcastic or bitter, or having physical fights.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious, long-lasting and complex mental health problem. People with BPD have difficulty regulating or handling their emotions or controlling their impulses.
Signs and symptoms
An unstable sense of self with poor ability for self-direction and impaired ability to pursue meaningful short-term goals with satisfaction. Marked instability in functioning, affect, mood, interpersonal relationships, and, at times, reality testing. Disturbances in empathy and intimacy.
Splitting is a psychological mechanism which allows the person to tolerate difficult and overwhelming emotions by seeing someone as either good or bad, idealised or devalued. This makes it easier to manage the emotions that they are feeling, which on the surface seem to be contradictory.
People with BPD may be sensitive to rejection and abandonment and are prone to splitting, rage, and impulsivity. If a person with BPD feels rejected or abandoned, they may end the relationship. However, this is usually followed by significant anxiety and regret and efforts to get back together.
A fear of abandonment is central to BPD. That can present obvious problems in a relationship, especially when you're just getting to know someone and have no idea where things are heading. Unfortunately, intense fear can lead to your partner being clingy or making unreasonable demands on your time.
Intense episodic irritability or anxiety lasting a few hours or more than a few days). Recurring feelings of emptiness. Frequent intense, inappropriate anger or issues controlling temper. Severe dissociative symptoms or stress-related paranoia.
Intense and sometimes inappropriate rage is a characteristic of borderline personality disorder (BPD). A person with this condition has difficulty regulating their emotions or returning to their baseline. Extremes of rage and other intense emotions may last longer than might be expected, from a few hours to a few days.
But, historically, the theory of “quiet BPD” referred to symptoms such as: intense mood swings that you manage to hide from others. suppressing feelings of anger or denying that you feel angry. withdrawing when you're upset.
Environmental factors
being a victim of emotional, physical or sexual abuse. being exposed to long-term fear or distress as a child. being neglected by 1 or both parents. growing up with another family member who had a serious mental health condition, such as bipolar disorder or a drink or drug misuse problem.