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- Hey, everybody, my name is Kati Morton
and I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist.
And today I'm gonna walk you through the 10 signs
of quiet borderline personality disorder,
otherwise known as BPD, and six ways
that we can better manage it.
And if you like videos like this,
make sure you like and subscribe.
It really does help.
But let's jump into today's topic.
When people talk about BPD,
they often talk about the outward expressions of it.
Things like us being impulsive
or difficulties in relationships.
We can get really upset easily.
We can lash out. We can pick fights.
We can also self-injure, just do a lot of things
that people can see in outward expressions.
When people talk about BPD,
they often talk about the outward expressions of it.
These can be things like us being really impulsive,
splitting behavior, which means
that we can see people as all good or all bad.
We can also lash out and be really emotionally volatile.
That's what a lot of people will reference.
However, what most people don't talk about
are the quiet symptoms of BPD.
These can be things like self-injurious behavior
deep depression, struggle with self-worth.
And that is what we're gonna talk about today,
the more quiet signs of BPD.
And before we get started today, just know
that we are building a studio outside of our house.
And so if you hear some nail gunning and compressors going,
that's because the building is happening.
It's very exciting, but it's also incredibly noisy.
Okay, with that, let's jump into
the 10 signs of quiet borderline.
And the first, I'm referencing my notes,
is feeling empty, alone, or numb a lot of the time.
And that kind of disconnection
between what I call like our brain and body, that numbness
means that even if we are experiencing things in life,
we're completely cut off.
And in my experience with patients with BPD,
this cutoff happens because we feel so much so intensely.
One of my favorite ways to describe BPD
is as us being emotional burn victims,
meaning like if you think of a burn,
any slight touch, ugh, it hurts, right,
and it sends through all our nerves.
And think of that when it comes to emotions,
that any slight, any upset, any pain
that someone could cause us emotionally
or that we experience is felt
maybe 10 times what a normal person feels.
And so we numb out, we disconnect because, frankly,
it feels better and a lot safer, okay.
Number two.
And sign number two is we can feel like we don't exist
or like we don't really know who we are.
And I think a lot of that can come from this disconnection
or this numb out.
But if we think about it,
when we struggle with borderline personality disorder,
we fear abandonment so intensely
that we can people-please,
we can do a lot of other things
to ensure people are around us
and that they're there all the time.
And that kind of behavior
can mean that we're looking outward for a lot of our needs
and not looking inward.
So we might not really know who we are.
We might not have taken the time to get to know ourselves
or to connect with what's really going on.
And also you can see this connection with dissociation.
I know a lot of my patients with BPD also dissociate.
And if we are removed from our reality,
at least a little bit, right,
to protect us from what's happening,
we can struggle to feel like we exist
because frankly we're kind of pulled out of it.
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The third sign of quiet borderline
is passive aggressive behavior.
If you're wondering what this can look like,
this can be like me running late
so that then you're running late to get to that appointment
or to get to the airport or something like that.
Maybe it's a subtle dig.
What I call like a complisault,
which is like a compliment that wraps over an insult.
That's saying like, "Oh, you look so nice today.
"Way better than yesterday."
And you're like, "I'm complimented,
"but I'm also offended simultaneously."
Or I can say, "I'm fine," like when I'm not.
That could be passive aggressive behavior.
We could also, referencing my notes, be sarcastic.
Ooh, purposeful ignorance.
This is one that I think is really important to remember
is when someone pretends
that they don't know how to do something
or that they don't remember as a way
of kind of making you feel, it's almost like gaslighting,
like, "Oh, I don't think that's how it happened.
"I just don't remember.'
And that's kind of done as a way
to invalidate your experience.
Or "I don't know how to run the vacuum," let's say,
so then you do all the housekeeping.
There can be a lot of these passive aggressive ways
that we interact when we struggle with quiet borderline.
Okay.
Sign number four is turning our anger inward.
So it's like, I'm trying to tell you that I'm upset
without actually telling you.
And all of these subtle signs that I give off
aren't actual clear communication.
And this is just another passive way that we can tell people
that we're upset without really telling them.
Sign number five, impulsive behaviors.
And this is very common, honestly,
with all of my patients with BPD,
but these are things like shopping, like overspending.
We can engage in risky sexual behaviors, use illicit drugs.
We can self injure. We can binge eat.
There can be a lot of different things
that we can do impulsively.
And impulsive really just means
that we're not giving it any thought
or really time to make a decision.
We're just acting quickly.
I think all of my patients who've had BPD over the years
would agree that they have engaged at one time or another
in these impulsive acts.
Sign number six is that we have
an intense fear of rejection.
And when we have this intense of a fear,
we can act out like a people pleaser, right?
We can fawn all over people, doing things to ensure
that they're happy, really
so that they don't leave us.
And I've talked about this before,
but often we think of people-pleasing
as a way of being really nice to everybody else.
And there is that component to it.
However, it's actually a manipulation tactic.
We please others as a way to soothe our own system.
