Borderline Personality Disorder

Reboot Your Relationship Radio

May 2013

Joe Whitcomb & Savannah Ellis

“Personality Disorders & Relationships” 

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We have been talking about Personality Disorders the last few weeks and we’re going to continue along those lines. There are ten different personality disorders that exist, and as I’ve been saying in the last couple of shows that everyone has a personality, and everyone has aspects of maybe two or three or four of these different personality disorders. It becomes a disorder when it interferes with your ability to function. Either at work, or at home, in relationships, but that’s one, it’s overwhelming when it interferes with your ability to get through life and it has a negative impact on your emotional state and your relationships.

 

I wanted to talk about a personality disorder that probably people have heard of and it’s certainly of all the personality disorders, this one is diagnosed the most, and it’s called Borderline Personality Disorder. Borderline Personality Disorder and what I’d like to do, is I’d like to talk with you about what is this disorder is. What are the symptoms. What are the criteria for this particular personality disorder. The ways in which it affects people’s lives, the causes of this disorder and then give you some strategies again, some treatment approaches to help someone or yourself if you’re struggling with this type of personality disorder. And one of the things that I may have mentioned as well in my work and I see people with all different types of personality disorders but defining, and identifying and diagnosing a personality disorder is more difficult than making a diagnosis of depression or a diagnosis of anxiety. Personality disorders are complex and they are more difficult to discern in working with people. That is why it’s not uncommon that people will come up to me and talk with me about a friend of theirs, or a neighbor, a relative and they will start describing them and say “What do you think? Do you think that they have a Narcissistic Personality?” or “Do you think that they’re Obsessive-Compulsive?, or this, or that?” and I avoid making any kind of diagnosis. It’s something that I would never do, is make a diagnosis of someone that I’ve never met, I’ve never interviewed, I’ve never talked to. So it’s something that I know people would like for me to do because they want to understand this person better. I might offer them some suggestions for treatment or some suggestions for reading material but I would never make a diagnosis like that.

 

This particular disorder, the Borderline Personality Disorder can be extremely debilitating. It can be extremely dysfunctional, and it can be extremely harmful for relationships. For one, Borderline Personality Disorder, again like most of the personality disorders is a long standing pattern. So a personality develops over many years. It’s a long standing pattern of unstable moods, self-image and relationships. People with Borderline Personality Disorder tend to be impulsive and again like most of the others it usually begins in early adulthood. And people with this disorder are typically unable to tolerate being alone, and their relationships tend to be unstable and intense. They also engage in risky and impulsive behaviors such as dramatic over-spending, having unsafe sex or having sex with people they hardly know, abusing alcohol or drugs, driving recklessly or binge eating. All of these are self-destructive behaviors. A person with a Borderline Personality Disorder tends to be self-destructive. It’s not uncommon for people with this problem to physically hurt themselves by cutting themselves, self-mutilating, or tried to kill themselves or have suicidal gestures or attempts. Individuals with this disorder, often experience severe mood swings, feelings of emptiness and intense anger. And there’s a couple of really key features of this disorder:

 

One is intense anger. Many of these patients have rage. They have hostility and they’re angry at everyone, they’re angry at the world. And they’re mood is to blame other people for their problems. They also have very stormy relationships. So it’s not uncommon for them to be in a relationship and have a lot of turmoil, a lot of conflict and sometimes a physical confrontation, many verbal confrontations and then to end the relationship. Either they end it or the other person ends it, but their relationships, even when they end, the person has a lot of ambivalence, a lot of mixed feelings. Borderline Personality Disorders tend to give a lot of mixed messages. They pull you closer to them, they want you to be close to them and then they push you away. They want you to help them, they want you to comfort them, and support them, and nurture them and then they hate your guts the next minute, maybe the next hour, maybe the next day. You’re the best thing since sliced bread, and then the next thing you know a week later, two weeks later, you’re a horrible person. I see this a lot in working in my practice where a person with this disorder will come in and I start working with them and they seem to be engaged, then seem to really appreciate the therapy process, really appreciate the insights that I might share with them. And they might think, “This person really is a wonderful psychologist, she’s a great psychologist, she really knows me.” And then, something switches, something changes. It may be, that they begin to feel vulnerable. Maybe they begin to feel that I might reject them or I might abandon them and they turn. And they turn to the point where they think I’m horrible as a psychologist, I don’t know what I’m talking about, I don’t know what I’m doing and it seems like it happens in an instant. But it’s related to their fear of being abandoned, their fear of being rejected. Many Borderline Personality Disorders have tremendous fear of abandonment and rejection. They feel this sense of emptiness inside and they have tremendous insecurity.

