Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

When you have BPD, you have an overwhelming fear of abandonment and make frantic efforts to prevent someone from leaving. This fear also manifests as a perception of impending rejection or separation, which causes major changes in your self-image, mood, and behavior. Things like a romantic partner having to go away for the weekend or a sudden change in plans can lead to inappropriate anger.

A feature of unstable and intense relationships is that you fluctuate between idealizing and devaluing romantic partners or caregivers. For instance, you may idealize them at the first meeting but devalue them when you feel like they don’t care enough. When you’re prone to erratic and dramatic shifts in how you view other people, you go from seeing them as loving to cruel.

A common marker of BPD is identity disturbance, characterized by an unstable self-image. You may have sudden shifts in self-image, signaled by changing vocational aspirations, values, and goals. Your opinions and plans about your values, career, or sexual orientation may change suddenly. At times, you may experience a complete absence of a sense of self, which typically happens when you feel a lack of nurturing and support.

Another symptom of BPD is that you show impulsivity in two areas that can be self-damaging. This includes actions like driving recklessly, engaging in unsafe sex, spending money irresponsibly, or substance abuse.

Criterion 5 includes recurrent suicidal behavior, including gestures and threats or self-harming behavior. At the same time, the rate of completed suicide is 8 to 10 percent, and self-harming behaviors like cutting and burning, as well as suicide attempts, are common. In most cases, recurrent suicidality is the reason people with BPD need help.

A common sign of BPD is mood instability, which leads to anxiety, irritability, or intense feelings of unease and dissatisfaction that only last a few hours to a few days.  When you have BPD, your mood is generally low but is interrupted by periods of panic, danger, or despair, which indicates your extreme reactivity to stressful events.

A major symptom of BOD is a failure to regulate your emotions. This can cause you to express inappropriate, intense anger that’s out of proportion to the situation. Similarly, you may show bitterness, use sarcasm, and have verbal outbursts. These reactions occur when caregivers or romantic partners seem neglectful or uncaring.

During highly stressful situations, you may experience dissociative symptoms or feel suspicious. Dissociation feels like you’re losing touch with reality as if you’re seeing the world from outside your body. Similarly, paranoid ideation or suspicious thoughts about others’ intentions is common.

People with BPD often experience chronic feelings of emptiness. Consequently, you may feel like you get bored easily and look for something to do. This can include binge eating, abusing illicit substances, or consuming excessive amounts of alcohol.