An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations

of the individual's culture, manifested in two (or more) of the following areas:

• Cognition (i.e. ways of perceiving and interpreting self,

other people, and events)

• Affectivity (i.e. the range, intensity, lability, and

appropriateness of emotional response)

• Interpersonal functioning (i.e. impulse control)

Feeling a desperate and urgent need to avoid
being abandoned by other people - even if the
abandonment is only imagined.

Having intense and unstable relationships,

repeatedly idealizing people, then intensely
disliking or devaluing them, in relatively short
intervals.

A chronic feeling of emptiness uncertainty of

self - what psychiatrists call an ‘unstable self-
image’.
 If you know or have
treated someone with BPD,
you might struggle to find
empathy towards them.

It’s important not to blame

You might have good
the person in such
reason - they might have
situations.
hurt you.

It’s not their fault, after all.

Gunderson, J., Herpertz, S., Skodol, A. et al. Borderline personality disorder. Nat Rev Dis Primers 4,
18029 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrdp.2018.29

Rebecca Matson, Sarah Kriakous & May Stinson (2021) The Experiences of Women with a Diagnosis
of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Using Sensory Modulation Approaches in an Inpatient Mental
Health Rehabilitation Setting, Occupational Therapy in Mental Health, 37:4, 311-331,
https://doi.org/10.1080/0164212X.2021.1933674