Please note this blog details my experience of Borderline Personality Disorder. We all experience it differently, for a diagnosis you need to meet 5 of the 9 criteria meaning there are a variety of ways this illness presents.
BPD is also known as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, and by several other names depending on your geographical location or the circles you run in. It is a highly stigmatised and misunderstood diagnosis, even among mental health professionals.
You can read all my posts about borderline here.
Which criteria do I meet?
-
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
-
A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
-
Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
-
Impulsivity in at least 2 areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating).
-
Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour.
-
Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
-
Chronic feelings of emptiness.
-
Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
-
Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.
