Borderline Personality Disorder: The 9 Criteria

We are back in this ongoing series exploring the different cluster B personality disorders. We have gone from that most famous villain, narcissistic personality disorder to the least talked about, histrionic personality disorder. Why? Because it shares five traits that at first glance look eerily similar to narcissists and three traits that look eerily similar to borderlines. So, now we are moving into borderline personality disorder – that other famous cluster B and yet, the awareness that’s being raised on borderlines can’t be any more opposite than the awareness being raised on narcissistic personality disorder.

Narcissistic personality disorder is synonymous with narcissistic abuse. While borderline personality disorder is synonymous with all of the reasons you should feel sorry for them. It’s okay to put narcissistic personality disorder on blast because hey, according to the internet they’re the only villains of the cluster B continuum – while telling the victims and survivors of borderline abuse to shut up and stop stigmatizing the borderlines. As a child of a borderline who got her complex-PTSD diagnosis because I was raised by one and I’ve been in five support groups since 2014 for children of borderlines, I can also confirm that my experience is no isolated incident.

With that being said, I will not be making any two minute apologia speeches to appease those of whom are not my targeted audience anyway. If my constant reminder that there is hope for anyone who is willing to practice self-awareness and personal accountability is not good enough for any cluster B disorders out there, well all I can say is, stay in therapy and work on your self-stigmatizing behaviors. And stop playing DARVO on every platform on the internet.

Interlude for My Readers

Too busy to read the rest of the article? Listen to it on my podcast (here) available on all listening platforms. Or my YouTube channel if you want to see the woman behind this site (here) speaking on this topic. This series on the Cluster B disorders are written transcripts from my new podcast and YouTube channel. Having never written articles on these particular topics, it seems appropriate to maximize platforms in my quest to raise real awareness.

I am also sparing you the word I was forced to use on the other platforms due to the censorship that’s currently happening on the internet. Whereas I was forced to censor the word on those platforms, I can’t be censored on my own site.

The following terms mentioned in this article are in Trauma Glossary 1 (here).

 

• • DARVO

• • Enmeshment

• • EUPD

• • Love Bombing

• • Narcissistic Rage

• • Object Permanence (Lack of)

• • Primary Supply Person

• • Splitting

• • Splitting Episode

• • Suicide Theater

Common BPD Misdiagnoses That HAVE Been Unfairly Stigmatized

Bipolar

Therapists who, shall we say, graduated at the bottom of the class often confuse BPD for bipolar and vice versa.

Bipolar is a mood disorder, not a personality disorder. Contrary to popular belief, bipolar disorder can have a manic stage that lasts weeks, even months. They can also have a depressed stage that lasts weeks or months. With the borderline on the other hand, they cycle through every single emotion in a single day and sometimes in a single hour. Bipolar disorder does not determine good or bad character. Borderline personality disorder on the other hand has The 10 traits that all cluster B disorders have.

Schizophrenia

Borderline got its original name from being on the border of neurosis and psychosis, explaining how another common misdiagnosis used to be schizophrenia. I also find it interesting how as far back as the 1980s, both bipolar and schizophrenia were the most famously stigmatized long before anyone heard of borderline personality disorder. And yes, I’m aware that they have recently renamed them EUPD: Emotionally Unregulated Personality Disorder. I have chosen to completely ignore that, considering how quackery today, I mean psychology is continually ignoring the veterans who are asking for the D in PTSD to be removed. It seems quite obvious where the cognitive bias is these days in the psychology community.

DID

Another common misconception to outsiders looking in, borderline personality disorder can appear to look like DID which is Dissociative Identity Disorder. We used to know it back in the day as multiple personalities. This is because of the borderline’s tendency to shift their emotions so rapidly, it’s like flipping a switch.

Complex-PTSD

Finally, another misdiagnosis is complex-PTSD, though how on earth it could be mistaken for BPD is probably because the same psychology community promoting a sympathy campaign for the borderlines are also still refusing to have complex-PTSD added to the DSM. So, I will spare you all the differences and just tell you to go here. Complex-PTSD vs. BPD: The Truth without the Gaslighting. It includes 11 visual aids that will help you out there.

The Criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder

The keyword is “My feelings are the facts”, meaning their emotion dysregulation is the great influencer on their perception and how they see everything around them. Once we understand that “my feelings are the facts”, the rest of the criteria will make sense. So, all cluster B personality disorders have an excessive need for something specific from other people but that need will never be fulfilled. So, in the case of borderline personality disorder, they have an excessive need for co-regulation – as in your feelings must match theirs. They also have an excessive need for validation.

