What are the Borderline Personality Disorder Traits?
Here are the traits of Borderline Personality Disorder as defined by the DSM. A diagnosis requires that the subject present with at least five of these. In I Hate You -- Don't Leave Me! Jerold Kriesman and Hal Straus refer to BPD as "emotional hemophilia; [a borderline] lacks the clotting mechanism needed to moderate his spurts of feeling. Stimulate a passion, and the borderline emotionally bleeds to death."
Traits involving emotions:
Quite frequently people with Borderline Personality Disorder have a
very hard time controlling their emotions. They may feel ruled by them.
One researcher (Marsha Linehan) said, "People with Borderline
Personality Disorder are like people with third degree burns over 90% of
their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest
touch or movement."1. Shifts in mood lasting only a few hours.
2. Anger that is inappropriate, intense or uncontrollable.
Traits involving behavior:
3. Self-destructive acts, such as self-mutilation or suicidal threats
and gestures that happen more than once 4. Two potentially self-damaging impulsive behaviors. These could include alcohol and other drug abuse, compulsive spending, gambling, eating disorders, shoplifting, reckless driving, compulsive sexual behavior.
Traits involving identity
5. Marked, persistent identity disturbance shown by uncertainty in at
least two areas. These areas can include self-image, sexual orientation,
career choice or other long-term goals, friendships, values. People with
Borderline Personality Disorder may not feel like they know who they
are, or what they think, or what their opinions are, or what religion
they should be. Instead, they may try to be what they think other people
want them to be. Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder said, "I
have a hard time figuring out my personality. I tend to be whomever I'm
with." 6. Chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom. Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder said, "I remember describing the feeling of having a deep hole in my stomach. An emptiness that I didn't know how to fill. My therapist told me that was from almost a "lack of a life". The more things you get into your life, the more relationships you get involved in, all of that fills that hole. As a borderline, I had no life. There were times when I couldn't stay in the same room with other people. It almost felt like what I think a panic attack would feel like."
Traits involving relationships
7. Unstable, chaotic intense relationships characterized by splitting
(see below).8. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
- Splitting: the self and others are viewed as "all good" or "all
bad." Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder said, "One day I
would think my doctor was the best and I loved her, but if she
challenged me in any way I hated her. There was no middle ground as
in like. In my world, people were either the best or the worst. I
couldn't understand the concept of middle ground."
- Alternating clinging and distancing behaviors (I Hate You, Don't
Leave Me). Sometimes you want to be close to someone. But when you
get close it feels TOO close and you feel like you have to get some
space. This happens often.
- Great difficulty trusting people and themselves. Early trust may
have been shattered by people who were close to you.
- Sensitivity to criticism or rejection.
- Feeling of "needing" someone else to survive
- Heavy need for affection and reassurance
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
This means feeling "out of it," or not being able to remember what you said or did. This mostly happens in times of severe stress.
Miscellaneous attributes of people with
Borderline Personality Disorder:
Borderline Personality Disorder:
- People with Borderline Personality Disorder are often bright,
witty, funny, life of the party.
- They may have problems with object constancy. When a person
leaves (even temporarily), they may have a problem recreating or
remembering feelings of love that were present between themselves
and the other. Often, Borderline Personality Disorder patients want
to keep something belonging to the loved one around during
separations.
- They frequently have difficulty tolerating aloneness, even for
short periods of time.
- Their lives may be a chaotic landscape of job losses,
interrupted educational pursuits, broken engagements,
hospitalizations.
- Many have a background of childhood physical, sexual, or emotional abuse or physical/emotional neglect.
