Borderline Personality Disorder
Borderline personality disorder is a severe mental illness, usually develops during adolescence or early adulthood in an individual. It impacts the person's way of thinking and how they feel about themselves. All of these affect the daily functioning and might create a negative self-image.
There is a consistent behavior of emotional instability and impulsivity leading to unstable relationships. In borderline personality disorder, a person feels a fear of abandonment. Through frequent mood swings, it gets difficult for one to tolerate everyone around, and he or she might begin to ignore even close relationships.
The condition gets worse every day as it usually begins in early adulthood. However, borderline personality disorder is totally curable unless the right steps are taken to come out of it, one has to open up about it to his family.
- Self-destructing and risk-taking behaviors: A person takes unnecessary risks due to which he or she may hurt himself. The individual might get used to intake of harmful substances like drugs and alcohol. He may turn to self harm which may lead to unwanted consequences.
- Distorted self-image and fear of abandonment: The person might feel abandoned and also bad about self which may further lead to loneliness and depression.
- Extreme emotional swings and insecurity: Feeling of insecurity is quite common in this condition, the person faces frequent mood swings which affects the behaviour of a person.
- Explosive anger and guilt: It’s extremely hard to take control over emotions in this condition. A person may be angry about minor things and might react to it in an unpleasant way.
- Confusing relationships: It is understandable that in such a condition an individual may not be able to maintain or build a healthy relationship with someone. It can be confusing to get a straight-forward relationship even with the closed ones.
There is not any major cause highlighted by researchers to this date relating to borderline personality disorder. However, many factors contribute to this disorder: environmental, genetic and serotonin abnormalities.
When a person grows up in an abusive or a neglectful environment at an early age, they might suffer from borderline personality disorder during adolescence. Mood regulatory hormones also make a person susceptible to borderline personality disorder.
If you are emotionally vulnerable or unstable, you are at risk of developing borderline personality disorder. Child abuse is also considered to be a risk factor behind BPD.
- Discouraged borderline personality disorder: In this condition, the individual seems very dependent and needy. The person gets quickly disillusioned and carries a strong desire for other people’s acceptance. Such patients will cause harm to themselves as they may feel inferior and inadequate.
- Impulsive borderline personality disorder: In this condition, the individual seems to be more charismatic, full of energy and excited all day long. They get bored or angered easily when other people do not match their strength and maybe frequently involved in conflicts.
- Petulant borderline personality disorder: In this condition, the individual feels unworthy and unloved, leading to sudden explosive emotional outbursts. They tend to manipulate others' behavior and try to control them. If everything doesn't go according to them, they may get more possessive.
- Self-destructive borderline personality disorder: The person having this type of BPD, can be moody, furious, and angry. They fail to express themselves to everyone as they can be lacking a stable sense of self.
Treatment for Borderline personality disorder includes a combination of psychotherapy, medication and possibly hospitalization, depending on the severity of the situation.
Below mentioned are the therapies a used in treatment of borderline personality disorder:
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT): Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a sort of psychotherapeutic treatment used to treat people suffering from borderline personality disorder to help people learn about identifying and changing disturbing thoughts and behavioural patterns that have a negative effect on a person.
- Rational Emotive behavior therapy (REBT): REBT is a psychotherapeutic approach to assist individuals who suffer from BPD and helps in coping up with emotional and behavioural problems and disturbances to lead people towards a better mental health.
- Client centered therapy: Client-centered therapy is a form of psychotherapy developed for a person suffering from BPD; this therapy is developed for the growth of a person’s personality by clarifying the ideas and the therapist asks the client to observe himself more clearly.
Borderline personality disorder damages several areas of life. It makes a relationship full of conflicts, and in most severe cases one can cause self-injury. But when a person takes regular counselling sessions, he learns new ways to cope up along with developing some possible benefits to other areas as well.
Here are some therapy outcomes for Borderline personality disorder:
- Improved confidence: Therapies emphasize on building coping skills to manage the negative emotions arise due to borderline personality disorder. Through the regular session, one becomes able to handle difficult situations as he feels much more confident.
- Improved ability to deal with stressful situations: In borderline personality disorder, many individuals are not able to decide well or work well, leading to major stressful life. The therapist will tailor your coping skills according to your situation to help you deal with stressful life.
- Reduced self-harm: Many a times, in borderline personality disorder, a person's intensity to function emotionally well decreases. As a result, they might do something harmful to themselves, like engaging in fights, addiction etc. Often people get mistaken and to escape the emotional distress, they find a way to hurt themselves, but with therapy sessions, one can learn skills to get over such feelings.
- Reduced emotional dysregulation: Physical and emotional aggression increases a lot during borderline personality disorder leading to dysregulation. But with regular counseling sessions, one can reduce the likelihood of negative behavior.
- Listening to music: Playing music contrasting to the current mood can help to create a positive emotion. One can try playing music contrary to his thoughts, like if a person’s feeling sad, he may play an upbeat tone, and if the person’s feeling angry, then he may go for relaxing music.
- Engaging in physical activities: A person can activate his body by engaging in different physical activities like exercising, walking, dancing etc. This also helps to distract one’s emotions and boost a positive mood instantly.
- Seek the right support: One can reach out to people they feel connected and close to. A person can either call a friend or a family member and must confront his problems with them. If a person is unable to share all these with anyone, he must consider a counsellor as it will be the best decision.
- Stay mindful: One must stay calm and collected as much as possible even in the bad times. He can not get influenced by the past and live in the presence, learning to accept reality.
- Take a warm shower: Just like the way breathing deeply relaxes the body muscles, a warm shower allows the mind to get distracted from the negative thoughts.