The one word that best characterizes BPD is "instability." Their emotions are unstable, fluctuating wildly for no discernible reason. Their thinking is unstable - rational and clear at times, quite psychotic at other times. Their behavior is unstable - often with periods of excellent conduct, high efficiency and trustworthiness alternating with outbreaks of babyishness, suddenly quitting a job, withdrawing into isolation, failing.
Their self control is unstable - ranging from the extreme self denial of anorexia to being at the mercy of impulses. And their relationships are unstable. They may sacrifice themselves for others, only to reach their limit suddenly and fly into rageful reproaches, or they may curry favor with obedient submission only to rebel, out of the blue, in a tantrum.
Associated with this instability is terrible anxiety, guilt and self-loathing for which relief is sought at any cost - medicine, drugs, alcohol, overeating, self-injury, suicide. Sadly, oddly, self mutilation is discovered by many individuals with BPD to provide faster relief more than anything else - cutting or burning themselves stops the anxiety temporarily.
In addition, individuals with BPD show great difficulties in controlling ragefulness; they are unusually impulsive, they fall in and out of love suddenly; they tend to idealize other people and then abruptly despise them. A consequence of all this is that they typically look for help from a therapist and then suddenly quit in terrible disappointment and anger.
Underneath all these symptoms, therapists began to see an inability to tolerate the levels of anxiety, frustration, rejection and loss that most people are able to put up with, an inability to soothe and comfort themselves when they become upset, and an inability to control the impulses toward the expression, through action, of love and hate that most people are able to hold in check. And, furthermore, what most defines BPD is great difficulty in holding on to a stable, consistent sense of one's self: "Who am I?" these people ask. "My life is in chaos; sometimes I feel like I can do anything - other times I want to die because I feel so incompetent, helpless and loathsome. I'm a lot of different people instead of being just one person."
*From BDPResourceCenter.org
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