Emotional Instability Disorder: Symptoms And Treatment

There are various symptoms or warning signs that you may be suffering from this disorder. Although presenting one or more of them at some point in life does not necessarily indicate that you suffer from this type of disorder. The characteristics of emotional instability disorder are:

• Low tolerance to frustration.
• Constant mood swings for no apparent reason.
• Difficulty not transferring the emotional state from one situation to another: for example, not being able to separate emotions in the workplace.
• High emotional dependence and low self-esteem.
• Anxiety and feelings of insecurity.
• Dichotomous and polarized thinking.
• Frequent feelings of frustration and sadness.
• Little consistency in all areas: relationships, work, studies…
• Impulsiveness.
• Feelings of emptiness.
• Addictions: to drugs, sex, gambling….
• Intense and aggressive emotional reactions.

Within the emotional instability disorder we can distinguish two typologies based on its basis and symptoms.

Impulsive emotional instability disorder

This subtype of emotional instability disorder is characterized by the inability to control impulses and a lot of emotional instability. There’s a lot explosions of violence and threats, especially in the face of criticism from third parties. In this article we explain what impulsivity is in psychology.

Borderline-type emotional instability personality disorder

There is high emotional instability and self-image, goals and preferences (including sexual ones) are often confused or altered. In addition, they tend to have intense and unstable relationships so they can have repeated emotional crises and making suicidal threats and self-harm. This subtype is where we would find borderline personality disorder or borderline personality disorder (BPD). If you want to analyze if you present these symptoms, you can take the borderline personality disorder test.

This type of emotional instability disorder, the borderline type, in turn, has four subtypes:

• Type I- Psychotic side: It is characterized by inappropriate and maladaptive behavior, there are problems when interpreting reality and making sense of identity and, in addition, there is negative behavior and anger.
• Type II- Core of borderline personality syndrome: There is generalized negative affectivity and involvement with others is unstable. There is high aggressiveness and one’s identity is not conscious.
• Type III – Group “as if”: there is a tendency to imitate the identity of others, anaffectivity (i.e. polyamorous relationships), a slightly more adaptive behavior than in the other types and the relationships are lacking in spontaneity and authenticity.
• Type IV – Neurotic Thief: There are episodes of anxiety, anaclitic depression (depression in the first year of life of the person with the disorder) and there are characteristics related to narcissism and neuroticism.

Depending on which of the two subtypes you have, the treatment of emotional instability disorder would have a different approach, although in some aspects it may be similar.

With the purpose of treat impulsivity self-instruction and problem-solving techniques will be worked on.

• The self-instruction technique It consists of training the subject to be able to give instructions to himself in order to be able to control impulses completely autonomously.
• Regarding problem solving techniques The person would be taught to develop action plans to solve the different problems in their life and they would be taught to divide them into parts in order to better address them.

In some cases it could be done exposure with response prevention that is, with the supervision of a professional, confront the person with the situations that trigger their impulses, controlling that the subject does not react to said situation.

In addition, different types of emotional instability disorder can be used for this subtype of emotional instability disorder. drugs such as antidepressants, neuroleptics, lithium and antiepileptics.

In the second subtype the dialectical behavioral therapy. This therapy has different components.

• First of all, we will work on motivation of the person for change through goal setting.
• In addition, we work on discomfort tolerance self-awareness and staying in the present moment by performing mindfulness exercises.
• Another module would integrate emotional control exercises and the last module would work on the person’s social skills so that they learn to interact appropriately with others.
• Throughout the therapy the self-esteem of the person and the impulse control through the detection of the moments or situations that trigger such impulses.

In this article you will find more information about Marsha Linehan’s dialectical-behavioral therapy.

As for the Pharmacotherapy It is common to use antipsychotics and anticonvulsants and, in many cases, antidepressants are used.

In either case, the improvement process is long so you have to be patient. Although, little by little, the person’s quality of life can improve through the help of the relevant professionals.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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