Border Line Personality Disorder
All really lovable criminals are..

The woman convicted of serial murders on the flordia highways is going to be executed tonight ( i believe )


i can count a few orgers that would qualify for the title of border line..

Borderlines are born with an innate biological tendency to react more intensely to lower levels of stress than others and to take longer to recover. They peak "higher" emotionally on less provocation and take longer coming down. In addition, they were raised in environments in which their beliefs about themselves and their environment were continually devalued and invalidated. These factors combine to create adults who are uncertain of the truth of their own feelings and who are confronted by three basic dialectics they have failed to master (and thus rush frantically from pole to pole of):

• Vulnerability vs invalidation.
  
• Active passivity (tendency to be passive when confronted with a problem and actively seek a rescuer) vs apparent
  competence (appearing to be capable when in reality internally things are falling apart).
  
• Unremitting crises vs inhibited grief.

Symptoms include:

• Repetitive self-destructive behavior, often designed to prompt rescue.
  
• Intense unstable relationships in which the borderline always ends up getting hurt.
  
• Distorted thoughts/perceptions, particularly in terms of relationships and interactions with others.
  

BPD is really nothing more than untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (usually physical/sexual abuse as a child is involved), and usually develops within a person as a defense mechanism.

The mental health system tends to overdiagnose this disorder, though, and not treat it appropriately...

Just my opinion, based upon some experiences and studies...

AnotherLoverHolenYoHead said:

True... Several studies have shown that individuals with this disorder are more likely to report abuse than are individuals with other psychiatric disorders.

I was reading a study the other day (Zanarini et al., 1997) .. where they found a very high rate of abuse histories in individuals with borderline personality disorder... (91% reported abuse before the age of 18

Of course there is no absolute evidence that abuse can cause borderline personality disorder (they just seem to correlate very highly) .. however abuse definitely seems to be a predisposing factor in quite a number of cases.

"If childhood abuse does lead to most cases of borderline personality disorder, the connection may well explain why woman are affected more often than men. Girls are two to three more times more likely to be sexually abused than boys... There are also very similar parallels between PTSD and borderline personality disorder, for example both have difficulties in regulation of mood, impulse control, and interpersonal relationships... all of which seem to support the hypothesis that borderline personality disorder may be caused by early trauma" Herman et al., 1989

So yeah... while it can be argued some traits are inherited, and other factors may be involved... I think enviromental or psychosocial influences play a big role here too.
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Silly number 18 kinda turned into the emoticon.. cos of the bracket... Fixed now though!
[This message was edited Wed Oct 9 21:26:20 PDT 2002 by Diva]