Dealing with BPD symptoms: Any advice?

Anyone here dealt with this disorder before? If so, would you mind sharing your experience?

I’m hearing about this for the very first time in my life🤔...
What on earth is that supposed to be?

Hannah Davis12 said:Anyone here dealt with this disorder before? If so, would you mind sharing your experience?

Check out this thread:

there's plenty of info there...

I was gonna write up a whole breakdown on DG for you guys—both the theory and how it actually plays out in the real world... but I gotta run, meeting a friend for coffee real quick. Catch ya later.☕

In slang, we're talking about that red line—that borderline between neurosis and psychosis. So, "borderline personality"—their moods and emotions are just all over the place, totally unstable. They don't really have a solid sense of who they are, which makes their emotions super volatile and their behavior unpredictable and impulsive. They live with this constant, heavy sense of emptiness and depression... and they can be prone to manipulative suicide attempts.
Honestly, a patient like that is a therapist's worst nightmare because once they get into that state, it’s incredibly hard to fix. You've got people dealing with chronic depression, deep-seated addiction to drugs or booze, marriages that are completely trashed, and often a pattern of being hypersexual, jumping from one bed to the next. You see them—the "overpass jumpers" and those sad souls sitting on park benches, fingers interlaced like the seams on a football, carrying these deep psychological scars that just won't heal. Their ego is so fragile, so brittle... they spend all their energy playing parts, trying desperately to be anything except who they actually are. They crave intimacy more than anything, yet they push away anyone who tries to get close. They're rarely satisfied, drifting from one specialist to another, hoping someone will finally hand them a magic pill to fix their shattered feelings and that hollow void inside. They'll follow any guru or messianic type—any charismatic loser promising a quick fix for the pain. Usually, it ends with a premature trip to
jail or a psych ward. When they come out, they look fine on the surface, which gives everyone hope... right up until the next crash, whether it's real or just in their heads. But one thing is for sure, they never actually change...

🤷

Go check out my blog if you want!

Donna Sullivan7 said:In slang, we're talking about that red line—that borderline between neurosis and psychosis. So, "borderline personality"—their moods and emotions are just all over the place, totally unstable. They don't really have a solid sense of who they are, which makes their emotions super volatile and their behavior unpredictable and impulsive. They live with this constant, heavy sense of emptiness and depression... and they can be prone to manipulative suicide attempts.
Honestly, a patient like that is a therapist's worst nightmare because once they get into that state, it’s incredibly hard to fix. You've got people dealing with chronic depression, deep-seated addiction to drugs or booze, marriages that are completely trashed, and often a pattern of being hypersexual, jumping from one bed to the next. You see them—the "overpass jumpers" and those sad souls sitting on park benches, fingers interlaced like the seams on a football, carrying these deep psychological scars that just won't heal. Their ego is so fragile, so brittle... they spend all their energy playing parts, trying desperately to be anything except who they actually are. They crave intimacy more than anything, yet they push away anyone who tries to get close. They're rarely satisfied, drifting from one specialist to another, hoping someone will finally hand them a magic pill to fix their shattered feelings and that hollow void inside. They'll follow any guru or messianic type—any charismatic loser promising a quick fix for the pain. Usually, it ends with a premature trip to
jail or a psych ward. When they come out, they look fine on the surface, which gives everyone hope... right up until the next crash, whether it's real or just in their heads. But one thing is for sure, they never actually change...

Is there actually any help out there? Like, anything to stop the hypersensitivity or that constant loop of overanalyzing everything from yesterday to ten years ago? Personally, I don't think so. It feels like something you just have to live with until the end... like some incurable, terminal disease.

There’s "help" in the short term, but we all know what that looks like: spiraling through bottles of wine or beer, or chasing shallow relationships. A day is only 24 hours, but the average person goes through something like 3 million thoughts an hour (not that anyone's actually counted, but still)...

If your brain is wired wrong, hahaha, it's really just a matter of time before everything hits the fan. Total breakdown, madness, alienation, deep depression, mania, dysfunction, pure hatred, and finally... well, you know how it ends. Straight to hell. :|

Nathan Davis said:🤷

Go check out my blog if you want!

-so you definitely have it... but for that specific topic, what does gambling actually have to do with borderline? please explain, because I'm really not following...🤷

Nathan Davis said:🤷

Go check out my blog if you want!

get lost, dummy

steelranger31 said:Is there actually any help out there? Like, anything to stop the hypersensitivity or that constant loop of overanalyzing everything from yesterday to ten years ago? Personally, I don't think so. It feels like something you just have to live with until the end... like some incurable, terminal disease.

