borderline personality disorder

There are nine specific diagnostic criteria (symptoms) for borderline personality disorder. They commonly fall into four groups.

1. Excessive, unstable and poorly regulated emotional responses.

• Affective (emotional) instability including intense, episodic emotional anguish, irritability, and anxiety/ panic attacks
• Anger that is inappropriate, intense and difficult to control, and
• Chronic feelings of emptiness

2. Impulsive behaviours that are harmful to you or to others.

• Emotional over reactivity (“emotional storms”)
• Emotional responses that are occasionally under reactive, and
• Chronic boredom

3. Lack of sense of self

• Self-damaging acts such as excessive spending, unsafe and inappropriate sexual conduct, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating, and
• Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-injurious behavior

4.  Unstable relationships. 

• You may engage in frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, and
• Your relationships may be very intense, unstable, and alternate between the extremes of over idealizing and undervaluing people who are important to you