Video Description

This video answers the question” What is the “trail of destruction” that we see associated with borderline personality disorder. Some time ago, I made a video on narcissistic personality disorder and the trail of destruction associated with that and I had a number of requests to specifically look at borderline personality disorder in the same way. When I use the term “trail destruction,” I'm really talking about the negative outcomes in terms of functioning, interpersonal relationships, career, financial, and physical health that we see associated with certain disorders, including Cluster B personality disorders. The trail of destruction isn't unique to borderline personality disorder or personality disorders in general. We see this with substance use disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, intermittent explosive disorder, paranoid personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. There are also a number of other disorders that have this same type of pattern. This term - trail destruction - is a colloquial term we see in the popular culture and we don't really see it in the research literature. There are a lot of different terms that are similar that we also see used in the popular culture like borderline chaos, borderline tornado, borderline radioactivity, destructive whirlwind, and borderline toxicity.