I’m a 21 year old male and I’ve been wrongfully diagnosed with bipolar disorder with narcissistic traits many times. Some therapists and health professionals told me it’s both bpd and bipolar disorder. I didn’t see either one at first until others told me I have a very unstable self image and behavioral attitudes. One moment I feel worthless and powerless until I’m tired of feeling so much of a slave that I flip a switch and lash out at everyone. I go back and forth from guilt to grandiose and it’s hard to manage. My mood swings are very intense cause they make me seem like I’m grumpy and rude to others. And as for the impulsive behavior, I tend to look to sex and meeting a lot of people to fill voids within myself. It makes me feel emotionally fed and content. But yet I go back and forth from those to feeling worthless again and wanting to harm myself. Suicidal thoughts linger heavily.
I'm a man and I was diagnosed with bipolar, mixed personality disorder (borderline + dependent - immature subtype + adaptive and dissociative (conversion) disorders having also strong mentally masochistic tendencies. Three weeks ago I took ADOS-2 test and the results pointed that I was in ASD. I had that feeling before that I must have been aspie but so strong traumatised that I started to wear masks after school bullying, how to cover my ass because of "empathetic" people whom I haven't deserved to serve as a boot boy.
I think my fiance has BPD traits--as well as his diagnosed TBI and PTSD. This can be very challenging. On the one hand he's brilliant, on the other hand in men BPD traits tend to manifest as anger and narcissistic Tendencies. This is true of him. When he's not engaging in these things he's very loving and empathetic and insightful and a deep person, also playful and wonderfully creative. But the TBI (traumatic brain injury), PTSD, and the Borderline traits, plus narcissistic tendencies make it very hard. Thankfully he responded to my urging him to get back on medication and find more relevant and effective therapy. But it's three steps forward then one alarming big step back. Were it not for the effective medication and the very great therapist he found, our relationship probably wouldn't have survived, which would have been tragic, because we love each other very dearly.
49yo male here. I have all 9 to varying degrees but I'm not much of a cutter, only done that a few times. My psychologists in the past never dx'd me with bpd but came close: neglected as a child, separation anxiety, i'm "needy", might be autistic, and have clinical depression. They never delved into my own experience with "emptiness" or the constant feeling that "something is missing but I don't know what it is". I never brought it up, because I thought everybody was like that. They didn't seem bothered about how I react in new relationships like when I freak out in new romantic relationships or burn bridges with family members. They didn't ask, as far as I can remember. Instead they shake their head and ask "why did you do THAT?". My current therapist does not like to use labels, she prefers to say I have "borderline traits" and she says I am definitely not autistic. I'm pretty high functioning but my relationships suck, across the board (family, work, friends, romances). I guess what I want to say here is that if you are a man with bpd, it is very common to get misdiagnosed. You have to be your own advocate.
I'm an Occupational Therapist and have been through DBT for my own personal health. I have unofficially diagnosed my boyfriend with BPD. He has sooo many characteristics of the disorder and I am sure he has been left out of getting diagnosed because a lot of the criteria are considered socially acceptable in men. Binge eating - because he is a tall burly man; Anger and aggression - OK in men but women are "hysterical"; Drug Abuse, Sexual Promiscuity, reckless behavior and he does his self harm at work by injuring himself at his construction job. This is why he has not been diagnosed. He knows he has a problem but can easily dismiss it because the behavior is mostly accepted.
I'm a 19 year old boy with BPD and I have so many of the symptoms but I've been working really hard to manage it. I've stop the self harm, I've managed my anger, I'm working on my paranoia which is so much better now, my depression is managed with my meds, the feeling of abandonment is still an issue but it's getting better. Im learning to be more rational and how to cope when I'm scared someone is leaving
This can easily get confused with bipolar or narcissism which is a shame. It’s sad to think so many men are walking around with an incorrect or no diagnosis , basically not having a clue what’s going on at all with them. The rates are most likely equal for men and women.
