Borderline PD symptoms description

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!

I have so much chaos in my mind. I just want to feel normal

I feel the defensive, adult behaviors of bpd personalities can be unlearned and healthy behaviors learned and applied through therapy and self understanding on one's underlying anxieties to people and situations; objectively looking at them. It's worked for me.
There ain't nothing DNA has to do with personality. I keep a journal at times and write out my subjective and objective observations. In DBT, although it was short lived therapy, we covered the emotional, rational, and wise mindedness theories. I'm learning to react NOT out of my emotional mind with responses like anger and acting out in other ways, but to step back and be rational. Recently I was able to let go of a long, online relationship which I had mistrusted. I think sometimes the borderline personality finds it hard to adjust or adapt to being independent in judgment due to his/her long patterns of co-dependency or transferring needs to others. Check out Dr. J. Young's, "Reinventing Your Life".

oh That is helpful. Thank you. I was looking for reasons for my obsessions from my bipolar - but it is from my BPD.

This isn't me so why is my physcologys saying I am BPD I'm sure I'm not?

HI Guys ,

Well its strange that i feel courageous enough to tell you what im going through
it actually feels easier to put a stop to life .
its beyond crushing for me ( well i hope you wont take it against me )as a gay guy who lives in India , wants to have normal life with a partner he loves
but life is not that fulfilling i guess , i always end up feeling so constricted to emotions , be it my family who i lie about my sexuality , my feeling etc so as not to be thrown away like garbage .
i stay alone and sometimes i have difficulty in sleeping , i feel so fragile as i lock myself in my office washroom and will cry for hours
i have someone in my life who happens to be a student , who i try to support in his academic pursuits by taking care of his presentations .but as he lives with his family and is studying hard he rarely finds time for me ,
i trust his integrity and the relationship and im to fight for this with whatever it takes , but he is not convinced as he sees no future and will have to marry as per his parents will. So i have settled for two years of his time , i treat my life a cancer patient who just has two years to live ... but this hopelessness and not fairness of life and questions like why me are breaking my soul apart . i give him alot of calls and he gets irritated , but between you and me he is the only best friend and family i have in a city where i live alone without my family . sincerely hoping you will try understanding however stupid it might look to you all
but sometimes i actually wish to trade death for this life its becoming difficult for me each passing day .i have actually started liking being alone in room so much . i hate going outside and seeing happy couples because thie endless despair is actually killing me .

The rage thing is completely absent, so is the unstable relationships. Once I love you, I love you. Your'e stuck with me. Lol. A couple of the symptoms are there in a big way though - fear of abandonment, impulsivity (mostly generosity) emptiness/loneliness.

With the emphasis on rages and black/white thinking, could i still be borderline without those 2 things?

hmm....

Thank you so much...I know this is a "sticky". It is "The" perfect "welcome" into this forum. It is the first thing I read upon entering. It makes me feel understood.

This is intense. Reading about myself and every trait is...i don't know how to explain it. I do get very upset, but have not harmed anyone yet. When I get to that point, somehow I manage to mentally picture myself punching that person in the face..and with time..that feeling of rage passes. I am not sure how silly or strange that is, but it has worked.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I like this description of BPD because it is more than just a list, and I suppose because I relate to it very much. Learning more about BPD has helped me slow down the processes and find words for what is going on.

When this diagnosis is offered, it isn't always offered as an explanation for how we relate to ourselves and others and the intense emotions that result.
It is a complex way of being, as one thing affects another..affects another. It is no wonder we often feel overwhelmed.
I feel so fortunate to have a psychotherapist who understands, accepts, and is kind and patient.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The symptoms of borderline patients are similar to those for which most people seek psychiatric help: depression, mood swings, the use and abuse of drugs, alcohol, or food as a means of trying to feel better; obsessions, phobias, feelings of emptiness and loneliness, inability to tolerate being alone.

In addition, these patients displayed great difficulties in controlling ragefulness; they were unusually impulsive, they fell in and out of love suddenly; they tended to idealize other people and then abruptly despise them. A consequence of all this was that they typically looked for help from a therapist and then suddenly quit in terrible disappointment and anger.

