Borderline Personality Disorder

What is borderline personality disorder?

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental disorder which is often marked by rocky moods, relationships and inconstant behavior. The Borderline personality disorder is otherwise called as Emotionally Unstable Personality disorder (ESPD).

The borderline personality disorder is a mental health condition that influences the way a person would think and feel.

With border line personality disorder a person would have a high fear of abandonment and instability. This condition is marked by a long-term pattern of unsteady inter and intra personal relationships.

What are the symptoms of borderline personality disorder?

People with borderline personality disorder tend to experience a strong emotional reaction.

Some of the common borderline personality disorder symptoms include unstable relationships, an intense fear of abandonment, frequent changes in their self-identity and self- image, short intervals of stress, reduced presence in reality for a few minutes or hours, suicidal tendencies, continual feelings of emptiness and high levels of anger.

People with borderline personality disorder are most likely to take extreme or desperate efforts to avoid separation. Such people tend to idealize a person for one moment and then suddenly assume that the person doesn’t care enough or at times believe that they are cruel.

People with Borderline personality disorder tend to keep shifting their goals, change their values and beliefs quite often.

This mental disorder would make a person constantly think he or she is not good enough. There is a chronic feeling of void in a person with this disorder.

These symptoms of borderline personality disorder may be triggered to the person for various reasons which may seem very much normal to other people.

Some of the other symptoms of borderline personality disorder may include usage of substance, irregular eating patterns and depression.

The borderline personality disorder condition occurs to a person either during their late teenage or early adulthood. The exact cause of this disorder is not fully understood. It may be a result of multiple factors like child abuse and neglect, Genetics and also brain abnormalities in certain cases.

What is quiet BPD?

Borderline personality disorder doesn’t relate always to aggression all the time.

The quiet BPD means that the struggle which is faced by the person within. Their mental health condition is confined to themselves. The symptoms may not be noticed by others.

The quiet BPD is also called as high functioning BPD. The symptoms of a person with quiet BPD tend to manifest it within himself. These symptoms are difficult to identify or diagnose.

Now, there is a question popping up in every one’s mind.

How do we identify a person with borderline personality disorder?

Are the symptoms the only way to identify BPD?

Yes.

A Borderline Personality Disorder Test is designed to help a person understand if he or she is having BPD. This test studies the way a person with this condition reacts to various situations. Analyse the way the person would process their feelings and emotions.

The time duration of test would last 10 min and comprises a series of questions which a person is expected to answer honestly. The person is expected to reply weather he would disagree or agree. On answering all the questions, scoring will be measured based on his answers. Higher the score more likely that person has BPD.

There are a number of websites which offer free BPD tests which can be used as a reference to figure out the BPD symptoms in a person.

Do I have borderline personality disorder?

This is a common question any person would have on their mind.

Emotions are normal. Feeling empty or sad happens to every individual from time to time. That is the reason why many people feel that they need an answer for the above question.

There is a big difference between a person with borderline personality disorder and a person who doesn’t.

The degree to which a person reacts to their emotions would tell us if someone has BPD or not. A person with BPD would experience high levels of emotional pain and intense feelings of emptiness. They would detach themselves from the reality and often feel lonely.

Is borderline personality disorder a rare disorder?

The Borderline personality disorder is very common. It is so common that some of our favorite celebrities have this mental condition. Some of the celebrities with BPD are

1. Brandon Marshall- an NFL football player, who has been very outspoken about his condition and wanted to raise awareness on it.
2. Doug Ferrari known popularly as Dougzilla has been open about his borderline personality disorder.
3. Pete Davidson who is a comedian was also very open to speak about his condition when he was questioned.
4. Ricky Williams who was a former NFL running back, has confessed that it was difficult to cope up with his social anxiety and BPD. He often refused to give interviews because of the condition.
5. Vincent Van gogh, a famous Dutch artist was believed to have a range of mental health issues. There was no conclusive evidence but many people believed that he suffered with bipolar disorder, BPD and epilepsy, and hence he committed suicide.

How can we treat borderline personality disorder?

Many researches have been made to study the treatment for this condition. Many results were drawn from those researches. They call it the borderline personality disorder treatment. The treatment is of various types.

Usually, the first stage of treatment is the talk stage. This is done when a therapist feels that the symptoms are mild and easier to treat. This technique is proven to help people to cope up with anger issues and self-destructive behavior.

Some of the other treatments for borderline personality disorder management are

1. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a therapy that lays emphasis on being mindful or paying more attention to the emotions. It teaches a person with DPT how to control his intense emotions and other self-destructive behavior.
2. Mentalization-based based therapy (MPT) is a therapy where the therapist explains to his patients to identify and understand the other person’s feelings and perspective.
3.  Anger management therapy (AMT) is a therapy where the therapist would teach the patient on how to control their intense anger.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy, transference-focused psychotherapy are also used to treat people with BPD.

People need to be aware of BPD and know how to handle a person with borderline personality disorder. As mentioned above there are no specific triggers for BPD but some of the common triggers include disagreements, rejections and separations which may be real or perceived.

How to handle a person with borderline personality disorder?

In order to handle a person with BPD it is important for everyone to know about the illness. Only if there is a proper understanding of the mental health condition, one would be able to handle a person with BPD.

It is important to validate their feelings as they are most likely to experience an intense wave of emotions that people without that mental disorder would not be able to relate to.

In the same time encouraging healthy boundaries would encourage the person with BPD to be accountable for their choices.

Setting boundaries and not validating their feelings are two different things. If we are dealing with people who have BPD then we need to be very careful in validating their feelings. If their feelings aren’t validated enough, it would have a negative effect on their mental health. Saying no to a person with BPD would trigger an adverse effect on their mental health. There is a constant need for validation for people with BPD. If their feelings are ignored then they may use self-destructive behavior to express their emotions.

Medical assistance is always required. If we find someone suffering with BPD, we need to encourage them to resort to high quality treatment so that it would help them to control their emotions better.

As we study more about BPD, we would understand that displaying strong emotions doesn’t mean that a person has bipolar disorder. We need to understand that the major difference between bipolar disorder and BPD is that bipolar disorder deals with mood disorders and BPD deals with personality disorder.

Bipolar disorder would have other symptoms like sleep disturbances and severe mood changes.

In order to diagnose either of the disorders, it is important for anyone to know the common differences and the symptoms of each disorder.

It may take a while to find a right treatment for both BPD and bipolar. The effects of medications are unclear for these mental health conditions.

Psychotherapy is themost common treatment which has been found effective for both BPD and Bipolar mental health conditions.

Self-management and a combination of medication and psychotherapy can be very effective. This would help reduce the symptoms and improve their overall mental health.

These mental disorders are often described as worthy of disgrace or great disapproval in the media which lead to under-diagnosis. This stigmatized topic needs to be changed and there should be more awareness about the mental health condition of the people.