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A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affect, as well as marked impulsivity.   

People with borderline personality disorder are unstable in several areas, including interpersonal relationships, behavior, mood, and self-image.  Abrupt and extreme mood changes, stormy interpersonal relationships, and unstable and fluctuating self-image.

Unpredictable and self-destructive actions characterize the person with borderline personality disorder.  These individuals generally have great difficulty with their own sense of identity. They often experience the world in extremes, viewing others as either "all good" or "all bad."   A person with borderline personality may form an intense personal attachment with someone only to quickly dissolve it over a perceived slight.

Fears of abandonment may lead to an excessive dependency on others. Self-mutilation or recurrent suicidal gestures may be used to get attention or manipulate others. Impulsive actions, chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness, and bouts of intense inappropriate anger are other traits of this disorder, which is more common among females.

Onset is early adulthood.

Some of the typical signs are:

• frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
• a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating extremes of idealization and devaluation
• identity disturbance.
• unstable self-image
• impulsive, irresponsible behaviors
• recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures or threats
• self-mutilating behaviors
• affective instability (episodes of intense dysphoria, irritability, anxiety)
• chronic feelings of emptiness
• inappropriate intense anger
• difficulty controlling anger
• transient stress-related paranoid ideation
• severe dissociative symptoms