TV can teach a lot. It’s a screen into our mentality. The way we feel seen and drawn to certain characters? What does it tell us about us?
Movies can be surprisingly helpful in recognizing symptoms of various mental health conditions like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Since BPD is such a complex condition, let’s explore its symptoms across the TV.
The characters discussed in this article do not have confirmed BPD and cannot be used as diagnostic tools. The article has exclusively educational and entertaining aims. If you experience psychological distress, please refer to a mental health specialist.
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Main Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a complex mental health condition that primarily affects how a person experiences emotions, relationships, and their sense of self. BPD begins in early adulthood, but starts to develop in childhood.
While borderline symptoms can look different from person to person, there are some features that define the condition. A free online test can give you insight into whether your experiences meet the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5. It requires five out of nine symptoms to be present:
Desperate efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment.
Unstable relationships with other people tied to cycles of idealization and devaluation.
Absent or constantly changing self-image.
Impulsivity in two areas can be threatening.
Suicidal or self-harming behavior or thoughts.
Mood swings: switching between very intense emotions in short periods of time.
Chronic feelings of emptiness.
Inappropriate, dangerous, or hard-to-control feelings of anger.
Dissociative symptoms.
It’s important to note that having some of these traits does not automatically mean someone has BPD. Also, if you recognize yourself in these signs, but they don’t disrupt your life, there’s likely nothing to worry about.
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9 BPD Symptoms—9 Characters
1. Avoiding Abandonment: Joe Goldberg from You (2018–2025)
One of the core symptoms of borderline personality disorder is frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. It means that a person is panically scared of being abandoned because they don’t like to be alone or simply pushed away.
Joe Goldberg has an obsessive fear of being left alone. Because of being locked in a cage as a child, he learned a lesson that loneliness equals danger. Hence, he tries to secure closeness at any cost in current relationships, even if it takes murder.
Wanting to preserve relationships is not a crime. There is a logic behind it:
Abandonment feels like a catastrophe: If you’re alone, you’re dead.
Loss feels like a personal failure: You didn’t keep them.
Control becomes a way to regulate fear.
It doesn’t justify stalking, surveillance, or multiple murders. In real life, this symptom may show up as clinging, constant reassurance-seeking, or staying in unhealthy relationships simply to avoid being alone.
2. Idealization and Devaluation of Others: Cindy from Blue Valentine (2010)
BPD relationships swing between emotional extremes: idealization (“you are perfect, you saved me”) and devaluation (“you ruined everything, you never loved me”). This happens due to emotional and neurological dysregulation.
Cindy’s relationship arc in Blue Valentine captures this painful dynamic. Early on, she finds her partner flawless. But not for long. Because soon, Cindy’s partner becomes the source of resentment, anger, and disappointment.
Although it may look like manipulation, BPD brains cannot simply digest mixed emotions. You love me = I adore you. You hurt me = I don’t want to ever see you again.
3. Unstable Self-Image: Nina Sayers from Black Swan (2010)
Unstable self-image as a symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder means that a person doesn’t know who they are. They don’t have values, dreams, or aspirations, or unmasking skills. They adapt their personality to each person they meet.
Nina’s character in Black Swan has this inner fragmentation related to an unstable self-image. Her identity isn’t her own. She depends on public and external validation. If she pleased the audience, she’s nice and successful. If not, she’s a bad person and deserves to suffer (in her head).
With more pressure, her sense of self begins to fracture even more. She shifts between identities, values, and emotional states, unsure which version is authentic.
Familiar? Here’s how else an unstable self-image can show up:
Rapid changes in goals or values.
Feeling empty or undefined without “being assigned” a role.
Defining oneself through relationships or achievements.
4. Life-Threatening Impulsivity: Cassie Howard from Euphoria (2019—)
Impulsivity in borderline personality disorder isn’t episodic spontaneity. It can involve high-risk, self-damaging behaviors that temporarily relieve emotional pain but create long-term consequences.
