BPD Support Consulting

End the Stigma!

Criteria for BPD...

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
2. A pattern of unstable and intense relationships, alternating between idealization and devaluation
3. Persistently unstable self image
4. Impulsivity in at least two area that are self damaging, i.e. promiscuity, spending, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving
5. Recurrent suicidal or self injurious behavior
6. Intense feelings that fluctuate lasting a few hours to a few days
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness
8. Inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger
9. Stress related paranoid feelings or severe dissociative symptoms

Tell Me About BPD...

With the nine criteria, and an individual needing only five of the nine to meet diagnostic criteria, do the math...this means that BPD can present in 257 different ways, depending on how many and which of the criteria one meets. 

Borderline personality disorder is a severe mental illness that affects up to 2% of the population. Of those meeting diagnostic criteria, 75% are women. Like heart disease, like cancer, BPD can be a fatal illness...10% of those meeting diagnostic criteria complete suicide.

Those affected can recover. With good treatment and a stable support system, those diagnosed with BPD have a good prognosis. Recovery does not mean cure. Though I am now in recovery, I still find myself having to manage all nine of the criteria that at one point threatened to destroy my life. The difference is, now I control them, they do not control me.