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Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

Borderline personality disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It can cause  Issues with one's self-image, trouble controlling one's emotions and conduct, and a history of unstable relationships.


Like many other comorbidities, it shares a number of symptoms with ADHD and can be challenging to diagnose.


When you have borderline personality disorder, you may find it difficult to tolerate being alone and have a severe fear of abandonment or instability. Even if you desire to build enduring and meaningful connections, improper anger, impulsivity, and frequent mood swings may drive people away.

Usually by early adulthood, borderline personality disorder manifests itself. Young adulthood seems to be when the problem is worse.


Some Criteria for BPD Diagnoses are:


  • Chronic feelings of emptiness

  • Emotional instability in reaction to day-to-day events (e.g., intense episodic sadness, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)

  • Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

  • Identity disturbance with markedly or persistently 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. Please note: If these behaviors happen mostly during times of elevated mood or energy, they may be symptoms of a mood disorder and not borderline personality disorder.

  • Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)

  • Pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by extremes between idealization and devaluation (also known as "splitting")

  • Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-harming behavior

  • Feelings of dissociation, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside one’s body, or feelings of unreality.

Sources

  1. Borderline personality disorder - Symptoms and causes. Mayo Clinic. Published 2019. Accessed July 11, 2022. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/borderline-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20370237#:~:text=Borderline%20personality%20disorder%20is%20a,a%20pattern%20of%20unstable%20relationships.

  2. 9 Symptoms May Indicate Borderline Personality Disorder Diagnosis. Verywell Mind. Published 2021. Accessed July 11, 2022. https://www.verywellmind.com/borderline-personality-disorder-diagnosis-425174

  3. Borderline Personality Disorder. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Published 2022. Accessed July 11, 2022. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/borderline-personality-disorder

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