Social Effects of BPD
Borderline Personality patients use many defense mechanisms to protect their self image and the images of the people surrounding them. These mechanisms greatly impact their social lives.
One of these mechanisms is splitting. This is where the BPD patient categorizes people as good or bad. They do this to protect memories of themselves and also to keep people who they feel make them unstable away.
Another behavior is projective identification where the BPD patient accuses people of not caring or being uninterested in how they feelsy and then uses the person's reaction to these accusations to confirm the uncaring, uninterested behavior.
Idealization is a behavior welcomed by those dealing with a BPD patient because the patient is able to overlook the inability of the person they idealize to meet their needs.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is devaluation. The BPD patient places this label on people they do not trust and whom they feel cannot meet all their needs.
Possibly the strongest defense mechanism used by BPD patients
is denial. They subconsciously deny events they know happened in order to
protect their self image and the images they have of people around them.