Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental health condition that plays a major role in your mood, behavior, and self-image.
If you have a borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis, you’re likely familiar with turbulent and quickly changing emotions and a lack of stability in your personal relationships and self-image.
As mental health conditions go, BPD is one of the most stigmatized, even among some mental health professionals. Part of this is linked with the historical idea that BPD is untreatable — but we now know that this isn’t the case.
While there is still much to learn about this complex condition, recent research has shown that some types of therapy, such as dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), can be effective at reducing symptoms and improving your quality of life.
Having BPD is usually associated with instability: in relationships, in self-image, and emotions. Often, this instability stems from a fear of abandonment.
BPD is a cluster B personality disorder. Disorders in this cluster affect the person’s emotions and relationships and lead to behaviors that others believe to be extreme or irrational.
Among people with BPD, impulsive and potentially self-damaging behavior is common. Self-harm and suicidal thoughts and actions are also common. Treatments aim to help you manage these intense feelings and reduce distress so that they occur less often.
While there’s no “cure” for BPD, many people with the condition go into “remission,” which means that their symptoms become less intense to the point where they no longer meet the diagnostic criteria.
Far from being untreatable, some studies have suggested that remission rates are above 90% over a 10-year period, although the authors of the study note that many of those individuals were avoiding interpersonal relationships, which contributes to the remission.
BPD is defined in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). In some countries and regions, clinicians use the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), which uses the term emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD) instead of BPD.
The term “personality disorder” is controversial, with many people (clinicians included) rejecting the label. This is because the term itself can be stigmatizing.
It can be upsetting to be told that your mental health disorder is a part of your personality. People with this condition may feel like the emotions and actions of BPD are a rational response to difficult life experiences and not some defect within the person or their personality.
Taking this view, mental health professionals should consider the underlying cause of the person’s emotional responses, rather than determining that there’s a problem with the individual.
While people disagree about the label “personality disorder,” having a label of some sort can serve as a useful way to access support. And some people feel that having a BPD diagnosis is helpful in allowing them to understand and explain their experiences, both to themselves and the people around them.
There are nine symptoms associated with BPD, according to the DSM-5.
You have to have five or more of the following symptoms to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder:
Because of intense fears around abandonment, you might interpret situations as though you are being abandoned, even when that’s not the case.
For example, if a friend changes plans at the last minute for an unavoidable reason, you might have an immediate, automatic fear of being abandoned and feel very hurt or distressed.
When you feel rejected, you might become irrationally angry at the person who you believe is rejecting you (though it may feel rational at the time). You might also feel that you are being rejected because you’re a bad person, even though this is not the case.
Personality disorders are usually diagnosed in people ages 18 and older, even if they have had symptoms for years. This is because a mental health professional will need to look back at patterns formed over the years before diagnosing a personality disorder.
According to the DSM, if BPD is diagnosed in a teen or child, the symptoms have to be present for at least a year.
You can learn more about the symptoms of borderline personality disorder here.
