Borderline Personality Disorder / Multiple Personality Disorder?

Question

Do people with Borderline Personality Disorder speak to themselves? Often feeling that there's someone else sitting right in their head listening to them, commenting back, or supporting them, or scorning them.
Do they feel different at times? As if they're not the same...for example having a different body language, or different kinds of social skills etc.

Do they talk aloud to themselves? First as one person? and then as someone else? It's like one actor trying to play different roles all by himself? Do BPD's go through this?

Do BPD's experience memory loss? Do they find it hard to recollect things what they've been doing, for eg. like last evening? Do they get confused thinking whether they really did it or no?

Do BPD's become violent? Like having the urge to hurt the ones they love dearly? Maybe physically or emotionally. How can they hurt someone they love deeply?

Or is this a case of Multiple Personality Disorder? Please help!!

Answer 1

It doesn't sound like my experiences with DID (formerly called multiple personality disorder). Yes, I have time loss where people say I did things that I know I never did, but I would describe the interactions with my alters a bit differently. But that might just be me. Each system is different. I don't ever feel like someone else, I don't feel like I am jumping from role to role. Different parts take over, but I don't 'feel' like 'I' change. Most people in the world feel like they are wearing different 'hats', creating different roles, or acting as a different person at times in different circumstances. That's not DID.



I also want to note that DID is NOT correlated with violence at all. That is a TV myth. Most of the time when an alter is out, they are typically scared and think they are still 5. They are not apt to go out and kill anyone. Still, they might not know appropriate emotional boundaries or how to relate to others due to trauma. That can cause relational differences. That is very similar with BPD, and actually trouble in relationships is a criteria for BPD but not DID.



If you question having DID, talk to your psychiatrist or psychologist. I know that people with borderline personality disorder quite a bit of the time have a similar history of trauma and experience dissociation.



Wiki says: prolonged disturbance of personality function characterized by depth and variability of moods.[2] The disorder typically involves unusual levels of instability in mood; "black and white" thinking, or "splitting"; chaotic and unstable interpersonal relationships, self-image, identity, and behavior; as well as a disturbance in the individual's sense of self. In extreme cases, this disturbance in the sense of self can lead to periods of dissociation.



There is a lot of internal pain within someone who has BPD. Also a lot of internal and external confusion. I think the best thing to do is work with your treatment team. I'm not saying you don't have DID or any other mental illness, I am not a professional nor do I know you. I don't think that anyone could accurately diagnose you via YA. It took my docs 5 years to reach the correct dx.



Good luck.

Answer 2

It really sounds like schizophrenia more that Multiple Personality Disorder (or called Dissociative Identity Disorder). The hearing voices inside the head is classic of a schizophrenia, so is feeling a different person, talking to themselves/pretending someone else is there. Memory loss is also common in schizophrenia especially when experiencing a psychotic episode. And anger/rage is another extremely common symptom of schizophrenia.

Answer 3

Hey, Love.

It sounds more like "Multiple Personality Disorder", now termed Dissociative Identity Disorder by the DSM IV TR.

In history, borderline personality disorder was called manic depressive disorder and often confused with DID, however, theories on the disorders have now been refined.

Here is information on Borderline Personality Disorders:

Borderline personality disorder

Of all of them, this is the one that is most infamous in the therapeutic industry because it is hard to treat

They are impulsive, unpredictable, inappropriate fits of idealization, worship of therapist and anger

Splitting

A defense mechanism that causes us to deal with life with extremes

They talk about being empty and bored

Idealizing and devaluing is classic

Lack of identity

They don’t have a sense of their own personhood outside of relationship

People who attempt suicide when someone leaves them is suspicious

People who self mutilate or cut themselves

Affective instability is how they are and it is hard to treat

Desperately seek stimulation

Most likely known for sexually acting out

Twice as likely female as male

Extreme dependency and fear of dependency

Here is information on Dissociative Identity Disorder:

Dissociative Disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dissociation from personality

AKA- DID or MPD

Multiple Personality Disorder

Sub-personalities or alters

Primary/host personality

Core personality

Usually unaware of others

Transitions

Switching from one personality to another, usually sudden

Relationships between personalities

Mutually amnestic

Mutually cognizant

They know of each other

One way amnestic

Some know each other

Co-conscious observers

They are observers of what the current personality is doing

Memory lapses

Time distortions

“We” language

Average personalities are 15 for women, 8 for men

3-9 times more common to women than men

Often diagnosed up to seven years after starting therapy

A defense against trauma

Proliferation of personalities continues

Protector alters and persecutor alters

Persecutor alters hurt the core and do things to get everyone in trouble

Treatment goals

Détente

Developing a truce between personalities

Fusion

A goal, slowly getting sub personalities to merge with each other

Internal group therapy

Use of medication to treat depression



Dissociative Disorders

A separation of one part of a persons identity from another

Essential feature

Disruption in the usual functions of consciousness, memory, identity and perception

Ay d dealing with stress

Permits continued functioning

Dissociative amnesia

Dissociartion from memory

Localized

You don’t have memory for a period of time, usual during times of stress

Selective

Forget some but not all of what happened

Generalized

Can forget for entire life

raree

Contiuous

Remember nothing beyond a certain point in past

Dissociative Fugue

Dissociation from place

Flee from home: precipitated by a severe stressor

Forget details of past lie

Adopt a new identity

Fugue state is quite extensive

Minimal social contact

Later canot remember what happened during fugue

Depersonalizatin disorder

Dissociation from body

Either mental processes and or body feels unreal and foreign to them

Body parts feel unattacjed, like they don’t belong to them, or like theve changed sizes

Out of body experiences

Observing self from outside world