Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Attention Seeking Behaviors

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder and Attention Seeking

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a complex mental health condition characterized by intense emotions, impulsive behaviors, and instability in relationships, self-image, and behavior. One characteristic commonly associated with BPD is attention seeking, though the reasons behind this are nuanced and often misunderstood.

People with BPD may sometimes engage in attention seeking for various reasons. However, it is inaccurate and stigmatizing to suggest that all people with BPD are inherently prone to attention seeking. With compassionate understanding of the disorder's underlying factors, those with BPD can find healthy ways to build self-esteem and manage difficult emotions.

What Is Borderline Personality Disorder?

Borderline personality disorder is estimated to affect 1.6% of adults in the United States. The condition typically begins in early adulthood and is more prevalent among women. The main diagnostic criteria for BPD include:

• Intense effort to avoid real or imagined abandonment
• Unstable personal relationships that swing between idealization and devaluation
• Distorted and unstable self-image
• Impulsivity in areas like spending, sex, substance use, reckless behavior
• Recurrent suicidal behavior, threats or self-harm gestures
• Intense and highly changeable moods
• Feeling empty
• Inappropriate or intense anger
• Stress-related paranoia and dissociation

People with BPD tend to experience emotions in a much more extreme way than others. Their moods can shift very rapidly, and seemingly minor things can have an intense emotional impact. They also struggle to regulate their emotions effectively.

The instability associated with BPD can lead to chaotic relationships and difficulty maintaining stable work and living situations. People with this disorder often deal with suicidal ideations, self-harm behaviors, and other dangerous impulses. However, with comprehensive treatment, many people with BPD can manage their symptoms and lead fulfilling lives.

The Link Between BPD and Attention Seeking

Some people with BPD engage in attention seeking behaviors like repetitive self-harm threats, dramatic outbursts, or exaggerated displays of emotion. This leads to the perception that they are manipulative or making things up for attention.

In reality, attention seeking typically stems from deeper emotional needs going unmet in people with BPD. Here are some factors that may underlie attention seeking in BPD:

• Lack of a stable sense of self - With no grounded sense of identity, people with BPD constantly struggle for validation and reassurance from others.
• Fear of abandonment - The intense terror of abandonment for people with BPD also drives them to continually seek out attachment and reassurance.
• Poor emotional regulation - Difficulty controlling emotions means people with BPD often express distress in exaggerated ways initially meant to elicit caretaking from others.
• Black and white thinking - All-or-nothing thought patterns make it difficult for people with BPD to see attention seeking as anything other than desperation versus manipulation.

Viewing attention seeking simply as manipulation overlooks the genuine emotional pain and inner turmoil at the root of these behaviors in BPD. While attention seeking behaviors can be problematic, judging or shaming people is unhelpful and may worsen the issue. Instead, compassionate understanding and treatment focused on emotional skills are needed.

Healthy Coping Strategies for People with BPD

Treatment is crucial for helping people with BPD find healthier ways to cope with difficult emotions and improve relationships and self-worth. Key treatments include:

• Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) - This type of talk therapy focuses on skills for mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.
• Mentalization-based therapy - Working to improve mentalization can help people with BPD better understand themselves and others.
• Schema therapy - This can help identify and change long-held negative beliefs about oneself that contribute to BPD.
• Medications - While no medications treat BPD specifically, some like antidepressants and mood stabilizers can help manage mood swings and impulsivity.

A combination of professional treatment and self-help strategies can make a tremendous difference for people with BPD. Some positive coping techniques include:

• Practicing mindfulness to stay present and calm intense emotions
• Developing internal validation skills instead of needing external validation
• Using distress tolerance skills like distraction, self-soothing, and imagery to get through crisis moments
• Building a support system and asking for support when needed, not just during crises
• Setting healthy boundaries and communicating needs assertively instead of through attention seeking actions

With time and practice, these skills can help reduce attention seeking behaviors and improve emotional stability and relationships. Support groups can also provide invaluable help for feeling less alone and learning from others with BPD.

