Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) affects more than 14.7 million adult Americans at some point in their life. And yet, not a lot of people know about it. People are well aware of OCD, PTSD, and bipolar disorder, but when you bring up BPD, there are clueless faces. This lack of awareness makes it difficult for treatment and recovery, feeling like you're alone in this world with millions of emotions spouting out of your ears. But CBD oil can make drastic changes in your brain chemistry that can help people with BPD gain control over their feelings.

What Does It Feel Like To Have Borderline Personality Disorder?

Imagine you have been given the task to take your bosses four-year-old daughter on the train to go to an amusement park. You’re sitting on the train, playing with your phone, and you receive the best news. You are in for the promotion; your boss is just seeing how you will handle the thing he holds most dear, his daughter.

On the train, it gets a little bumpy, but you’ve ridden in these before. The little girl beside you is playing with the ruffles on her new dress that probably cost more than your month’s salary. And for a moment, you take your eyes off of her. Just a moment, and she’s gone.

At first, it’s no big deal. You look around and assume she wandered off as any child would, but you can’t find her. Your mind begins to race thinking, where could she be? Your heart is running, the space in your stomach is empty but heavy at the same time. Your chest is so tight it’s difficult to breathe. Did someone take her? Did she get lost? Is she okay? Does this mean I don’t get that promotion? The excitement from the promotion made the drop to desperation a lot harder to take.

Every bad though you can have starts filling your mind to the point you are overwhelmed. The only thing you can do is look to someone beside you with wide eyes and manage to spit out, “I lost her.”

That gut-wrenching panic is no stranger to someone with BPD. That feeling you get before you almost rear end a car in front of you? They can feel that feeling because they lost their keys or their phone. This isn’t just with negative emotions, people with BPD will be happier than anyone you’ve ever met. But that drop is what makes the low feelings even worse. Their superpower is to feel emotions greater than anyone in the world, but it is also a curse that drives some people to suicide.

What Exactly Is BPD?

Borderline Personality Disorder is an illness where the individual experiences extreme mood swings throughout short periods of time. They can go through stages of sheer rage, wilting depression, chronic anxiety, and mania all within the same day. Sounds exhausting because it is.

But why do they feel this way? Can they just not handle situations? It’s not that simple. When you get angry or sad, your brain has chemicals going around in your brain, so you feel that feeling. Soon, the parts of your brain creating that response calm down. Easy peasy. With BPD, it’s a different story.

BPD And The Amygdala

Amygdala is more than just a fun word to say. (Go ahead, do it a couple of times, it really is fun.) The amygdala is part of the brain that is affected by Borderline. For those with this illness, their amygdala is smaller. It being smaller, in turn, makes it more active. What does this mean? Anxiety for days.

The amygdala is in charge of your fear responses. Fear is good; it’s how you don’t get eating by bears in the woods or hit by a car in Time Square. Unnecessary constant fear is when chronic anxiety comes in. The feeling that something terrible is going to happen always looming over your head and paranoia begins to set in. This makes people irrational, agitated, irritable, and anxious.

All The Right Grey Matter In All The Wrong Places

Another issue found in the brains of people with Borderline Personality Disorder is grey matter deficiencies and overabundances. In the fear hub of the brain, they found that there was an excess of grey matter. The regulator in the front of the brain was lacking in grey matter as well as being underactive.

What Does BPD Look Like?

You can’t always have an MRI machine connected to someone, but wouldn’t it be cool if that was readily available? But you can see specific behavioral changes in yourself or those around you. When it comes to BPD, it’s more than just emotions that are on a crazy rollercoaster. They tend to have fluctuations that affect all aspects of their life. If you notice these changes in yourself or someone you love, you should consider therapy and medication. Luckily, medicine doesn’t have to mean prescription pills; it can mean CBD oil.

What are symptoms

Anxiety

Many people with BPD have chronic anxiety, which is when you are anxious for long periods of time; sometimes for no reason. Something as small as leaving a text message on “read” can send someone with chronic anxiety into a downward spiral. These episodes of anxiety can get in the way of their entire lives, making fear be the reason they never turn the next corner.

Depression

When people with BPD are sad, they are devastated; but this isn’t depression. People with BPD might find that there are moments where nothing matters, nothing is exciting, nothing looks good to eat, and no one is worth being around. This can cause a decline in their work, relationships, and home life. Many people with BPD also are associated with risky behaviors. Being impulsive mixed with depression is one reason 70% of people with BPD have attempted to take their life at least once.

