Bpd Symptoms~

[Theresasjourney]

Borderline Personality Disorder

SYMPTOMS

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The term "borderline" has been used in a number of ways that are quite different from the DSM-IV criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD), and that the misuse of this diagnostic label has long been criticized. Originally, this term was used when the clinician was unsure of the correct diagnosis because the client manifested a mixture of neurotic and psychotic symptoms. Many clinicians thought of these clients as being on the border between neurotic and psychotic, and thus the term "borderline" came into use. In some circles, "borderline" is still used as a "garbage can" diagnosis for individuals who are hard to diagnose or is interpreted as meaning "nearly psychotic," despite a lack of empirical support for this conceptualization of the disorder.
Additionally, with the recent popularity of "borderline" as a diagnostic category and the reputation of these clients as being difficult to treat, "borderline" is often used as a generic label for difficult clients or as an excuse for therapy going badly.
The main feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image and emotions. People with borderline personality disorder are also usually very impulsive and occurs in most by early adulthood. The instable pattern of interacting with others has persisted for years and is usually closely related to the person's self-image and early social interactions. The pattern is present in a variety of settings (e.g., not just at work or home) and often is accompanied by a similar lability (fluctuating back and forth, sometimes in a quick manner) in a person's emotions and feelings. Relationships and the person's emotion may often be characterized as being shallow.
A person with this disorder will also often exhibit impulsive behaviors and have a majority of the following symptoms:

• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
• A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
• Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently 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
• Affective instability due to a marked 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 ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

Details about Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
The perception of impending separation or rejection, or the loss of external structure, can lead to profound changes in self-image, emotion, thinking and behavior. Someone with borderline personality disorder will be very sensitive to things happening around them in their environment. They experience intense abandonment fears and inappropriate anger, even when faced with a realistic separation or when there are unavoidable changes in plans. For instance, becoming very angry with someone for being a few minutes late or having to cancel a lunch date. People with borderline personality disorder may believ that this abandonment implies that they are "bad." These abandonment fears are related to an intolerance of being alone and a need to have other people with them. Their frantic efforts to avoid abandonment may include impulsive actions such as self-mutilating or suicidal behaviors.
Unstable and intense relationships.
People with borderline personality disorder may idealize potential caregivers or lovers at the first or second meeting, demand to spend a lot of time together, and share the most intimate details early in a relationship. However, they may switch quickly from idealizing other people to devaluing them, feeling that the other person does not care enough, does not give enough, is not "there" enough. These individuals can empathize with and nurture other people, but only with the expectation that the other person will "be there" in return to meet their own needs on demand. These individuals are prone to sudden and dramatic shifts in their view of others, who may alternately be seen as beneficient supports or as cruelly punitive. Such shifts other reflect disillusionment with a caregiver whose nurturing qualities had been idealized or whose rejection or abandonment is expected.
Identity disturbance.
There are sudden and dramatic shifts in self-image, characterized by shifting goals, values and vocational aspirations. There may be suddent changes in opinions and plans about career, sexual identity, values and types of friends. These individuals may suddenly change from the role of a needy supplicant for help to a righteous avenger of past mistreatment. Although they usually have a self-image that is based on being bad or evil, individuals with borderline personality disorder may at times have feelings that they do not exist at all. Such experiences usually occur in situations in which the individual feels a lack of a meaningful relationship, nurturing and support. These individuals may show worse performance in unstructured work or school situations.



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[Theresasjourney]

Following is a definition of splitting from the book I Hate You, Don't Leave Me by Jerry Kreisman, M.D. From page 10:

The world of a BP, like that of a child, is split into heroes and villains. A child emotionally, the BP cannot tolerate human inconsistencies and ambiguities; he cannot reconcile anther is good and bad qualities into a constant coherent understanding of another person. At any particular moment, one is either Good or EVIL. There is no in-between; no gray area....people are idolized one day; totally devalued and dismissed the next.
Normal people are ambivalent and can experience two contradictory states atone time; BPs shift back and forth, entirely unaware of one feeling state while in the other.
When the idealized person finally disappoints (as we all do, sooner or later) the borderline must drastically restructure his one-dimensional conceptionalization. Either the idol is banished to the dungeon, or the borderline banishes himself in other to preserve the all-good image of the other person.
Splitting is intended to shield the BP from a barrage of contradictory feelings and images and from the anxiety of trying to reconcile those images. But splitting often achieves the opposite effect. The frays in the BP's personality become rips, and the sense of his own identity and the identity of others shifts even more dramatically and frequently.
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[Theresasjourney]

