Specific Symptoms Of Borderline Personality Disorder

A person with this disorder will also often exhibit impulsive behaviors and have a majority of the following symptoms:

• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

• A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation

• Identity disturbance, such as a significant and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self

• Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)

• Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior

• Emotional instability due to significant reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)

• Chronic feelings of emptiness

• Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)

• Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms