WHAT WE TREAT
While borderline personality disorder (BPD) is an undoubtedly complex condition, you can reduce how maladaptive it is in your life. Our holistic treatment programmes are designed to help you regain control over your emotions and restore the balance in your life.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a complex mental health condition that is the most commonly recognised of all the personality disorders. It is part of the Cluster B personality disorders, characterised by intense emotions, unstable relationships, impulsive behaviours, and a distorted sense of self. Due to this deeply-ingrained emotional regulation disorder, people with BPD often experience extreme emotional highs and lows, fear of abandonment, and difficulty managing their feelings. This affects thoughts, emotions, relationships, and self-identity, making daily life challenging.
Personality disorders like BPD occur when a person’s interpretation of themselves, the world and their relationships becomes maladaptive. That interpretation then leads the person to act out, creating patterns of pain, loss and suffering. Clinically, a personality disorder is a mental health condition characterised by long-term patterns of inflexible thoughts and behaviours that detrimentally impact a person’s life. When we speak of ‘personality’, we are referring to the patterns of behaviour, thoughts and emotions that make up the core sense of who we are.
Our personality is moulded throughout our lives, influenced by our experiences, our childhood and our biology – it is never wholly consistent. However, for someone with borderline personality disorder, that inconsistency is intensified, often leading to a distorted view of the world and their own position within it. By ‘distorted,’ we mean filled with fear, panic and insecurity. Those feelings then, in turn, often lead the individual to act in destructive ways, in an attempt to regain a sense of control over themselves and those ‘distorted’ emotions.
When someone has borderline personality disorder, they do not have this stable sense of who they are and can find it difficult to respond to reality. They will also find it difficult to differentiate their own emotions from those around them which can lead to long-term patterns of behaviour, emotions and thoughts that are rigid and unhealthy. However, that ‘rigidity’ can melt and people can find ways to manage the detrimental sides of their BPD. With a focus on increased self-awareness and creating robust coping strategies, we can help you re-find a sense of stability, safety and security within yourself.
There is no single cause of BPD. Instead, it is caused by a combination of biological, psychological, and environmental factors. These include, genetic predisposition, unstable family environment and issues with the areas of the brain responsible for emotional regulation. However, the most common cause of BPD is trauma such as abuse, absent parenting, neglect and violence in early childhood.
Through our combination of medical, psychological and personal care, we are proud to be the only personality disorders treatment facility in the world that addresses co-occurring conditions and every possible root-cause of BPD.
treatment
How we treat borderline personality disorder
We can’t tell you exactly what your four-week stay will involve because our patients have no pre-defined treatment path. Everyone who comes to stay at Paracelsus Recovery receives a bespoke treatment plan, with each day thoughtfully structured to include a range of carefully tailored therapeutic elements.
For BPD, consistency and trust are key to healing, so our approach integrates evidence-based therapies such as Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) to enhance emotional regulation, Mentalisation-Based Therapy (MBT) to improve interpersonal understanding, and trauma-informed care to address underlying causes. These therapies are designed to complement one another, ensuring that every aspect of your emotional, psychological, and physical well-being is supported in a safe and stabilising environment. See below for more details.
Our approach considers the whole person: mind, body and soul
At Paracelsus Recovery, our 360-degree treatment approach is designed to provide comprehensive and compassionate care for individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Central to our approach is intensive psychotherapy, including a live-in therapist and a specialist psychotherapist, ensuring continuous emotional support, and therapeutic intervention in moments of distress.
Given the emotional intensity and interpersonal difficulties often associated with BPD, we incorporate evidence-based therapies such as Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) to improve emotional regulation and distress tolerance, Mentalisation-Based Therapy (MBT) to enhance self-awareness and relational stability, and trauma-informed care to address past experiences that may contribute to emotional dys-regulation.
Alongside psychotherapy, we focus on rebalancing your cellular, neurological, and biological health, as factors such as gut health, inflammation, and neurotransmitter imbalances can significantly impact mood and emotional stability. When designing your bespoke treatment plan, we take various factors into account, including the severity of your BPD, your personal triggers, and whether any co-occurring mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, or PTSD, are present. Our goal is to help you develop robust coping mechanisms, build emotional resilience, and create meaningful, lasting change.
15+ team members, all dedicated to your health and well-being
Our team consists of world-renowned doctors, therapists, and specialists, including a Nobel Prize-winning board member. Given the complexity of borderline personality disorder and the need for consistent, specialised care, we ensure that a team of 15+ experts will be focused solely on your recovery throughout your stay with us.
This includes a personal psychiatrist to manage mood stabilisation and provide psychotherapeutic support, a medical doctor to monitor your overall health and neurological balance, a client relations team to support your journey, and a live-in therapist who will be available 24/7 for emotional support and therapeutic assistance. This constant, tailored attention is crucial for helping you navigate the emotional intensity and relational difficulties often associated with BPD, fostering long-term stability and healing.
Treatment programmes as unique as you are
Our borderline personality disorder treatment programmes are guided by our principles of humanistic pragmatism and curated to meet your individual needs.
We can provide treatment for personality disorders and any related conditions at our personality disorders treatment facility in Zurich.
FURTHER READING
