Borderline Personality Disorder and the "Trail of Destruction"

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel well this is dr. grande today's question is what is the trail of destruction that we see associated with borderline personality disorder now while back I made a video on narcissistic personality and the trail of destruction associated with that and I had a number of requests to specifically look at word-line personalized sorter in the same way so when I use the term trail destruction when I'm really talking about here are the negative outcomes in terms of functioning interpersonal relationships career financial and physical health that we see associated with certain disorders including cluster be personalized with us specifically borderline personalities order some of the damage especially the interpersonal relationship damage we see with borderline personality does rise the level of beyond repair but sometimes it is repairable one of the difficulties with boiling personality though of course is the symptoms are usually thought of as stable throughout the lifetime so this construct this idea of the trail of destruction this isn't unique to borderline personality disorder or personality sorters in general we see this idea that relationships can be damaged and there can be other consequences we see this with substance use disorder bipolar disorder schizophrenia intermittent explosive disorder paranoid person is order an even obsessive compulsive disorder there are also a number of other disorders that have this same type of pattern we see the same area of damage so when working to treat mental disorders this is important to keep in mind we don't see these issues just with one particular disorder this is something we see across a lot disorders we also see a trail of destruction sometimes in individuals who have no mental disorders so the idea is somebody can damage relationships and cause damage to their career this exists for everybody potentially now this term trail destruction of course is a colloquial term it's a term we see in the popular culture we don't really see it in the research literature and there are a lot of different terms that are similar that we also see used in the popular culture like borderline chaos borderline tornado which has kind of a natural disaster element to it there we see borderline radioactivity and also I've seen destructive whirlwind see that term used so borderline personality causes suffering for the person who has the disorder for that individual and sometimes tremendous suffering but it also has consequences for romantic partners family friends and coworkers so the destructive element of the disorder is not isolated to just the person who has the disorder mental health counselors can see this effect firsthand if they're working with a client and that client is okay with involving family or friends as part of the treatment so involving family and friends and treatment is often a good idea for somebody who has a disorder but of course the individual with this order would have to consent to that and there'd have to be some other ethical considerations that are made but either way we see that these different people interact with individuals of poor line person I swear and they have their own perspective on how they've been affected by it so they recognize this trail of destruction from different perspectives and to different extents some with the disorder can oftentimes see it even if they don't have a hundred percent insight and family and friends can of course see it but again their perspective is limited not usually due to a lack of insight but just due to their position they only see the person from a certain perspective as I indicated in my career I've treated several hundred people that have borderline person I sort and I've had the opportunity to talk to a number of family and friends of individuals with this disorder and in my experience I think a lot of times these individuals are just trying to communicate the impact of having a relationship with somebody who has borderline personality I don't think by using these terms they're necessarily trying to worsen the stigma associated with the disorder rather just try to communicate frustration and what's actually going on the different consequences they feel and how they struggle with those consequences in their own lives they want to help the person or line person is order but they also need to protect themselves so it comes down to setting boundaries and if we look specifically at some of the different terms I used before that I've heard of like borderline tornado and chaos and radioactivity I think you can see in these terms a lot of these characteristics are captured for example I mentioned a tornado is a natural disaster so this really captures this element that individuals who are relating to somebody with the disorder understand that the behavior isn't necessarily done on purpose it's not done out of some sort of evil disposition rather it's done because of the symptoms of the disorder it has a natural component to it now with the term borderline radioactivity if we think of this in terms of natural radioactivity and not man-made it has kind of the same element to it and I think this particular term has really been used expressively to try to communicate the true nature of the damage that occurs so if we think about radioactivity there's a few different elements of it that are hazardous if you're exposed to a lot of radioactivity that can be damaging so it's the intensity but also how much time you spend being exposed as an element and this is often times how people have communicated this to me they try to get close to the person with board line person is order but they can only stay closed for so long and they have to be careful how close they become so again we can see how this aligns with the construct of radioactivity I've also heard the word toxicity used in the same way and really you could think about this very similarly in terms of the nature of toxicity and the nature of some of these relationships so to explain the different elements the different characteristics of this water line trail of destruction I'm going to organize this video in a way where I look at all the symptom criteria and discuss how those symptom criteria could contribute to this trail destruction contribute to the damage to interpersonal relationships there are a lot of ways to organize material like this I think this makes sense for this particular topic so we'll start with the first symptom criteria and move to the last there are nine listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical with the first symptom criterion we see frantic efforts to avoid abandonment so here it's pretty clear to see how this can cause damage to interpersonal relationships in other areas we see frequent calling texting looking for continual reassurance sometimes stalking and this drives romantic partners away it's the opposite of what's intended of course by the behavior with this symptom criterion it's difficult to maintain relationships if somebody is always engaging in efforts to prevent rejection or to prevent being left alone that leaves a relationship really as unstable and this brings me to the second symptom criterion an unstable relationship pattern and here we see that this is partially due to what we see with the first symptom but there's really much more to it it's really a love-hate cycle a cycle of idealization and devaluation sometimes this is known as splitting seeing something is all good or all bad I think what happens a lot of times with this symptom criterion is that individuals who are in romantic relationships with individuals of borderline personalities who are simply tire of this cycle they may enjoy the idealization phase somewhat but they certainly don't enjoy the devaluation phase and it ties in with the anger symptom criterion that I'll get to a little later romantic partners in these instances doubt if the cycle will ever stop so eventually they permanently separate from the individual borderline personality and this leaves a number of failed relationships behind that individual with the disorder again very consistent with a trail of destruction and much of the time these relationships are really beyond repair not always