Borderline Personality Disorder

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What is borderline personality disorder, and what is the best talk therapy for it? Let’s learn more about it.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is something that can affect all aspects and areas of your life — including your health and relationships. It changes the way you think, act, and function. Awareness regarding various and other mental conditions is growing by the day.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a condition characterized by intense mood swings and impulsive behavior, and can lead to eating disorders. Although similar to depression and other personality disorders, borderline personality disorder is different. People with this disorder (BPD) may engage in higher risk factors and destructive behavior.

Shedding light on these problems provides insight into handling and overcoming them.

People diagnosed with the illness or personality disorder (BPD) are prone to self-harming. Substance abuse, self-injury or self-harming behavior, suicidal behaviors, or even binge eating are common manifestations, as well as sudden bursts of emotions such as intense anger and sadness that lead to attempting suicide or other self-destructive behaviors that could have long term effects, or lead to other health conditions.

Left untreated, this mental health illness can be debilitating and negatively impact life. Relationship problems resulting from personality disorders are common due to over-dependency and the development of toxic behavior and other conditions.

Some cases of these disorders even show paranoia caused by fluctuating moods. Overall, The condition can be destructive and harmful to patients and the people around them.

Despite these effects, you can effectively treat borderline personality disorder through a specialized combination of medication and psychotherapy. Like bipolar disorder, evidence-based treatment for borderline personality disorder focuses on understanding the condition and reducing impulsive actions.

Mental health therapy is impactful in allowing patients to manage their emotions. People with borderline personality disorder can live happy and meaningful lives with the help of these guided treatment plans and the assistance of health professionals.

Are you seeking help for yourself or a loved one with borderline personality disorder? Here are the frequently asked questions about family therapy that might help.

What Is The Best Treatment For Borderline Personality Disorder?

Dialectical behavioral therapy is the most common type of treatment to address borderline personality disorder. It is a cognitive behavioral therapy aiming to teach patients how to regulate emotions and tolerate significant stress.

This type of treatment applies to individual and group sessions. In group dialectical behavior therapy, you will undergo meditation, muscle relaxation, problem-solving, and breath training.

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Can The Condition Be Treated Successfully?

A borderline personality disorder is often ingrained in an individual’s personality and identity, but a mental health professional can treat it successfully through therapy and medication. In addition to therapy (DBT), medication controls the severe symptoms, while psychotherapy addresses the root causes of BPD.

You will learn how to react healthily to your thoughts and emotions through cognitive-behavioral therapies such as dialectical and schema-focused therapy. Psychodynamic therapy is also helpful in changing unhealthy patterns of developing borderline personality disorder in early childhood. It’s also beneficial to have a support family.

How long has borderline personality disorder been treated?

Psychotherapy spans 1 to 3 years for the successful treatment of BPD. This mental health condition requires a lot of work, as it deals with the interior workings of your brain-involved abnormalities. It may take a long time to manage, monitor, and reduce borderline personality disorder symptoms, but it is possible to treat them.

What triggers an individual with Borderline Personality Disorder?

Feelings or situations of rejection and abandonment trigger borderline personality disorder. These situations may arise from relationship issues, traumatic life events, or random memories of child abuse.

When exposed to conditions evoking these ongoing feelings, they tend to feel intense anger and fear. These reactions then lead to impulsive actions, self-harm, emotional pain, immediate distress, and suicidal thoughts.

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Can an individual with borderline personality disorder love?

Someone with borderline personality disorder is caring and affectionate. However, they can sometimes give too much or too little, making their love unhealthy or toxic at times. It can make it seem like bipolar disorder, so identification by a licensed health professional is important.

Being in a relationship can be dysfunctional for them at times. But with sufficient psychotherapy, they will learn to control feelings and actions and thus adapt how to love healthily.

What Is The Best Mood Stabilizer For A Person With Borderline Personality Disorder?

Lithium carbonate and anticonvulsant prescription medication prove useful in controlling fluctuating moods and impulsivity.

Anticonvulsants tested for borderline personality disorder include Lamotrigine, Carbamazepine, and Oxcarbazepine. But remember, mood stabilizers, however compelling, should be taken alongside psychotherapy treatments.

Can Someone With BPD Ever Be Happy?

People with borderline personality disorder feel emotions at high intensities, so yes, they can be overly happy. As for being truly happy and content, people with this mental health condition can learn how to regulate their emotions and actions healthily through therapy.

How Can You Tell If Someone Has A BPD?

