Download Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder
Characteristics
Contributing Factors
Symptoms and Lived
Experience of
Borderline
Personalities.
In a Crisis…
Support
Treatment
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Considered a disorder of emotion regulation.
Extreme mood swings
Very intense relationships
Black and white thinking (love/hate)
Difficult for the individual to maintain relationships.
Tend to rotate jobs (b/c of relational difficulties)
Very manipulative.
Little consistency in relationships.
Difficulty for the individual to take responsibility for their
actions.
♦ Avoids reality-oriented problem-solving.
♦ Both environmental and genetic factors play a role in
predisposing people to BPD.
♦ Upbringing is often in a home that devalues and invalidates
the individual.
♦ Tends to repeat between generations.
♦ Strongly related to abuse, in many cases sexual abuse.
♦ Intensifies from adolescents into adulthood.
♦ Difficult to identity in children.
Borderline Personality Disorder is considered a serious mental
illness. It is characterized by pervasive instability in moods,
interpersonal relationships, self-image and behaviour.
♦ Experience intense bouts of anger, depression, anxiety etc.
that last hours to at most a day.
♦ May feel mistreated, misunderstood and/or empty.
♦ Fears of abandonment and rejection with short separation
from social relationships (business trips, holidays, etc.).
♦ Sudden shifts from idealization to devaluation of social
relationships (love/hate).
♦ Impulsive behaviour.
♦ Focus on ‘here and now’ problems.
♦ Do not minimize their crisis.
♦ Be conscious of the possibility of a sudden shift in emotion.
♦ Validate their feelings while not encouraging or agreeing
with destructive or aggressive behaviour towards others.
♦ Introducing concepts of ‘limit-setting’ and boundaries.
♦ Be careful not to enable dependencies.
♦ Maintain neutral relationship with individual.
Treatment may involve both supportive therapy and symptom
specific medication.
Therapy:
♦ Crisis intervention should focus on the patients ‘here and
now’ issues.
Resources
♦ Long term phase focuses on conflict resolution and social
learning designed to minimize aggression.
♦ Boundaries and setting of limits are addressed.
♦ Reality-oriented problem solving is addressed.
♦ Goals should include gains towards independent functioning
and small steps in emotion management.
♦ * the characteristics of BPD of unstable and intense
relationships interfere with treatment for both the client and
therapists.
Medication:
♦ Usually prescribed to target specific symptoms (depression,
anxiety, distorted thinking).
♦ Not always required in treatment.
“I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me!”, J.J. Kresiman, Hal Straus.
“Stop Walking on Eggshells; Coping when Someone you Care
about has Borderline Personality Disorder”, Paul T. Madon,
Randi Kreger.