I have BPD, I have some psychopathic traits that I've noticed since I was a toddler. BPD in men is usually caused by verbal/ emotional abuse or neglect; most of the time it's by his mother. I believe there is a good sized genetic role in play as well. Expect a male borderline to lack empathy to some degree and have violent outbursts when you attack his character or self image. If you trigger him, either validate him and show massive empathy or leave the fucking area because we don't deal with Luke warm attitudes very well, especially condescending attitudes. Male borderlines will look empty and miserable a lot of the time and use sex/drugs, alcohol to avoid the void in us, we run on emotion and impulses 95% of the time. DBT and meds do wonders but if the root trigger is present then there's no avoiding it. If you really wanna help someone with BPD, be considerate and show alot of empathy.
You may find several of my other videos informative about BPD, as well. It is certainly possible to change one's reactions to triggers. Best of luck to you!
Hi Dr. Thank you for this video. My boyfriend of over a year has shown continuous signs of explosive behavior/temper caused by situations that to most people are considered "not a big deal." He will be fine one moment, then within a second his mood will shift and he will become very overly sensitive and harsh. He also blames me for many things when it was his fault something happened. When I met him I did not realize that he was using drugs and alcohol, but it seems as though he is his calmest when he is drinking/using. Like it almost helps him relax and be mellow. He also enjoys gambling a lot. On a regular day he can be overly agitated and shows an obvious lack of empathy towards others. I no longer speak to him because I became very fearful of him over time, and his instant switches in behavior began to really concern me. I think he has narcissism and did a lot of research on it, however I did not look into BPD until lately. I feel as though one of his personality traits is that of narcissism--but, can narcissism be considered one of the personality traits of someone with BPD? When he is having a manic episode he seems as though he is blacking out with rage and harshness, and he will certainly "gaslight" me when he is at fault for something but does not want to feel the blame for it. That all being said, when he was younger he was considered "emo" but outgrew the clothing styles and I don't believe he listens to emo music nearly as much as he used to. He shows little emotion anymore, but i've seen old pictures of his tattoos such as the semi colon project on his wrist which symbolized suicide awareness. ...that was many years ago however, (and he has now gotten it covered up) and I feel as though he would NEVER get a tattoo like that anymore because he shows such a lack of emotion towards others, and he does not seem to care about himself either. He cares a lot about his outward image but he also is very toxic to himself with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. I feel as though he maybe had BPD which has since transformed into NPD. I would like to help him but I do not know how to talk to him in such a way that doesn't set him off and accuse me of being the "crazy" one. It breaks my heart because he can be so "normal" at times but his behavior is so out of the blue and hurtful that it does not make sense. I feel as though you explain BPD as people who would like to change deep down but don't know how, whereas I feel as though narcissistic people do not want to change because they don't see anything wrong with themselves at all. I feel like the two disorders are actually very different. I feel like he most certainly can't control his outbursts/actions at times, but sometimes I feel as though he knows exactly what he is doing and saying and is just being cruel because thats just who he is. Could you please do a video on men with narcissism. I would love to hear your words on narcissism disorder. And is there is any help for healing this problem? I do not wish to be in a relationship with him ever again, but I feel as though I could be a friend that he could text and could maybe help him out down the road if he's ever able to listen and take responsibility. I know its up to him to see his issues however, so I know its not best to tell him straight-out how damaging he is to others as well as to himself. But i'd like to maybe point out things to him that will help him seek help? I'm not sure what to do.. seeking help is very hard because its hard to help someone who is sick and isn't really aware of it.
I have several videos already that you may find useful. One is on BPD; one is for the loved ones of people with BPD; one is on narcissism and BPD. You can also take a look at the Resources page of my website (drkristiwebb.com) for a reading list and some links to other websites you may find useful. Best of luck to you.
