Borderline Personality Features and Self-Injurious Urges: The Roles of Self-Concept Clarity and Bedtime Self-Critical Rumination

ABSTRACT

Low self-concept clarity is associated with self-injurious urges among persons with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Self-critical rumination may potentially exacerbate these associations. Yet empirical research on how self-critical rumination and self-concept clarity interact is scarce. We examined near-term associations between bedtime self-critical rumination, self-concept clarity, and self-injurious urges among adolescents who met at least 3 diagnostic criteria for BPD (N = 22; 63.6% girls/women; M_age = 16.45). Participants were sent five daily mobile surveys for 20 days (1691 total assessments completed). Bedtime self-critical rumination moderated concurrent associations between self-concept clarity and self-harm wishes, but not suicide desires. Lower self-concept clarity was associated with elevated self-harm wishes only among participants with moderate to high bedtime self-critical rumination. Findings provide a preliminary step toward understanding the link between self-concept clarity and self-injurious urges.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-concept clarity
• self-criticism
• suicide
• borderline personality disorder
• non-suicidal self-injury

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. EMA assessment period (i.e., pre vs. post-intervention) is included as a covariate in our models. No differences in self-injurious urges were found in the present sample pre- to post-intervention.

2. These items were drawn from Dr. Lori N. Scott’s laboratory protocol (publication forthcoming).

3. One participant withdrew from the study after the first EMA. Thus, 2150 possible assessments were used to calculate the compliance rate.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Western University’s Strategic Support for CIHR Success Seed Grant [R6039A02].