So yes, the title says “Dean Winchester Has BPD”. I guess this is a headcanon of mine that he has Borderline Personality Disorder, but I realized he has a great many symptoms of it. I know there are many posts out there trying to figure out what mental illnesses the Winchester’s have: PTSD, CPTSD, depression, and for Dean, anger issues. But I don’t think he actually exhibits anger issues, and instead his anger seems to be more a symptom of BPD, but I’ll get into that.
According the DSM-5, there are 9 criteria for BPD that can be broken down into different domains.
Domain A. Excessive, unstable, and poorly regulated emotional responses
1. Affective (emotional) instability including intense, episodic emotional anguish, irritability, and anxiety/panic attacks
Dean is an emotional character, sure. Most characters are or else we won’t be seeing a lot happen on-screen, however, there are many times where his emotions could be described as explosive or where his emotions are heightened and intense. There are multiple scenes of him breaking things, throwing things, yelling, screaming, punching, and not all in anger, just due to heightened emotional distress. I’ve also seen it mentioned that in one episode in season 13 it seemed as if he was having a panic attack. And if he’s not having an intense emotion he can also be pretty irritable, or quick to set off. Of course, he’s not always like that, but that leads into another symptom.
2. Anger that is inappropriate, intense and difficult to control
Anger. Oh boy, does Dean have a lot of it. He lets it out at people who are undeserving, during moments that are inappropriate and where a more productive conversation should be taking place. His anger leads him to lash out, and hurt those around him, and has led to lots of violent behavior. It’s uncontrollable for him, and it’s part of his heightened emotions that he feels.
3. Chronic feelings of emptiness
This one is a little harder to pinpoint, but I think we see it in Dean’s compartmentalization when he’s hunting. He doesn’t feel anything during parts of the job, he can’t, or else he’ll break down, and it’ll get him hurt or killed. But I think it’s leaked into other parts of his life too, and it shows more in his behaviors. Chronic feelings of emptiness prompt many maladaptive behaviors that Dean has. It can also be said that Famine telling Dean he’s already dead inside in 5x14 “My Bloody Valentine” was a direct quote about Dean’s emptiness. When someone does feel empty, or numb, or nothing, it really does feel like you’re dead.
Domain B. Impulsive behaviors that are harmful to you or to others.
4. Self-damaging acts such as excessive spending, unsafe and inappropriate sexual conduct, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating
Well, let’s see what we’ve got on that list for Dean: substance abuse, and I can argue unsafe and inappropriate sexual conduct. He’s not the Dean he was in earlier seasons where he hit on anything that moved and always jumped into bed with everyone, but Dean used sex a lot always under the argument that it was fun, but we know Dean is a very hurt, emotionally intense person and that it was more than that. And as far as his eating goes, I wouldn’t say he binge eats, but when something’s going wrong in his life, he turns to lots of unhealthy food. It’s common for the show to make it clear that Dean’s upset, or unfeeling, by giving us shots of too many empty beer bottles, and excessive food wrappers and/or pizza boxes.
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-injurious behavior such as cutting or hitting yourself. Also, you may engage in other impulsive behaviors such as actions that are harmful and destructive to yourself, others or property
I think if the show had a more adult rating we’d see the boys self-harm on-screen as they do have a lot of signs pointing to the fact that they would engage in that kind of behavior outside of the kind of ritualistic stuff they do to summon the occasional demon or minor god. But Dean is pretty consistently suicidal, no question. He oftentimes comes up with plans to sacrifice himself, but not to become the hero, simply because he’s tired of it all, as he’s once told Sam. Back in season 7 he had a plan for suicide involving both him and Sam. So Dean’s suicidal, without a doubt. As for other impulsive behaviors that are harmful and destructive to others or property, well, how many times has Dean stated that he needs to kill something, or how many motel rooms has he destroyed? It’s a common theme for Dean to engage in suicidal and destructive behavior.
Domain C. Inaccurate perceptions of yourself and others, and high levels of suspiciousness.
