Borderline Symptoms: Insecure and Impulsive
Difficulty controlling impulses and feelings are characteristic borderline symptoms. Borderline patients quickly snap even at trivial things and are quarrelsome, especially when they are prevented from acting out their impulses. Outbursts of rage are part of their everyday life. Behind this explosive behavior are usually strong self-doubts.
Borderline patients give in to their impulses without considering the consequences. Their excessive behavior quickly brings them into conflict with others. Their self-image is unstable to the point of uncertainty about their own sexual orientation. Most sufferers also have problems pursuing a desired goal because their plans change incessantly.
Borderline symptoms: Emotional storms
Borderline Symptoms: Self-harm and Suicide Attempts
Constant inner tension is typical of borderline disorder. Symptoms of tension can even manifest as trembling. The states of tension often occur several times a day. They increase rapidly and subside slowly. A trigger is not always recognizable for the patients.
In order to relieve this tension in the body, many borderline patients cut themselves (automutilation). They use razor blades, broken glass and other objects to inflict sometimes life-threatening injuries on themselves. Some also engage in other forms of self-destructive behavior. For example, they consume alcohol and drugs, suffer from eating disorders, race cars, engage in high-risk sports, or engage in high-risk sex.
Self-damaging behaviors that look to outsiders like a suicide attempt are usually a desperate attempt by those affected to get their tormenting emotional states under control.
Borderline disorder: paranoid or dissociative symptoms.
Self-injurious or -threatening actions also help patients find their way back to reality. This is because borderline patients often show symptoms of dissociation. In dissociation, perception changes as in a drug intoxication. There may be brief memory losses or even movement disorders.
Dissociation is related to the splitting off of feelings that borderliners experience. It is often caused by traumatic experiences in childhood. When a child does not have the opportunity to escape a traumatic situation, they often go elsewhere emotionally. These dissociations also surface in borderline patients later in life, especially when negative thoughts and feelings occur.
Some borderline patients also experience what are called derealizations or depersonalizations. In a derealization, the environment is perceived as strange and unreal. In depersonalization, the affected person perceives his or her own self as alien. Their feelings seem to be detached from their person.
Borderline symptoms: Black and white thinking
Forming stable relationships is therefore a major problem for people with Boderline Personality Disorder. Symptoms include both a fear of closeness to other people and a fear of being alone. The behavior of those affected therefore often alternates between rejection and extreme clinging.
Borderline symptoms: Feeling of emptiness
Typical borderline symptoms are also feelings of emptiness and boredom. These feelings are related, on the one hand, to the fact that borderline patients have difficulty with their own identity. They are unsure about who they are and what is good and bad for them. As a result, they often lack their own desires and goals to pursue and drive them in life.
On the other hand, those affected often feel alone and abandoned. Relationships with other people are difficult, unstable and break easily due to the typical borderline symptoms.
