Fear of abandonment, loneliness, rejections and feelings which are signs of borderline personality disorder
Hi there,
i read in subforum about borderline personality disorder that being afraid of rejections, abandonment and loneliness is sign of borderline personality disorder. But doesn't everyone fears rejection, abandonment and loneliness regardless of borderline personality disorder or even regardless of any mental health issues as we all are social beings? In which sense the fear of loneliness, rejection and abandonment differ from people who are healthy or don't have borderline personality disorder to the same fear in people who have got borderline personality disorder? I found self in the above mentioned fear. I am so fearful of getting abandoned that whenever i lose a friend i feel guilty and i self loathe due to it. I also feel that i will lose my job because of just an awkwardly asked question about my work to my boss or co workers (but it never happened that i lost my job). Furthermore, i feel strong fear of being lonely as i read very much about how loneliness is harmful. If i read psychological articles on loneliness, it worsens my emotional wellbeing and triggers my feelings of being lonely, anxiety and also anger. Due to strong feelings of fear i often become angry and also for anger i read here that it can be a sign of borderline personality disorder. But also here i doubt how anger which everyone has regardless of any personality disorders has differs from anger in people with borderline personality disorder. Can anyone please answer me?
@klemen You are completely correct.
To conclude that you have BPD using the American Psychiatric Association's system (known as DSM-5) you would have to meet about three pages of criteria for general personality disorder first. If you do meet the general criteria, then you can go on to consider the nine specific criteria for BPD, and one of the nine is "Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment".
Also note that the criterion doesn't say "fear". It says "frantic efforts".
Fear, anger, loneliness, rejection, abandonment, guilt and self-loathing are all normal experiences, not necessarily signs of any disorder at all. It's true that psychological articles make all kinds of scary claims about all kinds of things, but there's no reason to believe all the claims are true. (Sadly, this also applies to articles on this website.)
So it's very important not to self-diagnose using information from the Internet that may be incomplete, misleading or false.
If your life is being severely affected by feelings like fear or anger, then getting a professional assessment can be very helpful. If it turns out you have an emotional disorder causing the feelings, there are effective treatments.
I hope you've found that there are listeners here at 7 Cups you can talk to freely about these issues. If you'd ever like to talk to me, feel free to message me.
Charlie