With borderline personality disorder, you have an intense fear of abandonment or instability, and you may have difficulty tolerating being alone. Yet inappropriate anger, impulsiveness and frequent mood swings may push others away, even though you want to have loving and lasting relationships.
“Symptoms of abandonment trauma can include extreme insecurity or anxiety within a relationship, obsessive or intrusive thoughts of being abandoned, and also debilitating self-esteem or self regard.” When children feel abandoned, it can leave them feeling frightened and unsafe.
The fear of being abandoned often causes people with BPD to form unhealthy attachments.
When people with this disorder feel that they are about to be abandoned, they typically become fearful and angry. For example, they may become panicky or furious when someone important to them is a few minutes late or cancels an engagement.
Family members may be quick to deny or argue the feelings experienced the person with BPD. If these feelings are ignored, the individual may resort to self-destructive ways to express their emotions.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has long been believed to be a disorder that produces the most intense emotional pain and distress in those who have this condition. Studies have shown that borderline patients experience chronic and significant emotional suffering and mental agony.
People with borderline personality disorder fear abandonment, partly because they do not want to be alone. Sometimes they feel that they do not exist at all, often when they do not have someone who cares for them. They often feel empty inside.
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.
Some of the key signs and symptoms of borderline personality disorder are: A deep fear of being abandoned or unloved by those close to you. Difficulty in creating and maintaining a sense of self. You often feel empty, like there is nothing happening inside of you.
Symptoms of Abandonment Issues in Adults or Adulthood
Extreme jealousy or clingy behavior in a romantic relationship. Pretend they don't care about a spouse when they do. Rejection of a partner before they can be rejected. Avoid getting close to others.
The lasting emotional impact of abandonment centers on this sense of betrayal and unworthiness. The experience can leave us feeling as though we can't trust those that are closest to us or that we are simply not worth their love and commitment.
Feeling abandoned can be the result of emotional neglect, maternal death, being given up for adoption, or a mother literally leaving. Maternal abandonment often remains unaddressed in a family which is struggling to adapt to a "new normal."
Abandonment trauma, also known as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) of abandonment, is caused by experiences that make us feel unsafe, insecure, and alone as children. The emotional distress that stems from this type of trauma can persist throughout the lifespan and lead to many health complications.
PTSD of abandonment stems from losses and disconnections in early childhood, such as: A parent who is emotionally unavailable. Childhood neglect due to substance abuse, such as alcoholism or drug abuse. Mental illness, such as depression, in a parent or caregiver.
An anxious attachment style may manifest in fear of abandonment and a need for validation and constant reassurance from your loved one. It's typically caused by an unpredictable primary caregiver when you were a child.
Rage in an individual with BPD can occur suddenly and unpredictably. BPD anger triggers can include an intense fear of being alone. Two other BPD anger triggers include a fear of rejection and quickly changing views.
Narcissism is not a symptom of BPD listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). However, as many as 40% of people with BPD may also have narcissistic personality disorder,4 so people with BPD may also show signs of narcissism.
Compared to non-patients, BPD patients showed the anticipated higher crying frequency despite a similar crying proneness and ways of dealing with tears. They also reported less awareness of the influence of crying on others.
"For a person with borderline personality disorder, [cutting] might be a way to draw others in or create intensity. " Put simply, self-harm is a way to take unbearable emotional pain and turn it into more manageable physical pain. Physical pain helps to numb out the emotional pain.
Push/Pull behaviors
A common theory about why you might use this behavior if you have BPD is because you desperately crave closeness in your relationships but, fearing abandonment, you choose to reject this person before they can reject you.
One explanation for the intolerance of being alone in BPD may be that individuals experience annihilation anxiety [10]. This is a traumatic anxiety based on an actual experience of danger and psychic helplessness [11], reflecting a fear of impending psychic or physical destruction [12].
Symptoms of personality disorder are: Moody, Criticizing everyone, Overreacting, Intimidating others, and Dominance over another person. A borderline personality disorder is the hardest to treat.
How are personality disorders treated? Personality disorders are some of the most difficult disorders to treat in psychiatry. This is mainly because people with personality disorders don't think their behavior is problematic, so they don't often seek treatment.
Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPDs) become overwhelmed and incapacitated by the intensity of their emotions, whether it is joy and elation or depression, anxiety, and rage. They are unable to manage these intense emotions.