Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder is quite a destroyer of people and families if left undiagnosed and untreated.   It is great that mental health has been highlighted so prominently in recent months that more people are questioning what they are going through.  However in some areas diagnosis takes quite a long time and even with that there is barely sufficent free help around to help sufferers and their friends and family understand and deal with the condition.  Borderline Personality Disorder(BPD), very simply put, is when a person cannot deal with their emotions.  Most of us have some issues that is part and parcel of life and whilst we don’t like it and may rant and rave about it we can generally handle our emotions.  Sufferers of BPD are overwhelmed by their emotions.  They fear abandonment and rejection constantly, either love or hate people, get either too attached or disassocate, seek to ease the pain of their emotions by self-harming or worse.    Whilst this all sounds a bit heavy and bleak with a diagnosis and a will to change it is possible to get those demons back in their box where they belong.  Identifying and handling one’s emotions is the key as often it isn’t the situation that is the issue but the emotion the person feels around it.

The crazy thing is that whilst mental health (I like to call it emotional health) is in the spotlight unfortunately free resources to diagnose and help counsel people with borderline (and similar such conditions) is woefully lacking despite the good intentions of many.  I counsell people with BPD and whilst it is challenging for both myself as the counsellor and the client it is rewarding work for us both.  All it takes is for a client to recognise what BPD is and to work at putting in place coping mechanisms when emotions start getting out of hand.  Is it a quick fix? – certainly not but is there a release for the agonising burden of being victim to their emotions? – most certainly.