Steps from the Green Line
Help for BPD in Boston
Here at Back Bay Mental Health, you have access to an intensive outpatient program (IOP*) with a full treatment team. With us, you’ll have access to evidence-based treatment designed to help you manage difficult emotions in healthier ways. We also offer medication management alongside skills training and mental health treatment, giving you comprehensive care you can count on.
So get in touch with our team today. We start with an evaluation to understand your borderline personality disorder (BPD) and life goals, then work to create a personalized treatment approach.
What is the Borderline Personality Disorder?
A borderline personality disorder is a mental health condition characterized by emotional instability, impulsivity, and even aggression. Living with BPD can be very challenging, as those with BPD may end up being aggressive to either themselves or others, resulting in direct harm. Getting help for your BPD is the best thing you can do for yourself and your quality of life.
Treatment is possible, and you can get a personalized treatment plan made just for you when you visit our Boston clinic.
What are the Types of Personality Disorders?
There are four types of borderline personality disorder, and each one will need its unique approach towards mental health treatment. The good news is that at Back Bay Mental Health, you’ll have access to the leading evidence-based treatments to help you manage your self-destructive behaviors, minimize self-harm, and improve your quality of life.
If you aren’t aware of which type of borderline personality disorder you have, do not worry. We can evaluate you and help you understand your personality disorder first before connecting you with which category yours falls under:
Discouraged Borderline Personality Disorder
The discouraged borderline personality disorder, sometimes known as Quiet BPD, is characterized by an intense fear of abandonment. Those with this type of BPD will take extreme actions to prevent abandonment. If you have this type of BPD, then you might adopt perfectionist tendencies and may even be high-functioning and successful, to the detriment of your own mental health.
You may also experience these BPD symptoms:
- Feel a lack of connection with others
- Feel alienated from others
- Feel detached from others
- Feel lonely or empty constantly
- Engage in self-harm or suicidal behaviors
- Emotional mood swings
- Codependency
Those with this type of personality disorder tend to be considered clingy or needy by others. You may experience wild mood swings, including anger.
Impulsive Borderline Personality Disorder
Those with impulsive borderline personality disorder may engage in impulsive behavior to dangerous or harmful degrees. You may also engage in impulsive behavior with absolutely no concern for the consequences or for how others feel.
- Aggression: Impulsive behavior can include aggressive behaviors like starting or jumping into fights, hitting things, having violent outbursts, breaking belongings, yelling, or having a fit.
- Bingeing: You may alternatively, or alongside those aggressive behaviors, take part in bingeing behavior. Binging can cause shopping, gambling, eating, and other addictions.
Self-Destructive: Those with BPD may take part in self-destructive behaviors like driving drunk, having unprotected sex, doing drugs, and so on. These behaviors would be seen as risky or dangerous to others.
Petulant Borderline Personality Disorder
If you experience extreme mood swings between anger and sadness and cannot predict the next swing, then you may have petulant borderline personality disorder.
Those with this type of borderline personality disorder may feel unloved or unworthy of what they have. Those feelings are what often spur those with petulant BPD to try to control situations or relationships. This can lead to manipulative behaviors, extreme mood swings, and aggression.
Self-Destructive Borderline Personality Disorder
Not everyone with personality disorders is aggressive toward others. Those with self-destructive borderline personality disorder, for example, turn their aggression inward. They may partake in self-harm behavior, substance abuse, or take part in adrenaline-seeking behaviors, even if they’re risky.
Those with self-destructive mental health disorders may also experience a decreased desire to sleep, manic energy, or feelings of euphoria when they engage in self-destructive behaviors.
What are the Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment Boston Options?
Personality disorders are not lifelong sentences. You can treat borderline personality disorder with these treatment options:
Psychotherapy
You will have access to highly trained psychologists and psychiatrists throughout everyone one of your treatment programs here at Back Bay Mental Health. We work with your treatment goals to help you improve relationships, help you deal with self image issues, and to give you tools to help with emotion dysregulataion. This one-on-one BPD treatment is your chance to help you understand yourself and your mental health condition.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Dialectical behavioral therapy is just one of the options for treating borderline personality disorder. DBT is designed solely as a BPD treatment. It works by breaking negative cycles. This is done by helping you accept that your emotions are valid and real. This is to help reduce stress and shame surrounding your behaviors.
