What Many People Misunderstand About Borderline Personality Disorder

If you have ever had an exposed nerve ending in your tooth, you will know how painful and miserable an experience that can be. Although you could not see the issue, you would have been aware of it every time you chewed food on the side of your mouth where the nerve was exposed. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is like having multiple exposed nerves that cause overwhelming emotional pain most of the time.

Simple events can feel devastating. You live with a constant feeling that your loved ones are going to leave you, and you often experience overwhelming mood shifts. Your nervous system is in deep distress, and there is no equivalent of a dental filling to protect your emotions from the pain.

When you live your life as an impulsive, reactive, deeply emotional person, your relationships cannot help but be affected. Not only are relationships more complicated with Borderline Personality Disorder, but you frequently experience the one thing you fear the most: people leaving you.

Some people simply do not have the capacity or the compassion to stick by you. Other times, you push people away because of how BPD affects your view of others. You either see people as shining examples of everything right with humanity or as the devil incarnate, incapable of being good.

Borderline personality disorder is a mental health condition defined by black-and-white thinking, this or that, with no in between. It is exhausting to live experiencing such extremes, and most people with BPD are internally exhausted from having to experience everything they do. However, it is possible to recover from BPD, to learn to have emotionally stable relationships and friendships, and to be emotionally regulated. It is a long journey that begins with understanding yourself.

The Diagnostic Criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder

People who suspect they have BPD generally display the following symptoms for years: a history of instability in relationships, regular, extreme angry outbursts, impulsive behavior with disruptive consequences, and frequent, intense mood shifts. Behavioral traits like these might be attached to several trauma-related experiences, like PTSD or CPTSD. A mental health expert can confirm an official diagnosis of BPD if five of the following nine symptoms are ongoing and disruptive to your life.

(Note that this is not a tool to self-diagnose, or to diagnose someone else, but it is simply the diagnostic criteria that psychiatrists use to determine Borderline Personality Disorder.)

Frantic Attempts to Avoid Abandonment

With BPD, it constantly feels like people are preparing to cut you loose from their lives. Things as simple as an unanswered text message or a perceived change in mood cause you to spiral and to do whatever you can to avoid the seemingly inevitable abandonment. This could mean even threatening suicidal behavior as a way of getting their attention and keeping them from leaving you.

Unstable and Intense Relationships

People with Borderline personality disorder can only see others through a black-and-white lens, with no neutral shades. This means they see others as entirely good or entirely bad, with no blending of traits.

As if this were not unhealthy enough, there might be a random moment when their view of someone suddenly flips. They go from having that person placed on a pedestal to villainizing their every action. This makes for turbulent relationships and connections with others, ironically ensuring that others abandon them, just as they anticipated.

Identity Disturbances

Just as they see others in terms of black-and-white judgments, their sense of self-worth is similarly extreme. They tend to either feel like the most important person in the room or the most worthless, with the tendency to flip from one to the other with little warning. Along with rapid shifts in their self-esteem, their preferences, interests, and values continually change too.

Chronic Impulsivity

People with BPD have frequent, disruptive, impulsive behavior, which causes a variety of issues. From excessive spending to making major life choices on a whim to engaging in harmful behavior with others, this impulsive behavior is as destructive as it is unpredictable. The issue with chronic impulsivity like this is that there are often long-term consequences, and some of them are difficult to walk back.

Extreme Mood Swings and Instability

A person with BPD can go from a state of euphoria to anger and to anxiety over the space of a week. They experience each mood intensely for up to two days before moving on to the next mood. Of course, none of it is intentional, and they often know that none of the emotions are rational while feeling them. However, trying to regulate such intense emotions is like trying to calm a tsunami wave.

Chronic Feelings of Emptiness

After several dramatic mood swings, a person with Borderline personality disorder usually comes back to a baseline of feeling lonely, bored, and empty. Loneliness and emptiness are sometimes so intense that they become suicidal or resort to self-harm to feel something different. Some people with BPD describe their most stable, constant moods as being lonely or numb.

Extreme Anger That Is Hard to Control

Anger is often a logical response to injustice or unfairness. However, for the person with BPD, anger is most often disconnected from current events or is a disproportionate response. It frequently leads to physical aggression and threats, often with dire consequences.

Feeling Disconnected From Reality

When not feeling irrationally angry, empty, or on an emotional roller coaster, people with BPD tend to dissociate from reality. They might feel an out-of-body experience, or as if nothing around them is real. This mood does not persist for long, but it is unnerving each time it happens.

Repeated Crisis Behaviors Under Stress

More than most people, those with Borderline personality disorder engage in self-harm and suicidality when under stress. This behavior ranges from threats to suicide attempts, and overdoses on medication. It is often because they feel overwhelmed by the feeling of loneliness that they resort to these actions.

Recovery and Hope for a Future

All is not lost for those with Borderline Personality Disorder. Many people who spent decades struggling with the disorder eventually improved to the point of no longer meeting diagnostic criteria. It is not an easy or fast road, but with a combination of the right medication, therapy, and determination, it is possible that you can make as full a recovery as you could hope for.

It is helpful to know some terminology that is part of the recovery journey with BPD, however. If you have incorporated counseling or therapy as a regular part of your mental wellness, you might experience symptomatic remission. This is when you have become stable and no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder.

This is an achievement to celebrate, because it means that you have conquered much already. At this stage, it is advisable that you still receive counseling and support for your mental health, as some people experience relapses even when they thought they had recovered.

Recovery comes several years after symptomatic remission. When you have been asymptomatic for years, when you have managed to participate in several balanced, long-term relationships, and have had no disruptions from unruly emotions, you can finally say that you have recovered. The point is that recovery is possible and that it is worth the effort, focus, and perseverance it takes to achieve.

It can often feel like you are too damaged to heal, or that too much has happened ever to be able to experience stability and calm. Both feelings are valid, but the truth is far more optimistic. You can have a life without exhausting emotional swings; you can have relationships without excessive drama, and you can find love without fear of losing it. You just need to ask yourself if you are willing to risk the journey to find it.

Borderline Personality Disorder is not easy to deal with alone. We host an online catalog of counselors where we hope you will find someone to walk with you. Alternatively, our reception team can help you find a counselor according to your specifications and preferences.