And that goes for those with quiet borderline, right?
We are so worried that people are gonna reject us
or abandon us, that we do everything in our power
to make sure that they stay around and that they're happy
and we don't have any conflict.
Sign number seven is we can struggle with isolation.
Often when we are so worried that people are gonna leave us,
reject us, abandon us, we can feel
that it's safer to just be alone.
Also if we have a lot of emotional reactivity, right,
and being around other people just makes our self worth,
you know, go farther down.
Or we can feel like maybe I don't even really exist
on a deeper level.
It can kind of like exacerbate our BPD symptoms.
We're not gonna wanna be around people.
We're not going to want to put ourselves in situations
that will only make us feel worse.
And so we can think being isolated is the only way
to be safe and to feel okay.
Sign number eight is splitting behavior.
And I've talked about this a little bit,
but splitting is when people are all good or all bad.
And because those of us with BPD are emotional burn victims,
that's the way I like to describe it.
meaning that any small slight that can happen to us,
we feel it very intensely.
And then we can react out of it, right,
in those other symptoms I was talking about,
like impulsive behavior.
So what splitting is is when someone in our life
we think is amazing, perfect, and good
and they're like our bestest best friend.
And then maybe they just don't show up for us one time
or don't return our calls 'cause they're busy,
but we feel that deeply and it's very painful.
And so instead of acknowledging that hey,
maybe that person just isn't as perfect
or doesn't love us unconditionally, I don't know.
Instead of doing that, we say, "They're just bad.
"We can't trust them. They might abandon us or reject us."
And we think they're all bad and they're cut off.
Or we can pick a fight with them and cut them off.
And so my patients with quiet borderline
don't lash out at people so much,
but they are very good at ghosting
and just completely disappearing from people's lives
and disconnecting without any communication.
So if you find yourself doing that,
where something small might happen,
like they didn't text back after a couple of days
or they didn't get back to you about that thing
or they had to change plans last minute
and you wanna completely cut them off,
just take notice of that and think,
"Is this helpful for me,
"or could this be part of my quiet borderline?"
Okay.
Even if things are going good for us
and we feel like we're moving forward in our career
or with our relationships,
we can start to second guess ourselves and think,
"You know, I'm not really worth it."
And that like not feeling like we,
we don't have a good sense of self,
we can feel like we don't exist, right.
We can kind of spiral out and think,
"This isn't even working
"and I'm not even good enough for this
"and I'm not deserving of this."
And instead of allowing ourselves to be happy
and have things move forward, we can act in ways
that can be detrimental to us down the line.
These could be things like, you know,
dragging our feet in a project at work,
or maybe picking a fight with our supervisor at the office,
or doing things in our relationships
that will hurt us later.
Or maybe not showing up for someone.
There can be a lot of different ways we can sabotage.
But the thing that's important to remember about this
is that we may or may not know that we're doing this.
Sometimes we don't have an awareness
of the sabotaging behavior.
So when you start to maybe feel not so bad,
not great, but not so bad,
maybe just pay a little extra attention
to the ways that you're acting in your relationships
or things that are working you towards your goals
to ensure that we don't engage in any of this.
Just take notice of that and think, "Is this helpful for me
"or could this be part of my quiet borderline?"
Okay.
And finally sign number 10
is hypervigilance.
Since BPD is most often caused from trauma and PTSD,
we can feel very cued up and on edge
and any loud noise can send us,
it can trigger a panic attack
or send us into a dissociative episode.
We can just always feel very overwhelmed and on edge
and any small thing can just set us off.
So pay attention to how reactive you are to your environment
and how cued up you feel.
And one little tip I'll give you
is if you feel this way often, doing a full body shake,
whoo, when we start to feel it build
can give our nervous system the release
that it so desperately needs.
I hope those signs and symptoms were helpful
because quiet BPD is really often misdiagnosed
or missed altogether.
I've had many of you tell me you're misdiagnosed
as having bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder
and they've completely missed the other signs
and symptoms that you experienced because, like I said,
they're more internal instead of outward based.
And so our therapists, our psychiatrist, psychologist
might have missed them.
And so I think it's really important
that we share in this information.
And share in the comments if you have any other signs
and symptoms you think that I missed
because it's really important that we all learn together.
And with that, let's jump into six ways
that we can better manage it.
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My first tip, cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT.
And essentially the goal of this
is to notice those thoughts.
If you're having self-sabotaging thoughts
or thoughts about your self worth that aren't positive,
pay attention, stop the shit talking.
Sometimes we just have to recognize that it's happening.
And instead of thinking that we have to make it positive,
that's like that toxic positivity thing
that's been going around online,
like, "Just think it's good and it will be."
No, no that's not how it works.
But we can pay attention to these negative thoughts
and work to make them more neutral.
It sounds silly and it doesn't sound as positive.
Like let's say this negative thought
is, "No one's ever gonna love me, I'm not good enough."
