I think I have Borderline Personality Disorder

[Rational Gaze]

I match the symptoms: http://www.bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a102.htm

To the sufferer, BPD is about deep feelings, feelings often too difficult to express, feelings that are something along the lines of this (2):
If others really get to know me, they will find me rejectable and will not be able to love me; and they will leave me;


I need to have complete control of my feelings otherwise things go completely wrong;


I have to adapt my needs to other people's wishes, otherwise they will leave me or attack me;


I am an evil person and I need to be punished for it;


Other people are evil and abuse you;


If someone fails to keep a promise, that person can no longer be trusted;


If I trust someone, I run a great risk of getting hurt or disappointed;


If you comply with someone's request, you run the risk of losing yourself;


If you refuse someone's request, you run the risk of losing that person;


I will always be alone;


I can't manage by myself, I need someone I can fall back on;


There is no one who really cares about me, who will be available to help me, and whom I can fall back on;


I don't really know what I want;


I will never get what I want;


I'm powerless and vulnerable and I can't protect myself;.


I have no control of myself;


I can't discipline myself;


My feelings and opinions are unfounded;


Other people are not willing or helpful.
People with BPD often have highly unstable patterns of social relationships. While they can develop intense but stormy attachments, their attitudes towards family, friends, and loved ones may suddenly shift from idealization (great admiration and love) to devaluation (intense anger and dislike). Thus, they may form an immediate attachment and idealize the other person, but when a slight separation or conflict occurs, they switch unexpectedly to the other extreme and angrily accuse the other person of not caring for them at all.

Even with family members, individuals with BPD are highly sensitive to rejection, reacting with anger and distress to such mild separations as a vacation, a business trip, or a sudden change in plans. These fears of abandonment seem to be related to difficulties feeling emotionally connected to important persons when they are physically absent, leaving the individual with BPD feeling lost and perhaps worthless.

People with BPD often have an unstable sense of who they are. That is, their self-image or sense of self often rapidly changes. They typically view themselves as evil or bad, and sometimes they may feel as if they don't exist at all. This unstable self-image can lead to frequent changes in jobs, friendships, goals, values and gender identity.

Relationships are usually in turmoil. People with BPD often experience a love-hate relationship with others. They may idealize someone one moment and then abruptly and dramatically shift to fury and hate over perceived slights or even misunderstandings. This is because people with the disorder have difficulty accepting gray areas — things are either black or white. For instance, in the eyes of a person with BPD, someone is either good or evil. And that same person may be good one day and evil the next. People with BPD also often... deliberately injure themselves for emotional relief.

Other signs and symptoms of borderline personality disorder may include:

* Strong emotions that wax and wane frequently
* Intense but short episodes of anxiety or depression
* Inappropriate anger, sometimes escalating into physical confrontations
* Difficulty controlling emotions or impulses
* Fear of being alone

Individuals who match this personality disorder type have an extremely fragile self-concept that is easily disrupted and fragmented under stress and results in the experience of a lack of identity or chronic feelings of emptiness. As a result, they have an impoverished and/or unstable self structure and difficulty maintaining enduring intimate relationships. Self-appraisal is often associated with self-loathing, rage, and despondency. Individuals with this disorder experience rapidly changing, intense, unpredictable, and reactive emotions and can become extremely anxious or depressed. They may also become angry or hostile, and feel misunderstood, mistreated, or victimized. They may engage in verbal or physical acts of aggression when angry. Emotional reactions are typically in response to negative interpersonal events involving loss or disappointment.

Relationships are based on the fantasy of the need for others for survival, excessive dependency, and a fear of rejection and/or abandonment. Dependency involves both insecure attachment, expressed as difficulty tolerating aloneness; intense fear of loss, abandonment, or rejection by significant others; and urgent need for contact with significant others when stressed or distressed, accompanied sometimes by highly submissive, subservient behavior. At the same time, intense, intimate involvement with another person often leads to a fear of loss of an identity as an individual. Thus, interpersonal relationships are highly unstable and alternate between excessive dependency and flight from involvement. Empathy for others is severely impaired.

Core emotional traits and interpersonal behaviors may be associated with cognitive dysregulation, i.e., cognitive functions may become impaired at times of interpersonal stress leading to information processing in a concrete, black-and white, all-or-nothing manner. Quasi-psychotic reactions, including paranoia and dissociation, may progress to transient psychosis. Individuals with this type are characteristically impulsive, acting on the spur of the moment, and frequently engage in activities with potentially negative consequences.