 

Now one of the things that’s difficult, I mentioned this in the beginning that it is difficult to make this diagnosis because you really do need to get to know the person. Typically it’s hard to make the diagnosis on the first visit or even on the second visit, it may take several visits before a professional can make this determination. In so many of the different personality disorders this one in particular can look like something different. So it’s really important when you’re making a diagnosis as a professional that you rule out some other types of problems that might look very similar to the Borderline Personality Disorder. And one of them is Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder – which is used to be called Manic Depressive Disorder, now it’s called Bipolar but it’s basically someone who goes through dramatic mood swings. They have the high-high’s and the low-low’s. And when they’re in a Manic Phase, they can be reckless, they can be impulsive, and they can be angry and self-destructive a lot like the Borderline Personality Disorder. The difference is that Bipolar Disorders tend to be more grandiose and have an over inflated ego and feel invincible like Superman. People with Bipolar Disorders tend to, when they’re in a Manic Phase not require a whole lot of sleep because they feel like they’re wasting time when they’re sleeping and that they can be doing so much and can be so productive. They’re going in a million miles a minute. And they’re good with that. And they feel powerful and they feel like they’re accomplishing a lot. Whereas with the Borderline Personality they don’t have that kind of sense of invincibility or sense of grandiosity where they have an over-inflated self-esteem. Instead, they are more insecure and they are experiencing more of this emptiness and this rejection even though there are some similarities between the two disorders.

 

Now let me move in to the area of the specific criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder. So giving you some of the criteria, the first thing is, and I’ve mentioned this in the beginning, it’s a pervasive pattern of instability of relationships, of interpersonal relationships. Their self-esteem, their self-image is often unstable and their mood or their affect is unstable and they tend to be impulsive. So the first aspect of this and in order to meet the criteria for Borderline Personality you have to have five of these criteria that I’m about to mention.

 

The first one being, that there’s a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, characterized by alternating between extremes. The extreme of feeling like this is the perfect person for me, or the other is this person is horrible and vacillating and fluctuating between the person is great and the person is terrible. A lot of people that have this Borderline Personality tend to jump into relationships full force and both feet. They immerse themselves in relationships. So they might just meet the person for the first time and feel like they know that this is the person that they should marry. They are convinced that this is the person for them. And they totally share way too much. This is an issue for people with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) is that they have very poor boundaries. They have a hard time knowing where to draw the line in the sand and that there’s no line in the sand, they haven’t drawn any line. So they let people in way too much, way too quickly. They self-disclose and share way too much and they have a hard time in saying no, and in setting limits. They’re not good at setting boundaries for themselves and with people.

 

The second one is this frantic effort to avoid real or imagined abandonment. They are so afraid, terrified of being abandoned and being rejected. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been working with a patient that has this disorder. And if I mention anything about moving my office from one location to another or maybe I’m talking about a conference or something that I’m excited about going to and I’m going to be gone for a period of time, if they perceive that they’re being abandoned by me or rejected by me, it freaks them out. It creates a tremendous amount of fear and a tremendous amount of anxiety. So that’s the second aspect.

 

The third is this disturbance in their identity. They have either an unstable self-image or really no sense of who they are. They struggle with their identity, with who they are, and where they’re going with their lives. They really haven’t figured that out yet.

 

Number four is impulsivity. Impulsivity in some potentially self-damaging areas like spending money, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating. They tend to be self-damaging and self-destructive at times. So that would be number four.

 

Number five is for many Borderline Personality Disorders they have recurrent thoughts of suicide. They might have gestures where they might make an attempt. They might threaten others either their therapist or people that are close to them. And in some cases, they do self-mutilate, they do cut on themselves. So that would be number five.

 

Number six is their affect of instability. In other words, their mood, their emotional state. They could be up, they could be down. From one day to the next, from one hour to the next but their mood is unstable.

 

Number seven is chronic feelings of emptiness. They feel empty, incomplete and they feel like they don’t have a whole lot of direction for their lives.

 

Number eight is inappropriate intense anger, or difficulty in controlling their anger.