I can totally relate to what you said. My now ex is exactly the same. I believe he has BPD but at times he seems more NPD, especially if he’s really triggered. Like you, I would love to help him seek help but I’m afraid even hinting at the fact that he needs help will set him off. It’s so sad to watch and I’m worried because he’s raising a small child. 😕
I am an avid #MentalHealthAwareness advocate and performer, and I love this so much. I travel the country trying to bring that awareness on stages, in classrooms, hospitals, and on my RU-vid channel, so I get excited when I see other advocates. 💙❤
I believe my husband has borderline personality disorder along with bipolar, which he was diagnosed with a few years ago. He is a different person when he hangs out with his friends. It's like a switch goes on when he's with them and me. I found videos of him with his friend that he did not display with me and our children on Facebook, which he made me think he did not have for 1 year. And, when I left him for a couple days, he attempted suicide with my pills. Yes, he also has irritated, explosive temper. Very difficult for me and our children to live with daily.
NaturalHI, it sounds very difficult. I'm sorry you are having to deal with this. Yes, it's possible for someone to have both Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. It's also quite common to be misdiagnosed with Bipolar Disorder (especially Bipolar II) by psychiatrists and therapists who don't know much about Borderline Personality Disorder. I wish you the best of luck. Thanks for watching.
Your voice is so calm and peacefull. Im brazilian and here there are not many materials or information about dealing with people who are TPB, thanks for this video
Thank you Dr. Webb a very informative video. My girlfriend came to me and voiced her concerns for me. I scoffed a bit and then looked around at these sympotms and my heart sank a bit. My psychotherapist thinks I have some cluster B disorder. I think at the bottom this disorder is emotional dysregulation, I never know what I really feel So as a result I lack boundaries and an accurate picture of myself. When i was 9 I thought I was fat and used to punch myself in the stomach as a punishment and I used to bite myself if I was rejected by a classmate or teacher. At 18 I was a male bulimic and an alcoholic and pill junkie who had alienated himself from his friends and made enemies with many people. I never have really liked looking in the mirror too long.
..like tapping? ..seems hokey to me..I have a very difficult time with the mindfulness, meditation, yoga, tapping type stuff. Would you care to explain what exercises you tried and the result? .
Thank you dr. Kristi you are a very kind therapist, the first video i watched ill never forget what you said " alot of therapist avoid BPD patients due to their manipulation" and how you said we just need extra special help is so true. I have 1 question for you can you tell me, what are some of your personal observations with men and bpd as they age for example 25-30-40, ive heard symptoms and our behaviours can either become more severe or lessens with age Thank you 😄
Thank you for your kind words. It is true of many diagnoses, including BPD (also Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia, among others) that as people age they kind of "burn out" on the symptoms. I wouldn't be expecting any lessening of symptoms until the 40s or 50s, though.
Another aspect is that previous research also shows that men and women who shows that men who show the same symptoms are diagnosed with ASPD and women with BPD.
Hello. My name is Randi Kreger and I am the author of stop walking on egg shells, which sold 1 million copies and 14 languages. And the essential family guide borderline personality disorder. Thank you so much for making this tape about borderline personality disorder and men. Men are 50% of the borderline population and the clinical expert I have a abandoned them entirely. However I am very concerned about a statement you made that is incorrect: that BPD cannot be diagnosed below the age of 18. That is a mistake that many people make. Not diagnosing BPD in the younger population is a tradition, much like wearing white at a wedding or having a having a Christmas tree. Except it’s a dangerous one. You said yourself that adolescent boys already feel emptiness, have odd thoughts, chronic emptiness, and impulsivity. You did not say whether you thought they should be treated or not. Are you saying that it’s OK to have this at 16, but magically two years later when they turn 18 they can finally treat it? That is not current thinking. Blaise Aguirre, the author of “borderline personality disorder in adolescents”, runs the adolescent and treatment BPD center at MclLean, where John Gunderson used to practice. He is one of the consulting psychiatrist of the national education alliance of borderline personality disorder, which you can go to at NEABPD.org. If you watch the presentations at various conferences, you can see that right now the trend is helping children and adolescents as soon as those traits occur. We are interested in treating the young as soon as possible. Thank of those boys and their emptiness, impulsivity. The calendar year is not a magic diagnostic tool. I really wish you would do some research there and do a video tape on getting help for your children as soon as they start showing signs. This is so very important. Don’t wait for your child to turn 18 before getting help. Don’t accept 1 million other diagnoses from various experts when your child is clearly showing borderline symptoms. They end up on a dozen different medications that do no good and may harm and have side effects. Teenagers are especially misdiagnosed with bipolar, based on the fact that they can’t be diagnosed with borderline. They get the wrong medication and things get worse. You have a great public forum and it is done much good. Thanks again for doing this video. But please make this correction and do a video on children and teenagers who show signs of BPD. They need to get help. I really don’t even care what you call it. But they need to get help from somebody who understands BPD.
