Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental health concern that is characterized by a pattern of ongoing instability in moods, behavior, self-image, and functioning. It can be a complex condition to live with, but a borderline personality disorder treatment program can help.
Borderline personality disorder is challenging, but there is hope through treatment. Medication, therapy, and a variety of other resources and services can help you build healthy coping skills and a foundation for recovery. If you or a loved one is struggling with BPD, reach out to our borderline personality disorder treatment center at 269.280.4673 to learn more about our mental health treatment programs.
What Is Borderline Personality Disorder?
People with borderline personality disorder can struggle with impulse control and can have difficulty maintaining healthy relationships. This symptom may be partly due to the emotional highs and lows that bring on intense anger, depression, anxiety, and the fears of abandonment that lead to struggling with decision-making. These intense feelings can last a few hours or days, but are often reactive to a perceived trigger. Those with borderline personality disorder often struggle with other conditions, such as eating disorders or substance use issues.
If you suspect you or a loved one struggles with borderline personality disorder, look for the following additional symptoms:
- Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
- A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
- Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self
- Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
- Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting
- Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
- Chronic feelings of emptiness
- Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
- Having stress-related paranoid thoughts
- Having severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, observing oneself from outside the body, or losing touch with reality
It can’t be overstated—help and support are available. While these symptoms can be cause for concern, individualized, evidence-based treatment can make a difference.
Borderline Personality Treatment Programs
The gold standard in treating borderline personality disorder is dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT. DBT was created by Marsha Linehan, a psychologist who herself struggled with borderline personality disorder. DBT works to help participants accept reality, move through and feel all feelings, even unpleasant ones, and create lasting and meaningful relationships. Often, DBT practitioners refer to this as “creating a life well-lived.”
Other treatment modalities for borderline personality disorder include acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, and holistic measures like equine therapy and yoga.
Additionally, approaches like family therapy and group therapy can provide support during the treatment journey. The entire family can be impacted by BPD, and sessions with an experienced therapist can help family members understand what their loved one is going through. Meanwhile, group therapy allows those who are struggling to
BPD has a high level of improvement when adequately treated. Those who participate in treatment build healthy coping skills to help them navigate challenges they may face in recovery. This approach promotes lasting, sustainable recovery and a full, fulfilling life.
Help for Borderline Personality Disorder with Skywood Recovery
If you or a loved one has any of these symptoms, you may have borderline personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder can be treated in ways that will bring balance and greater freedom from negative emotions, such as dialectical behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy. Our admissions coordinators are available 24 hours a day to answer your questions about available treatment options. You are not alone. Call us at 269.280.4673 for more information.