 There's this massive stigma about borderline personality disorder, but in this video we're going to be talking about how everybody struggles with these symptoms. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. So I like to increase awareness, decrease the stigma and all that kind of good stuff. So if you're into that, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So real quick announcement for everybody who has signed up over on Patreon. I just put up a brand new video about Tristan's cat and how he bosses me around on a daily basis. Hey, what? I'm going to go take a shot. Oh, okay. Okay. That's what we're going to do now. Like, he thinks that I'm following him. He thinks that I'm trying to hassle him. What? This is your own fault. Oh, what? You're going to jump up on the counter? What are you going to do? Oh, you're going to weigh yourself? Tristan, he's going to go to scale. So yeah, if you're one of my lovely patrons, go over there and check that video out. It's hilarious. I had fun. The cat had fun. We all have fun. Anyways, yeah. So before I get started with this video, just a huge disclaimer, all right, I am not diagnosing anybody with borderline personality disorder and you should not diagnose yourself with borderline personality disorder. One of the reasons I talk about borderline personality disorder so much is because working in mental health treatment and knowing people who struggle with this mental illness, it really bums me out that there's such a stigma around it. You know, if anybody watching this has BPD, you know what I'm talking about. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Some of you have been very fortunate, but not only is it difficult to have relationships with friends, family members, significant others, but sometimes it's even difficult to get treatment. And I think I think it's helpful to help people understand that a lot of people can relate to these symptoms. And I think if you understand borderline personality disorder a little bit more and what the symptoms are, you can empathize a little bit more because the symptoms that we're talking about. These are things that everybody struggles with. Okay. But anyways, please do me a favor. Do not diagnose yourself if you can relate to these symptoms or if you think you have these symptoms. If you think that you might be struggling with BPD or another mental illness, go seek help. All right. Let me repeat that one more time. Go seek help. Talk to a doctor, talk to a therapist, talk to a psychologist, whoever it is and get on the right track because something else that I'm just going to say real quick before I jump into this is what I absolutely love is how many of my subscribers have borderline personality disorder and they talk about how they're recovering from it and how they manage their symptoms. I love it because I know there's so many people with BPD who feel lost, they feel hopeless, they feel like this diagnosis is terrible and they're never going to overcome it, but there's living proof. There is living proof of people who are overcoming this mental illness on a regular basis and learning how to live with it. All right. So to get started, we're going to jump into this book right here. The beautiful DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. All right. So those of you who don't know what this book is. This is the book that medical professionals use to diagnose different mental illnesses. All right. So what I want to do is go over some of the symptoms of borderline personality disorder and talk about what they are and how a lot of people struggle with these things on a regular basis. So you might be able to relate to them. So cut the people you know with BPD just a little bit of slack. All right. So this one right here. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. All right. So like, yeah. How many people, how many of you out there, how many people on a regular basis struggle with a fear of abandonment, right? And this could be a fear of abandonment, fear of getting fired, fear of somebody breaking up with you. You know, fear of your friends not talking to you, right? A lot of people with social anxiety have a fear of abandonment. They're afraid that people won't like them. Okay. So like, think about that. Now, what I'm going to be talking about throughout this video too is a lot of people with borderline personality disorder, it is to an extreme. Okay. So what happens with people with BPD, that real or imagined fear of abandonment, it goes to such a level that it causes a lot of different issues in their life. And sometimes they self-sabotage, which ends up scaring people away, which ends up leading to them being abandoned. All right. The next one. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of ideolation and devaluation. So this is something that I talked about the other day with my Gabby Hanna video. And I'll be honest, one of the reasons I got the idea for this video was there was a comment says, not everybody has borderline personality disorder. I'm like, I know. But that video was about black and white thinking or they call it splitting. Okay. Where somebody is all good or all bad. Right. And this is something that we see all the time, like look at canceled culture. Right. Like look at canceled culture. Canceled culture is the perfect example of black and white thinking. And we see it all the time on the internet where somebody is just up there. They're doing great. They're doing phenomenal. They, they screw up depending on what it is. Sometimes they screw up massively and then everybody just turns against them. Right. Like we see it all the time. Like people digging up old tweets from like 10, 15 years ago and saying, oh my God, this is the worst person on earth or like labeling people as like racist and all these other things. Like that is black and white thinking. Like I hope you guys understand when people are struggling with borderline personality disorder, yes, it happens on a more frequent basis and it happened with friends, family members, significant others and people like that. We're seeing like this happen on a society level too. And it's absolutely bonkers. Like we need to start realizing that people are not all good or all bad. People do have bad behaviors. People do make mistakes. All right. People do grow and they do change, but black and white thinking causes entire groups of people to turn their back on somebody. Identity disturbance, markedly and persistently unstable self image or sense of self. So people with borderline personality disorder, they lack a sense of self. A lot of actors and actresses have borderline personality disorder. Acting as a character gives them a sense of self. But how many of