Hi guys, welcome back to my channel and if you're new, welcome to my channel. My name is Stephanie Yates Anyabuile, Steph Anya for short. I'm a licensed associate marriage and family therapist.
This channel is for fellow therapists, those thinking of becoming therapists, and those who are looking to simply create their best lives. The video today will really be for... all three groups.
I'll be going through the clinical symptoms required for a borderline personality disorder diagnosis. It can be useful for therapists or those who are in training to become therapists to just be refreshed on what those requirements are. And for those who are looking to live their best life, if you think that you or someone you love could be struggling with this personality disorder, then just take a look at the symptoms and be honest with yourself. See if these things apply and if so, I have recommendations for ways to address those symptoms.
If you're interested in learning a little bit more about borderline personality disorder, stay tuned. So I think of borderline personality disorder as extremes or just instability, unstableness. You'll see a person who is unstable in the way they view themselves, instability in their relationships, sometimes instability in work context. Basically, we're seeing extremes and a lot of fluctuations in this person's approach to life and the way that they live their life. And once we get into some of the examples, I think you'll recognize that you probably Either exude some of these behaviors yourself or you definitely might know someone who exudes these behaviors.
Borderline personality disorder, like I've said before with the other personality disorder, narcissism I talked about in another video, a disorder that is ego- centric. So it mostly has an impact on the people in their lives. But the good thing about borderline personality disorder is that there are some processes that are developed specifically to work on the borderline tendencies, as well as it has a prognosis that is not lifelong typically. So that is also a very good thing to know about borderline personality disorder. So as we'll see with many of the DSM diagnoses, at least five characteristics of the ones that I'm about to name have to be checked off in order for a person to meet the clinical criteria for borderline personality disorder.
So I'm just gonna go through those now and give a few examples of what I've seen in session or seen in my personal life that can kind of show you what those. symptoms look like in real life. Here's a huge one. Frantic efforts to avoid abandonment.
Things like literally physically clinging to people when they are leaving, constantly calling, texting, showing up at a person's house uninvited to see who they're with, just doing a lot of things, almost a sense of paranoia that a person is going to leave you and doing everything you can no matter how it looks to make sure that that does not happen. The most common way that I see this symptom coming to life is by actually doing things that would sabotage a relationship so that they have the power to abandon that other person. They'll do things that cause people to want to leave them so that they feel empowered. That's how I see it most often.
Here's a big one, a pattern of unstable interpersonal relationships that really go back and forth between glamorizing, idolizing this person and devaluing them. This is splitting so this is what we talked about when I went through defense mechanisms that are very detrimental to relationships splitting is something that we see a lot in borderline personality disorder it is one of the main things that I am looking for before I will even consider a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder shortened to BPD it is basically viewing everything as either perfect or horrible and so that definitely includes relationships where they be romantic romantic friendships, family relationships. With my borderline clients, a lot of times you're just seeing all of these patterns of quickly cutting people off and also quickly developing these really intense relationships with people.
A person with BPD, they really want those close, intimate connections. We all do, but they really expedite the process of creating them. They'll start talking to a person at work and all of a sudden they are best friends. They're doing everything together.
And then that person will say or do something that really scares the BPD client, but from their perspective, they're just seeing that this person is doing something wrong and they will completely cut off the relationship. So going back and forth between idealizing them and completely devaluing them. So the next criteria is an identity disturbance. Going back and forth in the way that these clients even view themselves.
Persistent instability. It can be hard. to track because during the time whenever these identity changes are happening most of the time people who have bpd are really excited about these changes and so it's very hard to look at it as a negative thing or a sign of some sort of disorder so you might have a person who they are very adamant about being a vegan they are so upset about anybody who is not a vegan and then maybe in a few months you see them eating all of this meat And now their new thing is recycling.
And then maybe after that, they have found a new religion and they are obsessed with that religion. And after that, the next thing is fitness. And they're all about fitness.
And you just see them changing their identity very often. And it's very hard for people who are close to them to know what kind of person they are. And it's very, very hard for the person with BPD to know the kind of person they are. And this really impacts the relationships as well because if you are in a relationship with someone because you have this shared interest, let's say in fitness, and then in another six months, fitness is like something you don't care about at all and now your main focus is on saving animals. It's not just casual because we all go in and out of hobbies.
