Borderline Personality Disorder: Causes, Risk Factors & Symptoms

Causes

The causes of BPD are not fully understood although brain chemistry, genetics, and environmental factors are thought to play a role. People who develop BPD are probably born with an underlying vulnerability to the illness. When they are exposed to certain experiences and types of stress, their chances of developing the illness increase. BPD sufferers are often found to have experienced childhood abuse, neglect, separation, sexual abuse, or violence.

Risk Factors

The following factors increase your chances of developing BPD:

• Sex: female
• A history of abuse, neglect, or abandonment as a child
• A history of sexual abuse or violence
• Inborn sensitivity to stress
• Poor self-image; not having a clear sense of who you are
• Mother, father, or sibling with BPD

Symptoms

The symptoms of BPD vary from person-to-person. People with BPD tend to be extremely sensitive to rejection, reacting with anger and upset at even mild separations from friends or family members. Symptoms often become more acute when people with BPD feel isolated and lonely, or during times of particular stress.
Traits that are common to people with BPD include:

• Fears of abandonment, resulting in frantic behaviors aimed at avoiding abandonment
• Extreme mood swings and difficulty managing emotions
• Difficulty in relationships, characterized by dramatic swings between idealizing the relationship and devaluing the relationship (views people as all-good or all-bad)
• Unstable self-image
• Impulsive behavior
  • Excessive spending
  • Promiscuity, risky sexual behavior
  • Gambling
  • Drug and alcohol abuse
  • Self-injury, suicide threats
  • Binge eating
• Repetitively injuring the self through cutting, scratching, or burning
• Feeling misunderstood, bored, and empty
• Having deep-seated feelings of being flawed or bad in some way
• Using ‘defense’ mechanisms to avoid taking responsibility for behavior, or to blame others
• Unpredictable mood and difficulty regulating mood
• Problems with anger management, manifested as periods of intense, uncontrollable and often unreasonable anger
• Episodes (usually precipitated by stress) of intense paranoia, dissociation, or thought patterns bordering on psychosis (hence the term “borderline”)