There’s "help" in the short term, but we all know what that looks like: spiraling through bottles of wine or beer, or chasing shallow relationships. A day is only 24 hours, but the average person goes through something like 3 million thoughts an hour (not that anyone's actually counted, but still)...

If your brain is wired wrong, hahaha, it's really just a matter of time before everything hits the fan. Total breakdown, madness, alienation, deep depression, mania, dysfunction, pure hatred, and finally... well, you know how it ends. Straight to hell. :|

-from what I know, symptoms can be managed with medication, specifically things like Prazine, 100mg, 1-1-1... though obviously, that shouldn't be mixed with alcohol or drugs. people call it "Ferrari" in street slang because it contains promazine, which is an aliphatic phenothiazine antipsychotic. it belongs to the first generation of neuroleptics known for strong sedative and anticholinergic effects, along with moderate extrapyramidal side effects. it helps with withdrawal syndromes, irritability, tension, anxiety, and pain in chronic patients. taking phenothiazines (like Prazine/Ferrari) alongside alcohol can cause severe depression of the central nervous system and the respiratory system, plus it can drop your blood pressure significantly. to get a faster effect, psychotic patients are often started on I.M. (intramuscular) injections. after that, it's given orally every 4-6 hours, with the dosage adjusted gradually based on how the patient handles the treatment. watch out if the patient has serious liver damage.

Donna Sullivan7 said:In slang, we're talking about that red line—that borderline between neurosis and psychosis. So, "borderline personality"—their moods and emotions are just all over the place, totally unstable. They don't really have a solid sense of who they are, which makes their emotions super volatile and their behavior unpredictable and impulsive. They live with this constant, heavy sense of emptiness and depression... and they can be prone to manipulative suicide attempts.
Honestly, a patient like that is a therapist's worst nightmare because once they get into that state, it’s incredibly hard to fix. You've got people dealing with chronic depression, deep-seated addiction to drugs or booze, marriages that are completely trashed, and often a pattern of being hypersexual, jumping from one bed to the next. You see them—the "overpass jumpers" and those sad souls sitting on park benches, fingers interlaced like the seams on a football, carrying these deep psychological scars that just won't heal. Their ego is so fragile, so brittle... they spend all their energy playing parts, trying desperately to be anything except who they actually are. They crave intimacy more than anything, yet they push away anyone who tries to get close. They're rarely satisfied, drifting from one specialist to another, hoping someone will finally hand them a magic pill to fix their shattered feelings and that hollow void inside. They'll follow any guru or messianic type—any charismatic loser promising a quick fix for the pain. Usually, it ends with a premature trip to
jail or a psych ward. When they come out, they look fine on the surface, which gives everyone hope... right up until the next crash, whether it's real or just in their heads. But one thing is for sure, they never actually change...

This is a perfectly illustrated example. Personally, I think BPD is the toughest personality disorder to deal with.

I have a question. Is it actually possible to mistake Borderline Personality Disorder for just some intense teenage growing pains?
To give you some context, I have a daughter who fits about 95% of the description for someone living with that disorder. She’s 16 and a half now, but things started shifting drastically when she was around 14—by last year, she had become a textbook example of this condition. It’s been everything—drugs, alcohol, boys, self-harm, suicidal manipulation... she’s even cycled through four or five different therapists, running away from every single one as soon as they get close enough to actually understand her world. She’s constantly reliving the past, stuck on old grievances, has zero trust in anyone, stays superficial in her relationships, and is incredibly self-centered—basically, she thinks she's the center of the universe. However, while she’s still having crises this year, it feels like they are finally starting to taper off. There's no more drugs (well, I hope not!) and she’s settled down her social circle; she doesn't go out nearly as much, and overall, she seems much more composed than she was last year. The one thing she absolutely refuses to do? Study—even though she is incredibly bright.
Aside from that, things are slowly stabilizing. She is still an extremely difficult and demanding person to be around, and she still has those sudden crashes and outbursts, but they are far less frequent and much less intense than they were last year. We finally found a therapist who uses a completely different approach—all her previous ones just catered to her whims, which allowed her to manipulate them like they were little clowns. This new therapist actually challenges her, pushes her buttons, and provokes her into thinking; yet, for some reason I can't quite wrap my head around, she actually respects her and won't walk away.
Is it possible for this disorder to manifest during puberty and then naturally subside as she moves into adulthood? And is there such a thing as "stages" or varying levels of severity for this condition?

