I’ve tried researching it and many explanations seem to be emotionally charged, judgmental, and non-factual. “They’re so evil and manipulative!” Okay, but can you actually describe what it is?
The the factual, non-biased explanations show what’s in the DSM-5, but it’s kind of vague. What exactly is it? What might people with BPD do to avoid abandonment? Etc.
Edit: Just wanted to thank everyone for their reply. Everyone has brought something of value and an interesting perspective.
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I am not a psychiatrist but ive known 2 seperate people with bpd, so il try to explain my observations.
They tend to attatch themselves to 1 person, and dub them their ‘FP’ (favorite person). They were very attached and felt upset when they werent around. They also experienced ‘splitting’ and would be set off by minor things. They tend to see things in black and white, and tended to idolize or despise people. They also can be unstable, and threaten their FP’s with Suicide, Self harm, and Threats if they think theres even a slim chance they will be abandoned.
the stereotype for BPD is that its the ‘crazy ex girlfriend’ but thats not always the case. BPD is highly stigmatized but it can be treated with the right help. Again, im not a psychiatrist so this is purely from observations
My mother had this.
For an eli5 explanation:
Think of a time when you felt an extremely intense emotion. Maybe rage or grief or fear. If you have experienced an emotional extreme – and most of us have – you’ll notice it temporarily changes the way you think.
Most people know that thoughts create emotions, but the opposite is also true. When you’re enraged with someone, you probably can’t remember much you like about them. You could even forget every positive thing about them and wonder why you ever hung around with that person in the first place!
Now most of us have what’s called meta cognition, which is thinking about our thoughts. So when I get angry with someone and think ‘why do I even hang out with this person?’ there’s another part of me that says ‘yeah, you feel that way now, but give it an hour and you’ll remember everything you like about them’. This is a type of emotional regulation that we learn through experience of noticing our thoughts shift with our mood – we start to take them with a pinch of salt and that knowledge that not everything we feel is reality helps us stay relatively calm.
But I bet you’ve sometimes had emotions strong enough to override that, right? You’ve occasionally acted regrettably due to a very strong emotion? Most people have, it’s very normal.
People with bpd tend to experience very extreme emotions on a far more regular basis and are trapped in that state where the emotion overrides regulation, so they tend to take their emotionally driven thoughts as fact and they act accordingly. They also tend to lack meta cognition – often because they haven’t been in an environment safe enough to learn it – so can’t calm down. They often also deal with very high levels of shame derived from an abusive or troubled upbringing that add fuel to the emotional fire.
And that’s essentially what bpd is.
I think one thing worth mentioning is that BPD is a treatable disorder. Since it’s often the result of trauma or neglect, basically nurture over nature, it seems to be easier to work through than say mood disorders like bipolar disorder. It’s also something that’s commonly misdiagnosed.
I personally witnessed someone close to me be misdiagnosed as bipolar when they actually suffered from bpd. When we realized that the bipolar diagnoses didn’t really fit, we were eventually able to recognize that bpd might be the culprit.
The awesome part is that with the correct therapy, this person was able to get phenomenally better in a relatively quick span of time. They really turned their life around in a way that sadly isn’t typical of someone suffering from bipolar disorder.
So while many people who suffer from bpd can have a very difficult go of it, there is hope they can recover.
I found a great resource for this question. This video spells out the most noticeable traits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to5qRLRSS7g
Very simply, people with BPD experience emotions very strongly. They often struggle with impulse control, see things in extremes, and have an intense fear of abandonment. A good phrase to remember is “I hate you! Don’t leave me.” They are not evil.
Hey I have this – if you have any questions I’d be glad to answer them 🙂 especially stuff relation to day to day life and relationships with my friends and family .
Personally, as someone who has been diagnosed with BPD in the past (and then read everything I could find about BPD and non-suicidal self injury in my university’s library) , I think it’s a reaction to growing up in unstable and abusive families.
