Borderline personality disorder triggers turmoil and rage

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      For as long as she can remember, 26-year-old Tannis Jackson has found herself routinely slipping into fits of rage. After one particularly bad day at work, she became so infuriated she made her own head bleed.

      “I remember being so angry I pulled out two fistfuls of hair and smashed my head against the wall,” Jackson tells the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “There was no other way to express how I felt.”

      Jackson (who requested anonymity), who works in a health-care field in the Interior, didn’t know why she couldn’t control her everyday emotions. She just knew that the most minor conflict would aggravate her delicate state of mind, leading to explosive outbursts. Imagine a cup of water filled to the rim: when everything is going smoothly, the water stays still and calm. But any slight disruption, such as a disagreement, has an effect like a tsunami, making the water churn and spill over, with devastating consequences.

      “I wasn’t able to cope with anything,” she explains. “I would have temper tantrums, and I would take things out on myself. If I had a bad day at work, I figured everything was my fault. Every day was a struggle.”

      Four years ago, Jackson was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. BPD—as misunderstood by the public as it is missed altogether by many doctors—is a serious mental illness marked by severe instability in moods, relationships, and behaviour.

      Jackson had never even heard of BPD when her psychiatrist told her that was what was causing her relentless torment. But she couldn’t deny that the telltale signs—including intense but stormy attachments and extreme emotional reactions—described her perfectly.

      Although not as well known as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, BPD is more common, affecting about two percent of adults, mostly young women, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

      Vancouver is home to some of the world’s leading research into and treatment of the condition. But local health professionals who specialize in the disorder say that BPD is grossly overlooked by the medical profession and funding bodies.

      People with BPD often experience instantaneous shifts in their attitude toward people close to them, veering from idealization (love and admiration) to devaluation (anger and dislike). Although people suffering from depression typically endure the same low mood for weeks, those with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, sadness, or anxiety that last just hours.

      They often feel misunderstood or mistreated and lack a sense of identity. They might make desperate attempts to avoid being alone and act impulsively, spending excessive amounts of money or having risky sex. They can come across as manipulative, controlling, unwilling to change, and attention-seeking.

      At the root of people’s volatile, unpredictable mood swings is a fear of abandonment or rejection. Consequently, those with BPD can react with hostility to short-term separations such as a business trip or even a last-minute cancellation of plans.

      Their cognitive distortions can lead to frequent changes in long-term plans, career goals, jobs, friendships, and personal values. Sometimes people with BPD view themselves as fundamentally unworthy or have issues with gender identity.

      They tend to have other, compounding health problems, too, like substance-use issues, eating disorders, and even other mood conditions, such as bipolar disorder (which, once referred to as manic depression, is marked by extreme highs and lows).

      BPD is also marked by chronic thoughts of suicide or actual attempts.

      According to a 2005 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, BPD presents some of the most difficult and troubling problems in all of psychiatry.

      Vancouver psychiatrist John Livesley, who specializes in the illness, agrees that it is one of the most severe forms of psychopathology.

      “About 10 percent of patients die, mostly through suicide,” Livesley says in an interview at his UBC office. “Viewed as a disorder that affects young people with a 10-percent mortality rate, if it were any other condition, there would be a huge outcry from the public and from the [medical] profession to do more about it,” he states. “But because it’s a mental disorder, it doesn’t attract the same concern. People haven’t gotten used to the idea that mental disorders are just that: disorders. They aren’t things people can just change.”

      He explains that people with BPD live in a constant state of fear.

      “The world seems to them a threatening and frightening place,” Livesley says. “As a result of this emotional instability, their relationships with other people tend to be chaotic too, and unstable.”¦They have endless fears linked to emotionality, which adds to the instability of life.”

      Those with the condition can act on those fears in physically damaging ways.

      “There can be self-harm: they cut; they overdose; they hit or burn themselves,” Livesley explains. “This is an attempt to control their feelings, as they haven’t learned alternative ways to handle their emotions.”¦When emotions are this unstable, they’re very difficult to handle.”

      However, Livesley maintains that treatment is effective and recovery possible. Getting there is the hard part.

      “The condition has taken on a lot of negative connotations, so diagnosis is usually pejorative,” Livesley says.

      Much of the misunderstanding surrounding borderline personality disorder comes from the name itself. Historically, BPD has been seen as lying on the border between psychosis (having a severely distorted view of reality) and neurosis (a nonpsychotic mental condition marked by anxiety and distress).

      But people who have BPD are no longer considered to be on the border of anything, UBC psychiatry professor Kerry Jang explains.

      Jang, who has contributed to more than 100 published studies on personality disorders and is also a Vancouver city councillor, says it’s no wonder people are confused about BPD. Researchers have defined five broad domains of personality (extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism), yet at the same time, the current edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists 10 personality-disorder diagnoses (including narcissistic personality disorder, which is marked by a lack of empathy, and antisocial personality disorder, in which people have no regard for right and wrong). In fact, researchers from Michigan State University, among others, are proposing changes to the way personality disorders are classified in the next DSM, which comes out in 2013. To make matters worse, different researchers use different scales to measure those five personality dimensions, and diagnoses tend to overlap.

