Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder
• Unstable emotions (mood swings)
• An unstable sense of self or identity
• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
• Impulsivity in self-harming behaviors
• A pattern of unstable and intense relationships
• Self-injury (self-mutilation or parasuicidal behavior)
• Suicidality
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Stress –related and transient paranoid thinking
• Inappropriate and intense anger and/or aggression
Personality Disorders
There are currently 10 diagnoses that are recognized in psychiatry as Personality Disorders. Each is considered to be a clinical condition due to a chronic pattern of disturbance that impairs functioning and creates distress. Although Borderline Personality Disorder is just one of several Personality Disorders, there are common traits and characteristics among all these disorders. These commonalities include problems in the areas of:
• perceptions about self
• perceptions about the environment
• thinking related to these perceptions, and
• behavior related to these perceptions
BPD Treatment
The recognition of the prevalence of past trauma such as childhood abuse or neglect in those with this disorder led to the common use of trauma-related treatment techniques with many who have Borderline Personality Disorder. These techniques include a wide-range of modalities including:
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
• Anger Management
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Supportive, trauma-informed counseling among others.