but much of the time my experience the next symptom criterion is identity disturbance so this is an unstable self-image this is extremely painful to the individual with worldline personalities were it does time with other symptom criteria like affective instability or the chronic feeling of emptiness I'll get to both of those in a few moments and it can be difficult for relationships if somebody doesn't have a stable self-image it can be difficult to navigate some of the nuances of forming early romantic relationships but I don't see this one of the major contributors to the idea of this trail of destruction now the next one is a major contributor the symptom criterion is impulsivity and at least two areas that could be self damaging I'm going to group this together with the symptom criterion after that which is suicidal behavior gestures and threats these are independent symptom criteria but really they're very similar of course these two constructs are oftentimes seen together I think what happens a lot of times with these symptoms criteria is that people care about the individual borderline personality they don't want to see them harmed they certainly don't want to see anything that even is remotely close to suicide but eventually they just get burned out in terms of caring they care a lot they try to help the person when they damage themselves when they end up in the hospital so they really work and invest a lot of energy in that relationship and again a lot of caring a lot of empathy and even sympathy but eventually they just distance themselves for their own self protection after so many instances of impulsive behaviors that are harmful it just becomes difficult to maintain that relationship sometimes the next symptom criterion is affective instability this is emotional dysregulation and the problem here is that somebody never knows what to expect in social environments and career environments and this one has a particular impact on both of those employers want somebody who's reliable and emotional dysregulation doesn't line up with the construct of reliability very well so affective instability doesn't have some of the same consequence as we see with the other symptom criteria but it can be very harmful it can contribute to the trail of destruction individuals want to have relationships that can be quantified measured they can understand what's going to happen and affective instability really throws that off it makes a person unpredictable so the next symptom criterion is a chronic feeling of emptiness and I see this as linked in quite a bit to the identity disturbance but of course it's a separate symptom criterion and we see here that somebody is seeking support because they have that my feeling of emptiness so this can really tie in with leaning on people too much and people can grow tired of that we also see with the chronic feeling of emptiness sensation-seeking which of course is linked back to impulsive OD and is usually thought of in the context of borderline person anyway that's quite negative so this one may not appear to have a strong link to this idea of the trail destruction but I think it actually does have somewhat of a connection here now the eighth symptom criteria is inappropriate intense anger I'm gonna come back to this one a second I'm going to skip to the ninth and revisit anger in a moment so the ninth symptom criterion is paranoid ideation and this is where somebody is suspicious of others I think this links to the frantic efforts to avoid abandonment pretty closely I think what we see here with paranoid ideation is this simply drives people away similar to what we see with paranoid personality disorder also on the same symptom criterion we see severe dissociation this one could contribute to damaged relationships it doesn't have really the same impact as paranoid ideation would but these are again on the same symptom criterion they're loaded on the ninth symphony Tyrion and both could cause damage to relationships so both do have negative consequences so moving back to number eight I want to save this one to the end because I think this is probably one of the most important symptoms of boiling person is order that contribute to a trail of destruction what we see with this particular symptom criterion is not only anger but aggression and sometimes physical violence and what I found here is if someone has a relationship with an individual borderline personality disorder and that person can endure the affective instability the unstable relationship pattern the frantic efforts to avoid abandonment and all the other symptoms that may be present a lot of times they still can't endure the anger in particular the aggression and the physical aggression I think really for many people is the line that they draw when physical aggression occurs when physical violence occurs that's really the end of the relationship so we see that people try to stick it out they try to help the end they try to maintain a relationship with the individual but the anger is just too much and we even see this with mental health counselors a lot of times mental health counselors are working with somebody board line person is Witter and the anger just gets in the way so much or causes a problem at the agency and they just can't endure it they can't put up with the risk they worry about their co-workers they worry about some of the behaviors sometimes they may have to call the police and it just becomes too much so the inappropriate intense anger I think really has the most significant connection to the trail destruction in many ways and we also see a wide range of difficulties associated with anger like legal problems are fairly popular employment difficulties would be fairly common and of course the social and romantic relationships would see consequences from this as well so anger is really far-reaching and fairly destructive again one of the most significant factors we see with this trail of destruction so now taking a step back and looking at this trail destruction of boy line personality sorter we do see that a lot of this is about setting boundaries individuals have to look at their own values and set the boundaries where it makes sense in terms of relating to anybody including individuals with borderline personality again there's this difficult component because often times people want to help the individual but they also need to protect themselves it is important to understand that more like person a sorter is a mental disorder the behavior is there because of symptoms an improvement is definitely possible sometimes it takes a while but I've seen amazing recoveries during my career so despite this so-called trail destruction there is hope and it's important to keep that in mind I certainly appreciate that family members friends employers and other people that relate to individuals with borderline personality are put in a challenging position but we have to work to understand the nature of the disorder and understand of course the people that have this order are people and they want to recover and again with this disorder I don't really see this as something that's intentional everybody acts intentionally from time to time regardless of I have a mental disorder or not but borderline personality has strong symptom manifestations and these can distort how people see their behavior they may not understand what they're doing and the effects of what they're doing so again understanding compassion and involving mental health counselors can go a long way in terms of helping somebody with borderline personality I hope you found this description of borland person a sorter and the trail destruction to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 326,110

Keywords: borderline personality disorder, trail of destruction, personality disorder, borderline chaos, borderline tornado, borderline radioactivity, destructive whirlwind, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM, dramatic, narcissistic, antisocial, histrionic, abandonment, unstable pattern of relationships, identity disturbance, impulsivity, suicidal behavior, affective instability, chronic feelings of emptiness, anger, paranoid ideation, dissociation, bordeline toxicity, cluster b

Id: lofcSmdr_r0

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 31 2018