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Emotional Dysregulation Disorder In Teens (Borderline Personality Disorder)

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

What Is Teen Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment?

Those who need Teen Borderline Personality Disorder treatment have extremely negative, distorted views of themselves, characterized by low feelings of self-worth, and this leads to problems creating and maintaining relationships with others.  Though beliefs and behaviors stem from those feelings of inadequacy, often teens with the disorder will offend and ostracize others, because of their unpredictable behavior, moodiness, and occasional outbursts.

What It Looks Like

Teens with Borderline Personality Disorder think and behave in these ways compulsively.  Therefore, they may be aware and even feel guilt over, the effects which their behavior has on others, and yet, nonetheless are unable to change or behave differently.  This friction caused by negative compulsive behaviors and their resulting guilt can ultimately lead to even more negative feelings about themselves, and even Depression.

Some of the specific symptoms that teens with Borderline Personality Disorder experience include, but are not limited to:

  1. Impaired Emotional Control: excessive, poorly regulated emotional responses, especially anger, that change rapidly;

  2. Harmful Impulsivity: impulsive behaviors that are harmful to you or to others, such as spending sprees, excessive use of alcohol or drugs, self-injurious acts (e.g., cutting), physically aggressive acts and sexual indiscretions;

  3. Impaired Perceptions and Reasoning: suspiciousness, misperceptions, an unstable self-image, a poor sense of your identity, and difficulty in reasoning under stress; and

  4. Disrupted Relationships: tumultuous relationships with a person close to you that vary from extreme fear of abandonment to episodes of excessive anger and the desire to get away from that person.

There are considered to be four different subtypes of Borderline Personality Disorder, including:

The Discouraged Borderline (Quiet)

Characterized by Depression, a grave, serious demeanor, outbursts of anger, and reckless, harmful behavior

The Impulsive Borderline

Characterized by risk-taking and thrill-seeking, flirtatiousness, extreme need and desire for attention, socialness, and dangerous and risky behavior

The Petulant Borderline

Characterized by difficulty maintaining relationships, moodiness and gloominess, fear of disappointing others, a bad temper, and anxiety and fear about being unloved

The Self-Destructive Borderline

Characterized by people turning their negative outlook about life onto themselves, carried out in punishing, harmful behaviors such as eating disorders, substance abuse, and other reckless behavior

Treatment

Teen Borderline Personality Disorder treatment involves addressing the mental and behavioral aspects of the illness. Often, therapists will use a combination of talk therapy and medication to help teens return to normal functioning.  Therapists will help teens to recognize their thought patterns and behaviors, develop new reactions to stress and triggers that lead to these behaviors, and also address underlying causes or belief systems that interfere with their relationships. Lastly, therapists work with teens to repair and develop healthy relationships, as well as their overall lifestyle.

Questions

How long does therapy take?

Like treatment for many Mental Health problems, the timeline and process differs for every person.  Some of the most central goals of therapy are to help you back to a place of normal and healthy interaction with others, so that your outbursts and previously uncontrolled behaviors are no longer causing harm to your responsibilities at school, home, or in relationships.  It may take a while for you to get to this place, and even when you can relate and engage functionally, you still may have to resist urges and old habitual patterns.  With this being said, what’s true for almost all treatment is also true with regard to this disorder, and that is: the sooner you start, the better.

BPD Self-Test

  1. My emotions change very quickly, and I experience intense episodes of sadness, irritability, and anxiety or panic attacks.

  2. My level of anger can quickly become inappropriate, and intense.

  3. I suffer from chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom.

  4. I engage in two or more self-damaging acts such as excessive spending, unsafe and inappropriate sexual conduct, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating.

  5. When upset, I engage in recurrent suicidal behaviors, gestures, threats, or self-injurious behavior such as cutting, burning or hitting myself.

  6. I have a significant and persistently unstable image or sense of my self, or of who I am or in what I truly believe.

  7. I worry about what others think of me, or I have suspicious ideas, or can become paranoid (believe that others are planning to harm me); or experience episodes under stress when I feel that I, other people or the situation is somewhat unreal.

  8. I engage in frantic efforts to avoid abandonment by people who are close to me and on whom I depend.

  9. My relationships are intense, unstable, and alternate between the extremes of over idealizing and undervaluing people who are important to me.

Recent surveys of clinicians and patients provided the following names as possible suggestions when renaming Borderline Personality Disorder:

  • Emotional Regulation Disorder

  • Emotional Dysregulation Disorder

  • Emotional Intensity Disorder

  • Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder

  • Impulsive Personality Disorder

  • Impulsive-Emotional Dysregulation Disorder

  • Emotionally Impulsive Personality Disorder

 



BPD family education workshop series


BPD FAMILIES CONNECTION PROGRAM


BPD VIDEO SERIES FFOR FAMILIES

If Only We Had Known: A Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder

This video series was created to help individuals, families, and loved ones who live with Borderline Personality Disorder. Using the personal stories of families and insights from leading experts in the field, the disorder is explained in ways that are clear and easy to understand. Each of the five videos provides information that can help families learn how to cope with BPD and rebuild fractured relationships.

video Trailors

video series


RECOMMENDED BOOKS FOR BPD


BPD FAMMILY SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS


BPD EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS


DBT EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS



If you have any questions or would like to set up an appointment, you can call 404-386-6130 or emailalison@kellycounselingandcoaching.com You can also view the online scheduler or set up a complementary 15 min. phone consultation from the links below. Thank you and let me know if I can be of any further assistance.