What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think, feel about yourself and others, causing difficulties functioning in everyday life.
People who suffer from borderline personality disorder (BPD) have severe difficulties in regulating their emotions, which often leads to mood swings, impulsiveness, and unstable personal relationships. In addition to destructive mood swings, BPD patients typically have a very low sense of self-esteem and self-worth.
With borderline personality disorder, you have an intense fear of abandonment or instability, and you may have difficulty being alone. Inappropriate anger, impulsiveness and frequent mood swings can push others away, hindering lasting relationships.
Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder
A person with this disorder will also often exhibit impulsive behaviors and have a majority of the following symptoms:
- Frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, whether the abandonment is real or imagined
- A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
- Identity disturbance, such as a significant and persistent unstable self-image or sense of self
- Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
- Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
- Emotional instability due to significant reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
- Chronic feelings of emptiness
- Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
- Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms
If you or someone you love is dealing with borderline personality disorder, we can help!
If you or someone you love has borderline personality disorder, don’t get discouraged. Many people with this disorder get better with treatment and can learn to live satisfying lives.
At Honey Lake Clinic, our experienced staff, licensed therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists can guide you to an accurate diagnosis and start you on the path to health. The team at Honey Lake Clinic understands that effective treatment requires a multifaceted, faith-based approach, involving healing of your mind, body, and spirit.
We are here to offer hope and provide answers for you. We can guide you to an accurate diagnosis and start you on the path to a brighter tomorrow.
