The pattern of unstable relationships is often most visible among the person’s family, friends, and closest loved ones. It may seem difficult to keep up with how they feel about you.
BPD can also include intermittent feelings of emotional emptiness, hopelessness, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. These symptoms can be dangerous without the right help.
If someone in your life is showing these signs, they likely need someone who truly cares about them enough to help them through difficult moments.
Like most mental disorders, each person’s experience of BPD is unique to them. Symptoms can evolve over time, especially in response to different forms of treatment or care.
How Does BPD Develop?
Like many other disorders, it is unclear which factors lead to borderline personality disorder. Different experts have suggested that it may be caused by genetics, the physical structure of the brain, a person’s environment, or various social factors.
While inconclusive, research indicates that these factors can each contribute to an increased risk of BPD. Being related to or even raised by a person who has the condition puts you at higher risk of developing it yourself.
Some studies on the brain have helped to expand our understanding of how BPD works. The part of the brain that is responsible for impulses and emotional regulation may hold the key to the root of this disorder.
Perhaps most significant of all, the environment where people spend most of their time can help shape people into who they are. Undergoing traumatic life events like abuse or abandonment in your childhood can lead to unstable emotions or mental states.