Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
Its a serious mental illness,
characterized by pervasive instability in moods,
interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior.
This instability often disrupts family and work life,
long-term planning, and the individual's sense of self-identity.
People with BPD suffer from a disorder of emotion regulation.
There is a high rate of self-injury without suicide intent,
as well as a significant rate of suicide attempts
and completed suicide in severe cases.
A person with this disorder,
can often be bright and intelligent,
and appear warm, friendly and competent.
They sometimes can maintain,
this appearance for a number of years
until their defense structure crumbles,
usually around a stressful situation.
Many borderlines have a perfectly working, pleasant,
alluring, seductive, competent, superman/woman facade
and it is sometimes difficult
to differentiate which self is being presented.
However,
the BP has an empty core at the center of identity.
A person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger,
depression, and anxiety that may last only hours, or at most a day.
These may be associated with episodes of impulsive aggression,
self-injury, and drug or alcohol abuse.
Distortions in cognition and sense of self
can lead to frequent changes in long-term goals,
career plans, jobs, friendships,
gender identity, and values.
Sometimes people with BPD
view themselves as fundamentally bad, or unworthy.
They may feel unfairly misunderstood or mistreated,
bored, empty, and have little idea who they are.
Such symptoms are most acute
when people with BPD feel isolated
and lacking in social support,
and may result in frantic efforts to avoid being alone.
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.
When the fear of abandonment becomes overwhelming,
they will often push others out of their life
as if trying to avoid getting rejected.
Symptoms are often present in adolescence
and almost always by young adulthood.
There may be a history
of unstable relationships in the person's life.
People with BPD often have
highly unstable patterns of social relationships.
While they can develop intense but stormy attachments,
their attitudes towards family, friends,
and loved ones may suddenly shift from idealization
(great admiration and love)
to devaluation (intense anger and dislike).
Thus, they may form an immediate attachment
and idealize the other person,
but when a slight separation or conflict occurs,
they switch unexpectedly to the other extreme.
Even with family members,
individuals with BPD are highly sensitive to rejection,
These fears of abandonment seem to be related
to difficulties feeling emotionally connected
to important persons when they are physically absent,
leaving the individual with BPD feeling lost
and perhaps worthless.
People with BPD exhibit other impulsive behaviors,
such as excessive spending, binge eating and risky sex.
BPD often occurs together with other psychiatric problems,
particularly bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders,
substance abuse, and other personality disorders.
The instability in behavior
is marked by impulsive and often dangerous acts.
Self-mutilation or suicidal threats and gestures
are common among people with BPD.
Many people with BPD say that cutting on themselves
or burning themselves provides a sense of relief and calm
that they have difficulty finding otherwise.
Borderlines have a great difficulty
in trusting people and themselves.
They are hypersensitive to criticism or rejection
and often feel they "need" someone else in order to survive.
But since they do not trust others to stay and not abandon them,
Borderlines show an extreme need for affection and reassurance
by the other people in their lives.
question now,
should i bow in defeat to my shrink?
or change her?
Phoenix Chen "Kitty Phoenix" Seductive
- 16 years, 3 months, 27 days ago