The following list is by no means exhaustive but these are the main symptoms.  It is important to remember though, that to meet the DSM diagnostic criteria for bpd, one would have to experience a pervasive pattern of behaviour that includes 5 or more of the following:

• Extreme mood swings
• Impulses to harm yourself
• Fear of being abandoned
• Feeling angry or hurt a lot of the time
• Feel you can’t trust others around you
• Ongoing relationship problems
• Feeling your emotions are out of your control

• Urges to indulge in risk-taking behaviour
• Binge eating
• Suicidal thoughts
• Rigid ‘black and white’ patterns of thinking
• View others as all good or all bad
• Shaky sense of identity
• Feeling very empty or restless
• Seeing or hearing things you know aren’t really happening
  

Official DSM Diagnostic Criteria

The central feature of borderline personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, self-perception and moods.  Impulse control is markedly impaired.  Transiently, such patients may appear psychotic because of the intensity of their distortions.  Diagnostic criteria require at least 5 of the following features:

• Frantic efforts to avoid expected abandonment
• Unstable and intense interpersonal relationships
• Markedly and persistently unstable self-image
• Impulsivity in at least 2 areas that are potentially self-damaging (eg, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving)
• Recurrent suicidal behaviours or threats of self-mutilation
• Affective instability
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Inappropriate and intense anger
• Transient paranoia and dissociation

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