Borderline
Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment in Orange County, California
With BPD, feelings are so big and come so fast they cannot be contained, and everything spills over.
BPD Treatment in Orange County
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) can appear in children, teenagers, or adults. However, a medical diagnosis can only be made in adults because children and teenagers tend to outgrow their borderline personality disorder symptoms as they mature.
BPD diagnosis comes after a medical exam, a historical overview with your doctor, a psychological evaluation, and a thorough discussion of your signs and symptoms.
What Is Borderline Personality Disorder?
BPD is a mental disorder characterized by unstable relationships, mood, and behavior. It impacts thoughts and feelings about yourself and others, causing malfunction in your daily life.
The personality disorder comes with an intense fear of abandonment, impulsiveness, inappropriate anger, and mood swings that push people away despite your best efforts. While the condition resolves with age in young adults, many people learn to live and thrive through therapy treatment. See more personality disorders here.
Medication for Borderline Personality Disorders
BPD can come with co-occurring problems such as depression, anxiety, or aggression. In such cases, therapy is combined with medication to help treat these symptoms. The drugs can include antipsychotics, antidepressants, or mood stabilizers.
PHP for Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment
When you have a borderline personality disorder, self-harm behavior like cutting, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts manifest. Such behavior necessitates a partial hospitalization program (PHP) to mitigate potential risks and secure your life. PHP also allows adequate time to treat BPD through various therapies.
Effective Therapies for Borderline Personality Disorders
Psychotherapy or talk therapy is the most commonly used approach in treating borderline personality disorder. Your therapist chooses a suitable treatment depending on the goals you want to achieve.
The ultimate goal of borderline personality disorder therapy is learning how to live a satisfying life. Other objectives of your treatment sessions can include learning about BPD, improving relationships by being mindful, managing uncomfortable emotions, and reducing impulsiveness to avoid trouble. The most effective BPD therapies are:
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DPT) – Dialectical behavior therapy teaches you to practice mindfulness. It equips you with skills to help strike a balance between accepting and changing behavior by controlling intense emotions, reducing self-destruction, and improving relationships.
- Mentalization-based therapy (MBT) – During a mentalization-based therapy session, you learn to identify your thoughts and feelings before using them against yourself or someone else.
- Transference-focused therapy (TFP) – Also called psychodynamic therapy, TFP helps you understand emotional and interpersonal challenges through the relationship with your therapist. You can then apply the insights to other relationships.
- Schema-focused therapy – This therapy is similar to cognitive behavioral therapy. It restructures negative thoughts into positive ones to change your self-image.
- Good psychiatric management – GPM provides your therapist with a practical approach to treating severe BPD. The therapy may involve family, group, or individual sessions to help you make sense of emotionally challenging moments by considering interpersonal feelings.
