I emailed my T this.

What are the symptoms of borderline personality disorder?

According to the DSM, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), to be diagnosed with borderline per*sonality disorder, a person must show an enduring pattern of behavior that includes at least five of the following symptoms:

• Extreme reactions—including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions—to abandonment, whether real or perceived

I do not have extreme reactions

• A pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often veering from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)

Where is the stormy relationship?


• Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self, which can result in sudden changes in feelings, opinions, values, or plans and goals for the future (such as school or career choices)

I am not sure that my image of myself is distorted

• Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating

So I have bulimia but I think it is just an eating disorder not an impulsive dangerous behavior.

• Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting

This does not make me a borderline. I do not threaten suicide or threaten to self harm.

• Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days

So I am moody.........what woman isn’t? That does not make me a borderline.

• Chronic feelings of emptiness and/or boredom

Again you do not have to be a borderline to have these feelings.

• Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger

I do not have inappropriate intense anger or a problem controlling anger.

• Having stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms, such

as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality.

I do not dissociate and I paranoid thoughts are when you think people are following you and they are out to get you. I do not think people are out to get me.





If you had to defend this diagnosis to another health care profession how would you do it?

It seems every second person with BPD is sure they dont have it and the doctors MUST be wrong...

Generally I trust the docs.

His he a doctor.........Phd?

No he is a LMHC...........so yeah he can be wrong.

I usually trust someone in the field but if you are so strongly sure it's not you I'd go look for a second opinion!

I have anoter T....LICSW.......I have been seeing for a year but now I only see him every two weeks. I asked him his opinion. He said he could only base it on the sessions I have with him and from his past experience as a director for a residential treatment school for adolesence(Lost of BPD)...no I am NOT BPD but easily fall under the catagory of DESNOS or Compex PTSD which in NOT a billable diagnosis to the insurance comapany. He feels my other T is billing as eating disordered PTSD/BPD because that is accetable.

This is his response:

Hi,

Well, I believe you do meet 5 of the items but it's a more mild case of BPD.

I found this:

By David Joel Miller
Are there differnet types of Borderline Personality Disorder?
People with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) differ so much there might be more than one type of BPD or that we may be placing several different mental illnesses together under one label. Gunderson in his book Borderline Personality Disorder describes three levels of functioning in people with BPD. Hotchkiss appears to enlarge this idea into three types of borderlines.
Diagnostic criteria for mental health disorders are largely normal characteristics which have grown so large that they begin to interfere with everyday life. Everyone has sadness sometimes and we all are or should be anxious occasionally. That same concept of degree rather than nature is applicable to BPD.
Masterson wrote about Narcissistic personality disorder and described this as coming in low medium and high levels. I think the use of that same sort of yardstick for measuring BPD might be useful.

Low Borderline characteristics or traits

People with low BPD or beginning Borderline traits have or are able to sustain a primary relationship. This relationship may be rocky but the low borderline trait individual is able to have satisfying interactions with a partner. They will perceive this partner as supportive.
What brings a low symptom Borderline into treatment will be feelings of emptiness, loneliness or depression despite having a supportive partner. They may also suffer from chronic boredom or masochism. They want both a close relationship and fear that relationship because needing someone exposes you to becoming dependent on them.
As a result of the presence of that supportive person in there life a mild BPD individual may go undiagnosed. They may lack the intense anger and have fewer and milder mood swings than those that appear in more severe cases. Their self-destructive behaviors will be fewer and less frequent and may be ascribed to life experiences like layoffs or fights with their S. O. rather than being recognized as BPD traits.
What tips the clinician off to the BPD traits is not the current relationship but a history of previous unstable relationships and a pattern of over rapid entry into and speedy exit from relationships, as well as a history of being the victim of abuse or neglect.

Medium BPD

As the symptoms of BPD become more severe you may experience more anger, more worries about losing your partner and more frantic efforts to keep your partner in the relationship. People with medium BPD are described as having difficulty seeing things from others point of view and devaluing others. They may manipulate as a way to get their needs met. They have the belief that asking will not get them what they need and that they need to force others to stay with them.
This level of borderline functioning is full of break ups and make ups, drama from current and previous relationships and recurrent self-harm or suicide attempts to force the partner to stay. Someone with medium intensity BPD may plan suicide with the thought that this will punish the other for not loving them enough.

High Borderline Personality Symptoms

When BPD reaches this level the borderline is unable to maintain a relationship with a significant other. They are without a functioning support system and become increasingly lonely and angry. They may develop distorted thinking, delusions and eventually hallucinations. They may have episodes of panic involving various anxiety provoking possibilities.
At this level of BPD symptoms the most likely coping mechanisms are efforts to distract the self by using drugs and alcohol, abusing food, and acting out behaviors. Fights, promiscuity, self-mutilation or suicide attempts will be common.
Are relationships a cause or the result of the level of BPD?
There is some question as to whether having a significant relationship reduces the level of borderline traits or if people low in traits can maintain better relationships than those who are high in BPD traits.
One thing that seems clear is that if you have a supportive other in your life, especially in your primary relationship you are more likely to be able to cope with your mental illness. Learning life skills can improve you functioning and increase the likelihood of finding a supportive partner. Healthy people attract healthy partners.