We often confess to reacting in an overwhelmed way, shouting in anger, uncontrollable crying and impulsive behaviours. This affects our daily routine, work, relationships, and mental health. Emotions are a way of expressing our feelings strongly and help us to respond to the world. Emotions are a vital part of the mental health of individual growth. When it is not regulated properly, failure to respond to it or overflowing of emotion leads to emotional dysregulation (Gross, 2015). Emotional dysregulation means a person who cannot handle or regulates his own emotions.
A person with personality disorders has seen high emotional instability and intensity. Here, we should understand that emotional dysfunction is a core mechanism of personality disorder, particularly borderline personality disorder (Crowell, Beauchaine, and Linehan,2009)
Emotional Dysfunction or Dysregulation
Emotional dysfunction or emotional dysregulation is a condition in which a person has difficulty managing and expressing emotions. It involves an inability to fix emotional stability, emotional numbness, and slow coping strategies. It starts from the early childhood stage and carries through the adolescent stage, and it involves neurological and developmental reasons. Signs of emotional dysregulation:
- Aggressive behaviors
- Verbal outbursts like shouting and screaming
- Uncontrollable crying
- Frequent temper outbursts
- Difficulty in calming down
- Trouble keeping relationships or social connections
- Irritability or anger
- Mood swings
- Often frustrated
- Feeling detached
- Emotional numbness
- Shutting down when overwhelmed.
Emotional dysregulation cause for many mental health conditions of anxiety disorder, traumas, disruptive mood disorder, personality disorder obsessive compulsive disorder, ADHD, autism, past trauma, mood fluctuations, spectrum disorder, and personality disorders. Among these, a personality disorder is a major reason for the emotional dysfunction (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
Read More: What to do when you are feeling overwhelmed
Personality disorder and emotional dysregulation
People with personality disorders have maladaptive patterns of thoughts, feeling a behavior that lead to chronic disturbance in interpersonal and occupational functioning. People with personality disorders often have difficulty maintaining meaningful relationships and are socially unavailable. It interprets interpersonal events in highly distorted ways and may be chronically vulnerable to depression and anxiety (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). For example, the film “Fatal Attraction” portrays a woman with extreme emotional instability, dramatic gestures of suicide, and extreme mood swings.
Borderline personality is strongly associated with emotional dysfunction. Borderline personality disorder is severe instability in mood, intense emotional expression, and overwhelming distress (Linehan, 1993/2015). People with borderline personality disorder fear that abandonment or isolating themselves will lead to mood swings and extreme distress. Even small emotions can also trigger extreme emotional expression. This impulsiveness led to self-harm and suicidal risk s(Oldham,n.d). The factors, including biological emotional vulnerabilities, traumatic experiences and invalidating environments, are reasons for emotional dysregulation.
Read More: It’s Important to Understand the Complexities of Borderline Personality Disorder
Characterisation of Borderline Personality Disorder:
- Dramatic mood swings
- Fear of abandonment
- Identity crisis
- Extreme emotional pain
Self-harm and suicidal risk:
Extreme state emotional instability leads to the risk of self-harm and suicide. Research shows that an estimated 8-10% of people with borderline personality disorder died by suicide. 69-80% of people engage in self- harm (Oldham, 2006; Homan, Sim, Fargo, & Twohig, 2017; American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Linehan’s Theory of Borderline Personality Disorder
According to Linehan’s Biosocial model, it explains why emotional dysregulation happens in borderline personality disorder. Emotional dysregulation arises from the interplay between biological factors and environmental influences (Linehan, 1993/2015).
Biological Emotional Vulnerability traits
A person who is born with high emotional sensitivity, strong emotional reactivity, and slow return to emotional baseline. The emotional response is very high and intense. It takes a longer time to calm down. Impulsivity is also another biological trait associated with emotional dysregulation. People with behavioural control, delayed gratification, and the ability to manage frustration are cautiously struggling, and increase the vulnerability.
Invalidating environments
A person who experiences emotional instability caused by being ignored, criticised, punished, mocked, minimised, and misunderstood. In some cases, invalidation may occur through trauma, abuse, and neglect from parents. They constantly have questions like,” Are my feelings valid or not?” “How can I hide this feeling?” “I am ashamed of having this feel”. Even the individual does not validate their emotions. Especially children severely have this emotional dysregulation from childhood. It also continues into adulthood. The recovery time and healing take a long time.