 

And then the last one, number nine is sometime in some cases, Borderlines can experience some paranoia where they get paranoid under a tremendous amount of stress. They might experience some paranoia or some dissociative symptoms where they kind of check out and they’re not really there. They are physically there but mentally they’ve checked out.

 

So those are the nine criteria in order to be diagnosed with this disorder a person would have to experience five of those nine. Now Borderline Personality Disorder, the other thing to mention is I mentioned that it is the most studied Personality Disorder. 20% of psychiatric hospitalizations are for Borderline Personality Disorder. And a lot of these individuals do seek help, do seek therapy but they also tend to drop out of treatment. Maybe they feel threatened, maybe they feel that the therapist is going to reject them. So for a lot of people if they anticipate being rejected they might beat you to the punch and reject you first because it’s so painful for them to even think about being rejected by someone else especially a therapist. So they might reject the therapist first, and drop out of treatment. They are also quick to open up in therapy but they’re just as quick to shut down. So trust is a huge factor in the therapeutic relationship with Borderline Personality Disorder. 2% of the general population have BPD, and about 10% of all mental health out patients struggle with it, and about 20% of in-patients. Couple other pieces of information and statistics on this disorder, 75% of those diagnosed with BPD are women. And 75% of people with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) have been either physically or sexually abused. Now as I was saying earlier, with a lot of the Borderline Personality Disorders, there are other things going on in their lives so they can have an anxiety disorder or depression or substance abuse disorder. In fact, 54% of BPD’s have problems, have abuse to substances. You know, have some form of substance abuse whether be alcohol or drugs, but 54% have substance a abuse disorder. And just to not scare you with this, there is a great deal of variability, there is a great deal of difference between a highly-functional Borderline Personality Disorder and an extremely low-functioning Borderline Personality Disorder, so it can vary greatly. In like most personality disorders it’s on a continuum from mild to moderate to severe. And the same holds true here, mild, to moderate to severe.

 

Now ironically, these individuals recognize that they have problems in their relationships and problems that are affecting their daily functioning. But they may not have the insight or they may not have the desire or motivation to change. So one of the things that’s so important in the therapeutic process is not only to develop trust but also to help them in developing a sense of commitment and to the change process and to recognize that there are things that they can do to change, to help themselves. When we get to the treatment strategies, part of what I try to do for people is help them regulate their emotions more effectively or more constructively. You know some people regulate emotion through substances, so some people that have maybe depression, maybe anxiety, they might drink alcohol, and that’s their way of regulating their anxiety. It maybe that the alcohol calms them. Well, it’s not a healthy way to regulate emotions and part of my job is to give people some healthy ways to regulate emotion. Ironically with Borderline Personality Disorder when they cut on themselves, when they self mutilate, that’s their way of regulating their emotions. Again, obviously it’s an unhealthy way, it’s a destructive way but they get some relief from self-harm. It sounds strange but that’s the way it works with someone who has a Borderline Personality Disorder. Many of these individuals grew up in dysfunctional environments, maybe in an environment where their parents were invalidating their emotions, maybe punishing their emotions. They may have been told by their parents that they shouldn’t be angry. Or when they are angry, they may have been told it’s because their jealous, jealous of maybe a sibling or jealous of their parents and not allowing the individual to experience negative emotion. Not allowing them to monitor, regulate and manage their emotion but totally and completely denying their emotion.

 

There’s been a lot of research done on Borderline Personality Disorder and the research has indicated that there is a genetic base for some of their problems, like their problem with impulsivity and aggression but the environmental influences are also significant. And for many of them, it extends back into childhood. So again the “nature-nurture” of personality disorders, they may be a component of genetics but there’s a very large component that is tied into the environment in which they grew up. The impact of this disorder is pretty over-whelming. The ways in which this disorder can affect families and relationships is pretty overwhelming.

 

Now for some people that have this disorder, they act out or they act in, and what I mean by that is acting out behaviors might include rage, blame, they might become physically violent or verbally abusive. And acting in is by self mutilating, by holding anger in and maybe attempting suicide. So it can affect people in either of those two ways, either they act out their anger or they act in their anger but that’s one aspect of people with Borderline Personality Disorder. I mentioned earlier that it’s common for people to have a drug or alcohol abuse problem if they are Borderline. They have frequent changes in their career, their job is often unstable, and they have conflicts with maintaining friendships and relationships. They might have suicidal threats, gestures, attempts and spend maybe an excessive amount of money. They tend to what’s called splitting, they tend to split people, they tend to be like a wedge between two people, maybe two friends that they have. They might try to split them because again it goes back to the fear of being rejected by one person or by the other person. And they become a wedge because maybe they are afraid that those two friends might be closer to each other, and might reject or abandon them as an individual or as a person. So they do what they can to try to split or become a wedge between those two individuals so that they don’t decide to reject this one person. They do a lot of projecting, which means they project their feelings and their thoughts and their inadequacies and their anger and their sadness onto others. They have a hard time focusing in on their own inadequacies so criticism and blame is a defense mechanism that’s often used by people with Borderline Personality Disorder.

