What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD is a personality disorder characterized by its impulsivity. Patients suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder have difficulties in relationships with other people; their self-control is very low and their emotional state is unsteady as they experience severe mood swings. Their life in the society is also troubled by abnormally high anxiety, constant feeling of emptiness and impulses to commit a suicide. Due to numerous issues that they suffer from, patients with BPD gradually become unable to take active part in social life; the loss of ability to communicate to other people in a socially acceptable way makes them distance themselves from the human society (Gunderson et al. 129). People with BPD often have intestinal issues, depression, drinking issues and drug addiction. The first signs of BPD often appear when the patient is young. Nowadays Borderline Personality Disorder is believed to be a subtype of emotionally unstable personality disorder.
Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder
Various types of abnormal behavior connected to person’s unstable emotions characterize BPD. First of all, people suffering from BPD tend to feel emotions longer than healthy people do; they feel everything more deeply and this is why they have a higher propensity to become depressed (Iverson et al. 415). What is more, people with BPD usually need more time to recover from an emotional upheaval. Most of time they are either very joyful or extremely depressed and it is caused by greater power of their positive and negative emotions. Moreover, people with BPD experience increased emotional lability. The behavior of such patients tends to be impulsive as it gives them a kind of relief from the mental pain that drives them distracted.
Many people with BPD feel so hopeless that it leads to suicide attempts and self-harming. In some cases, self-harming is aimed at attracting attention that these people lack; they sometimes believe their anguishes to be underestimated by friends and relatives and this is why they choose such a way to show what they feel. Being unstable in many spheres, they also possess a lack of balance in the field of interpersonal relationships. Thus, their attitude to the people who they have relationships with can significantly change because of some minor events. For instance, their feelings may shift from love to hate in a short lapse of time. When it happens, their self-image changes as well. The self-images of patients with BPD are constantly changing as they feel certain of nothing; there is nothing that seems constant to them and it causes a strong feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness of life (Talbott 83).
Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder
People with BPD are in dismal need for medical attention as their behavior is potentially dangerous for them and for the entire society. The treatment is essential as failure to render proper medical assistance may lead to a successful suicide of the patient. Nowadays long-term psychotherapy is believed to be the best treatment for patients with BPD (Choi-Kain et al. 343). Various types of psychotherapy turn out to be helpful for such patients. The particular issue that psychotherapists should pay attention to is intense psychological projection of their patients. Among other ways to manage BPD is taking various medicinal drugs that reduce anxiety and anger. Patients with BPD are often prescribed to take sedating medications that help to reduce their suicide proneness.
Works Cited
Choi-Kain, Lois, Elizabeth B. Albert, and John Gunderson. “Evidence-Based Treatments for Borderline Personality Disorder: Implementation, Integration, and Stepped Care.” Harvard Review of Psychiatry, vol. 24, no. 5, 2016, pp. 342-356.
Gunderson, John, Igor Weinberg, and Lois Choi-Kain. “Borderline Personality Disorder.” Focus, vol. 11, no. 2, 2013, pp. 129-145.
Iverson, Katherine Mary, et al. “An Investigation of Experiential Avoidance, Emotion Dysregulation, and Distress Tolerance in Young Adult Outpatients with Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms.” Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, vol. 3, no. 4, 2012, pp. 415-422.
Talbott, John. “Borderline Personality Disorder.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. 201, no. 2, 2013, p. 83.