The second step is to challenge why you believe or feel those behaviors are necessary to validate your emotions. The goal is to help you break away from those specific symptoms.
Dialectical behavior therapy is accomplished both individually, and also in group sessions. The goal is to help you build up your distress tolerance skills, which can help you through crisis survival events.
Transference-Focused Psychotherapy
Transference-focused psychotherapy is a unique treatment approach that works to help those with PBD identify the underlying emotional issues they have and how to address them.
It works by encouraging clients to transfer their past and present relationships with others to the therapist. The therapist then listens and pays attention to how their patient feels and behaves towards them, and interprets the meaning behind your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to help you understand yourself and and your relationships better.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
CBT works to help you break negative thought patterns so that you can better manage your emotions. The goal is to help you identify the trigger point so that you can stop the negative downward spiral into emotional pain ahead of time.
This treatment can particularly help if you also experience anxiety disorders.
Mentalization Based Therapy
Mentalization based therapy, or MBT, works by encouraging you to identify your thoughts and feelings and then consider how they could be seen differently. For example, you may think and feel a friend is pulling away because they don’t like it. MBT asks you to consider other causes, like perhaps it’s exam season and your friend is just studying.
The goal is to stress thinking through your emotions and thoughts before acting on them. This can be key in developing and maintaining stable relationships since it encourages emotional regulation.
Therapeutic Communities
Group sessions with support groups are essential for those living with BPD. It isn’t easy living with borderline personality disorder or any of the personality disorders, and having others who understand how you are feeling can help you accept your condition, your difficulty regulating emotions, and life’s challenges. Support groups also help by introducing you to new interpersonal relationships.
Family Therapy
Family therapy is often an essential component of treatment programs’ success. Childhood trauma can cause or exacerbate borderline personality disorder. Not only that, but relationship difficulties between family members can result in an increase in self-injury and risky behavior. That’s why we work with you, and also with your family members here at our treatment center.
Are You Qualified for Borderline Personality Disorder Treatment in Massachusetts?
We are always accepting new clients and are here to help everyone, from adolescents to students to older adults, find hope that they may one day learn how to manage their personality and mood disorders. We help with a variety of disorders and conditions as well, so even if you aren’t a good fit for borderline personality disorder treatment, we might be able to help in other ways. For example, you may exhibit more signs of having bipolar disorder than borderline personality disorder. In this case, the only difference is that we will treat you for your bipolar disorder at our treatment center instead.
As for whether or not you qualify specifically for BPD treatment, know we look at these specific symptoms:
- Rapid mood swings, often triggered by minor events
- Fear of abandonment, leading to clingy or even manipulative behaviors
- Unstable interpersonal relationships
- Extreme feelings, like a lack of identity or an intense sense of emptiness
- Extreme anger towards yourself or others.
You will likely exhibit these behavioral symptoms as well:
- Impulsive, risky, and/or aggressive behavior
- Self-harming thoughts or actions
- Suicidal thoughts or actions
- Paranoia
- Dissociation
Why Choose an Intensive Outpatient Program* to Treat Your BPD?
Flexible Treatment Options
We are located right practically at your front door, making it easy to get to your sessions whether you are at school or home. You’ll find us well-connected to those in Boston, Massachusetts (MA). We are also fully flexible. This way, you can work in your treatments around school, internships, work, and even personal outings. You can even start treatment with us after an inpatient period. We are a fully licensed outpatient facility, meaning we can continue the work you’ve already done toward managing your personality disorder.
Access to Licensed Professionals
All of our clinical psychiatrists and psychologists are fully licensed. They only use the latest evidence-based treatments for your personality disorder.
Community Support
Your group sessions will help you connect with those who understand mental illness and where you can then share life hacks. The goal is to build on the power of social connection to help you lead a fulfilling life beyond your personality disorder.
No Waiting Times
As a private clinic, we can offer treatment ASAP. You don’t need to wait for months on a waiting list to get the treatment you need to help with your emotional dysregulation. Instead, contact our team and book your appointment today.
Get in Touch with Our Team at Back Bay Mental Health Today
Learn more about your condition and how to manage its symptoms with your very own personalized BPD treatment plan. Our team will be here for you every step of the way, so get in touch to start your journey today.