 

Now there are several good books out there, the two I want to mention, one is called “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me”. Excellent book, it’s a book that talks about Borderline Personality Disorder and discusses some of the ways in which it affects an individual’s life. But that really describes a Borderline Person. They might have tremendous anger and hatred for another person at one point in time. But they don’t want to be abandoned. So they might push him away, and then pull him back, and then push him away, and then pull him back. The other extremely good book is called “Stop Walking on Eggshells” and this is a book for families, friends, for people that love or care about someone who has a Borderline Personality Disorder. So it’s called “Stop Walking on Eggshells”, taking your life back when someone you care about has Borderline Personality Disorder. And this book is written by Paul Mason and Randy Kreger. And here is an excerpt from this particular book, and it’s an excerpt of a patient that has Borderline Personality Disorder.

 

“ I always have this insatiable hunger for something I couldn’t define, except to call it the bottomless pit of need. Something that made me different and ashamed, something that made me scared to get close to anyone, anybody, for fear they discover I was rotten and disturbed. So I diversified, I had lots of friends and didn’t get too close to anyone of them. If I let my guard down and one friend found out how weird I was, they back off. I had 59 others.”

 

So they always have a back-up plan, they always have a safety net, but now a romantic relationship has kicked in and with it, closeness.

 

“The stakes are high with one person meaning so much and in need within me wells up like water behind a weak dam. It takes all I have not to let it burst through. Ah! But this is different, the guy needs me too. So maybe it’s safe here. So I knocked a chunk of rock out of the dam that holds back the raging waters and it sweeps me with its currents tossing me around in every direction bouncing like a pinball, spinning. I can’t control it, it’s got a life of its own. Be with me please! Every day and every night look at me, listen to me, I’m here, see me, I’m here, I’m here. Oh! This is incredible! Finally, finally the one person who can take all of this need, what a relief. Hey wait a minute, he’s resisting this. Says he wants to watch TV and peace, says he’s got something else to do, what the hell do I do now? I’m frustrated, I hate this guy, I let my guard down. Doesn’t he know how hard it was for me to do that. How dare you rather than watch TV than talk to me. How dare he rather be out with his friends than be right here, right now with me. How dare he find out what kind of completely disturbed person I am. I’m furious, and I’m embarrassed. I’ve been caught with my pants down, he’s seen my bottomless pit of need. He’s made a fool of me. Embarrassed, I lash out. Let them have it. Let the jerk just know who he is toying with. I don’t care about you. See, I’m cool, I’m tough. I don’t need him. I rage, I scream until I collapse in exhaustion and then I wake up and I see how much I’ve hurt him. And I despise myself more than I could ever imagine. I’m scared to death because he’s gonna walk. I just know he’s gonna walk. I’m so vulnerable, I’m not tough. Please don’t leave. I’m not the tough chic. I do need you. I cry, I beg, I tell him what an incredible man he is, how patient he is. I just know you hate me, you should hate me. I’d be better off dead, you’d be better off without me. No, I mean it. I wish I were dead. He’s relenting a little bit. Oh please let me make it up to you. Let’s make incredible love, let me cook a delicious meal. He’s back, he’s still around. I didn’t blow it permanently. It feels so good to be with him. He cares, I need him. When I realize that I’ve cause irrevocable damage when the psycho has repeated itself so often, I’m convinced that I’ve irrevocably blown it. Whether or not he has reached this conclusion, I cut the cord and find somebody else, and go through the whole cycle, again.”

 

That’s what it’s like to live with Borderline Personality Disorder. That’s what it’s like, it’s extremely painful, it’s extremely chaotic and it’s extremely turbulent. And those are the kind of relationships that people have when they’re struggling with this condition and they’re not receiving help. They’re not looking for a professional, guidance or direction. But they’re just spinning, they’re just spinning out of control.