      “Everyone has different levels of subtraits, and the severity of personality disorders varies,” Jang says during an interview in his City Hall office. “It’s a spectrum; it’s not so black-and-white.”

      It can be hard for people to get help, Jang notes, because so many who have the disorder don’t recognize the symptoms.

      “Many people who have the illness don’t think they’re ill,” he explains. “They can be the sweetest and nicest person in the world one minute, then mad as hell the next.”

      In some medical circles, the term borderline personality disorder isn’t used; rather, the same set of symptoms goes by the name “emotionally unstable personality disorder”. This is the name used by the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision.

      Jang’s current research is focusing on causes of BPD. Specifically, he’s been studying genetic and environmental factors, and the intersection thereof. He and a team of researchers from Harvard University recently had a paper accepted for publication by the Archives of General Psychiatry, an internationally renowned medical journal. In their study, the authors conclude that heredity has a role in the development of BPD.

      “This large family study confirms that BPD is passed on within families,” Jang says. However, although genetic factors likely play a part in BPD, no specific genes associated with the condition have yet been identified.

      UBC psychiatry professor Kerry Jang discusses new research suggesting there can be genetic roots to borderline personality disorder.

      Other risk factors for BPD include sexual or physical abuse.

      According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 40 percent to 71 percent of BPD patients report having been sexually abused as children. Jackson says her brother sexually assaulted her repeatedly when she was growing up, a fact she says her parents brushed off when she finally told them years later. She now has no contact with her immediate family.

      Neuroscientific research funded by the NIMH suggests that people who are predisposed to impulsive aggression have impaired regulation of the neural circuits that control emotion.

      The most successful treatment for BPD appears to be dialectical behaviour therapy. A cognitive-behavioural treatment developed about 15 years ago by Marsha Linehan, a psychology professor at Seattle’s University of Washington and director of its behavioural research and therapy clinics, DBT typically involves weekly individual or group-therapy sessions (or both) that focus on managing and coping with emotions, dealing effectively with interpersonal situations, and tolerating emotional distress. It also helps people practise “mindfulness”, a way of paying full attention to the present moment.

      SFU assistant professor and psychologist Alexander Chapman cofounded the Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Centre of Vancouver in 2007 with fellow registered psychologist John Wagner. The same year, Chapman coauthored The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know About Living With BPD with Kim L. Gratz and Perry D. Hoffman.

      “There was very little material for people with borderline personality disorder that was understanding,” Chapman says of the book. “People with BPD are branded as out of control, extremely angry, and manipulative. Even treatment providers turn them away because they’re deemed too difficult to work with.

      “There’s a stigma attached to BPD: if you’ve got BPD, your personality must be flawed; it must be a scar on your soul that will never go away. But research shows that people do get better over time. Impulsivity and suicidality tend to decrease with age; however, fear of abandonment and rejection do not.

      “When it comes to being highly emotional, there’s a positive side to that as well: some of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met are the people I’ve worked with,” Chapman adds.

      The DBT centre, which treats people with BPD as well as those with suicidal thinking, eating disorders, and self-destructive behaviour, among other things, offers weekly individual therapy. It provides skills training, too, teaching people how to identify and cope with emotions, deal with stress, self-soothe, and be “in the moment”. The wait to get in is usually between three and eight weeks—not ideal for someone who’s desperate for support and change but shorter than the usual year or so it takes to see a psychiatrist.

      “DBT is the well-researched therapy for BPD and related problems,” Chapman says. “The centre sees about 60 clients a week. There’s certainly high demand for treatment.”

      Although DBT has shown great promise in treating borderline personality disorder, all too often people are prescribed a cocktail of pharmaceuticals that have potentially serious side effects. Experts in the field say medications are inappropriate for treating the disorder.

      “The current evidence is that treatment is effective, and the primary intervention seems to be some type of psychotherapy,” Livesley says. “But that’s not how most patients are treated, especially here; most are treated with medication. American Psychiatric Association guidelines for treating BPD recognize psychotherapy as the main treatment and pharmacotherapy used as adjunctive treatment. Interestingly, the new guidelines out of the U.K. [the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence] don’t recognize medication at all for BPD.

      “It’s a myth that we can’t treat this disorder,” he adds. “The evidence is that we can make substantial changes and improve quality of life.”

      Livesley claims that government cutbacks to health care, in particular to day-treatment programs for those with mental illnesses, have made it harder for people to get help.

      “We’re going backwards, in a way,” he says. “We’ve had so many cutbacks. Europe is doing more in terms of longer-term inpatient care for more severe patients. But that doesn’t fit the North American model of short-term admissions. Medications are an easy option.”

      UBC psychology professor Don Dutton is equally stymied by the lack of resources being directed toward BPD.