Gregory Wells6, you should try looking up some online screening tests for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) just to see if your daughter’s behavior actually lines up with the symptoms. I can’t give you a direct link right now because I haven't looked at them in ages, but honestly, I remember reading about this stuff years ago and there was a massive amount of information available online. Just do a quick search and you'll find plenty of resources to dig into.
By the way, from what I understand, BPD isn't something people just outgrow once they hit adulthood; it’s a lifelong thing. It’s not like you just sail past puberty and suddenly everything is fine. That said, I really don't think your daughter has it—though, look, I'm not a doctor, so nothing is totally off the table—but if she actually did, the psychiatrists and psychologists she's been seeing would have definitely pointed that out by now.

I honestly hope not.
Throughout all those therapy sessions, the term "borderline type" came up once in a while—but nobody ever actually put it in black and white as a formal diagnosis. Usually, they just write down that there's a behavioral disorder, whatever that's supposed to mean. It’s been incredibly draining for me; really, the only thing keeping me going is the hope that this will eventually pass and everything will settle back into place. I find myself tracking every single bit of progress she makes—celebrating the small wins like a kid. I know things are hard for her, but truthfully, it’s just as difficult for everyone else around her (the family)—people like that can end up tearing everything in their orbit apart.

you know, people tend to jump to conclusions way too easily when they try to assess something like this. especially when we're talking about teenagers who are just starting to navigate their own identities for the first time. honestly, one of the worst things you can do to someone at that stage is start slapping all these clinical diagnoses on them, basically shoving it in their face that they're "crazy." you mentioned she’s sharp... and that clarity can actually be a bit of a curse, particularly during those years when you're old enough to see that the world around you is completely broken, yet you aren't quite "somebody" by official societal standards yet, so you don't have any real agency to change anything.

it would be incredibly wise to channel all that energy into something creative, maybe art or something similar—though, naturally, it’ll probably be something typical for her age group. based on what you've described, she strikes me more as an eccentric than someone with BPD, which isn't even a bad thing once a person finds their balance later in life. eccentrics usually solve problems better than "normal" people do (Jung used to say: show me a normal person and I'll cure them 🙂), they just tend to do it in ways that are non-conventional from a social standpoint. i'm convinced we're dealing with someone who has massive potential for growth, but if there's too much pressure to conform to society, they might just drown, and if there's zero pressure to integrate at all, they drift into alienation... and after that, it's a downward spiral.

in my view, the most important thing is to look at these types of people as individuals rather than treating them as outliers who don't fit the social mold. one thing is certain—you can accept that she's different and guide her toward doing something constructive with that uniqueness. though, granted, what counts as "constructive" might not look conventional at first. and when you think she's acting crazy because you simply don't get what's happening, don't just reject it, whine, or judge. there's still the matter of her immediate environment, specifically the family. the question is, are you prepared to see yourselves reflected in her and question the reality surrounding you? don't approach conversations and relationships as a simple "us vs. her" dynamic, because through actual dialogue, reality isn't just reinterpreted—it's created.

Yeah, unfortunately, people around them really struggle to cope with someone like that. BPD is typically diagnosed during early adolescence, often when a psychiatrist is either unsure about the specific diagnosis or finds themselves at odds with another specialist's opinion. It’s also incredibly common for BPD to show up alongside other mental health issues. The general idea is that you wait until they move past those teenage years to see how their psychological state settles... but the real catch is that you can never say for certain whether it's a genuine disorder or just an intense adolescent crisis.

Alex Cooper8 said:you know, people tend to jump to conclusions way too easily when they try to assess something like this. especially when we're talking about teenagers who are just starting to navigate their own identities for the first time. honestly, one of the worst things you can do to someone at that stage is start slapping all these clinical diagnoses on them, basically shoving it in their face that they're "crazy." you mentioned she’s sharp... and that clarity can actually be a bit of a curse, particularly during those years when you're old enough to see that the world around you is completely broken, yet you aren't quite "somebody" by official societal standards yet, so you don't have any real agency to change anything.

it would be incredibly wise to channel all that energy into something creative, maybe art or something similar—though, naturally, it’ll probably be something typical for her age group. based on what you've described, she strikes me more as an eccentric than someone with BPD, which isn't even a bad thing once a person finds their balance later in life. eccentrics usually solve problems better than "normal" people do (Jung used to say: show me a normal person and I'll cure them 🙂), they just tend to do it in ways that are non-conventional from a social standpoint. i'm convinced we're dealing with someone who has massive potential for growth, but if there's too much pressure to conform to society, they might just drown, and if there's zero pressure to integrate at all, they drift into alienation... and after that, it's a downward spiral.

in my view, the most important thing is to look at these types of people as individuals rather than treating them as outliers who don't fit the social mold. one thing is certain—you can accept that she's different and guide her toward doing something constructive with that uniqueness. though, granted, what counts as "constructive" might not look conventional at first. and when you think she's acting crazy because you simply don't get what's happening, don't just reject it, whine, or judge. there's still the matter of her immediate environment, specifically the family. the question is, are you prepared to see yourselves reflected in her and question the reality surrounding you? don't approach conversations and relationships as a simple "us vs. her" dynamic, because through actual dialogue, reality isn't just reinterpreted—it's created.

