Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is mental disorder where people have intense struggle controlling their emotions. It includes intense mood swings, impulsive behaviors, and extreme reactions can make it difficult for people with borderline personality disorder to complete schooling, maintain stable jobs and have long-lasting, healthy relationships. With borderline personality disorder, you have fear of abandonment or instability, and you may have difficulty tolerating being alone.

Symptoms Of BPD

  • Strong feelings of anxiety, worry and depression
  • Feelings of isolation, boredom and emptiness
  • Difficulty feeling empathy for others
  • A persistent fear of abandonment and rejection, including extreme emotional reactions to real and even perceived abandonment
  • Intense, highly changeable moods that can last for several days or for just a few hours
  • A history of unstable relationships that can change drastically from intense love and idealization to intense hate
  • Impulsive, risky, self-destructive and dangerous behaviors, including reckless driving, drug or alcohol abuse and having unsafe sex
  • Having an unstable or dysfunctional self-image or a distorted sense of self (how one feels about one’s self)
  • Unstable career plans, goals and aspirations
  • Harmful, impulsive behaviors. These may include things like substance abuse, binge eating, out-of-control spending, risky sexual behavior, and reckless driving.
  • Feeling empty inside.
  • Problems with anger, such as violent temper tantrums.
  • Hurting yourself, such as cutting or burning yourself.
  • Suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts.
  • Times when you feel paranoid
  • Hostility
"Your present circumstances don't determine where
you can go; they merely determine where you start."

-Nido Qubein

Helpful Resources For Borderline Personality Disorder

National Institute of Mental Health. This excellent site thoroughly covers the subjects of What Is Borderline Personality Disorder, Signs and Symptoms of BPD, Treatment, Clinical
BPD Demystified. The website is a compilation of all the essentials necessary for learning, understanding, and getting to the ‘nitty gritty’ of borderline personality disorder.
NEABPD. National Education Alliance for Boarderline Personality Disorder is a resources for families and people in recovery.