Criteria 1: Makes desperate attempts to avoid being abandoned.

We can think of their behavior as a scale. Here again, you got “my feelings are the facts. I’m going to be abandoned.” So, there’s this massive insecurity and the behaviors go from a scale of extreme clinginess up to they leave you. It comes from a place of “I’m going to abandon you before you abandon me.” In between the scale from the clinginess to abandoning you, there are other traits that can come out such as jealousy. Accusing their partner of cheating and also jealousy of their child.

As the child starts developing their own sense of individual self, that can be a problem, especially as the child starts growing into their independence. The borderline tends to get jealous, clingy, or both because they see their child as abandoning or neglecting them. Because borderlines need that constant excessive validation, if you are not validating them or co-regulating with their emotions, then it’s a form of abandonment and neglect to them. They will act out in ways that will either lead to child and parent estrangement or guilt the child into staying close.

Criteria 2: Has unstable and intense relationships, usually involves alternating between idealization and devaluation of another person.

This one is two parts. One, it describes the love bombing stage with the borderline. It feels more sincere because for borderlines, they’re going to put their so-called favorite person of the moment on a pedestal. Love bombing by a borderline feels like “Oh my God, this person is really, really into to me!” But the moment that so-called favorite person fails them or fails to follow the imaginary script in their head, “my feelings are the facts” once again. It’s extreme devaluation. “You’re the worst, most horrible person ever!” And you will likely be accused of things you never did because here again, the keyword is “my feelings are the facts”.

This leads to the second part. Idealization and devaluation also describes their black and white thinking. You’re either all good or all bad. They do this to their children as well, having that golden child and the scapegoat and their “feelings are the facts”. So, the scapegoat is the “all bad” and the golden child is “all good”. This is known as splitting – the black and white thinking – and this leads us into criteria 3, the splitting episode itself.

Criteria 3: Is easily provoked to anger or rage.

So, we hear a lot about narcissistic rage. When the narcissist rages, they can go for hours just raging, raging, raging! Then they will go quiet but they’re still present. They are quietly waiting while the rest of the family is walking on eggshells because you can feel it. The narcissist is waiting to explode again. It’s as though the narcissist is thinking, “Give me one reason to blow up again!”

But for the borderline rage, known as a splitting episode, they can rage for hours just like the narcissist. But then when they go quiet, they’re actually dissociating. Their dissociative quiet period is anywhere from two to ten minutes. Then the very next thing out of their mouth is so calm and mundane; and I will demonstrate it for you since I was raised by a borderline. Just imagine how terrifying it is for a child being raised in this type of environment.

A Scripted Demonstration of a Typical Splitting Episode

Right after raging like a narcissist for hours, the brief quiet (dissociative) period followed by: “So, what do you want for lunch?” And the new voice is calm and very soft.

Because borderlines have an excessive need for co-regulation and validation, that means the child learns young – very young – you had better go along with that new mood. You had better go along with that and don’t you dare let that borderline parent know that you’re still hurting from that huge rage fest that they just displayed a moment ago. Because if you do, they’re feeling invalidated and you’re not co-regulating with their emotions. So, if you don’t go along with that, they’re going to fly right back into a rage because they can shift their emotions that quick. And because any microscopic ounce of accountability feels like a personal attack to them – again, “my feelings are the facts” – they’re going to turn around and attack you for daring to make them feel bad. This includes another splitting episode with even more DARVO.

Criteria 4: Under stress can become paranoid or experience dissociative symptoms.

Dissociative symptoms were talked about briefly in criteria 3. So, on paranoid, it goes back to “my feelings are the facts”. Under stress, they will start making wild accusations. They’ll start telling you what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, what you’re going to do, what you want to do, and it doesn’t match the reality.

Criteria 5: Sense of self or self-image is chronically unstable.

There’s a wide umbrella of outer manifestations you’ll see, such as completely changing their appearance, also adopting a new interest all of a sudden only to later on discard it because it didn’t fit with their unstable image. Also being merger hungry – very, very merger hungry which is another word for having a strong desire to enmesh with somebody and adopting their interests, their appearance, or wanting to be just like somebody else. Those are just a few under the umbrella of what you’ll see as far as the signs of a chronically unstable self-image in borderline personality disorder.

