What is BPD?
Definition of Borderline Personality Disorder:
A complex condition characterized by extreme difficulty regulating emotions, distress, and confusion about their sense of self, unstable relationships, and impulsive behaviors.
Individuals are diagnosed with BPD if they meet five or more of the following criteria, as listed by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM):
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
Unstable, intense relationships where individuals alternate between idolizing and disliking individuals in their life.
An unstable self-image or sense of self.
Impulsivity in at least two areas that can be damaging.
Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-harm.
Affective instability (irritability, anxiety, etc.) that can last a few hours, but rarely more than a few days.
Chronic feelings of emptiness.
Intense anger or difficulty controlling anger
Stress-related paranoia or severe dissociative (out-of-body) symptoms
The DSM also introduced a new way of describing BPD and other personality disorders that mentions difficulties with identity, self-direction, empathy, and intimacy as main concerns.
Used by permission of Emotions Matter Inc.