I Love You, I Hate You: Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Although there are several personality disorders described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition Text Revision, one of the most difficult to treat is Borderline Personality Disorders. If you want to know about personality disorders in general and borderline personality disorder specifically, read on.
What are Personality Disorders?
Personality disorders are conditions that affect a person's capacity to relate in healthy ways to family, friends, and co-workers. Personality disorders are known to cause long-term difficulties that wax and wane throughout life for those who suffer from them. People with personality disorders present challenges to therapists who treat such disorders due to the fact that disorders of the personality are deeply enduring characterological traits that are not easily altered. You most likely know someone who deals with having a personality disorder on a day to day basis.
What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
A person with borderline personality disorder suffers from a variety of what we clinicians call "maladaptive" behaviors. These behaviors get in the way of the person having healthy family, social, and career relationships. The person feels angry a lot and exhibits overall vacillating moods and impulsive behaviors.
The person with borderline personality disorder is unable to see herself as a valuable human being. She views not her positive character traits but rather interprets herself as having deep problems that can't be resolved. She wants to be loved yet her impulsivity and changeable moods serve to be quite destructive to the very relationships she seeks. A fitting description of how one with borderline personality often feels towards others is, "I love you-I hate you."
Those with borderline personality are unable to maintain clear emotional boundaries in relationships and can be identified by their lives of instability, frequently shifting moods, and problematic and stormy relationships with everyone they know. Their lives tend to be chaotic with fractured work lives and crumbling intimate relationships. If you're involved in someone with BPD, you've most likely gotten pulled in to the hectic atmosphere in which the person lives.
Therapeutic Treatment for People who have Borderline Personality Disorder
As you might have guessed, treatment prognosis for those with BPD is at best, guarded due to the overall unstable nature of their lives and thusly their conscious and unconscious refusals to attend therapy regularly. Even the formation of a helping relationship in therapy is quite a challenge with those who suffer from the condition.
However, if these clients hang in with outpatient therapy attendance over months and sometimes years by building a strong therapeutic relationship, some progress can be made. One particular style of therapy that's been found to be quite effective is called, "Dialectical Behavior Therapy" or DBT, formulated by Marsha Lineham, Ph.D. Therapists who employ DBT methods follow a clearly proscribed plan of action for each session which leads the client step-by-step through exercises that promote change, acceptance and normalcy which the clients then work on and apply at home all week.
In the best of situations, a therapist for someone with borderline personality disorder will have completed the rather involved training required to master DBT before attempting its use with borderline clients. Worksheets, checklists, and therapeutic exercises to be completed both in therapy sessions and at home provide very clear boundaries for the client and therapist which are so important to the person with borderline personality's success in treatment.
Should this description of borderline personality strike a familiar chord with you, seek help from a qualified mental health professional. In the event you identify someone you're close to as possibly suffering from borderline personality, offer to attend counseling/treatment with the individual, at least initially to promote life stability, decrease impulsivity, and improve her mental health.
Sources
Lineham, Marsha, Ph.D. Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder book
Professional experience
Published by Pearl Grace - Featured Contributor in Health & Wellness
My writing career began in graduate school. I completed a thesis for my masters' in Clinical Psychology. As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, I work with individuals, children and families. I am publish... View profile
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