It’s part and parcel of what you see in the love bombing stage. When they’re adopting someone else’s interest, they might actually believe in it because they’re idealizing their partner and they want to be just like the partner. They want to have all the same interests until it doesn’t feel like the right fit for them anymore. Then that devaluation happens to the partner just as quickly because that partner wasn’t the answer to their self-image crisis after all. Same can go for the so-called favorite person, which is actually the primary supply person.

Criteria 6: Acts on impulse in ways that can be self-damaging.

For example: sex, drugs, overspending, and reckless driving. If you recall from last week when we talked about the comorbid histrionic (here) you might be having a sense of deja vu. Because the disingenuous – or malignant – histrionic is also highly impulsive and reckless. The difference is it all comes down to motive. For the malignant histrionic, they have an excessive need for excitement and stimulation. So, their high impulsivity is going for that. For the borderline, they are led by their emotions. And so, their impulsivity are all emotional reactions that their DBT therapy refers to as having an “urge crisis”. Either act out by lashing out or self-soothe by self-harm. Both choices lead straight back to DARVO of course. Either “Look at what you made me do to myself” or “It’s all your fault I attacked you!”

One common manifestation – and I have seen the screenshots from all the support groups so many times – the text bombing or voicemail bombing that happens because borderlines have an excessive need for validation and they have those abandonment issues. So, if they feel neglected or abandoned, or you don’t get back to them right away, they’re going to text or voicemail bomb you, and it looks like they’re having a conversation with themselves. It’s like they’re being Colombo. Remember that old detective show? His big catchphrase was, “and just one more thing”. Except the borderline is coming back over and over again with “another thing, and another thing, and another thing!” because of the emotion dysregulation issues and “my feelings are the facts” mentality.

Criteria 7: Makes frequent suicidal gestures or threats or mutilates him or herself.

The self-harm is quite common, such as cutting and taking a picture and showing it to the internet because that’s one of the things they want. They want you to feel sorry for them because it’s an excessive need for validation – feeling validated because they hurt themselves over the pain.

I want to bring something to the internet’s attention right now. Over a decade ago, the internet was weaponizing this criteria right here as a means of destigmatizing borderlines and silencing the voices of their victims. The psychology community was saying that we shouldn’t call borderlines bad. We should be ashamed of ourselves if we say that because 10% of them complete suicide.

So, I would just like to raise a little awareness right here, right now. There’s another side of the coin that they’re intentionally overlooking in their sympathy campaign due to this criteria. There’s a difference between suicide ideation and suicide theater. The difference between ideation and theater is that in ideation, the person forgets all the people who would be hurt if they took their own life. In theater, they are 100% focused on those who will be hurt if they take their own life, and they choose to do so to hurt them. This is an excerpt from Trauma Glossary 1.

For those on the receiving end of this criteria

Suicide Theater: *special disclaimer! * Suicide Ideation (see also Trauma Glossary 2) is not only a common problem in CPTSD, but there are those who have attempted suicide or talked about an urge to end their life when they were sincerely crying for help, NOT as a motive to manipulate, or worse, the ultimate act of vengeance, as you will see. Suicide theater is composed of three platforms. 1) Coercive Threat: “If you do/don’t (insert what the Cluster B wants) I will kill myself!” 2) Fake Attempt: they actively attempt suicide in some way but with an obvious safety net which insures they won’t lose their life (e.g., Swallowing a bottle of pills and promptly “passing out” within minutes before spouse/children arrive home). 3) Final and Ultimate Vengeance: they complete suicide, not as a means of ending their suffering, but to inflict the ultimate abandonment on you. It’s the final act of holding you responsible for their decisions, to the very end. Their declaration of suicide is horrific abuse designed to keep you bound to them. The problem is, playing into this only further enables the Cluster B into more Coercive Threats or Fake Attempts. If their tactics work the first time, they will keep doing this.

Trauma Glossary 1: The Abuser’s Culture

I published an interview with a man named Don a while back (here). In that story, he was bound to his abusive partner for three years and she made many coercive threats. At the end, when he had enough, she bumped it up to platform 2: fake attempt, which was going to all the tenants in the apartment building and telling them that this was her last day on earth. She intentionally left her own unit door unlocked so that she could be saved in time from her overdose. Don got out. He is a survivor.

However, my father is still the victim. I was almost two when my father got fed up with my borderline mother and was ready to leave her. So, what did she do? She swallowed a bottle of pills, went straight outside to mail her suicide letter, and conveniently passed out right at the mailbox. So, neighbors saw her, called the ambulance, stomach pumped, tox report came back. The pills hadn’t even had a chance to enter her bloodstream yet. But it worked. She got her man back and now he’s 51 years married to his abuser and he is dead in every sense except physical. Let me assure you, he doesn’t even respond anymore to her daily BPD rages. All he does is frown and grunt. He has completely shut down.