Co-Occurring Conditions with BPD

Borderline personality disorder rarely occurs alone. Up to 90% of people with BPD also meet the criteria for another mental health condition. Some co-occurring disorders include:

1. Depression

Around 35% of people with BPD experience major depressive disorder. The intense and rapidly fluctuating emotions associated with BPD also mean that depressive symptoms like sadness, emptiness, suicidal thinking, and fatigue commonly occur.

The overlap between BPD and depression can make both conditions more difficult to treat. Medications, psychotherapy, and self-care strategies to boost mood and manage stress may help treat both conditions.

2. Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders like generalized anxiety, social anxiety, panic disorder, and PTSD affect over 40% of people with BPD. Anxiety and BPD can worsen each other as anxiety exacerbates emotional volatility, while BPD unpredictability feeds anxiety.

Anxiety may also contribute to attachment issues, abandonment fears, and attention seeking in BPD. Psychotherapy, medications, and anxiety management skills can help treat both disorders.

3. Eating Disorders

Up to 35% of people with BPD also have an eating disorder like anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder. The compulsive behaviors of eating disorders can be a way to manage painful BPD emotions.

The body image issues and instability in identity and relationships associated with BPD also increase eating disorder risks. Treatment involves addressing any nutritional needs, underlying emotional issues, and thought patterns driving disordered eating habits.

4. Substance Abuse

Around 28% of people with BPD struggle with alcohol or drug abuse. Drugs and alcohol may seem to temporarily ease BPD mood swings, emptiness, or loneliness. However, substance abuse typically just worsens BPD symptoms over time.

Integrated treatment with addiction counseling, medical care, peer support, and therapies like CBT and DBT can help. Helping to develop healthier coping strategies is key to overcoming BPD-related substance abuse.

5. Bipolar Disorder

Around 11% of people with BPD also have bipolar disorder. Both conditions involve intense, frequent mood swings, so they are often confused. However, the emotional shifts of people with BPD happen much faster - often within hours - compared to bipolar disorder mood episodes lasting weeks.

Medications like mood stabilizers and atypical antipsychotics can help control instability in both disorders. Establishing the correct diagnosis is important for choosing therapies with the best outcome.

6. ADHD

Around 38% of adults with ADHD also meet the criteria for BPD. Both disorders involve impulsivity and emotional reactivity. People with ADHD and BPD may act rashly and have trouble controlling urges due to both conditions.

Stimulant medications often prescribed for ADHD may potentially worsen instability in some people with both disorders. Non-stimulant medications, psychotherapy teaching organization and emotional skills, and routine can help.

7. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Roughly 30% of people with BPD also have PTSD, often due to a history of childhood trauma and abuse. PTSD flashbacks can worsen BPD paranoid thinking and dissociation. Intense PTSD emotions and nightmares may also contribute to BPD mood instability and suicidal behavior.

Treatment involves both trauma-focused therapy to process and cope with PTSD memories, as well as skills to manage BPD symptoms. Medications may also help control shared symptoms like depression, anxiety, and sleep disruption.

Achieving Stability, Growth, and Healing with BPD

Borderline personality disorder introduces numerous challenges for those affected. Emotional struggles, impulsivity, and relationship difficulties can feel utterly overwhelming at times. However, the right treatments and supports make growth, healing, and a stable sense of self possible.

For loved ones of someone with BPD, compassion for the deep pain beneath attention seeking or other problematic behaviors is important. Judgement and criticism tend to backfire by feeding into insecurities. Those with BPD benefit most from patient support to build inner strength, skills, and a sense of unconditional care.

While BPD cannot be cured, long-term remission is achievable. With time, dedication to treatment and positive coping strategies, and the support of understanding, patient loved ones, those with borderline personality disorder can lead stable and fulfilling lives.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before starting any new treatment regimen.