Many of the diagnostic criteria involve insecurity about relationships with others, fear of rejection, rapid changes in self image, poor boundaries, manipulative behavior, and self harm. If you grew up with erratic and abusive parents, these things make a lot of sense.
– Some of the most important relationships in your early life *were* unstable. It’s common for abusers to be loving, caring, and apologetic in between abusive moments. If your relationship with a parent rapidly swings between extremes of love and rage, you learn to expect that relationships will be either perfect or catastrophically bad.
– You don’t have a strong sense of self because you have to change the way you act all the time to try to avoid upsetting someone who might suddenly fly into a rage over something that used to be fine. You learn to manipulate people because it can keep you safe from the abuse.
– People often assume that self harm is manipulative or a cry for help, but that isn’t always the case. For some people, self injury can help people become more grounded when dissociating (and dissociation is a fairly common response to trauma…). Some people learn to self harm to express anger that they feel unsafe directing towards others (like, say, abusive parents). Self harming behavior has also been observed in primates deprived of maternal care (Harry Harlow did some experiments around this. They are ethically troubling, but also pretty informative/scientifically significant)
A lot of borderline behaviors and emotional patterns are bad in healthy relationships, but they can be effective survival strategies for people with abusive parents.
In the long run, it’s not that borderline people need to avoid abandonment, it’s that they need to learn that not everyone will abandon them. (but in the short term, they need to get therapy to learn to have healthier relationships, because there’s kind of a catch-22 where people are more likely to abandon you if you’re not emotionally well enough to be somewhat stable in a relationship)
As someone with BPD, here is how I like to explain this to my friends. This may not be anything close to a scientific definition or anything, and I know that things like my ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) play a role too.
There is no middle ground. If I am thinking about ordering pizza, it’s either I get a pizza and wings and bread sticks and soda and desert, or I skip it all together. I am fully aware when I am being unreasonably emotional, but in the moment it feels right. The world is constantly against you, and sometimes you do bad stuff out of fear and anger. If I am trying to imagine the outcomes of let’s say me running away from home, what I see is either the cops will be involved and I will go to jail and my life will be over, or it will go perfectly and everything will work out and it will be sunshine and rainbows. My mind is not able to see that middle ground of I walk around for a bit and my parents freak out and then I come home and just get grounded, or anything like that.
It is a heavy burden on the people around you, but it is also very hard on the individual. Sometimes I will just be thinking “what the hell am I doing” But be unable to stop myself in the middle of one of these episodes. The hardest part is I’ve watched a YouTube video and then decided that I need to throw my life away, because one little thing in there influenced me, and that’s all that will be ringing in the back of my head.
As someone with BPD I can say that the best thing someone can do to help when I am in one of these episodes is just accept it and don’t take anything I say to heart. I know that may be hard, and I am not saying that you should accept abuse from others at all, but if you have a loved one with BPD and they are saying crazy shit like “you never loved me” Or “we need to get married tomorrow” Just try to console them until they can calm down a bit, and then have a serious talk about it. It may at times feel like you are playing into serious manipulation, but sometimes we can’t control it, and feel like shit later. If it gets serious, don’t accept it, don’t let yourself get abused by them, but if you can just play along it can truly help them calm down quicker. Don’t be afraid to after ask them “what’s going on, how much of that was rooted into the truth” And to say “I am not ok with this, you hurt me”, but if you can, try to help them find a coping mechanism.
If you only take one thing out of this though, if someone you love has BPD and you end up having to deal with one of their meltdowns, do not fight back heavily. Do not escalate it in the moment. Wait to talk about it once they can actually speak without shaking. It shouldn’t take too long normally.
Also check out the book “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me” (if it hasn’t already been posted here). It’s a book written to help people understand how the BPD functions and how it affects those who have it. As someone diagnosed with BPD and still struggling with it, it’s been a huge help not only to myself but also to the people close to me
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