1. Negative Emotionality: Emotional Lability

Having unstable emotional experiences and mood changes; having emotions that are easily aroused, intense, and/or out of proportion to events and circumstances

2. Negative Emotionality: Self-harm

Engaging in thoughts and behaviors related to self-harm...

3. Negative Emotionality: Separation insecurity

Fears of rejection by, and/or separation from, significant others; distress when significant others are not present or readily available.

4. Negative Emotionality: Anxiousness

Feelings of nervousness, tenseness, and/or being on edge; worry about past unpleasant experiences and future negative possibilities; feeling fearful and threatened by uncertainty.

5. Negative Emotionality: Low self-esteem

Having a poor opinion of one’s self and abilities; believing that one is worthless or useless; disliking or being dissatisfied with one’s self; believing that one cannot do things or do them well.

6. Negative Emotionality: Depressivity

Having frequent feelings of being down/ miserable/ depressed/ hopeless; difficulty “bounding back” from such moods; belief that one is simply a sad/ depressed person.

7. Antagonism: Hostility

Irritability, hot temperedness; being unfriendly, rude, surly, or nasty; responding angrily to minor slights and insults.

8. Antagonism: Aggression

Being mean, cruel, or cold-hearted; verbally... humiliating and demeaning of others; willingly and willfully... active and open belligerence or vengefulness.

9. Disinhibition: Impulsivity

Acting on the spur of the moment in response to immediate stimuli; acting on a momentary basis without a plan or consideration of outcomes; difficulty establishing and following plans; failure to learn from experience.

10. Schizotypy: Dissociation Proneness

Tendency to experience disruptions in the flow of conscious experience; “losing time,” (e.g., being unaware of how one got to one’s location); experiencing one’s surroundings as strange or unreal.

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 two areas that are potentially self-damaging
affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood
chronic feelings of emptiness
inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger
transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

I took this test:
http://similarminds.com/personality_disorder.html

My results:

• Paranoid: 90%
• Schizoid: 70%
• Schizotypal: 74%
• Antisocial: 58%
• Borderline: 90%
• Histrionic: 58%
• Narcissistic: 10%
• Avoidant: 58%
• Dependant: 86%
• Obssessive-Compulsive: 50%

Average results:

• Paranoid: 49%
• Schizoid: 53%
• Schizotypal: 53%%
• Antisocial: 47%
• Borderline: 47%
• Histrionic: 43%
• Narcissistic: 41%
• Avoidant: 39%
• Dependant: 37%
• Obssessive-Compulsive: 40%

I saw the campus mental health advisor awhile back but he did not think I was mental enough, although I was not so sure back then and was not at a particularly low point when I went to see him. I was thinking of seeing my doctor to see if they could refer me to a psychiatrist or whatever.

[Catholicity]

You also have Asperger's, which in and of itself casues some very serious emotional debilitating issues. You need to see a specialist before you go "chasing rabbits" to have have the aspie related issues managed, as this in and of itself triggers behavioral and mood changes

[Hamster]

You should see a doctor before you jump to conclusions. You can reflect many of the traits of a personality disorder without having the full blown disorder. But it's good that you've recognized unhealthy traits that you have, because that's the first step toward living a better life without too much interference from the psychological static that clouds our decisions sometimes.

[Rational Gaze]

It is not merely exhibiting some or even most symptoms, but all of them. If I do have BPD, then it is probable that my having AS is what led to it.

[Catholicity]

It is not merely exhibiting some or even most symptoms, but all of them. If I do have BPD, then it is probable that my having AS is what led to it.

I have friend and relatives who have AS and have borderline traits, bipolar traits, paranoid traits, every "trait" you could fit him under, but its all Aspergers related and on the Autistic Spectrum, you need to see a professional who treats Autistic Spectrum disorders.

[Rational Gaze]

you need to see a professional who treats Autistic Spectrum disorders.

That is what I plan on doing. Although BPD fits the traits I exhibit like a glove, rather than just some amorphous burlap sack. The two might be coterminous.

[phaedrus]

With my own twin sons who are young men with Asperger's Syndrome, I see many of the same 'symptoms' which are very well moderated by appropriate anti depressant medication. I would encourage you to follow Cath's advice and see an ASD specialist who can prescribe medication for you. My experience is that you CAN feel better and getting the appropriate help should be your highest priority.

[Epoetker]

Bah, humbug. Drugs are bad.

