Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is not just a personality disorder, it is a serious mental illness. So I will start on what exactly the patient feels everyday.
"Borderline individuals are the psychological equivalent of third degree burn patients. They simply have, so to speak, no emotional skin.Even the slightest touch or movement can create an immense suffering"
- Dr. Marsha Linehan
They feel like hell. They do not know how to fit in to the community. Sometimes they are anxious. Sometimes their normal face is rage and their rage face turns them to be monsters.
They love you for one moment, and hate you for another moment.
The more they try to stop all negative feeling the more intense they get for them.
It is true, it is like living in hell everyday.
This disorder is caused by the unstable serotonin levels in the patient's brain.
Yes, they live in a crazy roller coaster ride.
They fear of abandonment, and can respond on abandonment in the extreme way. This is because they are very afraid of rejection.
Besides all of their negative thoughts, sometimes they are happy and loving life.
I will list the symptoms below just to make it clear.
1. Extreme reactions—including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions—to abandonment, whether real or perceived
2. A pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often veering from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
3.Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self, which can result in sudden changes in feelings, opinions, values, or plans and goals for the future (such as school or career choices)
4.Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting
5.Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
Chronic feelings of emptiness and/or boredom
6. Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
7. Having stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality.
Borderline personality disorder is a mental illness that causes intense mood swings, impulsive behaviors, and severe problems with self-worth. It can lead to troubled relationships in every area of a person's life.
Most of the time, signs of the disorder first appear in childhood. But problems often don't start until early adulthood. Treatment can be hard, and getting better can take years. Problems with emotions and behaviors are hard to improve. But with treatment, most people with severe symptoms do get better over time.
Nowadays, a borderline is treated by Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and some medications especially serotonin reuptake inhibitor (fluoxetine, sertraline) and some mood stabilizer.
In conclusion,
they are suspicious, needy, misunderstood, manipulative, grandiose, unlovable.
They feel like they are hazard to themselves. I know it very well, because I am a borderline.
Labels: borderline, marsha linehan, mental health, symptoms
