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Borderline personality disorder affects your self-image, causes volatile and extreme emotions and behaviors, and disrupts relationships. You can overcome these challenges with holistic mental health treatment from the caring Bellevue Psychiatry team. Take the first step toward restoring your mental well-being by calling the Kennewick, Vancouver, Bellevue, or Kirkland, Washington, office or booking online. The team offers prompt appointments in person and through telehealth.
What is borderline personality disorder?
Borderline personality disorder is a mental health condition that causes an ongoing pattern of changes in self-image, sudden anger outbursts, and relationship difficulties.
People with borderline personality disorder struggle to control their emotions and behaviors, creating a volatility that affects every aspect of their lives.
These impulsive emotions and behaviors may arise from a deep fear of abandonment or rejection. However, a person with borderline personality disorder may not be aware of their fears.
While the experts don’t know what causes this condition, they believe that it develops for several possible reasons, including genetics, a history of child abuse or neglect, and chemical changes in the brain.
What are the symptoms of borderline personality disorder?
Borderline personality causes the following symptoms.
- Fear of abandonment: You may engage in urgent, intense efforts to prevent real or imagined abandonment.
- Unstable or explosive relationships: Your feelings about people may change rapidly, or you may have extreme expectations.
- Shifts in self-image: Your self-image shifts between good and poor, and you may have a pattern of changing values and beliefs.
- Impulsive behaviors: These behaviors are often risky, such as overspending, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating.
- Emotional instability: Your emotions are fluid, extreme, and poorly controlled.
- Anger: Your anger exceeds the emotions expected for the circumstance. You may frequently lose your temper, feel constantly angry, or get into fights.
- Chronic emptiness: You may feel like you don’t have a purpose or you’re lacking something.
- Paranoia and delusions: Stress may trigger brief episodes of paranoia (being suspicious of others) and delusions (false beliefs). You may feel detached from yourself or the world.
- Suicidal thoughts or self-injury: Many people with borderline personality disorder think about or attempt suicide or engage in self-injurious behaviors like cutting or burning.
If you feel suicidal, call 988, the Suicide and Crisis Hotline. You can get help and support any time of the day or night.
How is borderline personality disorder treated?
The Bellevue Psychiatry team specializes in treating borderline personality disorder with a comprehensive, holistic approach.
After completing a psychiatric evaluation, your provider creates a customized treatment plan that includes talk therapy (the first line of treatment recommended by the American Psychiatric Association).
You may need medication to improve symptoms, and your provider may also recommend supportive lifestyle strategies.
If you have symptoms of borderline personality disorder, schedule a consultation by calling the office or booking online today.