Impulsive behaviour and mood swings may impact a person's workplace relationships. If the workplace is not supportive, the person may feel misunderstood or find it hard to "fit in" A person's BPD symptoms may affect their concentration and focus at work, making it hard to keep up with deadlines.
Disruptions at Work
But it's not just common sense. It's been confirmed in recent studies by Director of Outpatient Psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital Mark Zimmerman, M.D., that those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder have a harder time holding employment.
Symptoms of BPD can also interfere with concentration, which can lead to poor work performance. For example, frequent dissociation can inhibit your ability to finish your tasks in a timely fashion.
Effects of BPD symptoms
Due to the emotional reactivity of BPD, individuals with the disorder can create divisions in the workplace through their tendency to see people as all-good or all-bad as a coping strategy to avoid being abandoned or rejected.
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.
Many people with BPD feel emotions deeply and find working in a caring role fulfilling. If you are an empathetic person, consider jobs such as teaching, childcare, nursing and animal care.
People with BPD are chronically unsure about their lives, whether it is with their family, personal relationships, work, or future aspirations. They also experience persistent uncertain and insecure thoughts and feelings about their self-image, long-term goals, friendships, and values.
You don't have to tell your boss that you have BPD, but some people find that being transparent actually improves relationships at work. You may find it easier to explain your mood swings and impulsive behaviours or ask for help when you need it.
One of the cognitive and emotional challenges for patients and clients who suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder is their inability to tolerate thoughts, alternatives, beliefs, or feelings that seem to be opposite to each other.
Once upset, borderline people are often unable to think straight or calm themselves in a healthy way. They may say hurtful things or act out in dangerous or inappropriate ways.
Individuals with symptoms of BPD are particularly sensitive to perceived criticism. This increases the likelihood that they will feel attacked when a therapist attempts to offer suggestions or insights. This often leads to lashing out.
Borderline intellectual functioning, previously called borderline mental retardation (in the ICD-8), is a categorization of intelligence wherein a person has below average cognitive ability (generally an IQ of 70–85), but the deficit is not as severe as intellectual disability (below 70).
When highly rejection-sensitive individuals encounter cues that they have learned to associate with rejection, their anxious expectations for rejection become activated, triggering both processing biases and intense reactions that strain their capacity for self-regulation.
People with Borderline Personality Disorder have a reduced life expectancy of some 20 years, attributable largely to physical health maladies, notably cardiovascular. Risk factors include obesity, sedentary lifestyle, poor diet and smoking.
It is certainly possible to have BPD and success in education and employment. In fact, many maintain strong careers when able to control BPD symptoms. On the other hand, some people with BPD have trouble with their career in which some are unemployed, underemployed or unhappy in their jobs.
Strong self-esteem helps you remain confident, strong and connect with other people. But if you have BPD, feeling capable and serving may be very rare. Instead, you may feel incompetent or worthless more often.
Consider cutting out all processed food and sugar for a few weeks and observe your energy level and your emotions. Avoid misusing alcohol or caffeine, as these also can intensify mood instability. BPD sometimes includes symptoms of self-harm or substance abuse.
Borderline personality disorder is known to cause many negative outcomes, including the loss of interpersonal relationships, divorce, an inability to maintain steady employment, self-harm, addiction, legal trouble, unplanned pregnancy, health complications, and more.
Instead, it is probably better to disclose that you have a mental health issue, but not to go into specific details unless they are likely to cause specific difficulties that can be helped by reasonable adjustments.
For many folks with BPD, a “meltdown” will manifest as rage. For some, it might look like swinging from one intense emotion to another. For others, it might mean an instant drop into suicidal ideation. Whatever your experience is, you're not alone.
Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are at high risk for early death from suicide and other causes, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
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.