It's not all doom and gloom it's not about me always wanting to hurt myself.
I also feel the best of things with such an intensity, happiness, joy, and love.
Hearing that made me realise why we do the job that we do because,
this isn't about taking away intense feelings of love and happiness. It's helping people
regulate emotions so that they fit the situation that they're in.
I'm Emily. I'm a Clinical Psychologist. Borderline Personality Disorder isn't something that we
tend to see in popular culture so it's really helpful when Lady Gaga comes out and talks about
her experiences of not only the diagnosis but the treatment that she engaged into
and how the treatment has helped her. It's more and more people who are able to destigmatize the
diagnosis and be open about the challenges that they've had and the treatment that they have had
that then creates more hope, more conversations, more discussions around this misunderstood
diagnosis. Borderline Personality Disorder it's a disorder which is marked by emotional instability,
difficulties, challenges in relationships, challenges around kind of your sense of self,
thoughts and cognitions, and challenges around being able to
tolerate distress and so acting in kind of impulsive ways. So self-harming behaviours,
challenges around kind of disordered eating, substance misuse. Personality Disorders are
persistent, pervasive, and problematic. Persistent in that they have persisted
through often adolescence and into adulthood. Pervasive in that they run through all walks
of the individual's life. It's not just a home problem or a work problem. And problematic in that
they cause problems not just to the individual but they cause problems to other people as well
What we know about Borderline Personality Disorder and its causes
is that there is a biological vulnerability and environmental challenges that interact
so that they learn to stop trusting the emotion and start seeking external
views about how it is that they should feel. So environmental factors that people with borderline
personality disorder experience are sexual abuse, emotional abuse, violence within the house,
all types of abuse that mean that the child's needs are not getting met, and what we know is 70%
of all people with a diagnosis have had some form of significant childhood abuse.
Things that are not helpful to say with people with Borderline Personality Disorder
is your attention seeking, get over it, you need to sort yourself out, you're going to lose all
of your friends, anything which is about coming from a place of "I'm not getting where you're at"
and not understanding that what the person is experiencing is severe pain. Somebody that is
cutting themselves because they're experiencing so much pain gets viewed as being attention seeking
and what they're articulating might be "I need help, I want to stop this pain." We've got to
change the narrative around this. This is why it's so important that we need to talk about,
we need to start being curious about, we need to try and find out and understand
more about the challenges people have and also offer hope, offer optimism around treatment.
So the good news is, is that Borderline Personality Disorder is treatable. How can
you help somebody with Borderline Personality Disorder? Number one, you can listen, truly
listen, by hearing what their experiences are, by truly being in the room and paying attention to
what they're saying. So often somebody says "I'm struggling" and we're answering phones and we're
thinking about what we've got to do later on in that day. So truly listening. Number two
you can be genuine, being a friend, being there, being supportive. And number three,
put yourself in their shoes starting to see it from their perspective. Understand that
the experiences that they have had have led up to the point where they are now. Understanding
that managing these really painful emotions are nightmarish, and think about how you might want to
have somebody respond to you and how you might want somebody to support.
So today I hope I've given you a bit more information that will help us together
break the stigma of Borderline Personality Disorder.