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Borderline Personality Disorder GF?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hi all,
So I've posted here before with various random issues regarding my girlfriend in the past, most of which have been relatively stupid things IMO. We're still together, and when things are great, they really are -great-, but things turn low real fast.
The last week or so, she has been ridiculously great, gifts, hugs, romantic gestures; but tonight it turned the opposite because I was unable to give her a ride to work. :banghead: Now, in my opinion, something isn't right that she could turn cranky so fast, so I thought I'd do a bit of searching on the subject of easily irritated girlfriends.
I came up with this link, http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx10.htm
Though she doesn't have all of the symptoms, the more I read, the more it definitely seems like a possibility. She's always had HUGE mood swings, and they've slowly gotten better with time for the most part. (Which it says age will increase stability of moods.)
She is 19 now, but had a self-harm phase back a few years, which is now gone thankfully, but that is another symptom of BPD!
My main questions are:
1. Has anyone had any experience regarding BPD?
2. How do I break it to her? I don't want her to take it as an insult, but she has said in the past that she 'swears she needs a psychologist.'
Thanks all!
So I've posted here before with various random issues regarding my girlfriend in the past, most of which have been relatively stupid things IMO. We're still together, and when things are great, they really are -great-, but things turn low real fast.
The last week or so, she has been ridiculously great, gifts, hugs, romantic gestures; but tonight it turned the opposite because I was unable to give her a ride to work. :banghead: Now, in my opinion, something isn't right that she could turn cranky so fast, so I thought I'd do a bit of searching on the subject of easily irritated girlfriends.
I came up with this link, http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx10.htm
Though she doesn't have all of the symptoms, the more I read, the more it definitely seems like a possibility. She's always had HUGE mood swings, and they've slowly gotten better with time for the most part. (Which it says age will increase stability of moods.)
She is 19 now, but had a self-harm phase back a few years, which is now gone thankfully, but that is another symptom of BPD!
My main questions are:
1. Has anyone had any experience regarding BPD?
2. How do I break it to her? I don't want her to take it as an insult, but she has said in the past that she 'swears she needs a psychologist.'
Thanks all!
0
Comments
(Get a referral through her doctor- if she doesn't mind doing this, of course.)
Persuade her to go and see her doctor and get her the medical help she needs. There's no need to try and put a label on what she is experiencing, the pain she has should be enough for you to try and get her the help she needs.
For what it's worth, I have a clinical diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and what you've said could be that. It could also be any number of other mental health disorders and it really isn't for you to try and put the label on. BPD is a difficult diagnosis because parts of it can apply to many different people depending on context and taking a few symptoms in isolation doesn't mean anything. You can make pretty much anyone out to be borderline if you try hard enough which is why BPD is still a difficult and controversial diagnosis.
Type 'SCID II' into google. This will give you the official questionnaire used to diagnose personaility disorders. The first part has to be done by the person in question, the second should really be done by a therapist. If you really want to know if she's BPD see if you can get her to fill in the first part and then do the rest yourself on her behalf.
Can you just speak to her saying how difficult it is to deal with her mood swings and ask if she would be willing to speak to someone about it?
Whilst I agree with the 'slow down' part of your post, I don't agree with some of the rest of this paragraph. I've been diagonosed with BPD amongst other things, and whilst years ago there wasn't much treatment available there is more and more that can be done. The link supplied by the OP discusses both DBT (dialectical behavoural therapy) and MBT (mentalisation based therapy), I've been doing MBT in a specialist personality disorders unit for a while now on the NHS and I have at least seen it work on other patients with the same diagonise as me and both DBT and MBT have been proven to help. Also, a lot of the symptoms can be reduced with medications e.g. anti-depressants can help with depressive symptons, some people find mood-stabilisers and other meds useful.
Even if someone doesn't get 'treated' or 'cured' there is still a lot that can be done for them. It was kind of explained to me like being diabetic, like it can't be cured to make it go away but it can be managed so that you can live a normal life or mostly normal life. Except now in more recent years they have found cures that work for some people with personality disorders as I discussed above. A lot of information on Personality Disorders that is available is out of date though (I think even the info sheets on thesite are quite negative and don't exactly offer much help to sufferers!!)
Also, the thing with the SCID-II is when you read it you can't really tell, as a lay person, which things apply in a clinical sense to someone, it really does need a professional to make sense of it. You can convince yourself you've got most mental illnesses by applying these questionnaires to yourself!!
But yeah Satai, I agree with what has been said about talking to the girlfriend about her problems or her symptoms rather than trying to guess at a diagnosis.