Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
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What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a mental health disorder. It’s known for severe mood swings, sudden, explosive upsets and reactions that can last hours or days. Intense loneliness is another big feature, often talked about as a life-long, gnawing sensation. Like a gaping hole that can’t be filled. Systems Family Therapy partners with you to build stability, resiliency and a deeper connection to personal strength.
Living with BPD often mean struggling with friendships, dating, maintaining relationships, especially with the people we love. The raw intensity of feeling and constant spiraling, makes every day an emotional, chaotic, struggle. People struggling with BPD sometimes feel like they get lost in relationships, caught up in trying to please, acting-the-part, doing everything right, so they won’t be alone or abandoned. Change feels frightening and loss feels catastrophic.
We know it feels like you’re stuck on a roller-coaster and we can help you get off.
Borderline Personality Disorder may last throughout a person's life. It usually pops-up when we’re teens or young-adults, but it can go undiagnosed or even misdiagnosed into adulthood. Having a therapist with experience and specialization goes a long way. At Systems Family Therapy, we can help you cope and live beyond BPD.
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What is Borderline Perosnality Therapy?
Expertise in BPD: Systems Family Therapy has specialized therapist experienced in working with Borderline Personality Disorder. We understand the unique complexities of BPD and how best to manage it.
Proven Approaches: We incorporate evidence-based, proven methods in treating Borderline Personality Disorder.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Psychodynamic Therapy
Our goal is to empower you with the skills and resiliency to manage the challenges of BPD. It’s time for more than just surviving. You can live beyond BPD
Take the first step today.
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What Should I look for in BPD treatmet?
Emotional Regulation Skills: Our therapist teach the necessary skills to manage intense emotions and reduce impulsive behaviors.
Relationship skills: Enhance your communication skills, navigate relationship challenges, and build healthier connections.
Identity Exploration: This is an important key in BPD therapy. Systems Family Therapy works with you towards developing a more stable and positive sense of self, fostering self-acceptance and self-worth.
Crisis Management: BPD feels like you’re a half-step from crisis, all of the time. Systems Family Therapy will help you develop effective strategies for handling crisis and preventing self-destructive behaviors.
A long-term plan: BPD can be a life-long struggle. Both you and your family need long-term solutions. Our therapists are dedicated to supporting you all the way: from diagnoses to coordinated care, through management, crisis, relapse and recovery. We don’t give up.We are Systems Family Therapy
Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder
What is the clinical definition of Borderline Personality Disorder?
“A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts…” Let’s take a closer look!
Click on each symptom to learn more.
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With BPD you may struggle with maintaining stable and healthy relationships. You may idealize someone one moment and drop them the next. Intense and shifting emotions lead to impulsive, often regretful behaviors. This can lead to intense and rocky relations.
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Borderline often comes with a poorly defined or unstable “sense of self.” Boundaries can be a real issue. You may experience rapid changes in self-identity, self-esteem, and self-worth. It leaves you wondering “who am I?” without my partner, my family, my friends. It can feel like we are walking around with a gaping hole inside and we’re unable to look away.
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Impulsive behaviors are a common and very challenging hallmark to Borderline Personality Disorder. This can be everything from reckless driving and road rage to substance abuse, binge eating or jumping from one sexual partner to the next. The intensity and constant changing of emotions leads to impulsive, sometimes largely out-of-proportion reaction.
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BPD is marked by intense and fluctuating emotions. You may experience episodes of anger, anxiety, or depression that can last for a few hours or get dragged out for days. The severity of feelings is blaring, stressful and relentless. BPD makes a roller-coaster out of every daily life.
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People with BPD often have a profound fear of abandonment and may go to great lengths to avoid real or imaged rejection. This intense fear wreaks havoc on maintaining stable relationships, creating a constant sense of worry and foreboding. It interferes with how much and what your willing to share with someone, effects what you allow yourself to do or say and often stops you from truly enjoying the moment.
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Borderline Personality Disorder is often associated with extreme behaviors. Some engage in self-harming behaviors, such as cutting or burning. Some express rage, vengeance and terrible anger. These behaviors are usually impulsive and can be dangerous.
REMEMBER - If you or someone you know is in crisis, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) or visit a local hospital for immediate help.
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Many individuals with BPD report a persistent sense of emptiness or loneliness, which can contribute to the search for external validation. This means we look for someone else to make us feel okay about ourselves. Which means we feel like we are always reaching, always uncertain and somehow never enough.
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Some individuals with BPD may experience dissociation, where they feel detached from reality or our own emotions. It can be very frightening and a lot like an out-of-body experience. To help us manage our overwhelm, our perception can shift into the background, away from whatever is, too, much. It almost feels like a movie.
Systems
Family Therapy
Systems Family Therapy is a telehealth provider of mental health services to Florida residents. We bring a higher level of care to patients and families managing mood disorders, Trauma/PTSD and Bipolar disorder. We offer individual, couples and family therapy, after-hours appointments, short and long-term care, specialized services, and flexibility.
Florida Borderline Personality Disorder Resources
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI):
NAMI is a prominent mental health organization providing education, support, and advocacy for individuals and families affected by mental health conditions. Visit the NAMI website (https://www.nami.org/) for information on BPD and resources.
Behavioral Tech:
Behavioral Tech, founded by Dr. Marsha Linehan (developer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy), offers resources, training, and information on DBT. Their website (https://behavioraltech.org/) includes educational materials and training opportunities.
Treatment and Research Advances Association for Personality Disorders (TARA APD):
TARA APD is an organization dedicated to promoting research, treatment, and support for individuals with personality disorders. Visit their website (https://tara4bpd.org/) for educational materials and information on BPD.
Mind.org:
Mind is a mental health charity in the UK that provides information and support for various mental health conditions, including BPD. Visit their website (https://www.mind.org.uk/) for resources and information.
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH):
NIMH, a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, offers information on mental health conditions, including BPD. Visit their website (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/) for research updates and resources.
BPD Central:
BPD Central (https://www.bpdcentral.com/) provides information, articles, and resources on Borderline Personality Disorder. It covers various aspects, including symptoms, treatment options, and personal stories.
Systems Family Therapy:
Systems Family Therapy is a Florida-based telehealth (on-line/virtual) provider of mental health services to Florida residents. They Specialize in patients and families managing mood disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder, Trauma/PTSD and Bipolar disorder. They offer individual, couples/marriage and family therapy, after-hours appointments, short and long-term care, specialized services, and flexibility. Reach out to systemsfamilytherapy.org or call: (407)-205-7236 and E-mail: contact@systemsfamilytherpay.org