Borderline Personality Disorder in A thin line between love and hate

At this point is when she exhibits borderline personality disorder. She exhibits this kind of behavior in many ways. First of all, she starts stalking Darnell, refusing to let go of him. At another instance is when she goes to the extent of removing all the tyres from Darnell’s SUV so as to prevent him from going anywhere. At some point she resorts to violence and destroys Darnell’s night club and also shatters his windshield out of frustration over being left by Darnell (Lawrence, 1996). That is why she was so intent on punishing Darnell. Such people are also associated with threats, suicidal tendencies, self-mutilation and so forth as per the DSM V. In the movie it was apparent that Brandi had such a behavior, threats in particular since at some point she threatened Mia forcing Darnell to end his relationship with her.

In addition, the manual goes on to add that these people may even partake the role of an avenger of their perceived mistreatment in the past. This means that they will go after the person who abandoned them and try to punish them. Therefore, when an event triggers their emotions they will feel the emotions intensely and for a long time. It is usually hard for them to return to the emotional baseline they were in before the event triggered the outburst. The consequence of this are activities like threats, suicidal tendencies, difficulties in relationships and even self-harm. The prevalence of this disorder is as follows. First of all, the median population prevalence for this disorder is approximately 1. They may blame the other person for not caring in these circumstances.

In other situations where a person has broken off relations with them for justifiable reasons, they may even seek to harm the person who rejected them as a way of avenging themselves. The next criterion is unstable relations with others that alternate from idealization to devaluation. This is to say that this minute they may think they love someone a lot then in the next minute they hate the person. Hence, they may express a lot of love and attachment to people close to them but when something minor happens they immediately shift to the other extreme and even hate their family and friends. One factor is genetics. No specific gene or gene profile has been identified for this but studies involving twins have shown that this disorder could be hereditary.

Moreover, research indicates that the disorder is five times more common among people who have a first degree relative with the disorder. Another cause is environmental factors. When a person goes through physical abuse, sexual abuse or any other form of psychological trauma in their childhood have a higher tendency of developing the disorder (Gunderson & Ridolfi, 2001). Psychotherapy is the cornerstone of BPD treatment as it addresses the emotional issues associated with the disorder. The principle of this treatment is to learn to cope with the emotional disturbance and develop acceptance. The types of psychotherapy available are several. One is dialect behavioral therapy where one is taught how to cope and learn to regulate their emotions and to relate better with others.