So, how dare the psychology community go around shaming the victims with this 10% statistic without raising awareness on what happens to those with a conscience not wanting someone else’s suicide on their conscience.

Criteria 8: Has highly unstable moods (depressed, irritable, anxious) for brief periods.

This goes with the emotion dysregulation we talked about in the opening and how they can cycle through every emotion in a single day, sometimes in one hour. You can’t have your own emotions because it’s all about co-regulating with the borderline. Whatever emotion they’re cycling through in the moment, it’s your job to co-regulate with them and validate them at the exact same time. Lord knows there were times my mother would rage and rage and then all of a sudden start crying and demand us to feel sorry for her.

Criteria 9: Chronically experiences feelings of emptiness.

When they are not emotionally dysregulated, they feel numb and there’s this sense of having a void within. This creates thoughts of having no sense of purpose or fulfillment.

BPD in the Cluster B Continuum

Of the 10 traits that all cluster Bs have in common, where the borderline is concerned, we need to start with focusing on the lack of object permanence.

Understanding the Borderline’s Lack of Object Permanence Compared to the Narcissist

Like I said in the first installment, you think of their lack of object permanence as a scale from cheating to stalking. When the partner is out of sight, it creates this sense of emptiness. So, whereas the narcissist – not all but an alarming number of them – will use the “what’s in Vegas stays in Vegas” mentality. Because when the partner is out of sight, the partner is also out of mind. The relationship doesn’t exist and that “justifies” the narcissist’s cheating behavior.

On the other hand, where borderlines are concerned, due to their feelings of abandonment and needing someone to co-regulate their emotions and validate them, they’re going more towards the scale of stalking. Does that mean all borderlines are going to stalk? No, but there’s definitely the clinginess that goes on with their person. They want extreme clinginess. They want to erode the boundaries and it’s because they need constant check-ins with the partner. And they will get very insecure if they don’t hear back from their partner right away.

Remember, golden rule is if they want extreme intimacy in a relationship, it is synonymous with saying “I don’t want boundaries.” Also remember that where a lack of object permanence is concerned in the cluster B continuum, the cheater can turn into a stalker on a dime and the stalker can turn into a cheater – also on a dime. This bleeds over into the jealousy aspect of the borderline.

The Borderline’s Jealousy

They may feel insecure if you’re involved in anything. Anything that takes the focus off them, from being around your friends, coworkers, even hobbies. This is because of their excessive abandonment issues and believing you love someone or something more than them.

Masking and Unmasking

As we have been moving through the cluster B continuum, we started with the narcissist – who is the most held together. Then we moved into histrionic who can somewhat hold themselves together, but not quite like the narcissist. Today the continuum has moved towards instability. If you’ve never experienced anyone with borderline personality disorder and you are learning about the criteria for the first time, you might be thinking, “There’s no way they can mask. No way!” Actually yes, they can – oh yes they can! Believe me, among the most common questions asked in support groups for kids of borderlines is, “If it’s a mental illness then why can they act so fake in public?” So, whereas a narcissist tends to present themselves as charming, confident, and charismatic, the borderline tends to present themselves as charming, vulnerable, and a little quirky.

Most common first impression red flags you’re dealing with a borderline

On first dates and also when they infiltrate a trauma healing space, the borderline wants you to feel sorry for them. You’ve got to understand this. It’s a source of that excessive need for validation and so you’ve got to look for those traits. For the borderline, there’s a tendency to overshare – share their life story. They will talk about what is happening and then all of a sudden they will cycle back to an event that happened 10/15/20 or more years ago and go on repeat just in this little cycle. They’re talking about it as if it just happened. Also due to their emotion dysregulation, they will start crying while cycling back on repeat. There’s the constant repeating of the events while the same emotion dysregulation keeps happening on repeat. That’s because they are trauma dumping, not trauma processing. There is a difference between the two.

Join me next week when we talk about what kind of borderline do you get when they’re comorbid with another personality disorder.

*Edit to add: Be sure and check out the comment. That’s my borderline mother posing as my father. It’s not the first time she has sent nasty messages about me while pretending to be my father. It’s a perfect demonstration of “my feelings are the facts” the splitting episode, and of course, DARVO and just bald faced lying in general.