There is a large area of human conditions that cannot yet be attributed to mental disorders, but they are no longer health. This condition is borderline, and it determines many phobias characteristic of a person, neurosis, syndromes of experiencing extreme or inadequate situations, as well as chronic fatigue syndrome. Often, borderline conditions appear to underlie the subsequent development of a somatic or neurosomatic disease.
They are spread almost 10 times more than obvious mental deviations. And in this article we will try to understand them in more detail.
What causes a borderline state of personality
Of every 100 people, two have a borderline condition. But what exactly is its immediate cause, the researchers are at a loss to say. It can be attributed to the imbalance of neurotransmitters, which helps to regulate our mood, and to a hereditary predisposition to mental illness.
According to researchers, people who find themselves in this state often belong to the group of those who experienced physical or emotional abuse, early loss of parents or separation from them in childhood. If these injuries are combined with personality traits, expressed as a severe reaction to stress or high anxiety, then the risk of developing borderline disorder is greatly increased.
Borderline mental states often develop amid depressive disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.
By the way, the well-known fact that this ailment is often accompanied by a malfunction of certain parts of the brain has not yet shed light on whether this problem is the cause of the borderline state or its consequence.
Specific features of the border state
The borderline state, from the point of view of psychoanalysis, differs from psychosis in the patient's ability to realize reality, relying on common sense and drawing the line between subjective and objective impressions.
Although the key feature of the borderline state is still instability, caused by a constant fear of being abandoned by others, even if this threat does not correspond to reality. This, incidentally, can sometimes cause a person to reject others first, which cannot but lead to an increase in problems in relationships.
- In people in this condition, attacks of anxiety and depression can occur often and usually without obvious reasons for this.
- Such a person has a very unstable concept of the importance of his own personality - from complete self-abasement to the exaltation of his own merits.
- Interpersonal relationships among these people are also unstable: they can switch quite quickly from idealizing the personal qualities of a friend to contempt for him (and for no apparent reason).
Borderline condition: symptoms
In addition, people in the borderline state have at least a few of the disorders listed below.
So, they can act under the influence of a momentary impulse, impulse, for example, extravagantly spend money, have many sexual partners, it is difficult to overeat or drive a car with a risk to life.
The clinic of borderline conditions is characterized by a feeling of prolonged emptiness or tides of hard-to-control anger that result in getting into fights. Emotionally excessive reactions or repeated suicidal attempts are very characteristic of such people.
In order to be diagnosed with borderline disorder, these symptoms must be quite severe and long-term, causing communication problems.
Panic attacks are part of the borderline state
Panic attacks are also referred to as borderline conditions. They arise unpredictably and manifest as attacks of acute anxiety. Patients complain of palpitations, cold sweat and a feeling of lack of air. Dizziness, fainting, tremors may appear, pressure changes.
A borderline state with panic arises, as a rule, against the background of experienced stress, which means that the brain gives a signal to the body about the danger. In this case, to ensure active actions, hormones are released into the bloodstream, which provide muscle tone and a rapid heartbeat.
Despite the fact that panic attacks cause great concern in people, they, according to experts, are not dangerous, although they require compulsory treatment so that dependence on this condition does not develop. And this, as a rule, leads to self-restraint and the accession of other fears.
Borderline has signs of various diseases
In addition to all the listed symptoms, borderline mental states have another important feature - they are on the border between health and illness. That is, they are characterized by non-specific manifestations of the disease, which are included in the symptoms of various pathological processes - both mental, and somatic, and neurological. This can be asthenia (a state of increased fatigue, weakness and exhaustion), and autonomic dysfunction, and obsessive states.
The initial symptoms of neurotic disorders in our medicine are also referred to as borderline conditions. Typically, these are:
- irritability;
- emotional instability;
- recurrent headache;
- sleep disturbances.
All these symptoms require careful examination and clarification of the diagnosis.
Frontier Center: Help Needed
People with such a disorder need specialized psychological help, they do not have enough advice from a psychologist. By the way, psychoanalysis is especially undesirable for such people, since the high anxiety they are inclined to can do a “disservice” and spur the development of the borderline state into a mental disorder.
For the treatment of patients on the basis of a multidisciplinary somatic institution, a department of borderline states is often created in which people are suspected of this disorder. As a rule, these are patients who are in a state of psychological crisis with the risk of suicidal attempts or who have committed those. They need a temporary exclusion of traumatic situations, as well as the conduct of psychotherapeutic and drug treatment.
What lies behind the borderline conditions of newborns
Despite the outward similarity of the definition, the borderline states of newborns have nothing to do with the ailments listed above. For babies who have just been born, these are the natural physiological reactions that manifest the adaptation of the body to existence in new conditions.
In pediatrics, this condition is assessed as transient (transient), lasting no more than 3-4 weeks and is physiologically normal. It, as a rule, disappears on its own by the end of the indicated period, but in case of insufficient care, impaired adaptive capabilities of the baby or under adverse environmental conditions, these processes may turn into pathological and require treatment.
How does the borderline state in newborns
The borderline conditions of newborns are manifested in the physiological decrease in their body weight in the first days after birth. It can decrease by 10% from the initial indicators of weight. These phenomena include changes in the condition of the skin of the child, which are expressed in its redness after wiping from the original lubrication.
A third of newborns show the occurrence of toxic erythema, in which vesicles with serous fluid appear on the skin of the baby, located in the joints, on the buttocks or on the chest.
Exposure to the maternal hormones estrogen leads to a hormonal crisis, and intestinal restructuring and the passage of the original feces are accompanied by dysbiosis, which disappears by the end of the first week of life.
A few words in the end
The concept of borderline states, as you see, can mean completely different manifestations: from transient physiological reactions of the body to new conditions of existence in newborns to a complex psychological state that balances between health and illness.
But there is still a common feature here - the precariousness, the fragility of this process. It can become pathological at any time. So, you can’t take it lightly!