What is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)-Dyslimbia ? 2012-2013

What is Borderline Personality Disorder ?

Artist- MargaritaJP

BPD also called Dyslimbia (meaning malfunction of the limbic system) or Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder is a mental health disorder.People with BPD have unhealthy patterns of perceiving,thinking about & reacting to their environment and events in their life. There is a pattern of instability spread out in various areas such as relationships,self-image (how you see yourself),emotions & impulsivity usually starting during early adulthood (& sometimes adolescence)

Artist -RaeGrimm 

You need 5 or more of the following criteria to be diagnosed with BPD by a professional using the (DSM-IV-TR).



Note: Please do NOT self-diagnose,everybody has some of these personality features,it is when these traits are inflexible,maladaptive & cause significant functional impairment or subjective distress that they make up a personality disorder.A new updated version of the criteria will be posted on www.dsm5.org in 2013.
 I have included some proposed DSM-5 (2013) criteria within the old criteria sections.

1.Trying very hard to prevent being abandoned, with desperate efforts to prevent real or imagined abandonment. Fears of rejection /separation, associated with fears of being too dependent and complete loss of independence

2.A pattern of trouble in relationships,often thinking that other people are much better or much worse than they really are and changing between the two views (idealization and devaluation).The relationships are intense,unstable and conflicted.There is mistrust, neediness,anxiousness and alternating between over involvement and withdrawal in close relationships. There is a tendency to see negative features/vulnerabilities in others.

3.Identity Disturbance

Bigfoot-artist AtomicCheese

 Self-direction: Instability in :ambition, aspirations, values or career plans.

 What’s special about me? What are my goals ? What’s important to me? 

4.Being impulsive (acting on the spur of the moment) in ways that are dangerous (unprotected sex with multiple partners,, drinking too much alcohol or abusing drugs, eating too much (binge eating), driving dangerously,irrational spending of money)Note: These do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5

5.Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures/threats and/or self-injury usually come with a sense of urgency and under emotional distress (mental pain).Common methods are cutting,hitting, burning or drug overdose (but may include skin picking,hair pulling and head banging)

6.Affective (Emotional) Instability Severe intense mood swings,including : depression, irritability & anxiety usually lasting a few hours & only rarely more than a few days. 

Anxiety: Intense feelings of nervousness, tenseness or panic, often in reaction to interpersonal stresses, worry about the negative effects of past unpleasant experiences and future negative possibilities,feeling fearful,apprehensive,or threatened by uncertainty,fears of falling apart or losing control.

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7. Often feeling empty/hollow inside usually felt in the abdomen or chest,it is not boredom.It is associated with loneliness and neediness.

8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper,constant anger, getting into many fights).This anger can be a response to small criticism.

9. People with BPD have difficulty coping with stress on their own as it usually makes symptoms worse and causes other symptoms like temporary stress-related paranoid ideation(thinking),severe dissociative symptoms or Psychotic-like Perceptual Distortions (inaccurate perceptions eg. thinking feelings=facts, ignoring the positive).These usually pass once the stress is gone.They can have also magical thinking and hallucinations.

 Dissociation symptoms: feeling unreal or that the world is unreal,feeling detached from thoughts/ emotions/ sensations/memories, where familiar things look strange and you feel like you are looking at your body from the outside.

BPDs can be unrealistically self-conscious,believing that others are  looking at or talking about them in a judging way. These lapses of reality/distortions of reality in the BPD patient can be usually corrected with feedback unlike some other disorders.

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Up to 10% of those diagnosed commit suicide.BPD exists in approximately 2-4% of the general population.
The majority of people who have BPD also have other mental llnesses such as: bipolar,ADD,OCD,dysthymia,clinical depression,eating disorders,anxiety disorders,post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other personality disorders. Most have or have had substance abuse and/or addictions.


*2012 Video update Coming Soon!* It will include the latest scientific info from review papers on RCTs on drugs & therapies for BPD (more recent than Wikipedia,which I plan to update after I've finished the video) You can subscribe to my YouTube to know when I've uploaded it http://www.youtube.com/user/ROMI1AAT
But here is a sneak preview while I'm finishing