Breaking the Stigma: Understanding BPD and How DBT can Help
May Is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month
If you’ve been feeling misunderstood and overwhelmed by the challenges of borderline personality disorder (BPD), you’re not alone. BPD is one of the most stigmatized and misunderstood mental health diagnoses, leaving many to feel even more confused and hopeless.
Here's the truth: BPD is totally treatable.
May is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month, and it’s time to break down the stigma that often surrounds it. While conversations about mental health have become more open in recent years, certain diagnoses, such as borderline personality disorder, still carry heavy stigma and misunderstanding.
For those living with BPD, this stigma can make reaching out for help feel overwhelming. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers a path to hope and healing that you don't have to live this way anymore.
Understanding BPD
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a complex mental health disorder that can significantly impact emotions, relationships, behavior, self-image, and thinking patterns.
What is BPD?
BPD is marked by five key areas of dysregulation. These patterns are deeply tied to the DSM-5 criteria and reflect the unique challenges faced by individuals living with BPD:
BPD Emotion Dysregulation:
This involves intense and rapidly shifting emotions, which can feel overwhelming and difficult to manage. Examples include mood instability and inappropriate, intense anger. In other words, drastic shifts in moods, and explosive anger.
BPD Relationship Dysregulation:
Individuals with BPD often experience tumultuous relationships marked by extremes, such as idealizing someone one moment and devaluing them the next. Fear of abandonment frequently fuels these patterns.
BPD Behavior Dysregulation:
Impulsivity is another hallmark of BPD, leading to risky behaviors like reckless spending, substance use, or self-harm. Impulsive behavior in borderline personality disorder is linked to an inability to tolerate distress, where someone is desperate to “solve” painful emotions by engaging in problem behavior, such as self-harm, excessive substance use, or over spending.
BPD Self Dysregulation:
People with BPD struggle with an unstable sense of self, feeling unsure about their identity, values, or goals.
BPD Cognitive Dysregulation:
When under extreme distress, individuals with BPD may experience transient paranoia or dissociative episodes. Additionally, cognitive dysregulation can relate to “splitting” behavior, resulting from extremes in thinking.
These patterns are not signs of weakness or personal failure. Rather, BPD is often the result of heightened emotional sensitivity in combination with invalidating environments. Understanding these patterns through a compassionate lens allows us to support those living with BPD and reduce stigma surrounding those with borderline personality disorder.
What BPD isn’t:
There are so many misconceptions about BPD that create unnecessary stigma. Let’s clear a few things up:
No, BPD doesn’t equal manipulation.
Your behaviors might come from intense emotional pain or a deep need to feel understood, not a calculated effort to control others.
You’re not doomed to be ‘borderline’ forever.
BPD is treatable, and with DBT therapy you can learn skills to manage emotions, improve relationships, and build a life you love. In my Philadelphia DBT private practice, I’ve seen many clients graduate therapy no longer meeting the criteria for BPD, showing that recovery is not only possible, it’s achievable.
Having BPD doesn’t mean you’re narcissistic.
While both are personality disorders, BPD is rooted in emotional sensitivity and fear of abandonment, not self-importance or a lack of empathy.
No, you’re not actually ‘crazy.’
This label dismisses the very real emotional struggles you’re facing and invalidates the challenges of navigating such intense emotions. And, frankly, we ALL can act crazy at times, you know?
Myths about BPD can stand in the way of getting the help you deserve. When misconceptions cloud your understanding of what BPD truly is, it can make seeking effective treatment feel even harder. Clearing up these myths opens the door for you to see your struggles for what they are and recognize that with the right support, healing and growth are absolutely possible.
Challenging the Stigma Around BPD
Borderline personality disorder is such a misunderstood diagnosis that even among therapists, misconceptions persist. BPD is a complex disorder and thus needs a comprehensive treatment, like Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Referring to people with BPD as 'difficult', 'manipulative', or 'crazy' only exacerbates the shame that people with BPD already experience.
Breaking down misconceptions about BPD is something that can make a big difference in creating a more supportive and understanding environment for everyone.
Why DBT Is the Treatment of Choice for BPD
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is widely regarded as the gold standard treatment for BPD. Borderline personality disorder is a complex disorder and thus NEEDS a complex treatment.
DBT Individual Therapy:
One-on-one sessions where a therapist works with you to target problem behaviors, build insight, and tailor strategies to your specific goals.
DBT Skills Training:
Skills training will help you learn and practice skills in four key areas—mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. Think of skills training as a metaphoric toolbox to help you strengthen and learn effective ways to solve your problems.
DBT Phone Coaching:
Phone coaching in DBT is one of the reasons DBT stands apart. In between session coaching is used to help clients learn how to use what they’re learning in treatment IRL.
DBT Consultation Teams:
DBT therapists need support too. The DBT Consultation Team helps provide the DBT therapist with a support system to ensure the DBT therapist provides high-quality care while staying motivated and effective.
BPD Treatment in Philadelphia
If you’ve been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder or think you have BPD, I know that it can feel like an uphill battle. I know you’ve been struggling and may want to give up. You need to know that you totally can create a life that’s worth living and that you actually want to be a part of.
As a Philadelphia DBT therapist, I realize that you still may be confused about borderline personality disorder. I get that looking for a BPD therapist can feel intimidating and overwhelming. Reaching out is a powerful first step.
Philadelphia DBT
Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month is a reminder that every person’s mental health journey deserves validation and support. By breaking the stigma around BPD and promoting effective treatments like DBT, we can create a world where individuals feel empowered to seek help and embrace their potential.
If you’re ready to take the first step toward healing, reach out to a DBT therapist today. Together, we can work toward a life that feels more balanced, connected, and fulfilling.
