Borderline Personality Disorder

  Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships. It's often caused by a combination of biological factors, environmental and social influences, such as trauma or early life experiences.

Symptoms can include:

• Significant, intense mood swings lasting from a few hours to a few days

• Chronic feelings of emptiness

• Intense fear of abandonment, sometimes resulting in extreme measures to avoid real or imagined separation or rejection

• Unstable relationships, often moving between idealizing someone and then believing the person doesn’t care or is cruel

• Intense episodes of anger or depression

• Impulsivity and risky behavior such as spending money, substance abuse, unsafe sex, binge eating, reckless driving

• Periods of stress-related paranoia and fearfulness.

     Treatment for BPD includes helping to identify patterns that trigger maladaptive behaviors and replace them with more effective behaviors; interpersonal therapy to improve communication skills; mindfulness to help slow down racing thoughts and anchor to the moment, and distress tolerance skills for when a situation is particularly painful.

With evidence based treatment remission of BPD symptoms is possible!