you out there have struggled with not knowing who you are, right? It's like feeling of like, who am I? What am I going to do? A lot of us, you know, we have our job define us or we have a relationship define us because we don't have a stable sense of self. So this is something that a lot of people are struggling with, especially from my experience, people like in their 20s and growing up, hitting that adulthood, trying to find their career path, seeing what they like, what they don't like, who they are. Something that I struggled with a lot, like especially in high school was being kind of like a social chameleon, right? I never knew who I was. So I was constantly bouncing around from group to group and I would change my behaviors and like even how I talk depending on who I was hanging out with because I lacked a sense of self. Next, impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self damaging. So some of the examples are spending being promiscuous substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating, etc. So like, come on you guys. How many people have like self damaging, impulsive behaviors? Like how many people do like stress eating, right? How many people like just go out on a bender, you know, after they had a rough week at work or you know, they sleep around or whatever it is, whatever it is, like this is a human problem. I made a video a while back about how addiction is everywhere, right? Like we do so many things. And this is one of the reasons why on my channel, I try to teach you to embrace your emotional and mental struggles and build up resilience because what happens is we're constantly trying to avoid the way we're feeling and we turn to toxic behaviors. Okay. Like people with borderline personality disorders, they're they're more likely to do different things like such as you know, substance abuse, promiscuity, you know, poor eating behaviors, gambling, things like that. But there's something that a lot of people struggle with on a regular basis. So many of us turn to toxic behaviors as a way to cope with life rather than facing our struggles head on and learning how to work with them. So this next one, effective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood. All right. So one of the major symptoms of borderline personality disorder is emotional dysregulation, right? We get these extreme moves. The way I explain it is because it can be both good or bad, like people with borderline personality disorder, they don't just get angry. They get pissed, right? They don't just get stressed. They get anxiety. They don't just get sad. They get depressed. But on the positive side, well, depending on how you look at it, they don't just like somebody. They fall in love with them, right? These extreme emotions. So some of that is similar to like addiction where we get an increased burst of dopamine where we get this intense pleasurable feeling. But like I also look at it kind of like on a scale of one to 10, right? Or on a scale of like negative 10 to positive 10 and people with borderline personality disorder, they go all the way to the plus 10 or all the way to the negative 10 where most people with emotional regulation, you know, though their mood just kind of like, oh, that's cool, right? Or oh, I'm kind of upset about that. But like how many of you, like depending on what's going on in your life, like you might have one of those weeks where one thing after another is going poorly and then you just explode or you just have a panic attack or a nervous breakdown or you get extremely depressed. So like something with depression is a lot of people struggle with depressive episodes rather than like a major depressive disorder. Okay. So a lot of us struggle with like these emotional regulation issue and this last one right here inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger. So some of you hear about this like BPD rage, right? But this is probably the most common one. This is why like I'm trying to let you guys all know like you don't need a disorder to work on your mental health. It's one of the reasons why I wrote my book Rewire Your Anger because so many people's anger is not under control. Like you guys like think about how many people get irrationally angry, irrationally angry like think about road rage, right? Like think about that for a second. Like when you hear about people like running each other off the road or like just other crazy things, it's like what like what like where's this intense anger coming from? Like some of the saddest stories that I hear on the news is just like two complete strangers just get into an argument over something stupid like somebody cut in line or something like that. And then the other person pushes them somebody like trips and they bang their head and they like go into a coma or die or something and it's like what like you guys we need to work on our anger. So yes, people with borderline personality disorder can have more intense anger on a regular basis at different periods of time. But this is something we all need to work on. So again, like this is why I wrote Rewire Your Anger. If you want to buy it cool, go for it five bucks. But like anger is such a major issue and we need to start addressing it. But anyways, anyways, like this the point of this video again was not to diagnose anybody. It was just to help create some empathy and some awareness for people who are struggling with borderline personality disorder. Like if you're watching this video, if you are a human being, you could probably relate to some of the symptoms that I read in this. All right. But again, if you feel like you have a mental illness that needs to be addressed, do not diagnose yourself. Go to your doctor, go to your therapist, go to your psychologist, call up your insurance company, see who's recommended. If you would like, I always put a link down in the description because this channel supported by better help online therapy. While they cannot diagnose you, they can help you with some of the mental health issues that you're struggling with. All right, but go out there, get help, have some empathy for people who are struggling with borderline personality disorder. But to end this video, let's talk down in the comments below. Like with any of those symptoms that I listed off, can you relate to at least one of those symptoms and don't you lie to me? I will know if you're lying to me. All right. Anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge thank you to all these wonderful people supporting the channel over on Patreon. And don't forget, there's a brand new exclusive video up over on Patreon with Tristan's cat bossing me around. All right. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.