No, borderline personality disorder (BPD) is not "insanity". Insanity is a legal term, not a medical diagnosis, and BPD is recognized by mental health professionals as a treatable mental illness or health condition.
To tell if someone has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), look for patterns of intense mood swings, unstable relationships, a distorted self-image, chronic emptiness, impulsivity, intense anger, fear of abandonment, self-harm, and stress-related paranoia or dissociation; a diagnosis requires a mental health professional to assess at least five of these core symptoms, which often overlap with other conditions, making professional evaluation crucial.
Individuals with BPD often experience intense and rapidly shifting emotions, have difficulty regulating their emotions, and engage in impulsive behavior, including recurrent self-harm and suicidality.
If Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is left untreated, symptoms worsen, leading to severe emotional instability, chaotic relationships, chronic emptiness, and a significantly higher risk of self-harm and suicide, alongside developing co-occurring mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, severely impacting daily functioning and overall quality of life.
Understanding High Functioning BPD
Individuals with this diagnosis may have impulsive behaviors, experience intense anger, and undergo frequent mood swings that drastically affect how they interact with others. As a result, maintaining stable relationships can be difficult due to their emotional and behavioral state.
Some people engage in impulsive or reckless behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance use, dangerous driving, and binge eating.
Why BPD Symptoms Peak in Early Adulthood. In the 20s, identity formation and independence conflict with emotional vulnerability. Research shows impulsivity and mood swings occur most frequently between the ages of 18-25.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious, long-lasting and complex mental health problem. People with BPD have difficulty regulating or handling their emotions or controlling their impulses.
People with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are triggered by intense emotions, particularly fear of abandonment, rejection, and invalidation, often stemming from past trauma, leading to reactions like sudden anger or self-harm when feeling criticized, alone, or facing instability, sudden changes, or perceived neglect, according to sources like Borderline in the ACT. Common triggers include relationship conflicts, cancelled plans, perceived or real abandonment, reminders of trauma, or unmet needs like sleep, disrupting their fragile sense of self and emotional regulation.
Don't…
Empathy and compassion – People with BPD experience greater internal and external turmoil. However, this in turn allows for the ability to recognise and have greater insight for others in similar situations.
Treatment for BPD may involve individual or group psychotherapy, carried out by professionals within a community mental health team (CMHT). The goal of a CMHT is to provide day-to-day support and treatment, while ensuring you have as much independence as possible.
People with borderline personality disorder have a strong fear of abandonment or being left alone. Even though they want to have loving and lasting relationships, the fear of being abandoned often leads to mood swings and anger. It also leads to impulsiveness and self-injury that may push others away.
Symptoms - Borderline personality disorder
Up to 50% of people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) experience psychotic symptoms like hallucinations and paranoid thoughts. BPD-related psychosis typically differs from other psychotic disorders as symptoms are usually brief, stress-triggered, and the person often maintains some reality testing.
5 Positive Traits of Borderline Personality Disorder
Conclusions: Parental externalizing psychopathology and father's BPD traits contribute genetic risk for offspring BPD traits, but mothers' BPD traits and parents' poor parenting constitute environmental risks for the development of these offspring traits.
The "3 C's of BPD" typically refer to advice for loved ones of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, reminding them: "I didn't cause it, I can't cure it, I can't control it," to help set boundaries and avoid taking on undue responsibility for the person's actions or illness. Another set of "C's" describes core BPD traits for individuals: Clinginess (fear of abandonment), Conflict (intense relationships/moods), and Confusion (unstable self-image).
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a complex mental health condition. It's characterized by intense emotional reactions, unstable relationships and a distorted self-image. A core symptom of BPD is the fear of abandonment. This fear can be so intense that it triggers irrational thoughts and behaviors.
Many individuals with BPD are highly intelligent and are aware that their reactions may seem strong. These individuals often report feeling that emotions control their lives or even that they feel things more intensely than other people.
BPD may seriously affect a person's ability to cope and function in a job or in school. Other common problems that affect people with BPD include getting other mood disorders such as: Anxiety. Depression.
It is called 'borderline' because doctors previously thought that it was on the border between two different disorders: neurosis and psychosis. But these terms are no longer used to describe mental illness. It is sometimes called emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD).
BPD occurs equally in men and women, though women tend to seek treatment more often than men. Symptoms may get better in or after middle age.
But some medicines may help with symptoms. And some medicines can help with conditions that occur with borderline personality disorder, such as depression, impulsiveness, aggression or anxiety. Medicines used to treat these conditions may include antidepressants, antipsychotics or mood-stabilizing drugs.
If left untreated, the person suffering from BPD may find themselves involved with extravagant spending, substance abuse, binge eating, reckless driving, and indiscriminate sex, Hooper says. The reckless behavior is usually linked to the poor self-image many BPD patients struggle with.