What is "borderline personality disorder"?

Question

please use simple words

Answer 1

Tends to be a person who loves you one moment, and hates you the next... it is a personality disorder that is very difficult to work with, and very difficult to treat. Must be committed to intense therapy; there are no real medicinal treatments that work for this disorder!

Hope this helps!

God Bless!

Answer 2

THE "BEST ANSWER" IS WRONG!!!!!! PLEASE DISREGARD IT!! EVEN -ONE- GOOGLE SEARCH CAN SHOW THAT THERE ARE TREATMENTS FOR BPD!!!

A Personality Disorder is a mental illness in which a persons core development has been altered from the norm. It is a defect in the foundation of the mind itself.

A Borderline is a person who is "on the borderline" between "mania" and "depression" at all times (BPD was formerly called Manic-Depression, or Manic-Depressive Disorder). This person is hyper-defensive, and filters ALL input through the emotional rather than with the logical part of the brain. In an effort to limit damage to the self, the person often takes drastic action that seems irrational to most, and even to themselves later.

For instance, a Borderline might initiate a big argument just before their spouse leaves for work. The end-goal of the argument is to keep them home longer, even a few moments. They are blind to, oblivious of, any long-term consequences, all of their focus being on the moment.

This is because the stimulus (knowledge of their spouse soon leaving), when filtered first through the emotions instead of logic, triggered intense fear of being abandoned and completely hijacked their rational mind.
To their fear-clouded mind, this behavior makes perfect sense. In their mind, they are preventing a horrific consequence, and through that cloud of self-preservation they cannot see that they are CAUSING a problem where one would not otherwise exist.

Borderlines are people who live in a chronic state of pain and/or fear. Their actions are not hostile, or born out of a bad person, they are merely the frantic self-preservation actions of a broken one.

Answer 3

BPD is a term used to describe a large range of individuals, whose symptoms and suffering are often very different from each other. It is an attempt to describe something, a pattern of behaviour and feeling that is easier to recognise than to pin down. Most people (yes, I really do mean most) have some elements of borderline, because the particular symptoms result from difficulties in psychological development when we're little - difficulties that are very common since few parents, if any, can be perfectly attuned to their child at all times.

The most obvious thing that leads to people being given the BPD label is that they can swing from feelings of intense love to real hatred about a person, quite suddenly. This is because when we are little, we naturally split the world into 'good' and 'bad' as a way of managing our feelings. For a tiny baby, the whole universe feels horrific when it is hungry (and of course it doesn't yet have any idea of change - it's just stuck in an eternal present). Then along comes the mother, who feeds it, and the world feels completely fantastic. Without going through the whole process of development, you can perhaps understand that in the long run, we have to learn that the mother who comes and the mother who doesn't come are the same person, but this is a complicated psychological task. When it doesn't go well, there are splits in our feelings - hence the swing from intense love to hate.

Another characteristic that is labelled as BPD (although not all people given this label will show it) is a tendency to self-injure. Not all people who self-injure have BPD, either!

Other people may experience someone with BPD as 'manipulative'. This is a terribly unfair matter, because the individual who is suffering is not trying to manipulate anyone, but desperately trying to make the world half-way OK for themselves.

You can find more information at two websites run by and for people with BPD.
http://www.borderlineuk.co.uk/ and http://www.bpdworld.org/

NB the person above me has, without acknowledgement, quoted a huge chunk from http://health.yahoo.com/topic/mentalhealth/symptoms/article/healthwise/ty6805
Similarly, UgLy M has cut and pasted, without acknowledgement, from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/borderline-personality-disorder.shtml or one of the other three websites which use the same text.
It is not ethical to quote/cut and paste without acknowledgement and I hope that if these people use these techniques again, they will acknowledge their sources.

Answer 4

I guarantee that there is no one here on Yahoo who is qualified enough to answer this question so I caution you not to look to this forum for "the simple answer" to a question that does not have a simple answer. BPD is an extremely complex and multi-layered disorder that even most mental health professionals do not understand because they do not train to specialize in dealing with personality disorders and therefore have very limited knowledge on the subject of BPD. If you really want this confusing disorder explained to you in terms that are extremely accurate (and I would know because I have BPD myself), I would recommend going to the TARA Association for Personality Disorder website http://www.tara4bpd.org/dyn/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=12 or reading anything by Marsha Linehan ( created DBT therapy for BPD), Jeffrey Young (created Schema Therapy for BPD) or anyone else who has dedicated many years of specific training, research, and first-hand patient experience to understanding the core of Borderline Personality Disorder and other PD's

Answer 5

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. This instability often disrupts family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual's sense of self-identity.

A person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last only hours, or at most a day. These may be associated with episodes of impulsive aggression, self-injury, and drug or alcohol abuse.

Pharmacological treatments are often prescribed based on specific target symptoms shown by the individual patient. Antidepressant drugs and mood stabilizers may be helpful for depressed and/or labile mood. Antipsychotic drugs may also be used when there are distortions in thinking.

Answer 6

It's a severe and complicated mental illness that is difficult to define in simple words. Try this link for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder

Some characteristics of BPD may be remembered with the mnemonic PRAISE:

P: paranoid ideas
R: relationship instability
A: angry outbursts, affective instability, abandonment fears
I: impulsive behavior, identity disturbance
S: suicidal behavior
E: emptiness

Answer 7

Try this link to the Mind website

Understanding borderline personality disorder:
http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Understanding/Understanding+borderline+personality+disorder.htm

the information is easy to read and understand.

Hope this helps.

Answer 8

You have not got a disorder yet but are very near to having one.
A personality disorder could be many things ; you could be quiet and very stange with people etc, hyperactive,

Answer 9

Personality disorders are not mental illnesses they are learned behaviour. This particualr one means that they are on the boder between reality and fantasy - not in a psychotic way but retreat to a fantasy world quite often to cope when life is not what they want it to be. Often have mood swings and can be very nice people - when they want something.

Answer 10

it means you have a very complex character. one day you may be ok, and then you can change for whatever reason. you can fluctuate through all emotions and feel like noone understands. but it IS manageable xx