Border patrol

by Alicia Potter

It is impossible to talk about borderline personality disorder without mentioning its effect on friends, lovers, and family members. Because BPD patients rely on extreme behavior to connect, often those close to them are the targets of hurtful, infuriating, and puzzling actions. Here's a sampling of questions to ask yourself to help determine if someone you know may be suffering from BPD.

Do you find yourself concealing what you think or feel because you're afraid of the other person's reaction, because it just doesn't seem worth the horrible fight or hurt feelings that will follow? Has this become so automatic that you have a hard time even identifying what you think or feel?

Are you the focus of intense, even violent rages that make no logical sense, alternating with periods when the other person acts perfectly loving?

Do you feel as though the person sees you as either all good or all bad, with nothing in between?

When you try to break off the relationship, does the other person try to prevent you from leaving in a variety of ways -- anything from declarations of love and promises to change to implicit or explicit threats?

This is a partial list. Further questions are published on the BPD Central Web site at http://members.aol.com/BPDCentral. Another resource is a booklet called Walking on Eggshells by Paul Mason and Randi Kreger. To order, call 1-800-266-5564.

Borderline Personality Disorder: A Definition

Alicia Potter is a freelance writer living in Boston.