Borderline Personality Disorder

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Those living with Borderline Personality Disorder typically experience unstable relationships, significant and seemingly uncontrollable shifts in mood, an enduring sense of emptiness, an intense fear of rejection, abandonment, or criticism, impulsive behaviours, and an unstable sense of who they are. Indeed, many living with this condition describe it as feeling as though they are chameleons.

Symptoms

You may meet a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder if you experience 5 or more of the following symptoms:

o    Fear of abandonment (frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment)
o    Devaluation and idealization (a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealizing and then devaluing the other person) 
o    Unstable sense of self (not sure of who you are)
o    Impulsive behaviours (e.g., binge eating, substance abuse, sex, reckless driving, etc.)
o    Suicide ideation and self harm
o    Mood swings (mood instability due to significant mood reactivity e.g. intense episodes of dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and rarely more than a few days)
o    Chronic sense of emptiness 
o    Emotional dysregulation (intense anger that is expressed inappropriately or difficulty controlling anger)
o    Short lived stress induced paranoia or extreme dissociation (Paranoid ideation is being afraid that others are plotting against you, and dissociation is mentally separating from physical or emotional experiences, or both)
o    Difficulty maintaining direction (e.g. frequent career changes)/ Undermining your own goals
o    Empathy challenges
o    Anxiety
o    Depression
o    Hostility to perceived insults