Online Therapy for BPD: Is It Effective?
Do you suffer from BPD? It’s currently estimated that approximately 1.4 percent of adults suffer from BPD is the U.S. That number could even be higher if more accurate studies are done worldwide. (Source)
What is BPD?
BPD is short for Borderline personality disorder, which is a psychological condition which is marked by both unstable moods and emotional states. It can seriously effect a person’s relationships, and more specifically their behavior and reactions to circumstances within their relationships.
BPD is generally considered to be a serious condition, in which people are not able to properly manage their emotions. This mainly centers around their relationships. This can vary from person to person, as for some people only one of their relationships is affected, while for other people every relationship that they have may be affected.
What are the Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder?
Some of the most common symptoms of BPD include impulsive behavior, a history of troubled relationships and frequent emotional highs and lows and drastic mood swings (often several times throughout the day).
What causes BPD?
No one knows for sure exactly what causes BPD, and this may also very from person to person. Some common factors that are considered are cultural, environmental and social experiences, abandonment or abuse during a person’s early childhood.
Do I Have Bipolar Disorder or BPD?
Because there are some similarities, many people often confuse bipolar disorder and BPD. One is often mistaken for the other. While both bipolar disorder and BPD have some things in common, they are really very different conditions, each with their own unique traits, symptoms and issues.
They are commonly confused because they both share some of the same symptoms, such as impulsive tendencies and behaviors, extreme emotional highs and lows and the common traits of depression. It is important to keep in mind that while they may be similar in nature, each of these conditions are unique and require their own unique treatment options.
While bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, borderline personality disorder is a personality disorder. Both of these conditions can be treated, and their treatment may vary. With proper treatment, people with either of these conditions can achieve long periods of time without experiencing any symptoms.
Typically, people suffering from BPD will behave and feel much different from the average person. BPD causes people to constantly go through a cycle of different moods, self esteem, and extreme emotions. This will usually cause problems with their relationships, how they deal with other people, as well as their overall life in general.
While bipolar disorder is a mood related disorder, which has been known to cause drastic changes in the person’s mood. This can appear in cycles that can go on for months at a time. These mood swings will affect their thoughts, energy levels, social interactions, and their overall ability to function in general.
Additionally, people suffering from BPD will normally have other mental health issues as well. Unlike people who are bipolar, people with BPD tend to have undergone some form of trauma when they were a child.
Learn the 9 Symptoms of BPD
If you’re unsure if you have BPD, it’s a good idea to quickly check yourself for the nine symptoms of BPD below:
- Severe Emotional / Mood Swings Volatile moods and emotions are one of the signature signs of BPD. People with BPD can easily go from feeling happy one minute, to awful the next minute. Trivial issues that most people either ignore or don’t notice at all may cause someone with BPD to go into extreme emotional states. While these extreme swings in emotions and moods may be severe, they can also go away in only a few minutes. This is one of the differences between BPD and bipolar disorder, as with the later they tend to last longer, often times for hours.
2. The Fear of Abandonment One of the common symptoms of BPD is the constant fear of being alone. Little things like someone not arriving on time or having to stay somewhere later than expected could cause very fearful thoughts and emotions. This will often cause the patient to do anything they can to keep someone close by, they may even argue, plead, bargain and even try to force others to stay with them. This extreme level of dependency and paranoia often pushed people further away, ironically.
3. Paranoia, Suspicion and Feeling ‘Out of it.’ It’s quite common for people with BPD to deal with a high sense of suspicion of other people, whether logical or not. It’s not uncommon for them to lose touch with reality altogether. This condition, called dissociation, will generally cause feelings of being tired, confused, low on energy and generally ‘out of it’.
4. Constantly Changing Self Image People with BPD will typically have an unstable and wavering sense of how they feel about themselves. They might feel great about themselves one day, yet despise themselves the next. Often times, those suffering from BPD will not have a clear picture of exactly who they are or where they want to go in life. This will often cause people to frequently go from friend to friend, change relationships, switch religions and even change greater aspects of their personalities several times.
5. Relationship Problems Another common issue for people with BPD is their constant relationship issues, which have more ups and downs than a roller coaster. For most people with BPD, not only are their lots of intense emotions in each of their relationships, but they also tend to be short lived as well. Often times this is a repeating pattern, as the person with BPD will go from relationship to relationship, hoping that each new person will be the one to save them from themselves. People suffering with BPD tend to feel that the relationships that they are in are either great or awful, seldom feeling anything in between.
6. Constant Empty Feelings A very common complaint from people who suffer with BPD is a persistent feeling of emptiness that never seems to go away. These feelings can make a person feel like they are nothing or worthless, or that their life is pointless. This often leads people to then try to get away from these feelings by over indulging in sex, alcohol, food, drugs or other addictive behavior.
7. Self Destructive Behavior Many people with BPD engage in self destructive behavior, often just in order to “feel something”. This could include drugs and alcohol, overeating, having unprotected sex or other dangerous activities. Just like with their attempts to escape the constant empty feeling described above, self destructive behaviors are another way to get away from their negative feelings.
