Borderline Personality Disorder
Imagine life where you only felt extremely happy or depressingly sad. Where one moment you’re skipping along with your family and the next you’re swearing at them for treating you badly, going from a smile to a razor blade. One of the worst psychological disorders, people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have to live through it everyday.
Black and white
The most common characteristic of people with BPD is that they think about everything in extremes. It’s almost as if when it comes to emotions, they can’t think rationally. Now I know people with BPD. They seem normal and some are extremely smart. However, when it comes to emotions, they break down.
You’ve met drama queens before haven’t you? Well, think of people with BPD as an exceptionally severe drama queen, without the gossip and the attention seeking factor.
This extreme type of thinking has been titled ’splitting’ or ‘black and white thinking’, and justly so. Black represents the negative side and white represents the positive side. Here’s an example. You meet someone new and he says something that annoys you a little. You won’t hate him, but you’ll think he’s slightly annoying. Now if someone with BPD was in that situation, the person with BPD would immediately hate that person. It’s important to note that it’s not mainly the gossiping type of thoughts. Rather, the thoughts are usually of despair and depression.
“One day I would think my doctor was the best and I loved her, but if she challenged me in any way I hated her. There was no middle ground, as in ‘like’. In my world, people were either the best or the worst. I couldn’t understand the concept of middle ground.”
As such, people with BPD are extremely sensitive. It’s important not to ’set them off’.
Triggering suicidal behaviour
People with BPD often fall into lapses of depressed moods. These mood swings can be ‘triggered’ or set off by anything remotely depressing. A sad song or a depressing movie, a description of a disadvantaged child, even reading this article. They can all trigger someone with BPD to fall into a depressed state.
In fact, the term ‘trigger’ is often used as an adjective describing anything that can trigger someone into this state. In the depressed state they usually think about how unfair their lives are and how nobody likes them. It had drawn parallels with schizophrenia and psychotic behaviour. It’s not surprising that BPD is often diagnosed alongside depression.
These bursts of depression last anywhere from a few hours up to a day, so it isn’t as long as clinical depression. However, these few hours can be extremely dangerous. Often BPD patients will resort to self injury to distract them from their unbearable emotional pain. Self injury becomes a habit and they become dependent on it. It’s important to note that when people inflict pain on themselves, it’s done without the intent of suicide.
In the worst hours, people with BPD will sometimes resort to suicide. They have to find a way to escape from the world and from the harshness of reality. I know a person who has had 4 suicide attempts in the past 2 years as a result of BPD, but every other day she’s as happy as everyone else.
It is of utmost importance not to trigger this behaviour. There are many treatments available and they are all very expensive.
The psychology of BPD in everyday life
Characteristic of people with BPD in everyday life are wide ranging. Here are the obvious few:
- People with a severe case of BPD usually have other disorders.
- Impulsive behaviour is a key characteristic. Binge eating, promiscuous sex, compulsive spending are all common.
- Can be very obsessive one moment and then be the complete opposite the next.
- Bad history with relationships, often ending abruptly in a triggered state.
- They can often be the life of the party when they’re in a happy state.
If I was to list every characteristic, this post would never end.
BPD is a very common throughout the world. Approximately 1-3% of the United States has been diagnosed with BPD, 75% of them being female. There is a terrible stigma associated with BPD and it is often hard for people with BPD to be open about it. Don’t be afraid of them as they are extremely nice people and don’t deserve to be branded with the stigma.
Why is it ‘borderline’?
When the disorder was first being studied, it was thought to be very close to psychosis and/or schizophrenia. People with BPD were thought to be on the edge of having a proper personality disorder. This is now known to be completely false and so the title does not reflect the disorder in any way.
For more reading, check out National Institute of Mental Health – Borderline Personality Disorder.
If you have 5 minutes to spare, this video describes what it feels like to have BPD.
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“Well, think of people with BPD as an exceptionally severe drama queen, without the gossip and the attention seeking factor.”
How then, do you draw the line at someone merely being highly emotional (by nature) and someone with BPD?
I guess you would have to try and use your common sense. Generally if they try and hide it, they have BPD.
Drama queens like attention.
People with BPD do not.
That said, I’m still trying to understand BPD more. It’s very hard to imagine. Thanks for reading my blog!
I was interested to read your comments that it is known to be “completely false” that BPD is related to psychosis.
As someone with a BPD diagnosis, I experience hallucinations some very strong delusions. Initially, I believe my diagnoses (either the BPD or secondary diagnosis of bipolar II) would have to be rethought, but I am assured by several sources – including my psychiatrist – that psychoses do happen in BPD. Indeed, there is discussion of this in “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me” (which, although outdated, is still a broadly accurate tome, and indeed the best-selling book of all time on the borderline personality).
I know you don’t specifically state that psychoses are *not* a part of BPD, butI think it maybe could be read that way.
On the other hand, this comment is not meant to suggest that *all* those diagnosed with borderline have psychotic symptoms. As it is not even a DSM (nor ICD for emotionally unstable PD) symptom for the disorder, obviously that would be in accurate. Indeed, the fact that an individual ‘only’ needs five out of a possible nine symptoms to receive this diagnosis, without even considering additional symptoms like hallucinations, highlights how diverse the illness is.
Most people are remarkably negative about mental illness, and about BPD in particular. Thanks for putting a more positive outlook out there into the blogosphere; only by open and unstigmatised discussion such as this can we hope to combat discrimination and stigma.
Best wishes
SI