What is it like to have borderline personality disorder

Limit personality trouble (BPD) is a serious mental health condition that is estimated to affect approximately 1.8% of the general population. It is characterized by a pattern of instability in social relations, self-imageAnd emotion regulation and a significant increase in impulsivity from young adulthood.

What is it like to have borderline personality disorder?

This elusive question was at the center of a new study led by Christian Moltu of Førde District General Hospital in Norway. More specifically, he and his collaborators were interested in how people with borderline personality disorder experienced their relationships with themselves and with others. The nature of these relationships has important implications for diagnosis and treatment, but is often poorly understood.

To this end, Moltu and her team recruited 12 study participants (all women) who had recently been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. They conducted in-depth face-to-face interviews with them about what it was like to be diagnosed and to live with the disease and their experiences of treatment. From there, the research team analyzed participants’ accounts for themes.

The results were startling. The general theme of “getting firm stakes” emerged, underscoring the continued search for stability and security. The particular expression “reach” spoke of the chronicle of the participants anxiety to lose what they had struggled to control. The women’s inner lives were marked by chaos and confusion, as they described a sense of fragmentation, not knowing who they were, and a sense of existential insecurity. Their own thoughts and feelings frightened them and often proved unbearable.

Reaching firm holdings also encompasses someone or something that could provide an escape from the intensity of their experiences. It could be self-destructive, like taking drugs, drinking alcohol, self harm, or an inflexible perfectionism. But it could also swing to the positive, including finding connections and trying to trust others.

This general theme produced five related sub-themes, which are described below.

1. Captive of emotions

Participants described their inner life as a cacophony of voices trying to shout at each other. The intensity of their emotions engulfed them like a tidal wave that led to mental and physical chaos and drove them to a desperate search for calm and escape. The uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of their feelings was most distressing, as they could also experience intense joy. Consider a participant’s reflection:

“I can wake up feeling depressed, and then three days pass, and I’m upstairs. I have no middle ground; either I’m down or I’m up. Either I’m happy and I have blue eyes and the world is really beautiful and everything is just “yes”, or it’s death, destruction, war, kill me! I am like this.”

2. Keep the undeserved at bay

Many women wanted to be perfect, but didn’t know what they were trying to accomplish or what it would actually mean to achieve perfection. Their quest for perfection stemmed from feeling damaged and worthless, and being perfect was a way to push those feelings away. However, the participants’ efforts at perfection left them “wandering in blindness” and influenced their relationships. A participant shared:

I would feel very insecure; I still do. I need confirmation several times a day, to confirm that I am doing things right, because I will be judging myself a lot. I have this perfectionist in me; if it’s not perfect, then it’s not good.

This perfectionism was destructive. When they could not meet their impossible standards or did not receive validation from others, some women resorted to punishment through self-harm (e.g., self-harm) or Talking to myself which could degenerate into suicidal ideations.

3. Be wary of yourself

Participants described feeling unmoored as if floating within themselves and among others. They didn’t feel equipped to hold on, soothe, and validate themselves. They were confused between what was self and the other and doubted their thoughts, emotions and perceptions of the social world. Being alone was particularly difficult, as if risking self-evaporation. One participant explained:

I struggle a lot with the fact that I get lost when I’m alone. Life can get hopeless, and I can’t do anything, even though I’d like to draw or something, I rarely can do anything when I’m at home (… ) It’s just to pass the time until it’s time to go to bed.

4. Dependency as stability

Many participants engaged in addictive relationships with things and other people, including alcohol, drugs, love, exercise, or relationships. In this vein, addiction he could be counted on in the storm of inner and outer confusion. This was a predictable and known quantity that could at least temporarily fill the only Cancel. One participant, for example, found relief from the daily challenges of prescription pills:

I really have an addiction personality; I easily become dependent on people. I can get really obsessive and think, “If I only have her as a friend, other people don’t matter.” I’ve been in love with people I didn’t even know and reacted by getting high, drinking alcohol, or taking pills. I was addicted to anxiety pills; I used them to not feel the intense feelings in me or to better manage certain situations. So I easily get addicted.

5. The uncertainty of reaching out

While women perceived others as ever-changing and precarious, they also sought relationships of stability and security and to counterbalance the precarious relationship they had with themselves. A bond between self and others arose, in which participants reached out to others for safety, but this meant they risked losing their grip on themselves. This to fear led some participants to “test” the love, tolerance and safety of their friends and family. One participant said she felt so “unhealthy” about herself that she urgently wanted to be fed by someone reliable and safe:

Maybe that’s what this personality disorder entails, because all I wanted was someone to take me home with them, you know (crying). Take me home and take care of me. It’s what I wanted and still want, but it’s not good, or what I want doesn’t go with what’s really good for me.

The women in the study found it both intolerable to be with and without others. But despite the crushing pain it caused, reaching out helped them to hold on and face the aftermath.