Borderline personality disorder

Borderline personality disorder is characterised by difficulty forming and maintaining a sense of self, high levels of distress and problems developing and sustaining relationships.

It is a disorder which often has a profound impact on a person’s day to day life and requires robust treatment to support someone to manage the condition well.

About 1 in 100 people in the UK have a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder so it is important that we take time as a society to understand the illness as it is not uncommon.

Below are some introductory videos to borderline personality disorder:

Some of the key signs and symptoms of borderline personality disorder are:

A deep fear of being abandoned or unloved by those close to you
Difficulty in creating and maintaining a sense of self
You often feel empty, like there is nothing happening inside of you
Heightened sensitivity
Emotions may change rapidly
High stress levels can cause you to feel paranoid

It’s an ordeal, I’ll give it that. I see the world as a platform of judges and critics. All eyes on me, analysing every fault, twitch, hair out of place and strand of thread poking out from my boots.

As with almost all mental health conditions, there are individual and widely varying reasons why someone may develop borderline personality disorder; it has no one cause. It is thought that borderline personality disorder may develop in response to childhood trauma – this could include being emotionally, physically or sexually abused. It could also include being neglected or abandoned, or experiencing a significant bereavement as a child, such as the death of a parent. However, not everyone who has a BPD diagnosis will have necessarily experienced childhood trauma.