Recently, a patient brought up their self-diagnosed borderline personality disorder in the context of something they had seen on TikTok.

Although I appreciate social media equalizing the playing field for accessible information about mental health, no one is fact-checking social media platforms. And two-thirds of people believe that most of the information they find online is factual.

 

What Is Borderline Personality Disorder?

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) looks a lot like your co-worker who has a love-hate relationship with absolutely everyone in her life. You are near-besties one month and she barely remembers your name the next.

People and places are separated into categories of good or bad, all or none. The low self-esteem that plagues individuals with this diagnosis can only be hidden for short periods and may often result in self-harm behavior and paranoia.

Someone with this diagnosis suffers from extreme and intense fear of abandonment about most people, most of the time.

Other characteristics that identify individuals with BPD:

• Unstable and intense relationships with rapid changes from love to hate
• Impulsivity such as spending money, unsafe sex, or substance abuse
• Recurrent suicidal ideation or threat of self-injurious behavior
• Emotional instability
• Feelings of emptiness
• Anger issues
• Stress-induced zoning out (often referred to as "dissociating")

BPD is Extremely Rare

Only 1-3 percent of people in the world have BPD, which makes it unlikely that you know as many borderlines as you think that you do.

To put this into perspective: 1 to 3 percent of the population has a peanut allergy

2 percent of the population has green eyes

3 percent of children in the United States are legally blind

I bet you remember the first name of every person with green eyes who you have ever met in your life.

Can you recall when you first realized that some children couldn't eat peanut butter? What was your teacher's name that year?

Does it sometimes feel like your emotions shift with the wind or are they all or none?

Source: Andrew Neel / Pexels

Have you ever known someone who was legally blind at birth? Do you remember where you met them?

As humans, our voyeurism helps to keep us alive because observing others can help us avoid repeating the mistakes of others.

When we see someone who seems similar to us, or #Relatable, we want to learn more about them. And the more similarities we look for, the more we find.

Many People With BPD Have a History of Trauma

People with BPD are most likely to have experienced the following types of trauma(s):

• physical neglect (48.9 percent)
• emotional abuse (42.5 percent)
• physical abuse (36.4 percent)
• sexual abuse (32.1 percent)
• emotional neglect (25.3 percent)

What about the death of a parent? Witnessing a crime? There are so many traumas here that are not listed above, and could very well contribute to a potential diagnosis of BPD, or it might not. We don't have all of the information necessary to answer this question.

Very few influencers are taking the time to slow down and explain that so far only certain traumas are proven to have been a statistically significant contributing factor to developing BPD when combined with other contributing factors.

The Brain of Someone With Borderline Personality Disorder

A 2020 study by Nenadic and colleagues studied 19 brains of women with BPD and found that they have less grey matter in the brain that helps to regulate impulse control, mood, and something referred to as "turn-taking, or seeing something from another person's point of view." Individuals with BPD are therefore less likely to act in the same manner that they would want to be treated.

People with BPD also display more activity in the left amygdala and left hippocampus while processing negative emotions, meaning in certain instances they may be quicker to assume the worst of people and situations.

Some educated influencers provide informed content about the physical brain mapping of BPD in the brain, but this doesn't quite have the same influence on the average social media consumer as some of the other content.

Borderline Personality Disorder Runs in Families

BPD has a heritability rate of 46 percent and is more likely to affect identical twins than fraternal twins, which is not surprising, since most genetic traits work similarly.

If someone in your family has been formally diagnosed by a medical professional-mental health professional with BPD, the odds of another person having BPD increase.

If no one in your family has ever been diagnosed with borderline, the odds of another person having this disorder decrease.

If You Only Remember One Thing About Borderline Personality Disorder, Remember This

Earlier I mentioned that people with BPD experience extreme and intense fear of abandonment, about most or all people, most or all of the time.

They experience all of their symptoms about most or all people/places/things, most or all of the time. Not for a few hours, days, or even months, but for many years.

Unstable and intense love-hate relationships with most people, most or all of the time.

Impulsive spending, unsafe sexual activity, and or substance use most or all of the time.

Frequent thoughts of suicide most or all of the time.

Feelings of emptiness and or anger most or all of the time.

Stress-induced zoning out (often referred to as zoning out) frequently, not based on time or day or exclusive to activities such as being on their phone or watching television.

Symptoms of things people with borderline personality disorder feel are, in fact, relatable to each of us, because they are emotions we all feel. The issue is that they are exaggerated forms of what most of us feel.

Social media content has to be relatable for it to attract views and followers and is not intended to be a clinical diagnosis or even the slightest suggestion of a suggestion of a clinical diagnosis.

Conclusion

Remember, neither trauma nor personality traits alone are enough to validate the sometimes-social-media-makes-it-sound-kinda-flashy diagnosis of BPD. It's actually trauma and genetics and what your brain looks like and upbringing and much more that too many on social media tend to miss.

Just because something is #Relatable doesn't make it is true.

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