Hi, Randi, thanks for viewing and writing. I have many other videos that deal with many other aspects of BPD; in one of them I explain that the DSM and ICD (which we now use) still hold that arbitrary line of 18 for a dx of BPD. This seems, as you and I agree, patently absurd, but it's what hospitals, mental health agencies, and insurance companies in the US use. In private practice one can be more flexible about the dx if one doesn't take insurance. So - agreed - it's foolish to draw that arbitrary line. I am quite familiar with Blaise's work through the DBT International listserv. In my area, we have several DBT groups for tweens and teens that use Jill Rathus and Alec Miller's DBT manual. I do not work with kids or adolescents myself. I like your idea, though, of a video on BDP in - especially - teens. We have too many suicides of adolescents because they cannot get the official diagnosis, hence their insurance company will not pay for appropriate treatment, hence they go untreated or - worse - mis-treated. Thanks again for writing.
@@DrKristiWebbChapelHill YES, we are taught in school not to diagnose with BPD until the client is 18 years or older, but i do have 3 young clients 14...15....16 years of age that exhibit all 9 criterion and the clinics who have sent them to me diagnose with DMDD, MDD, Juvenile Bipolar disorder, ADD/ADHD, ODD, or conduct disorder. I wish we were able to wipe this train of thought off the board and help these kids from the get go instead of pumping them up with meds. thanks for reading my rant.
Hi, Randi, We were in a conversation about references and then the thread disappeared entirely. If you want to continue it, let's move it off this site. Please contact me via email (found through my website) or using FB Messenger (I'm at Facebook.com/DrKristiWebb). Thanks.
That's a great question! It's possible, although remember that the traits in the Big 5 were developed from real people, so it may simply mean that as they normed the test, they observed women scoring higher on those traits. In other words, correlation is causation.
Hey, thank you so much for some much needed information on men and the disorder, can I ask for the name of the research thats shown the colorations in boys that later go on to develop BPD?
What a great question! I went back to the research and it didn't include any specific examples. Reading the research, however, "odd thinking" seems to fall into two categories. First, there's thinking that is clearly delusional; a delusion is a thought that doesn't make sense in your culture. For example, someone might have the delusion that he has invented an exciting new rocket and that NASA has come to his house to talk to him about it; or they might believe that Martians are speaking to them through their fillings. The other category of "odd thinking", though, is what I believe is meant: it's thinking that's not quite delusional but doesn't make a lot of sense. The adolescent boy might report feelings of not being real, or may be convinced that he will be throwing out the first pitch at the next Red Sox game. The thoughts are not delusional, they're just ... odd. I hope this helps. Best, k
If someone has 4 symptoms of bpd but expressed in intense way doesn't mean is bpd.I don't believe is the number of symptoms that defines a dysorder but the power of psychodynamic and can be shared in less than 5 symptoms.It matters also the intensity of the symptoms.