      “People have this emotional roller-coaster ride with extreme highs and lows. Some have trouble with the justice system: they might be dealing with out-of-control gambling or substance abuse,” he says. “It’s [BPD is] fairly problematic; it’s definitely a concern. It strikes me as strange that it’s received so little attention in Canada.”

      Dutton says much more has been done south of the border: take the major funding being directed toward research by the U.S.’s National Institute of Mental Health. The institute is also collaborating with a private foundation to help attract new researchers to develop a better understanding of and better treatment for BPD.

      For Jackson, treatment has turned her life around. She sees a psychiatrist for bimonthly psychotherapy. She has found ways to control her emotions. But she wants others to understand just how tormenting the condition can be.

      “I’ve heard someone with BPD can be compared to someone with third-degree burns on their skin: emotionally, they’re that sensitive,” she says. “It’s so hard to realize you have a problem and then to find a way to deal with it.”

      Comments

      36 Comments

      constance

      Feb 17, 2011 at 6:14pm

      This illness is so incredibly misunderstood. There is so much blame associated with it, as though the person suffering with this incredible illness is somehow responsible. No one blames an epileptic for having seizures. Why does this have to be different? People with BPD have a set of challenges that are like a personal battlefield, and every day one must go to war.

      frank

      Feb 19, 2011 at 8:15am

      My partner of 9 years was diagnosed with BPD 7 years ago. She started seeking treatment a year later, and now, all I notice are the ways which BPD gives her strengths that others don't have. She is remarkably intelligent, and quick-witted, extremely kind and compassionate... in short, she's amazing!

      exscapegoat

      Feb 19, 2011 at 10:05am

      People with Personality Disorders aren't responsible for their illness, but they are responsible for how they treat others.

      constance

      Feb 19, 2011 at 1:33pm

      exscapegoat - it's true. They are responsible for their behaviours. The problem is they have to RE-LEARN how to behave and be in the world. It takes a long time and a lot of patience, similar to helping a child grow and learn how to be in the world.

      exscapegoat

      Feb 19, 2011 at 5:49pm

      I was raised by a mother with a PD, not sure if it's BPD or NPD. Both parents were alcoholics. I can relate to people having to relearn behavior. I'm just tired of PDs expecting far more than they are willing to give. I'm willing to relearn behavior even though it's not easy. I'm willing to leave the blame behind. Sadly, the PDed in my family aren't as willing.

      SurvivorX

      Feb 19, 2011 at 5:52pm

      Constance: That's because seizures don't have the same effect on the people close to the epileptic.

      BPD is, because of it's nature, very difficult when someone close to you has it. Physical and emotional abuse, as it may lead to (intentionally or not) is not ok. I belive that a big part of recovery includes getting the disordered people to realise how others actually feel when getting exposed to some of their behaviours.

      Do you at least agree on that they're responsible for taking whatever course of action needed to recover?

      Frank: Nice to hear that she's getting better! Could you perhaps specify these strengths that the disorder has given her? Would be nice to hear some success stories for a change. :)

      constance

      Feb 20, 2011 at 7:32am

      SurvivorX - while it's true that seizures don't have the same effect, the fact remains that people with BPD have no control over the fact that they have this illness. And as such, while they are responsible for taking action to recover and change their behaviour, this can't happen overnight. Even realizing they have a problem, that takes time and a lot of support from those people close to them. The stigma out there is so big and so terrible that it is very difficult for someone to seek help - even many professionals in the field speak with negative connotations about BPD. Unfortunately, it's not because the things they say are true, but rather, because of fear and misunderstanding. You know how children lack the language to express their feelings and frustrations, and so they cry? It's kind of the same with borderlines. At first, without help, they lack the insight to see what they're doing, and further, they don't have the words or abilities or skills that someone without the illness has, in order to stop themselves from lashing out etc. And it's really, really hard for the people close to them, because one's initial reaction to the behaviours is to take it personally. But it's not.

      julie

      Feb 20, 2011 at 2:30pm

      In the late 80s, I believe I was diagnosed with BPD. I was a bulimic and was very active in my own recovery.

      There were several psychiatrists in my journey that wanted to medicate me. I was lucky as I knew I'd had a pretty messed up childhood and had to work some stuff out. I also came across several people, psychologists and non-mental-health individuals who guided me through learning to cope with feelings and stresses and managing my quirks.

      I have no time for anyone who thinks they can use any diagnosis, mental or physical, as an excuse for cruelty and messing with other people, especially their own children. In this day and age we have enough information at our fingertips to get the help we need, and we should expect as much from those around us.

      I am a functional person now raising a healthy family. When I come across things that I don't know how to cope with, I seek out the answers. I took a couple of different parenting courses to get the skills I need to rewire myself to give my children the healthy upbringing that I was provided.

      jesson

      Feb 21, 2011 at 10:56am

      those borderlines are NUTS! ex girlfriend drove me to have my own mental breakdown. stay away!!