Multi-component model of emotional dysregulation
By birth, people with borderline personality disorder are theorised to be sensitive to emotional stimuli, and experiencing a negatively valenced stimulus in the environment leads to an increase in maladaptive and impulsive regulation strategies.
- Emotional sensitivity: From biological components, emotional sensitivity, and heightened emotional reactivity to environmental stimuli, including emotions of others, it is closely associated with anger, fear, and sadness. It is associated with negative emotions.
- Negative effect: An individual with BPD appears to experience more negative affect than an individual without BPD.
- Inadequate emotion Regulation strategies: The negative effects lead to defects in appropriate emotion regulation strategies. Emotionally sensitive children experience inadequate emotional regulation.
- Maladaptive regulation strategies: Negative effects tend to lead to maladaptive behaviour. It is also linked with cognitive strategies. People always choose avoidance, suicidal, and self-harm.
How emotional Dysregulation shapes personality disorders
Emotional dysregulation is a major issue in personality disorders. It severely effects the everyday life.
1. Identity crisis/ instability
People with personality disorders have difficulty finding their identity. People with mood fluctuation cannot be stable and consistent in their sense of self. Which becomes challenging. People with this personal disorder cannot maintain a stable self-image. Frequently, they get confused about themselves, unable to hold personal aloes and beliefs, shifting goals and opinions. Emotionally disconnected self and expression.
For example: Depersonalization character, A person who has a condition like rapidly changing their clothing style, career and belief system within a short span, seems like identity instability. But the person with OCPD has a high degree of rigidity in the sense of self.
2. Impulsiveness
The extreme emotions are also integrated with dysregulation, which can cause for impulsive behaviours. Impulsivity in borderline personality disorder is rapid and unplanned action. They seek immediate validation and discount delayed rewards. These actions give temporary relief from emotional stress and pain, but it causes big issues in routine life.
3. Relationship and social instability
An individual with borderline personality disorder constantly faces struggles between idealisation and devaluation of relationships. Moreover, unstable relationships, frequent conflict, and rapid shifts between intimacy and withdrawal are major causes of chaotic relationships. As with BDP, a person struggles with social isolation, unstable social connections, and aggressive behaviour towards social structure.
4. Cognitive Distortion
BPD also has intense effects on cognitive and developmental processes. Assuming negative intention, black and white thinking, catastrophizing, and overgeneralization lead to emotional instability and ongoing interpersonal conflicts.
5. Poor Resilience
People who have borderline personality disorder show the lowest resilience levels. They have hesitation seeking help and not even addressing their emotions. The person with BDP has random suicidal thoughts and self-harming. Therapies would help with coping mechanisms:
- Dialectical behavioural therapy
- Cognitive behavioural therapy
- Free association and psychodynamic approaches
- Trauma-informed therapy
These therapies help to regulate emotional stability and recover from the disorder. This process is slow, but an individual can lead emotional stable life.
Conclusion: Caption of one’s own ship
Emotional dysregulation is crucially addressable in personality disorders. Personality disorder tends not only to be highly distressed but to act on it. Emotionally signific experience helps to life of people’s mental well-being. It helps to create a successful career, relationship, and social status. Emotional dysregulation destroys this goodness. In personality disorders, especially borderline personality disorders, a major reason for emotional dysfunction. By validating our emotions, we learn to regulate emotions and build healthy relationships through a therapeutic approach. It helps to build emotional stable personality trait. Be a captain of one’s own ship.
References +
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Publishing.
Beauchaine, T. P., & Cicchetti, D. (2019). Emotion dysregulation and emerging psychopathology: A transdiagnostic, transdisciplinary perspective. Development and Psychopathology, 31(3), 799–804. Cambridge University Press.
Crowell, S. E., Beauchaine, T. P., & Linehan, M. M. (2009). A biosocial developmental model of borderline personality: Elaborating and extending Linehan’s theory. Psychological Bulletin, 135(3), 495–510.
Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26.
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioural treatment of borderline personality disorder, Guilford Press.
Oldham, J. M. (Year). Borderline personality disorder and suicidality. In Psychiatry (or journal/book title).
Sebastian, A., & Herpertz, S. C. (2019). Emotion dysregulation in personality disorders: Recent findings and future directions [Abstract]. Current Opinion in Psychology, 21, 18–22
Smith, J. (2025, November 13). Emotional dysregulation. Healthline.
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