Those categories for 'psychological health' were written by psychiatrists. And psychiatrists have been somewhat heavily compromised by the government and drug industries, if i may allow another psychiatrist to understate the case just a bit.

Take all personality tests with a massive grain of salt. Forswear psychoactives and any SSRIs. And try that cognitive behavioral therapy thing if you absolutely MUST see a professional-better people than me have recommended it, and I'm told it worked for everyone up to Barack Obama himself.

If you can, go to the country or at least the suburbs for a week. The city is bad for you.

[Sparko]

The problem with just answering questions is that the ones you listed are pretty generalized and don't have a lot of context. I think many people, who are perfectly normal would answer yes to several of them. For example:


If someone fails to keep a promise, that person can no longer be trusted;
If I trust someone, I run a great risk of getting hurt or disappointed;

Heck. Who wouldn't feel that way? Of course if you trust someone you are running a risk of being disappointed! duh!



I can't manage by myself, I need someone I can fall back on;
We all need someone sometimes! If you don't think you do, then you might have a problem! This question is really one of degree. Some people are so dependent on others that they can't function at all by themselves. But everyone needs people to rely on in their lives.



I don't really know what I want;
Again, who hasn't felt that way? This again is a matter of degree, not "yes" or "no"

Don't rely simply on questions being "yes" or "no" - I think it is the doctor's job to take the answer and probe deeper into the context and degree of the answer to find out what problems if any, lie beneath. A person who tries to diagnose themselves is like a a person being their own lawyer in a trial. It's stupid and dangerous.

[Rational Gaze]

Most people don't feel like that all the time.

[Epoetker]

So stop feeling for a while. Guilt is not a Biblical emotion.

Shame is.

And I, knowing nothing else but the fact that I'm the most awesome poster on Tweb, declare that to my knowledge, you have nothing to be ashamed of.

Now feel better or else.

[gharfish]

Some one who truly "has" all that the DSM-IV describes as Borderline Personality Disorder - the real thing; they will barely be functional as a person. They won't be talking about it online, wondering and worrying if it's visible at last. No. They won't nervously study it on Web MD or the like and worry about a future with it. They will be reeling towards personal ruin with it. If it is truly and fully in place it will be destroying your life. It won't wait around. It is several hells all strung together. It can end your life if you also 'have' major depressive disorder. If one has suffered with it for just a few years in it's true and full form - a known, most everyone the person effected loves will be leaving them or trying to leave them. It is chronic, extremely painful like no other PD, and essentially uncurable, [but] Dialectic Behavior therapy is the therapy of choice. If the person who has all that is involved in those DSM criteria for BPD, any sort of mercy coming to them from God will be in the way of county psychiatric and social workers, paid by Medicare and Medicaid to do the job of case management. (They won't be holding down a job with private insurance.) The full-blown BPD person is not liked by anyone, because of their anti-social symptoms.

Rethink this, IOW!


>

[Rational Gaze]

You don't sound like you know much about it. You are taking the most extreme case possible. There are "invisible" higher functioning BPDs. Plus, I have only been feeling like this for 2-3 years. Most people don't get diagnosed with BPD until much later.

[Rational Gaze]

The full-blown BPD person is not liked by anyone.

Just like me.

[CodewordConduit]

You don't sound like you know much about it. You are taking the most extreme case possible. There are "invisible" higher functioning BPDs. Plus, I have only been feeling like this for 2-3 years. Most people don't get diagnosed with BPD until much later.

A very close relative of mine possibly has it. She won't acknowledge or even think about it for a second, and neither will her parents. Her arms are slashed to ribbons, she's lost her place on her degree, can't keep a job, nearly murdered my pet that I lent her though total negligence then started harrassing me about how he was dying before she'd even taken him to the vet. I try to be kind to her, but half the time I'm being harsh and pushing her away because of her attempts at emotional manipulation. I have to threaten her with no-contact periods just to keep her in line. Repeated suicide threats, telephone calls about how she just made herself sick, lies about whether or not she's driving when she's had a drink at my house. Ironically, her mother is convinced she has Aspergers; and just as I use you as an example of what Aspergers actually looks like, I'ma use her as an example of what borderline behaviour looks like (not that she's diagnosed, remember, but she demonstrates many of the traits in action). I know you reasonably well RG, you're not like a BPD case, not really.

I've spent hours with this relative talking about her issues, and getting her in touch with self harm groups and the like, so I'm not just being harsh; but she doesn't want help, she couldn't make it clearer.