Cassie’s storyline in Euphoria isn’t “crazily” dangerous. But her intense need for love and validation makes her make bad decisions in relationships. She stayed with McKay, who made her have an unwanted abortion, and chose to stay with Nate, although he’s very toxic and manipulative. And she knows about Nate being a bad person from her friendship with Maddie.
It’s not thrill-seeking in the traditional sense. Impulsivity as a BPD symptom is all about trying to stop unbearable feelings as quickly as possible.
5. Self-Harm and Suicidal Thoughts: Hannah Baker from 13 Reasons Why (2017—2020)
Self-threatening thoughts and actions are a derivative of a previous symptom. It’s also an unhealthy way to cope with psychological distress.
Although Hannah Baker’s character is highly controversial, she still teaches us a few important lessons. She’s a testimony to how isolation can lead someone to feel trapped in unbearable pain.
In BPD, self-harm may serve different internal purposes:
Regulating intense emotions.
Turning emotional pain into physical sensation.
Communicating distress when it’s impossible to do so through words.
It’s crucial to approach this symptom with compassion. People experiencing it are not weak or dramatic. They need support and someone to make them feel normal, not “dramatic.”
6. Mood Swings: Carmen Berzatto from The Bear (2022—)
Affective instability, described as rapid and intense mood swings, is a hallmark symptom of borderline personality disorder. These shifts are usually triggered by interpersonal stress. They can happen within hours rather than days.
Carmy is a very reactive character. He moves quickly between anxiety, irritability, shame, determination, and emotional shutdown. For people who have never experienced mood swings, it’s hard to understand them. But they are natural responses to pressure, expectations, and unresolved trauma.
Mood instability in BPD may feel like it’s impossible to just calm down. Individuals with BPD also hear comments about being irrational or reacting too much.
7. Chronic Emptiness: BoJack Horseman from BoJack Horseman (2014—2020)
BoJack embodies the experience of having no meaning or identity throughout the series. Despite fame, success, and relationships, nothing seems to fill the internal void. Here’s why BoJack experienced such a deep hollowness:
He didn’t have parents who would care for him or love him unconditionally.
He used drugs and alcohol to get momentary relief, but it only worsened his depression.
He grew up in a household/world where only external validation was important. If you didn’t achieve anything, you’re a loser.
He pushes people who want good for him away because he’s unfamiliar with love.
Hollowness makes people with BPD desperate for emotions, no matter whether good or bad. It’s the reason for impulsivity, complicated relationships, and questionable habits.
8. Dangerous Anger: Terence Fletcher from Whiplash (2014)
Anger as a symptom of BPD feels sudden and all-consuming. Anything can trigger intense fierceness, but something personal, like feeling criticized or disrespected, is the most common trigger.
Terence Fletcher is a fictional composer who demanded perfection from his students, using emotional and physical abuse to “teach” them. His explosive and destructive anger, when paired with rigid thinking and emotional dysregulation, is a response to perceived loss of control and deep insecurity.
People with BPD who have similar anger tendencies can rarely control it and feel extremely resentful after anger attacks. After taking out their rage on someone, they can feel ashamed and redirect the anger inside them.
9. Dissociative Symptoms: Susanna Kaysen from Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Under extreme stress, people with borderline personality disorder may experience transient dissociation or paranoid ideation. It’s a type of dissociation that feels like being disconnected from reality. Time feels distorted, and the person doesn’t remember much from dissociative periods.
Susanna’s experience is actually a vivid illustration of dissociation as a protective mechanism, a psychological escape when emotions become too overwhelming to process consciously. It’s not a choice or manipulation.
Dissociative symptoms in BPD can include:
Feeling detached from one’s body or emotions.
Spacing out during emotional conversations.
Temporary confusion about identity or reality.
https://www.netflix.com/de-en/title/60000428
Conclusion
Seeing borderline personality disorder symptoms mirrored in fictional characters can be validating and even relieving, especially if you’ve felt alone in these experiences. If parts of these stories felt familiar, it doesn’t mean something is “wrong” with you. With the right support, people with BPD or BPD-like symptoms can build stable relationships and develop a stronger sense of identity.
