It takes courage to ask for help

*This page is for informational purposes only. Only your licensed mental health professional can confirm a diagnosis or offer treatment. 

Borderline Personality Disorder can be summed up as a relationship disorder. BPD is the name for a mental illness that affects your relationships:

• With yourself
• With other people

I’ll go into a lot more detail here, but that’s a good starting point.

LIFE WITH BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

People with BPD feel empty all the time. You may refer to the feeling as depression, but it’s more persistent than typical depression and it doesn’t seem to ever stop. It feels more like a Void with a capital "V."

Just like anyone would do, you try to make the feeling of emptiness go away, to fill the void, or at least distract yourself. One of the things that makes BPD different from depression is the lengths that people with BPD will go to feel better. 

You’re willing to do just about anything to make the feeling of emptiness stop. You find new friendships and romantic partners; reinvent yourself by trying out new hobbies or new haircuts; seek out thrills like driving too fast or having sex with strangers; engage in addictive behaviors like drinking or gambling or shopping. But it never seems to work.

Instead, you feel more panicked and overwhelmed when it doesn’t work out. You’re angry at yourself for even trying. You believe that you’ll never feel better, and you don’t want to live like this. This can lead to self-destructive or even suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

SYMPTOMS OF BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

A person with BPD typically experiences many of the following symptoms:

• Chronic feelings of emptiness – it feels like there is a void inside you that you can’t fill up. 
• An unstable sense of self – you’re not sure who you really are or what you want to be. 
• Fear of being abandoned – you are very worried that people are going to leave you, and you’ll go to extremes to stop them from leaving.
• Intense relationships – you may make friends quickly or fall in love at first sight, but you also frequently break up and get back together. You either love people or hate them (including yourself).
• Suicidal thoughts or self-harm – you often think that life is so painful you’d be better off dead, or you hurt yourself to distract yourself from emotional pain.
• Mood swings – you feel your feelings very intensely, and your feelings can change from one moment to the next. When you feel threatened you may become very angry or very paranoid.

It’s important to note that no two people are alike. Even two people who have the same diagnosis might have completely different symptoms. And two people with the same symptoms might feel or act very differently. 

WHAT CAUSES BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER?

The causes for BPD fall into two main categories: biological, and interpersonal. While no two people with BPD have the same history, most people with BPD share some common elements in their background.

Biological factors:

• Family history of mental illness – your genetics set you up to feel your feelings more strongly than the average person
• Neurotransmitters – people with BPD have altered levels of serotonin
• Brain development – MRIs show that the brains of people with BPD work differently than the brains of people without BPD

Interpersonal factors in childhood:

• Abuse – physical abuse, sexual abuse, or emotional abuse. About three-quarters of people with BPD report experiencing abuse as a child.
• Neglect – not having basic needs met; not receiving love from caregivers. Neglect is a form of trauma.
• Invalidating environment – discussed more below

The more we learn about human development, the more this becomes a “chicken or egg” type of question. Does trauma change the way a brain develops? (yes) Or do different types of brains process traumatic events differently? (also yes)

There is also a lot of overlap between symptoms of BPD and symptoms of Complex PTSD. It’s possible to have both, but it’s also possible to have one and not the other.

WHAT’S AN INVALIDATING ENVIRONMENT?

The invalidating environment is a unique predictor of BPD, meaning it is almost always found when we look into the histories of people with Borderline Personality Disorder. An invalidating environment occurs when you express your feeling or perception of events, and you are either ignored, punished, or mocked. 

There are a couple different types of invalidation, and I’ll do my best to give examples of them.

• Gaslighting – you say, “It hurt when you spanked me.” Your caregiver says, “I didn’t spank you” or “it didn’t hurt.” Now you’re not sure if it really happened, or if you were really hurt. You start to distrust your own perception of events.
• Invalidation of positive emotions – you are proud of an accomplishment, like learning to tie your shoes or write your name. Your caregiver says, “that’s nothing to be proud of, even an idiot can do that.” Now you are ashamed of yourself.
• Attributing negative emotions to moral flaws – your caregiver yells at you, and you start to cry. Your caregiver says, “you’re just being manipulative.” You had a valid reason to be upset with them, but now you feel bad about yourself.
• Moving goalposts – your caregiver repeatedly tells you that you can have a reward when you clean your room. You clean your room, and your caregiver tells you that you can’t have your reward until you do all your homework. You’re not sure how to please them. 

No parent is perfect, of course. Everyone makes mistakes and occasionally hurts their child’s feelings. But if your caregivers consistently invalidate your experiences, you may grow up:

• Unable to tolerate any emotion (even positive emotion) within yourself
• Unable to stick with goals you set for yourself because you’re worried you won’t achieve them, or it won’t mean anything if you do
• Unable to tolerate others’ negative emotions
• Unable to navigate relationships because you fear other people’s reactions