Borderline Personality Disorder

Efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, such as rapidly initiating intimate (physical or emotional) relationships or cutting off communication with someone in anticipation of being abandoned

A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)

Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating. Note: These may be signs of a mood disorder, not BPD.

Inappropriate, intense anger, or problems controlling anger

Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days

Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self

Difficulty trusting, which is sometimes accompanied by irrational fear of other people’s intentions

Feelings of dissociation, such as feeling cut off from oneself, seeing oneself from outside one’s body, or feelings of unreality

Recurring thoughts of suicidal behaviors or threats

Self-harming behavior, such as cutting

Chronic feelings of emptiness