Are you experiencing difficulties with intense emotions that impact on your relationships and on your everyday life?
If so, you might be experiencing symptoms of Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD), also known as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
People who experience features of this personality disorder can exhibit the following symptoms : having a poor sense of self identity; a sense of self-loathing; insecure attachments in relationships; an intense fear of abandonment or rejection; having intense, negative, intrusive thoughts that are often irrational; being prone to impulsive behaviours, that can be risky in nature; having intense or extreme emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to the event or situation that they are in; having unstable and or chaotic relationships and for some people, they may also experience dissociative episodes. As a result of these features people can experience mental health difficulties in the form of depression, anxiety, anger or rage.
People with EUPD can experience instability with their emotions that they can have difficulty regulating and therefore do not experience stability in mood for any prolonged period of time. As a result, they can oscillate from experiencing intense highs to intense lows, with their emotions, the intensity of which can be disproportionate to the situation at the time. When the emotions are negative they can be extreme, for example, experiencing intense grief instead of sadness; shame and humiliation instead of mild embarrassment; rage instead of annoyance and panic instead of nervousness.
People with EUPD will often seek to compensate for these unpleasant symptoms by engaging in behaviours that can be unhealthy or self destructive such as : self-harming in the form of cutting oneself; abusing substances such as alcohol, drugs or food; behaving recklessly, both sexually and in interpersonal relationships and making impulsive decisions about everyday matters in life such as job responsibilities or dealing with taking care of home or family, in order to relieve feelings of being overwhelmed or feeling intense, emotional distress. People with EUPD often report that these behaviours result from an initial sense of wanting to relieve their distress without thinking of the consequences even if that relief turns out to be self destructive or destructive towards others around them.
As a chartered clinical psychologist working for many years with NHS patients in Adult Mental Health services I have had training and experience in working with people’s psychological distress and in providing treatment in the form of psychological therapy to help them to either overcome, manage or find coping strategies to deal with their mental health difficulties. As such I have developed a specialist interest in EUPD and I am working increasingly with both younger people as well as adults, in this area, helping them to explore these issues and help them to develop healthy coping strategies to manage their symptoms. If this is something that you feel that you are experiencing and you would like further support, advice or help with, I offer psychological assessment as well as psychological therapy to people seeking to understand and consider what the next, best step might be for them. This might just be for an assessment to get a clear formulation and diagnosis or it might be to have treatment in the form of psychological therapy using National Institute of Clinical Excellence (N.I.C.E) recommended treatment models such as Dialectical Behavioural Therapy.
You can therefore make an appointment to see me for assessment where we can then discuss the difficulties that you might be experiencing and how might be the best way forward for you. Please refer to the contact details on the website to make an appointment.