FEAR OF ABANDONMENT
One sign of BPD is an intense fear of abandonment, whether it’s real or imaginary. Mona, a woman with BPD, explains it this way in Stop Walking on Eggshells.
“I have BPD. One night I called my girlfriend and she said she would call me back because she was watching TV. She didn’t call for two and a half hours. It hurt so bad because the day before, I had started to believe that she really loved me. By the time the phone rang I had decided to get rid of her before she could get rid of me. It turns out the movie ran long because it was crammed with commercials. I felt so ridiculous, but the pain, the fear, and the gut-wrenching poker in my gut were very real.”
INTENSE, UNSTABLE, EMOTIONS
The hallmark of BPD, a universal trait, is that those who have it are emotional unstable. Their moods are intense and can go from zero to 10 in seconds. Their moods can change from one to another just as fast.
You may have no idea what caused the emotion or the shift in emotions. That unpredictability, never knowing what kind of mood they will be in, has you walking on eggshells. Parents say their child’s moods makes it impossible to plan things, and partners say they dread not knowing what kind of mood their spouse is in when they come home from work.
ANGER AND RAGES
The emotion family members find the most difficult to cope with are the uncontrolled, intense rages. Like other emotions, the can come on quickly and intensely. In The Essential Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder, a woman perfectly explained what it is like to be on the receiving end of a borderline rage:
"When my partner was in a rage, it seemed like she was channeling an evil spirit. Her eyes had no life in them: just a blankness. She didn’t see who I was or how she was hurting me. There was no way to negotiate, no way to reason or argue. She did not understand rational arguments. Her voice would become more rapid, accusatory, demeaning, patronizing, irrational, and paranoid. Her tone was very fast—rat-a-tat-tat—like she was firing at me. She would pace and become very menacing, growing closer and closer as I became more and more afraid."
FEELINGS OF EMPTINESS
Another trait of BPD is feeling empty, like the person has a black hole inside them they can never fill up. People with borderline partners say they try their best to fill up their partner’s “black hole.” But it can’t be done from the outside. As one man from Moving Forward put it, “It’s like filling the Grand Canyon with a water pistol, except the Grand Canyon has a bottom.”
INTENSE EMOTIONAL PAIN
In my book Stop Walking on Eggshells for Parents, I quote someone with BPD saying, “I don’t want the possibility of anyone hurting me anymore. I want to stop existing because life is too painful. I push the people away who I love the most, and I can’t seem to stop myself or realize what I have done until it’s too late.”
Imagine your worst day ever. Then imagine feeling that way everyday. It would affect everything you did. As you interact with your loved one, remember their responses and reactions are affected by this pain. Closely related to this pain are the constant drumbeats people with BPD experience of shame, low-self esteem, and feelings of worthlessness.
The sad truth is that you can’t cure BPD with unconditional love. The problem isn’t that people with BPD don’t get enough love. The problem is that they feel such worthlessness and shame that they think they don’t deserve it. So your love encounters Teflon and slips away. But it’s difficult to face the worthlessness and shame and work on it, in therapy or out. All they know is they don’t feel loved, which means you must be doing something wrong.
SPLITTING
Non-disordered people can see a person’s good and bad points at the same time and see them as an integrated whole. But the brains of people with BPD are set up to see people, situations, and themselves in only one of two ways: black or white, good or bad, evil stepmother or good fairy. And when they’re in one mode, they can’t remember being in the other. This is called “splitting.”
When they see you in one mode, remember that it’s only temporary. That way you won’t be disappointed when they split you “black” or get too enthralled when they split you “white.”
MOMENTS OF EXTREME PARANOIA
These can be triggered by emotionality and fear of abandonment. Your family member may be sure you are going to leave them or are having an affair when there is no evidence. You doubt yourself or wonder if your loved one has a psychotic disorder. When the stress decreases, the paranoia usually goes away.
ACTING ON IMPULSE
People with BPD are both impulsive and in a great deal of emotional pain. This leads to impulsive “pain management” behaviors, such as:
INWARD-ACTING IMPULSIVITY
Some people with BPD turn their pain inward and tend to self-harm and feel suicidal. They talk about hating themselves or think other people hate them. They tend to identify as having BPD, seek treatment, and have co-occurring disorders that require treatment. I call this type “conventional” type because they meet the conventional descriptions of BPD and the people who have the disorder.
OUTWARD ACTING IMPULSIVITY
A greater number of those with BPD do not identify as having BPD and turn the pain outward, deny responsibility for any relationship problems, and blame and criticize “targets of blame” who eventually suffer the pain their family member has projected onto them.
For this type, the most common co-occurring disorder is narcissistic personality disorder, which prevents them from seeing their problems or feeling the need to seek therapy. I term them the “unconventional” type because they are not described in the clinical literature.
Many people with BPD have traits of both conventional and unconventional types of BPD.
UNSTABLE, CONFLICTUAL RELATIONSHIPS
All of the borderline traits listed on this page lead to having unmanaged relationships with lots of conflict, another BPD trait. One man says:
"When we first began dating, my borderline girlfriend told me I was the very first guy who really loved her for what she was. She told me about a whole series of ex’s, each of whom was worse than the other. We talked about how unlucky she was. But a few months, she started criticizing me and everything I did was wrong. She would break up with me and then want to get back together—sometimes in the same day. Then, I swear, she made something up and wouldn’t talk to me for two days. I’m beginning to understand what all these other guys went though."
“Randi literally saves people’s lives. To those of us who’ve read her stuff and found out that we’re not crazy and there’s a name for this disorder, she is a guiding star, a light in the darkness, and a voice crying out in the wilderness.”
–A reader