You put that so beautifully.--
Such solid, thoughtful advice, too.
Gregory Wells6, I really hope your daughter finds her footing and reaches her full potential—and that you guys work through everything together.

Gregory Wells6 said:I have a question. Is it actually possible to mistake Borderline Personality Disorder for just some intense teenage growing pains?
To give you some context, I have a daughter who fits about 95% of the description for someone living with that disorder. She’s 16 and a half now, but things started shifting drastically when she was around 14—by last year, she had become a textbook example of this condition. It’s been everything—drugs, alcohol, boys, self-harm, suicidal manipulation... she’s even cycled through four or five different therapists, running away from every single one as soon as they get close enough to actually understand her world. She’s constantly reliving the past, stuck on old grievances, has zero trust in anyone, stays superficial in her relationships, and is incredibly self-centered—basically, she thinks she's the center of the universe. However, while she’s still having crises this year, it feels like they are finally starting to taper off. There's no more drugs (well, I hope not!) and she’s settled down her social circle; she doesn't go out nearly as much, and overall, she seems much more composed than she was last year. The one thing she absolutely refuses to do? Study—even though she is incredibly bright.
Aside from that, things are slowly stabilizing. She is still an extremely difficult and demanding person to be around, and she still has those sudden crashes and outbursts, but they are far less frequent and much less intense than they were last year. We finally found a therapist who uses a completely different approach—all her previous ones just catered to her whims, which allowed her to manipulate them like they were little clowns. This new therapist actually challenges her, pushes her buttons, and provokes her into thinking; yet, for some reason I can't quite wrap my head around, she actually respects her and won't walk away.
Is it possible for this disorder to manifest during puberty and then naturally subside as she moves into adulthood? And is there such a thing as "stages" or varying levels of severity for this condition?

Not only is it possible, but I recently read that almost every teenager goes through something resembling bipolar disorder—that it's practically a normal part of adolescence—so why wouldn't borderline be similar?😉 Perhaps it wouldn't matter anyway; you could just send them to talk to a psychologist, simply so they have someone to share their worries with (since kids that age rarely turn to their parents for that kind of thing).

So, I actually have a neighbor with the exact same diagnosis. We’ve known each other since the end of the war—like 15 years now—and even with his meds and staying completely sober, he manages to hold together a pretty decent marriage and has a kid.... He’s even turned his apartment hallway into this little makeshift shrine, even though he isn't even religious. His whole vocabulary is just a loop of the same old phrases, you know? Like he constantly recites Bible verses or random quotes just to try and seem witty or something.... He puts on this big, happy face for the world, but you can really tell how much he’s struggling with those delusions that don't match reality. He’s super flighty, too... one minute he's all in on a goal, thinking he's actually gonna make it happen, but because he's so disconnected from reality, everything just falls apart so fast.
He follows these totally wrong idols, people who aren't even worth looking up to. He’s extremely antisocial, mostly just keeps to himself. Back in the 90s right after the war ended, he used to get these massive anxiety attacks—this irrational fear that he’d totally misinterpret based on his own twisted logic. He used to spend a lot of time at the local VA hospital because he felt safer there, knowing someone was watching over him... From what I know, his regimen includes Prazosin 100mg in the morning, afternoon, and night; he says it helps keep him level. But man, he has zero self-control when it comes to food or anything else, weighs about 260lbs. It’s basically the same pattern of behavior that any good therapist would spot instantly... things don't change easily, but with the right medication, you can definitely dial down the symptoms.

Jeffrey Ramos4 said:Yeah, unfortunately, people around them really struggle to cope with someone like that. BPD is typically diagnosed during early adolescence, often when a psychiatrist is either unsure about the specific diagnosis or finds themselves at odds with another specialist's opinion. It’s also incredibly common for BPD to show up alongside other mental health issues. The general idea is that you wait until they move past those teenage years to see how their psychological state settles... but the real catch is that you can never say for certain whether it's a genuine disorder or just an intense adolescent crisis.

🙂
-as for that last bit, don't sweat it. A solid therapist isn't gonna fall for it... because people with BPD have such specific, predictable patterns of behavior. That's basically what makes the diagnosis what it is.