BPs comprise:

• 2% of the general population
• 10% of all mental health outpatients
• 20% of psychiatric inpatients
• 75% of those diagnosed are women
• 75% have been physically or sexually abused

 

[Theresasjourney]

There is no "pure" BPD; it coexists with other illnesses. These are the most common. BPD may coexist with:

• Post traumatic stress disorder
• Mood disorders
• Panic/anxiety disorders
• Substance abuse (54% of BPs also have a problem with substance abuse)
• Gender identity disorder
• Attention deficit disorder
• Eating disorders
• Multiple personality disorder
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder

 

[Soulwings]

Wow. Those stats are really ... amazing. And sad.

These are the symptoms that Ive got in varying degrees:
Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
Affective instability due to a marked 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
Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

 

[Theresasjourney]

• Post traumatic stress disorder ~~I have PTS due to severe childhood abuse
• Mood disorders
• Panic/anxiety disorders~~I go through bouts of anxiety severe! but I have meds that help that till its passes
• Substance abuse (54% of BPs also have a problem with substance abuse)~~for yrs my drug of choice was shoplifting~~God delivered me from it!!
• Gender identity disorder
• Attention deficit disorder ~~its very hard for me to focus~`like for reading or memorizing~~yikes!
• Eating disorders ~~I was anorexic once~~scared me to death~~!
• Multiple personality disorder~~I am a mostly integrated high functioning DID
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder~~oh yes!! nothing weird~~but i am just the same.

 

[Soulwings]

• Post traumatic stress disorder - suspected by counselor but not really proven.
• Mood disorders - possibly.
• Panic/anxiety disorders - yes, Ive been having panic attacks for years, since I was 5 or 6.
• Eating disorders - Ive been diagnosed with EDNOS and Im currently struggling with it.
• Multiple personality disorder - features of. But dont fulfill all criteria.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder - nothing major, but Ive got compulsions and rituals that Ive got to do.

Theresa. Sounds like youve had a lot to deal with.

 

[Theresasjourney]

ah yes~~but God is in the healing business~~hehe
I have come a very long way in healing~consider myself a miracle!
God has done amazing things~~!!

 

[Soulwings]

Yes, youre right, God is the great Healer, after all. And thats something thats hard to remember sometimes, especially after youve tried and tried different meds and counseling and psychs.

 

[HVNbound]

I have read "Stop Walking on Egg Shells and take back your life" and "I hate you, Don't Leave me" and I have read everything I can on BPD, I believe my oldest daughter and my son's father (on top of being a drunk) have it.

My daughter has this recollection of her childhood that didn't happen, she can be sweet as sugar and in a second say hateful, nasty hurtful things that make you cry!

Her dad left when she was 5, and except for visitations every 3-6 months & him having her go live with him to care for his Alzheimer mother when she was 15, he kinda ignored her since she was born, one day while on a rampage she told me that I was never there for her! That she raised herself since she was 5 and that everyone that I knew and loved (family members & friends) hated me! She was mean to her B/F, called me crying anytime he "left her home alone" Now she hasn't spoken to me since she left my home in 2004 because I had to get a TPO against her as she was causing alot of emotional harm to my other 2 children and I.

She told me she was more successful at 18 then I was at 45, she told me of all these glamorous plans (go to school, have a career) and here she is almost 2 years later still in West Virgina where they moved to, unhappy with her B/F, has a year old baby, and calling her dad crying.

I love my daughter, but I don't know how to help her, she's not talking to me, I want to tell her to come home but, I can't have that emotional abuse in my home!

 

[Theresasjourney]

Sounds like she has huge abandonment issues~~they are very painful!
It could be she ceated a childhood within herself that was so real that it is mixed up with the actual reality. Its the splitting part of BPD
Sounds like you have had to do some hard safe selfcare for yourself and your other children.
On many BPD sites ther are also sections and helps for those who live with BPDs~~it takes strong boudaries and consequences and being consistant with them along with love.
She should also be seeing a therapist~~she needs to be officailly dxed and then own it and learn how to work with it. She can make a choice to take control of it and it not have control of her. But there are allot of variables for her to learn and grab hold of.
Get online in google and put in things about PBD~~and go browse some sites~~theres allot out there!
Here and caring about your pain~~

 

[jgarden]

• Post traumatic stress disorder - suspected by counselor but not really proven.
• Mood disorders - possibly.
• Panic/anxiety disorders - yes, Ive been having panic attacks for years, since I was 5 or 6.
• Eating disorders - Ive been diagnosed with EDNOS and Im currently struggling with it.
• Multiple personality disorder - features of. But dont fulfill all criteria.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder - nothing major, but Ive got compulsions and rituals that Ive got to do.

