What is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)?
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a regularly encountered disorder that can be diagnosed in adolescence through an evaluation of developmental deficits, the threshold for distress tolerance, and the management of interpersonal relationships and emotions.
During a teen’s early years, the symptoms of BPD begin to manifest. It is difficult though, for a clinician to diagnose somebody under the age of eighteen. This difficulty leads to the disorder going unnoticed and underdiagnosed in early age groups. Treatment starts too late in these patients’ lives and that amounts to unchecked years of misery and harmful behavior.
Signs of BPD in Teens
Severe Abandonment Issues
The first sign of BPD is increased efforts to avoid abandonment. The risk of suicide in teens who have broken up with a girl or boyfriend is heightened for a BPD patient. Even a non-romantic relationship can cause such intense responses. The teen with BPD feels like this other individual is vital for their very existence and well-being and once they lose that, all sense of purpose and security vanish in an instant.
Relationship Issues
Individuals with BPD often inflate or undervalue relationships. Somebody might be their best friend one moment and their most hated enemy the next. This black or white thinking is typical of BPD.
No Stable Sense of Self
As a teen enters an age where their identity must be defined, diagnosing this particular symptom of BPD is especially difficult.
Dangerous Impulses
Teens don’t always have access to vehicles, or money for that matter, so things like reckless driving and gambling go unnoticed as signs of a disorder. Other signs are engaging in casual sex, substance abuse, overeating, and running away from home.
Self-Injury
Many times self-injury can be found in the form of cutting, burning, banging heads against walls and other hard object, punching things, breaking bones on purpose, eating things that are not edible, and putting foreign objects through their skin. Suicide is also a common result in such self abuse.
Extreme Mood Reactivity
Teenagers with BPD experience emotions faster and more intensely than others and don’t return to a normal state of mind for a longer while. Relationship conflicts influence their moods to a heightened degree.
Feeling of Emptiness
Chronic feelings of emptiness is another sign. Adolescents with BPD become bored extremely easy, and they can’t deal with it. They indulge in dangerous behaviors to avoid the boredom.
Anger Issues
Anger in a teen with BPD can take the form of violence to themselves or others, vandalism or destruction of property, and verbally abusive attacks.
Dissociation & Paranoia
The last sign is especially telling. Thirty percent of teens with BPD have suffered a form of abuse in their past. So they deal with this pain through dissociation, depersonalization of others, and distancing themselves from reality. Furthermore, in an effort to distance themselves from the pain, they develop paranoia about other people’s intentions for them.
If you or someone you love suffers for Borderline Personality Disorder, or might not yet be diagnosed, please call 855-202-4220 for guidance and help.
Seeking Treatment for Kids with BPD
At The Family Center For Recovery in Lantana, Florida, we help adolescents and adults with mental health and addiction issues. We offer comprehensive and compassionate treatment. Contact us here.
