Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
This disorder is rarely and seldom detected or recognized, even the sufferer may not be aware that there is something wrong. These disorders can destroy lives, re-direct the sufferer towards negative direction and paths in life, destroy and break up relationships and families.
Borderline Personality Disorder – affects 2% of adults 70% of which are woman. It is a serious yet rarely detected mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. This instability often disrupts relationships, family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual's sense of self-identity.
Sufferers of this disorder have emotional regulation. There is a high rate of self physical-injury more commonly by alcohol or drug abuse without suicide intent or self destructive behavior more often directed towards destroying their relationship, family and home.
While a person with depression or bipolar disorder typically endures the same mood for weeks, a person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last only hours, or at most a day every few days or every day in bouts.
These are often associated with episodes of impulsive aggression often accompanied by drug and or alcohol use and or abuse. The symptoms may present themselves for a few hours then disappear, this gives the impression to many that there is nothing wrong or as normal characteristics and behavior of the sufferer, the inconsistency of mood change makes this disorder difficult to be recognised by the sufferer and others who do not see the sufferers outburst and actions within his/her private familial environment
Distortions in logic & reasoning and sense of self, can lead to frequent changes in long-term goals, partner, family, career plans, jobs, friendships, gender identity, and values.
Sometimes the sufferer will view him/herself as fundamentally bad, unworthy or second best. They may feel unfairly misunderstood or mistreated, bored, empty, and have little idea who they are or where they are going in life, they tend to cut themselves of from their existing life style, surroundings and loved ones believing themselves lost or needing to move on to find themselves, make changes or prove a point or goal to themselves.
They fail to apply cognition to their existing life, partner, home, family, friends to the degree of seeing all as a failure to fuel and devaluate all. Such symptoms are most acute when people with BPD feel isolated and lacking in social and family support, family rejection or abandonment may result in frantic efforts to avoid being or feeling alone, this is most common in characters that are used to receiving attention or experience family rejection.
People with BPD often have highly unstable patterns of social and loving relationships.
While they can develop intense loving but stormy attachments, their attitudes towards partner, 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/partner, but when a slight separation or conflict occurs, they switch unexpectedly to the other extreme and angrily make claims and accuse the other person of not caring for them and or will create issues often exaggerated, imagined and unfounded to motivate themselves towards fueling their thoughts, decisions, anger and to help move away, hurt, destroy, as well as to justify their actions and plans
Individuals with BPD are highly sensitive to rejection, reacting with anger and distress to such mild separations as not receiving adequate attention from partner, family, friends or brief separation, vacation, a business trip, or a sudden change in plans or complete abandonment. They do not like their mistakes pointed out to them and will rather walk away or switch off. These fears of abandonment are related to difficulties feeling emotionally connected to important persons, partner, or loved ones or family when they are physically absent, leaving the sufferer feeling lost and worthless.
The feeling of lost and worthless leave the sufferer with the overall feeling of needing to fill a void, the sufferer will often go from idealization (admiration & love) to devaluation (anger & dislike) from one moment to another, this can be triggered by the slightest of comments or actions made by the other person/partner or family, the devaluation mood leads the sufferer to manufacture and fuel anger, bitterness, mistrust, paranoia, feelings of unsafe and hatred, this leads to motivation towards ways to hurt the other person.
During episodes of devaluation the sufferer will often break up relationships and attempt to move on, often attaching themselves via communication or physically to other people from their past or others that they do not know well or new people, aiming towards intimacy and relationship so as to maintain their devaluation mood and gain feelings of worthiness; in absence of the devaluation mood the sufferer will return to the idealization mood which creates feelings of self judgment, regret and unworthiness as well as feelings of emotional conflict and emptiness battling within themselves whether they should move on or reinstate.
The sufferer has a poor judgment in character of others and will often over socialize with newly found friends and enter into one night stands, casual sex, taking risks with unprotected sex and risky situations with people they barely know to help maintain and keep his/her mood of devaluation so as to avoid real and true emotions and mood of idealization resurfacing.
People with BPD exhibit other impulsive behaviors, such as excessive spending, binge eating, illicit drug intake, excessive alcohol consumption and risky sex, attaching themselves to new and often risky social groups. BPD often occurs together with other psychiatric problems, particularly bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse and other personality disorders.
The sufferer represses much of what conflicts with their devaluation mood and has a selective memory to help him/her cope and move on and maintain devaluation mood and when idealization mood resurfaces it often repressed via seeking attention from others, risky sex, alcohol, binge eating, illicit drugs.
Although the cause of BPD is unknown, both environmental and genetic factors are thought to play a role in predisposing patients to BPD symptoms and traits. Studies show that many, but not all individuals with BPD report a history of abuse, neglect, parental divorce/separation or separation as young children. 40 to 71% of BPD sufferers report having been sexually abused, usually by a non-caregiver. BPD mainly results from a combination of individual vulnerability to environmental stress, neglect or abuse as young children, and a series of events that trigger the onset of the disorder as young adults. Adults with BPD are also considerably more likely to be the victim of violence, including rape and other crimes. This may result from both harmful environments as well as impulsivity and poor judgment in character in others and in choosing wrong/negative partners and lifestyles. Feelings of worthlessness often lead the sufferer towards negative characters.
BPD is difficult to self recognize and often when pointed out to the sufferer they are in denial, to be otherwise would mean to face up to their actions which to the sufferer is extremely difficult. The sufferer becomes dogmatic with their thoughts and actions despite knowing they are not real, illogical, irrational and unjustified.
Expression By; Chris Constantine
