Borderline Personality Disorder
BPD is a unique diagnosis and one that can bring a sense of hopelessness and confusion to many people. Flourishing Families wants to help bring hope and peace to individuals with BPD and to their loved ones supporting them. Unlike most mental health struggles, BPD is under-diagnosed and under-researched. Borderline Personality Disorder is often misunderstood and labeled as "manipulative," "over-dramatic," "obsessive." In reality BPD would be better named "Emotion Dysregulation Disorder" as the name is a much more sensical descriptor and gives others more insight into what it actually means to have BPD.
About BPD
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by adults who display at least five of the nine criteria below on a consistent basis (as opposed to meeting criteria only during college or during a difficult and stressful year).
~Fears of abandonment and frantic efforts to avoid abandonment
~A pervasive pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships
~An unstable self-image (many may feel as though they "are not a person" or change who they are in an extreme way based on those they are around.)
~Impulsive behaviors that are self-destructive (such as gambling, unsafe sexual behaviors, self-harm, using drugs, risky and dangerous behaviors, breaking laws, etc.)
~Recurrent suicidal behaviors, suicidal threats and thoughts
~Mood instability
~Chronic feelings of emptiness
~Inappropriate and intense anger
~Transient stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.
Yes and no. Technically, to meet the "official" criteria, one has to be at least eighteen years old. However, many people report having extremely intense emotions, chronic feelings of emptiness, and unstable self-image as young as six or seven-years-old. These clients and parents report "knowing they were 'different'" a long time before age eighteen.
Thankfully, an "official" diagnosis does not matter for much and people are free to identify or not identify with BPD and/or any descriptors they choose. Dialectical Behavior Therapy is helpful regardless of the diagnostic criteria one meets!
Can kids and teens have BPD?
There is Hope!
Dialectical Behavior Therapy is an evidenced-based therapy considered the gold standard treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. DBT was created by Marsha M. Linehan in the 1970s and 80s, as she viewed CBT an inadequate treatment for those with chronic suicidality. DBT has four "categories" of skills including Mindfulness, Emotion Regulation, Interpersonal Effectiveness and Distress Tolerance. Mindfulness is the foundation for all the other skills learned in DBT. Flourishing Families offers DBT-informed treatment, teaching you and your family the skills needed to help regulate emotions, handle difficult situations without making them worse, and have healthy and happy interpersonal relationships.