There are nine distinct symptoms found in most BPD patients. People with BPD fear abandonment and rejection, intense feelings of anger, and emotional mood swings. As a result, they also have a family history of intense and unstable relationships.

Chronic feelings of emptiness, self-destructive and impulsive actions, and self-harm or suicidal thoughts are also specific symptoms that BPD patients exhibit. They also have a vague sense of self, have an unstable self-image, and can thus be out of touch with reality and even paranoid.

If you have these symptoms, immediately seek the help of a medical professional or clinical social worker.

A woman experiencing borderline personality disorder
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What Is A High-Functioning Borderline Personality Disorder?

High-functioning borderline personality disorder, or quiet BPD, is when a patient manifests symptoms inwardly. High-functioning ones tend to hide their mood swings, which can last from a few hours to a span of days.

People with high-functioning BPD can also take things personally and get upset to the point of cutting off people. They may also have low self-esteem and often feel numbness, guilt, and emptiness. High-functioning BPD even goes to great lengths to please people and feel worthy.

The condition is often associated with being hyper-emphatic and is thus intelligent in an emotional and mental sense. They are highly perceptive of other people’s emotions and intuitive when it comes to difficult situations.

They have interpersonal intelligence, which makes them aware of other people’s feelings.

Are People With BPD Aware Of Their Behavior?

People with borderline personality disorder tend to focus on other people to avoid feelings of rejection. However, studies have shown how people with BPD are more self-aware than healthy people. Self-awareness can lead to more self-shame and guilt, resulting in an endless cycle of unhealthy coping mechanisms.

What do people with BPD think?

People who develop borderline personality disorder think in extremes. They can often gloss over complex situations and only see cases as being entirely good or completely bad. People with BPD may also be paranoid sometimes and think of scenarios wherein they may get abandoned, leading to impulsive behavior.

What is quiet borderline?

The quiet borderline is also called the high-functioning borderline. Having a quiet borderline may make it harder for the mental health provider to diagnose your condition because of its inward effect. The symptoms are the same with BPD but are sometimes self-inflicted and bottled up.

Thus, a quiet borderline can seem well on the outside while experiencing BPD symptoms in their mind.

How can you tell if a woman has a borderline personality?

BPD symptoms for men and women are almost the same and can thus be used to identify the condition. Here are the nine characteristics of someone with BPD:

  • Fear of rejection and abandonment
  • Impulsive behavior
  • A fragile sense of self
  • Feelings of emptiness
  • Wild mood swings
  • Intense and irrational anger
  • Paranoia
  • Unstable relationships
  • Self-destructive actions or dangerous behaviors
people with borderline personality disorder having healthy expressions
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Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is seen by many as something scary or dangerous. It is usually caused by severe stress and may run in the family members.  Even risky and impulsive behavior comes with BPD. But when you treat BPD, symptoms can be managed and controlled.

When symptoms of developing borderline personality disorder are spotted, it is critical to seek the help of a mental health professional. Although there are gaps in our current knowledge about BPD, psychologists, and therapists can help patients with this condition.

Acknowledging this problem as early as possible is crucial to reduce self-destructive behaviors brought on by the condition. These can include suicidal behavior, intense fear of change, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, intense emotions, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other early young adulthood mental illnesses.

The Outlook For People With BPD Is Generally Favorable

Therapy, medication, and most importantly, lots of time are essential to the process. Still, it will be worth it.

A woman with borderline personality disorder seeking therapy
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You may encounter standard methods such as dialectic behavioral therapy that can help reframe the way you think and act in your life.

Finding the right mental health partner, whether a mental health professional or therapist, is vital to your journey in controlling your condition. Continuous treatment for BPD will diminish its hold on your life.

Final Thoughts And Takeaways To Consider

Over time, people with BPD can form long-term relationships and have healthy expressions of emotions.

Pushing through the whole emotional support and treatment process may be a difficult path, but things will get better. It is important to get treatment. However, keep in mind to communicate with your therapist about this. Plans are only effective when they are tailored and suited for your needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the three symptoms of borderline personality disorder?
What are the behaviors of borderline personality disorder?
How can you tell if someone has BPD as a mental illness?
What is the biggest symptom of BPD?
How can you tell if a woman has BPD?
What does quiet BPD look like?
What are the main early signs of borderline personality disorder?
What can trigger BPD?
What do borderlines think?
What triggers a borderline episode?
Is borderline a serious mental illness?
What is the main cause of BPD?
What is a BPD person like?
How do you fix BPD?
Is borderline a psychotic disorder?