Theresa. Sounds like youve had a lot to deal with.

I had a friend with many of the same symptoms who was diagnosed with BPD. For what its worth, her current doctor refused to accept the diagnosis since based on his experience BPD was a "catch all."

He finally zeroed in on bipolar and after several med changes she has become his "poster girl" and is living a happy productive life. Many of her initial problems didn't appear to be bipolar related but have now disappeared.

Medical diagnosis is not an exact science and sometimes is good to challenge the "label" and/or get a second opinion. The last thing you want to say 20 years from know is, "If I only had known!" Check out your family history if you haven't already.

 

[AnointedPoetess]

Why with bpd do the moods change from happy one min to sad or mad the next? this has been going on with me for yrs and its getting to much. I'm scared and worried. Isnt it common?

 

[Theresasjourney]

Why with bpd do the moods change from happy one min to sad or mad the next? this has been going on with me for yrs and its getting to much. I'm scared and worried. Isnt it common?

Well I would reccomend talking to your Psyc if you have one~~but a lot of BPDs have manic depression going on also. So what your describing is normal for them~~

 

[AnointedPoetess]

I do have 1 but i also have major depression so...

 

[Gal328]

I have boderline personality disorder, Add, demonic opppression, and people treating me as if its my fault. Kicking me while I'm down and so forth. I also have to live with a handicapped relative. Have you ever had to explain things to someone who is mentally retarted? Its no Joke.



And how is your day today?

 

[madison1101]

I have boderline personality disorder, Add, demonic opppression, and people treating me as if its my fault. Kicking me while I'm down and so forth. I also have to live with a handicapped relative. Have you ever had to explain things to someone who is mentally retarted? Its no Joke.



And how is your day today?

BPD is not your fault. BUT, your behavior is your responsibility to change. There is no "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense with BPD. The diagnosis is not based on a brain dysfunction. It is learned behaviors and thinking. Therapy helps you to learn new behaviors and thinking. So, in a sense, it could be our fault. Not the diagnosis, but whatever behavior you do is your fault. Don't do the behaviors that are distressful to others. Easier said than done, I understand. But not impossible. I managed to get rid of the diagnosis by radically changing my behavior. No more behaviors, no more BPD. Took years to change, but I did it. You can too.

 

[Gal328]

BPD is not your fault. BUT, your behavior is your responsibility to change. There is no "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense with BPD. The diagnosis is not based on a brain dysfunction. It is learned behaviors and thinking. Therapy helps you to learn new behaviors and thinking. So, in a sense, it could be our fault. Not the diagnosis, but whatever behavior you do is your fault. Don't do the behaviors that are distressful to others. Easier said than done, I understand. But not impossible. I managed to get rid of the diagnosis by radically changing my behavior. No more behaviors, no more BPD. Took years to change, but I did it. You can too.

It goes MUCH deeper than this. TRUST me i am not justsaying this. But for the sake of argument, let's just say that My case applys to your advice. Is there any medication that can at least aid me in changing my behavior?

 

[Theresasjourney]

I have boderline personality disorder, Add, demonic opppression, and people treating me as if its my fault. Kicking me while I'm down and so forth. I also have to live with a handicapped relative. Have you ever had to explain things to someone who is mentally retarted? Its no Joke.



And how is your day today?

I am so sorry people are not accepting of you~~boy do I know what thats like~~;o/
And I totally understand what your saying.

 

[madison1101]

It goes MUCH deeper than this. TRUST me i am not justsaying this. But for the sake of argument, let's just say that My case applys to your advice. Is there any medication that can at least aid me in changing my behavior?

Are you in therapy? If so, ask for a psychiatric referral. Meds don't make you change the behavior, but they do help ease the symptoms so that you can learn to change the behavior with less intensity of emotions.

Believe me, I felt the same way you did at one time. I felt possessed and wondered how I could do some of the things I did. I look back and shudder at the things I did, and remember how I felt hopeless of ever changing.

If you are not in therapy, find one soon. And then see a psychiatrist for meds.