 

This is another example of something that a Borderline person has written:

“Being a Borderline feels like eternal hell, nothing less. Pain, anger, confusion, never know how I’m gonna feel from one minute to the next. Hurting because I hurt those I love. Feeling misunderstood. Analyzing everything. Nothing gives me pleasure. Once in a great while, I will get too happy and then anxious because of that. Then I self-medicate with alcohol. Then I physically hurt myself. Then I feel guilty because of that. Shame, wanting to die but not being able to kill myself because I’d feel too much guilt for those I’d hurt. And then feeling angry about that, so I cut myself instead.”

 

Those are some of the characteristics of this Borderline Personality Disorder, it can be overwhelming.

 

I want to be able to spend some time talking about treatment. Because there is hope. A lot of times especially with the magnitude of this disorder and the ways in which it can impact a person’s life, and some of what I have shared, may sound scary, may sound overwhelming, and even some of the material – the books, certainly the “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me” book, when patients of mine have read that, it can be overwhelming and it can be a little scary. And even when in the movies when they portray an individual as a Borderline Personality Disorder, they might portray them in the most severe light, in the most severe way. Example that I often will give is the movie “Fatal Attraction” and if you remember that movie, and I believe it was Glenn Close who played the Borderline Personality Disorder. The gentlemen, there was Michael Douglas who has the extra-marital affair with this Borderline Personality, and basically she went ballistic and did a multitude of things to try harm him. She portrays a Borderline Personality Disorder. There are other movies out there. The other one that I am thinking of is “Play Misty for Me”, an old, old movie, a Clint Eastwood movie. Also has that Borderline Personality in the movie.

 

So there are some treatment approaches. There are some ways in which a professional can help someone who struggles with Borderline Personality Disorder and certainly in my practice, I do have individuals that have this diagnosis. I do work with them, and sometimes it can be difficult and sometimes it can be frustrating for both the therapist and for the patient. And there is a lot of jousting back and forth and what I mean by that is it’s a fine line between confronting these individuals and kind of talking with them about their behaviors and where it comes from. Well at the same time not causing them to shut down completely or quit therapy or completely disengage from the process of working on changing themselves. So it is a fine line in working with these people and in dealing with these people if they are in your life.

 

Now there is a psychologist who has written a lot of material and also who has done some research on Borderline Personality Disorder, her name is Marcia Linehan. And she has a PhD, she is a psychologist, and she has come up with this treatment approach called Dialectical Behavior Therapy. And in the process of working, and she trains many professionals, mental health professionals in this approach. And it has been shown and proven through the research to be effective with individuals that have Borderline Personality Disorder. And one of the things, one of the areas for her objective and her focus is to help them accept their lives and limitations while trying to change some of their dysfunctional behaviors. Again, similar to what I said earlier, helping them deregulate and tolerate their emotions. Teaching them ways to deal with stress and conflict and turmoil in a healthier way. Teaching them skills, interpersonal skills, so that they can be more effective in communicating their needs without having to act out or do something that is self-destructive. Managing their emotions so that they’re not all over the board. And being more mindful, and more aware, more cognizant of themselves and their environment. So part of it is, helping them accept their emotions, deal with their emotions in more constructive and healthy ways and then restoring a sense of self. And a sense of self-confidence, and a sense of empowerment so that they don’t feel completely powerless and helpless which is what a lot of them do feel. That is one treatment approach.

 

The second one is called Cognitive Behavior Therapy and this is certainly one that I use – is helping people to change their thought process. Helping them change their thinking. Because a lot of times, people with BPD tend to have negative, irrational, destructive and often distorted thoughts. They tend to twist it or distort it. And they may read into stuff way too much. So because a person might say something like, they might not be happy about something that the person said or did, then they might interpret that as “I’m a bad person”, “I’m defective.”, “I’m helpless”, and teaching them to re-interpret or redirect their thinking. Change some of their dysfunctional statements in their head. And some of these dysfunctional statements, and some of these thoughts go back to when they were kids. Some of them, they learned when they were children. And it’s like if you grew up in a household and your parent would say, “You’re never going to amount to anything.” “You really are not good at anything.” “You’re really a bad person, you’re a bad kid.” “You always screw up.” Well, after a while that you’re going to believe that, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. And you’re going to take over where your parents left off. And now you’re going to be repeating and generating those same negative thoughts in your head every single day. So Cognitive Behavior Therapy is trying to teach people ways of modifying the thoughts that they generate in their head.

