I love to read about different mental issues and personality disorder and came across BPD but I didn’t really understand it. And now I really wanna understand it as it has peaked my interest. Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.
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Med Circle on Youtube has a lot of good, easy to understand videos on the topic. Dr. Ramani is the main one speaking… just look up, “BPD traits”
I work with sufferers of BPD. Although it would seem some people can lead totally functional lives with BPD others are borderline criminally insane and require support to live.
Im no expert. But its the inability to control your emotional range. So its either low, depressed or elated, confident. There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium and from my experience it frustrates the hell out of anyone who has it.
I work with paranoid, organic, delusional schizophrenics, people with brain injuries, other disorders but BPD is worse than them all as it can’t be treated effectively.
The name can be confusing because it’s based on an outdated way psychologists described certain disorders. They used spectrums between two types of behavior. BPD was considered to be a condition on the border between psychosis and neurosis. What this means exactly isn’t exactly important to understand what BPD is.
Unfortunately for patients BPD is a purely emotional disorder. It is not characterized by any specific brain chemistry imbalances like you might find for depression or bipolar disorder. The only treatment known is therapy to help the patient understand their mood swings and cope with them.
There are 9 characteristics which may define BPD. A patient may have any combination of the 9 or only a few of them.
1) a strong and consuming fear of abandonment
2) inability to maintain relationship
3) unclear or constantly changing self image
4) impulsive/self destructive acts
5) self-harm
6) extreme mood swings
7) chronic feelings of emptiness
8) explosive anger
9) suspicion or feelings that everyone has ulterior motives
BPD is often diagnosed with other things like bipolar disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse, and anxiety disorders.
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Off topic but is it possible for someone with BPD to maintain a romantic relationship? I was told by someone once that BPD is always a ticking time bomb that WILL go off, and I’ve experienced it one time personally myself. After that, I keep people with BPD at arms length (only have met one other person with it that was a friend)
Am I ignorant and overreacting because my hurt or is this fairly consistent?
I highly highly recommend you research Sam Vaknin for you want to research it more in depth. He has a few short videos but most are lectures.
I fell in love with a woman who had BPD and I couldn’t take the fighting and overreacting so I broke it off. When I learned of her diagnosis it made me wonder if she ever really loved me or if she was in the relationship just to not be alone. We went through the classic love bombing, devalue, discard steps and it’s taken me years to realize that the sheer bliss I felt in the first stage wasn’t real, it was her setting her hooks in place. I was also working for her, so breaking it off meant losing my job. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make but I still wonder if she ever loved me for real.
Hi,
No expert, not a therapist— Just a person that may or may not have or had BPD.
I have exhibited all of the traits mentioned in previous comments. I very nearly ruined my relationship in the early days. It is because of this relationship that I was able to start re-training my brain to recognize what was “normal” and what was not.
I grew up in a chaotic, unstable, abusive, neglectful home. I learned about C-PTSD later on and realized that though I was no longer in danger, my brain didn’t know that. I would be “gone” for weeks at a time if I was triggered.
Genuinely, I felt like I was gone. I felt like a starved, terrified dog backed into a corner was controlling my body, and I was just watching myself make a complete mess of my life.
My partner would do something small, maybe forget to take out the trash for example. I would immediately go nuclear. There was no, “hey you forgot the trash” simple text, or “Hey, can we talk about this, it’s happened multiple times and I want to figure out how to resolve it together.”
In a second, someone I knew to love me dearly was the enemy. I yelled, and screamed, and cried, and I would list every mistake I thought they ever made. I was cruel, and vindictive, and unkind. I genuinely believed this person, who’d only ever loved me, was a monster. After a few months of my partner putting up with my explosive episodes, always having to walk on eggshells around me because they didn’t know if any tiny little thing would set me off— They told me that the way I treated them made them want to die, and that they hadn’t been so miserable in years. That woke me up. That conversation was one of the hardest I’ve ever had to have with myself, and with someone else— because I had been so horrible, so cruel to someone, that they wanted to die. Taking ownership of that opened my eyes. I didn’t want to be a bad person— but I was being one, by my own definition. After years of abuse, I became the abuser. I had to believe that I could get better. That I could be better.
Maybe they should have dumped me. I would have. If it were my friend in the situation I’d have told them to run from a person like me, and never look back. No one deserves to be treated that way.
When I was “untriggered” I could be rational, I could admit my mistakes, and I could react normally to things. It was during these times that I had to do the hard work of catching myself before I exploded. It took several months of consistently (or as consistently as I could manage) asking myself, “Is this normal?” And eventually I could tell the difference between “me” and “triggered me.” When I became self-aware of what it felt like, it became easier to temper my reaction. I knew I couldn’t trust my emotions. And I knew I COULD trust my partner. They stuck by me, and believed in me, believed I could be better. I couldn’t have done it alone.
Not every person with BPD is so fortunate to have a partner like mine, because the scariest thing I ever did (after surviving a manipulative liar for a mother) was choose not to trust my own emotions, and to choose to trust my partner instead. After spending my formative years unable to trust anyone around me, and later realizing I had been even further manipulated than I knew before, and being raped/abused in the relationship I was in prior to this one, I had to trust someone new to tell me the truth of my own reality. And it worked. I no longer have irrationally angry emotional outbursts, I no longer react the same to a mild inconvenience as I do genuine tragedy, my emotional stability has improved, I no longer self-harm, I no longer worry that every person I know has an ulterior motive.
My partner is kindest, most forgiving, most loving person I ever met, and it was because of their love for me that in my moments of clarity, I understood that fighting the battle against my own mind was worth doing to keep them. I didn’t get better for me. I didn’t fight for me. I fought because love like that is worth fighting for.
Sorry it’s long— but I wanted to share. It’s a difficult journey, but it’s worth doing.
My ex wife (key word: “ex”) has BPD.
When she was first diagnosed, I read tons of people online telling me to get the hell out before it got worse. I ignored it, because I thought I could be the one to actually fix her.
You can’t fix it. These people are toxic, and will ruin every relationship they have, without exception. My ex cost herself her marriage, all of her friends and family, several therapists, several attorneys, every job she’s ever held, and every boyfriend she’s had since our split. It’s a very sad existence, but their fear of abandonment is a self fulfilling prophecy. They drive everybody away, and then say “see, I knew you were always planning to leave me”. Awful, awful stuff.
The doctor-lady that testified in the Depp-Heard trial explained it brilliantly. I have borderline, and couldn’t have explained it more clear.
It’s, very basically, a disorder that makes moods and relationships unstable. If you imagine your mood between -100 and +100, people with borderline could have extreme mood changes at the smallest trigger. Imagine a gamer that is winning, he happy, smiling, laughing, etc. Then he dies and gets pissed, and yells about cheaters, etc. Then, he starts winning again, he’s back to happy. That’s sort of like what borderline can be like, except without the catalyst of video games.
The same applies to a person’s relationships. It’s less severe for some.
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