For BPD to be diagnosed, at least five of the following signs and symptoms must be present: *
Intense fears of abandonment * A pattern of unstable relationships * Unstable self - image * Impulsive and self - destructive behaviors * Suicidal behavior or self - injury * Wide mood swings * Chronic feelings of emptiness * Inappropriate anger * Periods of paranoia and loss of contact with reality A diagnosis of BPD is usually made in adults, not children or adolescents.
But if you are denied these basic comforts early in life, whether through a lack of physical affection or emotional bonding, you may develop
intense fears of abandonment that can last well into adulthood — fears so powerful that they can actually cause you to push people away.
In certain forms of Christianity, it is similar to the groveling experience of a child who is driven back to a harsh parent by
an intense fear of abandonment To be healing, reconciliation must be like the experience of the Prodigal who comes to himself in a breakthrough of self - awareness and realizes that the parent's love has never left him, even in the far country of rebellion.
And while not all people with poor emotion management, impulsive and destructive actions,
intense fear of abandonment and an unstable self image have a history of complex trauma, it gets me to a non-judgmental place where I'm able to be very open to hearing someone's story.
These «internal working models» within the attachment system coalesce during later childhood and adolescence into stable personality structures, with the «I'm inadequate» self - in - relationship schema reflected in narcissistic personality processes, while the abandoning other - in relationship expectation becomes reflected in borderline personality processes of
an intense fear of abandonment.
For example, in circumstances where an attachment figure is inconsistently available, physically or emotionally, a person may implicitly adopt hyperactivating attachment strategies involving amplification of attachment needs, high levels of negative emotion, persistent attempts to maintain connection, and
intense fear of abandonment (Cassidy & Kobak, 1988).
Not exact matches
Love can bring out powerful forces in us such as
intense hatred, extreme jealousy, and gut wrenching
fears of abandonment that can make us act in seemingly irrational ways.
Dependency involves both insecure attachment, expressed as difficulty tolerating aloneness;
intense fear of loss,
abandonment, or rejection by significant others; and urgent need for contact with significant others when stressed or distressed, accompanied sometimes by highly submissive, subservient behavior.
«The conceptualization
of the core pathology
of BPD as stemming from a highly frightened, abused child who is left alone in a malevolent world, longing for safety and help but distrustful because
of fear of further abuse and
abandonment, is highly related to the model developed by Young (McGinn & Young, 1996)... Young elaborated on an idea, in the 1980s introduced by Aaron Beck in clinical workshops (D.M. Clark, personal communication), that some pathological states
of patients with BPD are a sort
of regression into
intense emotional states experienced as a child.
For both the narcissistic and borderline personality structure, regulating their
intense emotional distress originating from their core sense
of primal self - inadequacy and
fear of abandonment takes precedence over external restrictions, even the external restrictions placed on them by truth and reality.
In response to the interpersonal rejection inherent to the divorce (i.e., narcissistic injury and
abandonment), the narcissistic / (borderline) parent engages the child in a role - reversal relationship as a «regulatory other» in order to regulate the
intense anxiety experienced by the narcissistic / (borderline) parent associated with the threatened collapse
of the narcissistic defense against the experience
of primal inadequacy and a tremendous
fear of abandonment.