A question about this list of symptoms of borderline personality disorder. What if a person has some of these characteristics, but not all of them? My sister, for example has the following bold underlined, italicized and not the others.

• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment absolutely!
• A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
• Identity disturbance, such as a significant and persistent unstable self-image or sense of self I think so. She told me that as a child and young person, she has no sense of who she was. She was quiet and sweet, the third of three children, because she saw what I "got" when I stood up to our dad, and didn't want that to happen to her. So she "went along to get along."
• Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating) definitely sex. Not the others.
• Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior (NONE OF THESE)
• Emotional instability due to significant reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days) My sister is stressed out about 80% of the time. She used to be about 90% of the time until she retired from teaching elementary school, which stressed her out big time. But now that she's retired, she is still STRESSING HERSELF OUT because of her frantic lifestyle, and poor judgment relating to men in her life, including her ex husband, her two grown sons, and our sister in law. When our mother was alive, and years ago, the three of us would get together and talk about our lives. She asked us how she could cut down on her stress level. Mother and I made some positive suggestions on what she could do. Sister was teaching school at that time. Mother and I had also taught school. We suggested that she arrange/train the kids to do a lot of the work about the classroom, and be more self-directed. She did EVERYTHING, including designing and teaching extremely complicated art projects. We are all very supportive of the arts, so I'm not at all saying art classes in school are unnecessary, or "fluff." But the things sister put together, and not just art, where ridiculously time and energy consuming, but she swore it was necessary. She'd spend hours on superfluous stuff that the kids could be helping with. She never acted upon any of the suggestions Mother and I offered her, and finally stopped asking us to help. Now that she is retired, she has told me that's the way she likes to live her life -- stressed.
  
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights) nothing this violent. But she is irritable and distracted almost all the time. She is like two different people -- sweet natured and easy to get along with when the is not stressed out; irritable, blaming, and snappish when she is stressed. And she almost always is.
  
• Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms no

If not borderline personality disorder, does anybody have any ideas what her problem could be? She accuses me (and others, I feel sure) of saying something I didn't say, and accuses me of not saying something I did say! She falls in love with some man, tells him she will love him forever, even through a family party for "Mister Wonderful," one time. She promised Mister Wonderful she would marry him, when he proposed. Then she burned out, broke the engagement, got back together over and over. Finally he dumped her suddenly. Now, three years later, she still freaks out when she sees him -- and the woman he found after her - at a community event, which often happens as they run in the same social circles. This blaming and paranoia would be crazy-making if in conversation with me. It used to occur on the phone. Now, it occurs in email exchanges, to I can prove that she is doing this! However, I will absolutely not argue about it with her, or even try to point it out. The time before this time, I tried to email her nicely and rationally, but this took on a life of its own, with maybe 12-16 emails back and forth. I finally took the whole email thread to my therapist. He was shocked and amazed at how she "took" some teeninesy statement I made in passing!!! There is so much more that she does. I can't go into all of it here and expect you to read it all!