Borderline Personality Disorder: "The defining criteria of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts, 'as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.

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

3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable
self-image or sense of self; or sense of long-term goals;
or career choices, types of friends desired or values
preferred.

4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially
self-damaging: for example; spending, sex, substance
abuse, and binge eating.

5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or
self-mutilating behavior.

6. Affective instability: marked shifts from baseline mood to
depression, irritability, or anxiety, usually lasting a
few hours and only rarely more than a few days.

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.

8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling
anger; frequent displays of temper.

9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe
dissociative symptoms.




Borderline Personality Disorder is not one 'disorder'. It is to a great degree a collection of disorders that co-exist and often feed off of each other in wa"