What Is Borderline Personality Disorder | BetterHelp

[Music] so borderline personality disorder is one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized of all of the mental health diagnosis and I want to spend a little bit of time today educating you about what it is and what the people who are struggling with it really go through so that you can understand a little bit more if you might know somebody who's dealing with these issues or if you yourself might be struggling with some of these things I'm dr. Sonya and I'm a licensed clinical psychologist I've spent many years working with individuals who are struggling with borderline personality disorder and I have to say that they have been some of my favorite people to work with while they struggle significantly with symptoms that we're going to discuss in a little bit they are also some of the most sensitive caring and engaged clients that I've had the pleasure of working with and I think that they're commonly misunderstood and this misunderstanding results in even more difficulty for them because they're already struggling with their own view of themselves so individuals who are struggling with borderline personality disorder really struggle with an unstable sense of who they are as people and what this results in is kind of an inability to trust their own view of themselves but also an inability to trust their perceptions of others and so what often happens is is their own self-image swings from really positive to really negative their views of others can do this as well and what this can result in is either seeing the world in all good or all bad categories and seeing people this way as well this can be very disconcerting for the friends and family members and other people who interact with individuals who are struggling with this because one minute you may be their best friend on the top of the world and you can do no wrong and then if there's some perceived slight or misunderstanding you can go to being the worst person in the world who has no redeeming qualities and while this is very difficult to take from the outside perspective it's also super difficult for the person who's struggling with borderline personality disorder to cope with what it takes to go from one extreme to the other on such a regular basis one thing that's very very difficult for people who struggle with borderline personality disorder is their wild vacillation between emotional states so they can go very quickly from anger to happiness sadness and it's really tough to keep track of what triggers these changes in emotion this is really disturbing for them and often they will go to extreme lengths to try to either numb out their emotional experience or somehow overcompensate for what they're going through because the ups and downs of the emotions just become too hard to take because people with borderline personality disorder really struggle with modulating and managing their emotions oftentimes they will engage in impulsive behaviors as a way to either distract themselves or numb out from what they're going through and some of these impulsive behaviors include self harming behavior excessive drug or alcohol use risky sexual behavior and changing and frequent relationships with others when I'm working with people who have borderline personality disorder one of the things I've noticed is that they have a tendency to shift between the state of extreme emotional dysregulation so going from happy to sad to angry very quickly and unpredictably to a state of feeling very empty and numb and detached and this can be incredibly difficult for them to handle but it's also incredibly incredibly difficult for both the counselor as well as the other people that they interact with to handle borderline personality disorder is a very serious diagnosis and it really requires the help of a licensed professional in order to really make the gains and get past some of the behavioral and emotional problems that people struggle with it's it's not something to be taken lightly in fact there is a much higher rate of suicidal threats as well as suicidal behaviors and individuals who struggle with this so if you know anybody who's struggling with this or if you recognize any of these signs in yourself I strongly encourage you to reach out and speak to somebody who can help you you don't have to do this alone there are very very good therapies including one called dialectical behavior therapy that we're gonna talk about in another video that have shown to be incredibly beneficial to people who've been struggling with this for a long time in all of my years of working with people in therapy I found that individuals with borderline personality disorder are in a significant amount of pain and suffering based on their inability to manage how they feel about themselves as well as to manage their emotions and their behaviors in healthy ways on the positive side I have also found that they can be significantly helped through therapy specifically a type of therapy called dialectical behavior therapy or DBT which we'll talk more about in another video what I would strongly encourage you to do if you recognize any of these signs in yourself or anyone that you know is please please reach out to a licensed professional this is a very painful thing to struggle with and you don't have to do it alone there is help out there and you can live a fuller healthier life if you liked this video please feel free to subscribe 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Channel: BetterHelp

Views: 326,352

Rating: 4.931076 out of 5

Keywords: borderline personality disorder, bpd, borderline personality, personality disorder, bpd disorder, what is bpd, bpd symptoms

Id: rp_HvbDzIo8

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 02 2018