Taking Risks

People with Borderline Personality Disorder have an issue with being impulsive. Often they will fall into drugs, abusive relationships, or just living a reckless lifestyle. This type of behavior can also lead to self-harm or suicide.

Poor Self Image

Many people who suffer from BPD have a difficult time “finding themselves” because of their poor self-esteem. They are often plagued with the fear and paranoia that they aren’t good enough. This can look like changing styles in extreme ways like an outrageous new haircut or outfit. Continually trying to find ways to improve how they look so they feel better about themselves.

People with weak self-esteem also have a hard time in social situations, especially when you pair it with paranoia. People with BPD are naturally perceptive and intuitive. Unfortunately, they are also usually filled with paranoia. They may notice the slightest change in someone’s facial expressions which will alert them that the conversation is absolutely without a doubt going downhill. These types of social anxieties do more harm than good, making impulsively try to save their social status but ending up embarrassing themselves.

Unable To Hold Relationships

With low self-esteem, anger issues, superiority complexes, depression, and anxiety, it can be difficult for people with BPD to hold meaningful relationships. They can often sabotage their relationships and victimize themselves, so they don’t feel guilty afterward. People who get close to people with BPD can experience violent tantrums that they never knew possible.

Extremely Sensitive

It can be difficult not to get upset when your emotions are always at full speed. It doesn’t even have to be a big deal for someone with BPD for their feelings to get the best of them. Someone could get their order wrong at a restaurant, and it may result in tears or a violent outbreak. These extreme reactions seem rational at the time, but usually, extreme humiliation follows after they have calmed down.

Feeling Negative Emotions For Long Periods Of Time

When someone with Borderline Personality Disorder gets angry or sad, their emotions take longer to fizzle out than the average person. These feelings aren’t just a passing phase for many people with this disorder; they turn into full-fledged episodes. These episodes can last from hours to even days.

Can It Be Treated?

Yes! Through behavioral therapy, anyone with Borderline Personality Disorder can learn how to handle their intense emotions and go about their days just like everyone else. However, going through the treatment isn’t going to fix your problems right away.

Considering how dangerous it is to be depressed, many people use medication while they are going through therapy. This makes it easier because their brains aren’t always yelling at them all of the time. The episodes are far and few in between while being less severe. But not everyone wants to take pharmaceuticals that can make their symptoms worse, which is why they are switching to CBD instead.

How Can CBD Help?

Cannabidiol has been praised for its ability to work as an antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication. It’s able to do this because of its relationship with the Endocannabinoid System (ECS). The ECS is in charge of your body’s regulation. When you get sick, your ECS is what makes the magic happen to give you a fever.

The Endocannabinoid System controls the neurological system through CB1 receptors. CB1 receptors are of the two types of cannabinoids found in the body. The other receptors are CB2 receptors, and they are known to regulate your immune system. These receptors are located on our cells and are stimulated when they bind to endocannabinoids.

Endocannabinoids are chemicals that the brain makes to mediate the transfer of information between neurons. When your sending neuron, or presynaptic cell, has information like, “We need to be angry,” it uses a little electrical pulse to send out chemicals to the receiving neuron, or postsynaptic cell. Sometimes, the brain gets a bit too excited, and that presynaptic cell could send too much information to the postsynaptic cell causing an all out rage.

Endocannabinoids are sent out from the postsynaptic cell to the presynaptic cell with its own message. It tells the sending neuron what is needed and makes sure that the presynaptic cell doesn’t send too much information.

The process where endocannabinoids travel backward towards the presynaptic cell is called retrograde signaling. This process is how CBD oil helps with anxiety. When your brain is overactive, the CBD can help calm it down. This reduces stress, paranoia, impulsivity, irritability, and drastic mood swings.

But wait, there’s more! Didn’t we just mention depression?

Though we know of depression as a chemical imbalance, CBD has that part covered. Brains with depression have problems producing serotonin, which CBD can help elevate. It has also been discovered that those with depression have more cytokine proteins than those who don’t. These proteins can cause inflammation, which can lead to depression. Researchers have found that CBD can reduce the inflammation.

If you or a loved one have Borderline Personality Disorder, the first thing you should do is seek professional help. It is a serious illness that can be fatal if not taken care of. The road to recovery isn’t easy, it never is. But by using the tools like medication and a healthy support system, you can do anything. CBD oil isn’t the quick fix, but it can change the way your brain reacts to the world around you. Stop by our shop today to put the sunshine back in your life.