Instead of trying to think,
"Everybody loves me and I'm amazing,"
a neutral thought would be, you know,
"I'm open to the belief
"that I could feel better about myself."
Now I know that that doesn't feel a huge, you know,
it's not hugely positive.
It might not feel like a huge shift.
But trust me when I tell you
that paying attention to our thoughts
and working them into a more neutral place
will completely change your life
and help out with a lot of that negative self image
and talk that happens with quiet borderline.
My second tip is dialectical behavior therapy,
otherwise known as DBT.
And I took some notes because I broke down
the modules of DBT.
For those of you who aren't familiar,
DBT runs along and you move through modules
as you work on your mindfulness,
then into distress tolerance,
like how can I manage upsets in my life?
Then we work on some emotion regulation skills.
And then finally interpersonal effectiveness,
which means working on my relationship
so I can better communicate and feel more understood.
So those are the modules of DBT,
but I broke them into the first two,
the mindfulness and distress tolerance
are more acceptance modules.
So if you find some of the things
you're struggling with most is acceptance of yourself
or acknowledgement of what you're feeling,
those are gonna be the modules you're gonna wanna focus on.
And then the second component, the emotion regulation
and the interpersonal effectiveness
are more change-based modules.
Meaning now I wanna go out into my life
and improve my relationships, right,
or find ways to better regulate my emotions in the moment.
So overall DBT is incredibly helpful for BPD.
It was actually created by Marsha Linehan
who herself has BPD and just found
that there was no real therapy that was helpful
for people who felt so dysregulated and always feared,
you know, had this intense fear of abandonment.
And so I cannot encourage you
to look into a DBT-based therapist in your area.
It's truly life changing.
My third tip,
be more mindful of your emotions and how you feel.
I often personally will struggle to identify my emotions,
but I can tell you what my body's telling me
because I can experience it that way.
That's easier for me.
It might not be for you,
but getting to know yourself, right?
If I'm feeling super stressed out, I might be more spacey.
I don't sleep as well.
My hunger fullness is off, right?
There's certain things that I know personally
I'm going to feel, and I can recognize it earlier
so that I can intervene with some helpful things earlier.
And so take some time to get to know yourself
and how you experience life
so that you can take care of yourself
before we maybe lash out at a loved one.
And a great acronym from DBT is called HALT.
And it stands for hungry, angry, lonely, tired.
Check in on those things,
because if we're not taking care of our basic needs,
we are much more vulnerable
to our emotional outbursts and upsets.
Tip number four is to build a healthy support team.
This could be friends and family, therapists,
psychiatrists, whoever is helpful around you.
It can be really beneficial to have other people
to fact check with.
When we feel things so intensely,
it can be helpful to talk to someone and say,
"Hey, did you think that person was being extra rude?"
And they can say yes or no.
And that can give us a little bit of a breather
before we maybe act impulsively.
And having people to check in on us
and make sure we're not isolating,
overall having a support system is incredibly beneficial.
My fifth tip, use impulse logs.
I have impulse logs.
I think they're on page 190 of my "Traumatized" book.
I might be wrong, but they're in there.
And what a impulse log is, is it has you write down
what it is you're wanting to do.
What's that impulse that you feel?
Then it has you express what's going on,
what's happening around me.
Then the next is kind of like,
these are like columns I'm working through.
So the third thing would be what are some emotions
that I'm experiencing?
Or what is it that I actually want to express?
Then we have to come up with some other things
that we could do alternatively.
And then we usually wait,
like I have my patients after they've done the impulse log,
I want them to wait 30 minutes.
And then I give them permission to do whatever they want.
Because the thing about impulses
is if we don't act on them within, honestly,
for most people within 30 minutes to an hour,
the impulse is gone.
Not always, this isn't a hundred percent of the time,
but most often that's the case.
So if we can just build something into that time,
an impulse log, and we wait
and we use some distraction techniques and things,
we can prevent ourselves from acting
in ways that we really don't want to.
So I cannot recommend impulse logs enough.
And my final tip, tip number six
is what's called playing it out.
Now this is a CBT tool.
And playing it out means run me through,
or run yourself through,
what the worst-case scenario would be.
That's usually easy, 'cause we've already gone there.
So tell me about it. What would it look like?
What would be that worst case
that could play out in this situation?
Then what would be the best-case scenario?
Tell me if the, you know, the world, always,
everything always went in your favor
and everything just happened just in the right time,
what would that look like?
And then, finally, what is the most likely scenario?
And I find doing this practice of best-case, worst-case,
most likely calms us down, helps us see
pretty much all the options out there
and forces us at the end
to focus on what's most likely to happen.
And that can sometimes assuage any of those,
you know, impulses, urges, or self-deprecating thoughts.
I hope that was helpful.
Like I said earlier, do you have any other signs or symptoms
of quiet BPD that you wish I had included?
Leave those in the comments.
Or are there any other ways
that you best manage your symptoms?
Please share because it's with my expertise
and your experience that we work together
towards a healthy mind and a healthy body.
And I'll see you next time.
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