Borderline symptoms are varied. In particular, patients suffer from their impulsive behavior and their unstable emotional world. They are often aggressive and can hardly build stable relationships. Their thinking is black and white: they vacillate between idealization and downgrading of their fellow human beings, fear of closeness and abandonment fears. Self-injurious behavior and suicide attempts are often the result of stressful personality disorder. Read all important information about borderline symptoms here.
Borderline symptoms: Uncertain and impulsive
Difficulties controlling impulses and feelings are characteristic borderline symptoms. Borderline patients rush out quickly even when trifling and are contentious, especially if they are prevented from giving their impulses. Outbursts of anger are part of everyday life. Behind this explosive appearance are usually strong self-doubt.
Borderline patients give in to their impulses without considering the consequences. Their overbearing behavior quickly puts them in conflict with others. Her self-image is unstable, to the point of uncertainty about her own sexual orientation. Most have problems pursuing a desired goal because their plans are constantly changing.
Borderline symptoms: emotional storms
Typical borderline syndrome symptoms are mood swings and emotional storms. Patients experience a roller coaster ride of emotions that they can not control. The trigger for these intense emotions may seem marginal, but borderline people are very sensitive to external events. You feel overwhelmed or under pressure quickly. Their feelings usually do not last long, but produce a strong inner restlessness.
Borderline symptoms: self-injury and suicide attempts
A constant inner tension is typical of the borderline disorder. Symptoms of tension can even manifest as tremors. The states of tension often occur several times a day. They increase rapidly and fade away slowly. A trigger is not always visible to the patient.
To reduce this tension in the body, many borderline patients (Automutilation). With razor blades, broken glass and other objects, they sometimes inflict life-threatening injuries. Some also display other forms of self-destructive behavior. For example, they consume alcohol and drugs, suffer from eating disorders, run a car, engage in high-risk sports or have sex with them.
Self-destructive behaviors that seem like a suicide attempt to outsiders are usually a desperate attempt to get the agonizing emotional states under control.
Often borderline leads to depression. Many sufferers develop suicidal thoughts, over half of those affected commit suicide attempts. The suicide rate is between three and ten percent. The highest risk is people between the ages of 20 and 30 years, after which the impulsive behavior decreases.
Borderline disorder: paranoid or dissociative symptoms
Self-injurious or threatening actions help the patient to find their way back to reality. Borderliners often show symptoms of dissociation. In a dissociation, the perception changes like in a drug rush. It can briefly memory loss or movement disorders occur.
The dissociation is related to the splitting off of emotions experienced by borderliners. The cause of this is often traumatic experiences in childhood. If the child does not have the opportunity to escape from the traumatic situation, it emotionally moves to another location. These dissociations also appear later in life, especially when negative thoughts and feelings occur.
Some borderline patients experience so-called derealizations or depersonalizations. In a derealization, the environment is perceived as strange and unreal. In a depersonalization, those affected feel their own ego as foreign. Their feelings seem detached from their person.
Borderline symptoms: black and white thinking
Another borderline sign is the “black-as-thinking” of patients, which affects issues as well as their fellow human beings. So they often idealize people in their environment first, and then extremely devaluate them at the slightest disappointed expectation. Borderline can be recognized by such sudden changes.
Stable relationships are therefore a big problem for people with Boderline personality disorder. Symptoms are both the fear of being close to other people and the fear of being alone. Their behavior therefore switches between extreme parenthesis and rejection.
Borderline symptoms: feeling of emptiness
Typical borderline symptoms are feelings of emptiness and boredom. These feelings are related to the fact that borderline patients have difficulties with their own identity. They are unsure about who they are and what is good and bad for them. As a result, they lack their own desires and goals that they can pursue and that drive them through life.
On the other hand, they often feel alone and abandoned. Relationships with other people are difficult and very unstable due to the typical borderline symptoms and break easily.