Hi, John. Unfortunately, the way diagnosis works is that if you have 5 symptoms you have it, but if you have 4 you don't. Ridiculous, right? The thing is that any therapist who is experienced in treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder isn't going to care how many symptoms you have: they're going to treat you for your pain and misery and help you have a life worth living. Only insurance companies truly care about the diagnoses, in my opinion. I tell my patients that we can call it whatever they want - I'm going to treat them the way that I believe is most effective. Hope that helps you.
Hi Dr. I have a question for you. I hear people talk a lot about BPD patients having suicidal tendencies or the inclination to self harm. Is it possible for someone with BPD to not have these tendencies? I’m almost 90% sure my boyfriend has BPD but he has never once cut him self or threatened suicide. He DID, however, admit to me that he likes to go to bars, pick fights with other men and “get his ass kicked” over and over again, and when I asked him why he liked doing this, he said, “it’s an outlet. I need an outlet.” Would this be the same thing as self harm? The lack of self harm/suicidal tendencies makes me worry that he’s NPD and not BPD, but he also tells me that he has a “very broad range of emotion”, so I’m not sure. Thanks.
This is a great question, and I'm so glad you asked! It is common for men to express their urges to self-harm or to die in less direct ways than women do. They are less likely to cut (or burn, binge/purge, etc.) and more likely to get into situations - like fights - where there is a high risk of contusions and bodily damage. I hope your boyfriend can allow himself to talk to a therapist who specializes in DBT, which is the gold standard of treatment for BPD. Best to you.
Such an interesting situation, this area between having access to information to think about and using this information to pretend diagnose self and others. Does having information like this make things better in aggregate, or worse?
Dear Dr. Kristi Webb and all other so called "specialists" on BPD. Only a person with BPD knows what BPD really is or I should say what it is like to live ( a life I never asked for nor I ever wanted to live ) a life with those kind of feelings, reactions and behaviour. As far as I know, I am like I am for all my life (61 years now) and I consider myself as "normal". The world around me is, at least, difficult if not, for a normal thinking person, impossible. How can anyone feel good and sleep well knowing about all the injustice the human race courses to themselves and the world (nature and animals) around him. I am ok, the people around me have a "problem" with reality (like you have !!).
How do you know I don't have BPD? I appreciate your perspective and your post, and you make several valid points. There is no need, however, to be discourteous as you are at the end. Thank you for watching; thank you for your comments.
My question...finally divorced of 20 years. I am 45 he is 50. He was put in instution when a teen for a year. Violence kept him there that I am told but I believe it was much more. I wasnt told about this till after I had children. I have a 14 year old with same behavior. Diagnosis nearly matches father. Add ptsd. On 10th year of marriage the doc informed me that he had intense fear of abandonment. Because of hippa I was never told his diagnosis . It was a cat and mouse game for 20 years. After I went in for cptsd I learned what was really going on. And now I know he is bpd plus bipolar (2). What does it mean though if he has all 9 criteria? And would that make bordeline a spectrum? I hope I asked that correctly. God bless you for this video. He also has munchausen by proxy..if I spelled that correctly...on me and now the children since divorce. Try and prove that. Its killing me. He tried to cripple me in many different ways so I could not leave. And then later on kick me out of the house. Hypersexuality with strange men on craiglist. Advertising himself as a married man too. He also gets authority to abuse me and threaten me. Family court rigjt now is insane. But I think they see it. He is in a full manic epusode. And this time it is visible. He is like two people and hides the abuse. But it leaked out in the last three years of divorce. Its my fault bevause he was always hysterical and after a while you dont keave home. And you stop talking because he lies so much and any complaint is a cry for war public or not. Never could say no. It was like living with a 8 year sordid deviant. Just an insight to daily life with one.
I'm so sorry for this situation. I hope that you're getting good care for the CPTSD. BPD is not on a spectrum, exactly - not the way that autism is. According to the diagnostic criteria, you have it or you don't, and having 9 symptoms doesn't mean you have it MORE than if you have 5 symptoms. I realize that for anyone living with the diagnosis, not only how many symptoms, but which ones, matters.