 

A third treatment approach is to teach these individuals some interpersonal skills. And I mentioned earlier, part of that would be helping them to maintain boundaries. To set boundaries, to maintain boundaries, to draw the line on the sand, to know when you’re boundaries are being violated and to be able to tell an individual “No. No, I do not want to do that.” Or “No, I’m not interested in that.” To set the limit and again for many Borderline Personalities, they have a hard time with boundaries. So being able to communicate assertively. Being able to tell people exactly what you think and how you fell and do it without being offensive, without alienating others.

 

Another part of this process, another treatment approach is helping these individuals resolve conflict in a healthy way, in a constructive way, without having to either harm themselves or harm the other person because they can’t figure out a way to resolve the negative emotion that they are experiencing. A lot of these individuals have a tremendous amount of emotional baggage. They have been storing up a lot of their pain and a lot of their hurt in boxes and part of the therapeutic process is helping them to unpack the boxes and to discard, to throw away the content of the boxes.

 

There’s another treatment called Schema Focus Therapy. And this approach helps people confront some of the severe emotional damage that they experienced growing up. And helping them in experiencing the therapeutic relationship between the therapist and the client as an opportunity to develop new level of trust and a new level of healthy connectedness. So it may be that the therapist is the first person that this individual has been able to share their emotions with that haven’t used it against them. That haven’t thrown a back-up in their face. This is maybe the first time that they have been able to share what they are feeling inside and not have that be a means for rejection, not have that be a means for disapproval. Many of these individuals benefit from that kind of experience and from that kind of interaction. So teaching them ways to work through conflict, teaching them ways to confront the past and teaching them ways to be able to develop trust. Through the therapeutic relationship having a sense of stability in their lives.

 

So I’m going to wrap up the other things that might be helpful for these individuals. In some cases, medication is helpful because depression and anxiety and anger may also be a problem. Giving them ways to manage substances if they are abusing substances. There are support groups out there, helping them in building self-esteem. And then lastly, helping them in modifying certain aspects of their personality.

 

I know I gave you a whole lot of material but hopefully it was helpful and there are resources out there and there is hope for being able to change aspects of one’s personality.

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 thoughts

 

• The way parents nurture and treat their children when they were still young really has a great impact on how these individuals will become in the future. Some disorders that are not yet evident during their childhood years might be triggered or magnified and come out because of the way their parents have treated them and the way they have nurtured them in the past.

 

• It has been mentioned that changing or modifying an individual’s personality is one of the key steps for the treatment of every Personality Disorder, and that solely relies on the individual with the personality disorder. Truly it must start within the individual himself, but we must also take into consideration that families, friends and the people around them should take part in the treatment by understanding the individual’s situation and by showing their support.

 

• With regards to the abandonment issue of people with Borderline Personality Disorders, it has been discussed that they should develop trusting other people but they should also set a boundary for that. Trust is such a big word that has to be assured. Borderline Personality Disorders must learn how to cope (positively) with a situation whenever someone has failed them.

 

• The different traits and features of a Borderline Personality Disorder is somewhat conflicting. It is really difficult and challenging task for a therapist. They are not trusting and do not want to get close to someone because of the fear of being rejected or of being abandoned but then again, when they already have a good relationship, they cannot help themselves by exposing too much information or facts about them. They tend to be too much trusting in the end. Their situation is somehow complicated since their moods may change instantly, not just slightly but in extremes.

 

• Providing an effective therapy for a person with Borderline Personality Disorder is difficult and quite challenging because of the complex symptoms of the disorder. The therapist-patient relationship might also be subjected to the same unrealistic demands that the Borderline Personalities set on their interpersonal relationships. They tend to seek too much attention from their therapist and get easily frustrated when they feel that the attention or empathy they are receiving is not adequate.

 

• To wrap it up, I believe that the best way to lessen the negative effects of the Borderline Personality Disorder and to improve one’s condition is to guide an individual in adjusting, coping and learning to face and accept the things that are out of their control. People around them, their family members most especially should know how to react and must be educated about BPD and Borderline Personality’s condition so that they will understand and will not take things too personally whenever they are experiencing a push-pull, push-pull reaction or mood swings from. Moreover, these Personality Disorders are not merely the responsibility of the individuals experiencing it nor their therapist, we, as their loved ones, or relatives, as their friends or even co-workers are also accountable to them.