We all go in and out of things that we are interested in and advocating for. But it's this intense change to be totally obsessed and dedicated to this thing and then to completely drop it and move on to something else. And really, you know, we expect that at certain ages, you know, as preteen, teenager, young adults, we expect to be very experimental in the things that we dedicate our time to. But when you start seeing these behaviors into later 20s, early 30s, still persisting in combination with other criteria, this is not the only criteria.
This is where a therapist will start considering the BPD diagnosis. Another criteria is impulsivity. And we need to see that in at least two areas. It could be impulsivity in spending.
So it could be gambling. It could be sex. Maybe this person is having a lot of sex unprotected with different people. It could be drugs.
Just basically doing impulsive things. Again, we're seeing just this extreme nature. Suicidal ideation or threats.
Again, we're looking at the extremes. If this person is unhappy, they want to end things altogether. It's very important and critical to make sure that if a person, especially someone you know, has BPD and they are down or have a negative self-image at this point, to be very cognizant of that, check in on them.
make sure that if they have suicidal ideation, they can seek the help that they need. Another characteristic is instability with their affect. And affect is really like mood.
So, you know, they're going back and forth between being angry, extremely happy, sad. You just see a lot of mood fluctuations in what seems like a very unpredictable amount of time. Chronic feelings of emptiness. So a lot of times these extremes are just so the person can feel something.
I hear this all the time is that they're looking to fill this void. They'll basically risk or do anything, impulsive, risky things just to feel something. They'll start up a new friendship. They'll cut off a friendship.
They'll do things just to fill the void and feel something. So chronic feelings of emptiness is a characteristic that is also something to look for with BPD. Difficulty controlling anger.
is something that we see. What I've heard a lot of times is what people refer to as blackout anger. I'll have clients who literally do not remember what happened when they were angry and sometimes there are you know with cell phones and everything now people can record what's happening and I've had many clients come to me and say the reason that I'm seeking help, I didn't think anything was wrong but it's because I saw a video of myself. that I didn't even remember. So blackout anger can definitely be a sign of BPD.
Being paranoid or having disassociative symptoms, I talked about disassociation in my video on defense mechanisms. Basically having kind of a break from reality, not really being fully cognizant of what the rest of the world would say is happening. So that can be a sign of BPD as well. If you think that you might have borderline personality disorder or someone that you know, listen to these symptoms.
If five of them resonate with you, my biggest recommendation is to find a therapist. One of the promising things about BPD is that there are programs designed to specifically address the symptoms of BPD. DBT, which is dialectical behavior therapy, it's a program that usually has a group of people with BPD and other similar disorders. It's very regimented, brings some more structure.
Structure is like the antithesis of BPD. Oftentimes, there's such fluctuation that structure is almost something that is unwelcome. So it can be a very regimented process to kind of combat those ideas.
I don't lead any DBT courses, so I'm not very familiar with the exact structure, but I do know that I have seen very positive results. results for clients that I have referred to, DBT groups. And another promising thing about BPD is that the prognosis for it, typically what we see is that into the late 30s and early 40s, the symptoms start to decline for BPD. And so unlike other personality disorders, this does seem to be something that predominantly impacts young people.
And so at least it's not a lifelong experience for most. The best thing you can do is find a a group like DBT that can give you that structure that you need and tools to kind of deal with those impulses. And also a therapist to kind of deal with issues of abandonment and come up with other strategies or solutions for meeting your needs to feel connected and to fill that void.
In the meantime, just know that this is not a life sentence. What we see for a vast majority of our clients is that there's drastic improvements as they move on in life. So that is a synopsis of borderline personality disorder.
diagnosis again you can only be diagnosed by a professional who is licensed to do so but if you have any concerns that this might be something that you're struggling with or someone you love then you can see that professional maybe let them know that you were concerned about having this and they can do a more thorough assessment to see if you truly do meet the criteria I hope this video helps again my name is Stephanie Yates Anya Bwile, Stef Anya for short I ask that you subscribe to this channel and like this video if you found it to be informative. I appreciate you for watching until the end of the video. That actually truly helps me, so thank you.