Underneath all these symptoms, therapists began to see in borderline people an inability to tolerate the levels of anxiety, frustration, rejection and loss that most people are able to put up with, an inability to soothe and comfort themselves when they become upset, and an inability to control the impulses toward the expression, through action, of love and hate that most people are able to hold in check. What seems to be of central importance in the symptoms and difficulties mentioned above is that the hallmark of the "borderline" personality is great difficulty in holding on to a stable, consistent sense of one's self: "What am I?" these people ask. "My life is in chaos; sometimes I feel like I can do anything—other times I want to die because I feel so incompetent, helpless and loathsome. I'm a lot of different people instead of being just one person."

The one word that best characterizes borderline personality is "instability." Emotions are unstable, fluctuating wildly, often for no discernible reason. Thought processes are unstable—rational and clear at times, quite extreme and distorted at other times. Behavior is unstable—often with periods of excellent conduct, high efficiency and trustworthiness alternating with outbreaks of regression to childlike states of helplessness and anger, suddenly quitting a job, withdrawing into isolation, failing.

Self control is unstable leading to impulsive behaviors and chaotic relationships. A person with borderline personality disorder may sacrifice themselves for others, only to reach their limit and suddenly fly into rageful reproaches, or they may curry favor through obedient submission only to rebel, out of the blue, in a tantrum.

Associated with this instability is terrible anxiety, guilt and self-loathing for which relief is sought at any cost—medicine, drugs, alcohol, overeating, suicide. Sadly, oddly, self-injury is discovered by many borderline people to provide faster relief than anything else—cutting or burning themselves stops the anxiety temporarily.

The effect upon others of all this trouble is profound: family members never know what to expect from their volatile child, siblings, or spouse, except they know they can expect trouble: suicide threats and attempts, self-inflicted injuries, outbursts of rage and recrimination, impulsive marriages, divorces, pregnancies and abortions; repeated starting and stopping of jobs and school careers, and a pervasive sense, on the part of the family, of being unable to help.[/quote]

My life in a nutshell

Very good description of this problem. Those who don't have it would be surprised at just how many things these feelings affect!

I do have some of the symptoms listed here but I think it's just traits. I am diagnosed with OCD and I see people with BPD have obsessive traits. When you mean obsessive, do you mean being obsessed with a person or thing rather than an obsession that leads to a conplusion to take the obsessive thought away? I can be obsessive about people and my emotions can be very intense about others. I feel like I can be a bit manipulative, announcing that I feel depressed or something negative to catch a certain person's attention. Is this a BPD trait?

I wouldn't say I was 'unstable' but when it comes to relationships I can love someone one minute and hate them the next if they upset me.

I have considered bringjng this up with the nurse but I don't want that diagnosis as people are very ignorant about personality disorders. I already have an erroneous, in my opinion, diagnosis of schizophrenia and don't need another reason for people to hate me. Unfortunately the world is backward and the stigma attached to mental illness is enough to stop me from bringing it up with the nurse. Half of the reason I hate myself so much is because of the negative attitude of people towards mental illness.

Also I cope with self loathing through sugary foods and alcohol.

Does this sound like BPD??

Now I know for sure. Thank you.

Today my therapist told me I don't have bpd! She said I have tendencies, but not the actual condition.
Good! It's enough dealing with this bipolar.

My psychiatrist told me that too...

Yes.
A perfect description.
*ouch... but yes, perfect.

I think I have this. I have Bipolar depression and substance abuse problems that have greatly affected my life. I have relationship problems and anxiety etc...

I have been diagnosed as bipolar II and ADD, however this description is very much me. Does BPD often go along with bipolar?

Mental health support in my part of London is almost non existent so I feel your pain and frustration...it's like they want people to die ffs..I'm gonna present at AnE cos I'm so low...take care I hope things improve x

So with this diagnosis a couple of dofferent places, what actually is a treatment? Many places talk of symptoms and tribulations that define us as BPD, but how do we get better?