8. Extremely Short Temper People with BPD often struggle with severe anger issues and having a very short temper. They are often described as being “ready to blow at any minute”. This extreme anger may also be accompanied by irrationality, shouting and even violence. This anger may be directed at other people, or sometimes just at themselves.
9. Self Harm / Cutting / Suicidal Behavior All to often, people with BPD will engage in cutting, burning or other self inflicted harm. This self harm is not only quite common in relation to BPD, but it may even lead to suicidal behavior. This may include suicidal threats or attempts.
What Triggers People with BPD?
Typically, the most common triggers of borderline personality disorder are relationship triggers. When relationship issues or problems arise, these will often make someone with BPD feel severe fear, anger or feelings of abandonment. This can cause the person to engage in self harm behaviors or to close off to the world altogether.
The level at which a person will react normally has to do with the severity of the problem. The more intense the issue, the more extreme their feelings of fear, anger or abandonment will be. In more extreme circumstances this could lead to suicidal behavior.
One of the obvious signs of borderline personality disorder is that events that are emotionally charged and stressful to the individual will trigger their BPD symptoms, while these triggering events may seem like minimal, non events to anyone else. Things that are ‘no big deal’ to the average person could cause extreme or severe feelings to someone with BPD.
Online Therapy may be More Effective than In Person Counseling.
As online therapy has been rapidly growing over the past few years, there are more and more sites and platforms available than ever before. Not only is online counseling more cost effective and convenient — signs are now starting to show it being even more effective than in person treatment. (Source)
Some of the reasons why online therapy beats traditional counseling are that it is not only less expensive than in person therapy, but you can receive treatment right from the comfort of your own home. Not only that, but you can receive counseling at anytime of the day, making it much more convenient as it’s based around your schedule.
Online treatment is also much more private, as counselors are only given the information that they need. They may or may not ever see your face, and they’re located all across the country so you need never worry about bumping into your therapist while your out and about.
Not only are there all of these advantages of online counseling, but you’re still receiving treatment from only licensed professional therapists — who must all have the required educational and state licensing and several years of experience practicing bpt therapy in their local area.
Another benefit of bpd therapy online is that unlike face to face treatment which normally limits clients to 1 hour per week, many online platforms offer unlimited chat, emails and consultation with your therapist (some of these are even available 24 hours a day).
And just in case you dislike your therapist for any reason, online platforms allow you to quickly and easily change to a new therapist without any awkward interactions.
Your Best Options for Online Therapy with Borderline Personality Disorder
As I previously mentioned, there are more and more online counseling web sites springing up every day. I wanted to review only the most well known platforms that are respected by professionals in the industry.
My personal favorite of the platforms, Online Therapy has a great system for online counseling. You can instant message, video conference and live chat with your personal therapist and it’s easy to use.
You get unlimited messaging and a live one on one session weekly with any membership level, and of course all of their therapists are real licensed professionals in their area. They agreed to give my readers 20% off of your first month if you sign up through this link.
An absolute excellent choice for online therapy, Calmerry is one of the fastest growing online therapy platforms today. You can message your therapist any time of day and they also offer live, one on one video counseling to those who want it.
It’s an easy to navigate platform, offering unlimited messaging with real licensed therapists specializing in many different mental health disorders.
At Calmerry, all online therapy is carried out in a secure, HIPAA compliant platform — to keep everything 100% safe and confidential.
88% of people found Calmerry to be as effective or more effective than traditional bpd therapy. And 95% found it to be far more convenient than traditional, in person therapy.
They’ve generously offered to give all of my readers 30% off of your first month if you sign up through this link.
One of the most well known in the industry, Talkspace is a leader in online therapy and counseling. Talkspace boasts and easy to use user interface, a mobile app for any immediate help you need and all of their therapists are both licensed and background checked. They have therapists who specialize in many different conditions like depression, OCD, anxiety disorders, BPD and more.
You can typically get a couple of chat responses a day, and video chat is available if you need more help. They also have unlimited messaging on any of their plans.
Betterhelp
Betterhelp is another of the large and more well known platforms for bpd therapy online. While Betterhelp offers a great user interface, they do cost a little bit more than the above mentioned platforms.
Betterhelp’s algorithm will match you with the therapist who’s the best fit for your personal needs. While most of their users seem to be happy with their therapists, you can easy switch to a new one if you don’t like your therapist for any reason. They offer video chat, phone counseling and live chat and all of their plans feature unlimited messaging.
All of their counselors must have at least two thousand hours of experience, have been practicing locally for three years and they must hold a Master’s degree or above.
So regardless of if you decide to try Calmerry, Talkspace, Online Therapy or Betterhelp — keep in mind that it still takes time. Just like face to face counseling, online therapy is not an overnight cure. Some people even find it useful to try out more than one platform and see which one best fits their individual needs.
