What is Teenage BPD

Teenage borderline personality disorder is a diagnosis that has been notoriously difficult to understand in the medical world. An inability to fully understand it has made it just as difficult to treat successfully.¹https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3811088/ Individuals can experience some painful, unwanted symptoms including unstable relationships, emotional turbulence, and self-destructive behavior. Self-harm and attempted suicide can be experienced by teenagers who suffer from borderline personality disorder making it a very dangerous mental health disposition.²https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5030244/

Medical experts label borderline personality disorder as a biosocial disorder. It begins with a biological predisposition that is made worse by one’s social environment. Borderline personality disorder sufferers are highly sensitive emotionally and reactive. They feel things deeper and more intensely than most other teenagers. When a powerful emotion is triggered, it takes longer to return them to their emotional status quo.

What does it feel like to have Teenage BPD?

A majority of parents can experience issues raising a teenager. Young adults can be highly emotional and sensitive. Yet, the issues that a parent experiences with a child suffering from borderline personality disorder are far different and provide a nightmare for those that must deal with it.

Teenage BPD sufferers possesses an intense set of needs.³https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24309942_A_biosocial_developmental_model_of_borderline_personality_Elaborating_and_extending_Linehan%27s_theory Parents often find their attention being drawn to the child due to extreme emotional situations. The teenager needs to feel needed, noticed, and taken care of. Many parents avoid feeding their teenagers’ need for attention.

However, avoidance only fuels the individual’s needs to be noticed. Teenage borderline personality disorder creates an insatiable need to be loved in the person. They often feel disappointed, rejected, or as a failure when these needs of love are not met.

Young adults with borderline personality disorder struggle to build empathy and see the world from the shoes of other people. Sufferers feel as if they are the only ones who matter. The burden of caring for them belongs to the parent which creates stress in the caregiver.

When a person with borderline personality disorder feels rejected, they can lash out impulsively. In some cases, the individual offers zero prior warning before acting out. Impulsive behaviors can escalate from minor infractions to self-destructive actions.

Parents can feel alone and unable to help their teenagers especially if they find items that suggest the young person committed self-harm. Teenagers can threaten to harm themselves or even commit suicide when they feel rejected by their parents. The experience can leave parents feeling as though they have failed.

Teenage BPD Treatment

Luckily for parents, there are treatment options such as residential treatment centers available for teenagers with borderline personality disorder. Parents may feel like they are abandoning their teenager by sending them to a residential treatment center. However, the teenager can finally receive the help they need by experiencing treatment from trained professionals.

Therapeutic Boarding School

Teenage BPD sufferers sometimes feel more respite in a long term intensive therapeutic environment. Therapeutic boarding schools are a new type of alternative education. They specialize in the education of teens and young adults that have difficulty in a traditional school setting. Simply put, a therapeutic boarding school help teens that experience issues with their emotions and behaviors, including teenage borderline personality disorder.

Therapeutic Boarding Schools for Teenage BPD

Newport Academy

Yes We Can Youth Clinics

Claudia Black @ The Meadows

There is no medication that can magically treat the symptoms of borderline personality in a young person overnight. Residential treatment programs provide evidence-based psychotherapy treatments such as CBT, DBT, EFFT, and IFT to help reduce to symptoms and intensity in sufferers. Along with medication, teenagers can overcome the symptoms of borderline personality disorder and return to a more normal life.

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