6. A markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of yourself (your perceptions of yourself, your identity)
Dean based his identity off of John. We’ve been shown that time and time again, even in season 13 with how he was treating Jack, we were meant to think of John. He dresses like him, he only listens to his music, he seems to mimic his gruff way of speaking, and his values (looking after Sam first, saving people second) come completely from John. There is no stable self-image for Dean. He can’t figure out if he’s meant to be Sam’s older brother, his father, his mother, meant to be a hunter, meant to be a dad to Jack, someone who’s part of a family, what that means, if he’s violent, if he’s caring, if he’s allowed to be a nerd like Sam says he is, if he’s a little weird. He just doesn’t know.
7. Suspiciousness of others thoughts about you, and even paranoid ideation, or transient and stress related dissociative episodes during which you feel that you or your surroundings appear unreal.
Since I’m not in Dean’s head, I can’t say if he experiences this symptom, and if anything, Sam’s the one who seems to experience dissociative episodes. But Dean’s usually highly suspicious of others, including good things in his life, even though he does so with good reason. Still, that’s not cause to say he experiences this because he doesn’t seem to usually think those close to him are plotting against him.
However, he does exhibit a few more in this domain…
Other symptoms in this Domain include split- or “all-or-nothing” thinking, difficulty “pulling” your thoughts together so they make sense, and rational problem solving, especially in social conflicts.
Dean usually has a “with me or against me” way of thinking. If you’re not all in with him you’re his enemy, or someone who’s just going to get in the way. He consistently has a black and white thinking about morals and who the bad guys are that he has to get rid of. Sam’s shown that he has room for a gray area, and he’s tried to show Dean that gray area time and time again, but Dean rationalizes it all into black and white, or “all-or-nothing”. As for rational problem solving in regards to social conflicts, as recently as season 14 we saw how greatly Dean struggles with that. The situation with Jack? Pinned it all on Castiel and proclaimed, “You’re dead to me,” instead of rationally going through the entire situation and figuring out the true heart of the conflict. The conflict between him and Castiel was a communication issue, and the bigger issue was Jack, of course, and the blame for that falls on a lot of people, but Dean exhibited his issues with that, and he often has issues with social conflicts like that.
Domain D. Finally, you may experience tumultuous and very unstable relationships.
8. You may engage in frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
Oh, if this isn’t Dean. Right from 1x06 “Skin” when the shapeshifter pretending to be Dean was used to give the audience a mirror of Dean’s own vulnerability said, “…sooner or later, everybody’s gonna leave me,” we’ve seen him trying so hard to hang on to what he has, even to the point of violating his brother’s consent (9x01 “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here”). He constantly makes the decision that hurts him or someone else in order to keep his family together, in order to avoid being alone, and Sam hit that nail right on the head in season 9. Dean doesn’t want to be alone, and is afraid of being abandoned.
9. Your relationships may be very intense, unstable, and alternate between the extremes of over idealizing and undervaluing people who are important to you.
All of Dean’s relationships are intense: with Sam, Castiel, even Mary, and John, and he has oftentimes over-idealized both his parents and put them on a pedestal, and the later seasons have been about tearing that pedestal down for Dean. At times he’s undervalued Castiel, which has made Castiel undervalue himself, and even without any of that the relationships are intense. They’re “ride or die” kind of relationships, or ones where they’ll die together, or they’ll die for each other, or do the worst things to and for each other and call it love. Dean’s been beaten by Castiel, and he’s beaten Castiel, he has abusive tendencies towards Sam, Sam’s punched him a few times, they often go off at each other, but they end up back together as a family. Dean’s relationships are not calm, and healthy, and there are often periods where they won’t talk to each other or they claim to hate each other. They’re intense, and unstable.
You may also recognize that you have overly dependent and clinging behavior in important relationships.
This describes Dean with Sam 100%. Oftentimes their relationship is described as co-dependent, but where we’ve been shown that Sam can let go and be with Dean to a healthy degree, Dean can’t. He is dependent on his brother and needs him for that stability that he lacks from himself. Dean is dependent to the point of harming Sam and being detrimental to Sam’s own health and life.
Now, me pointing out all these things about Dean is not me saying Dean is bad, and it’s not me saying people with this illness are bad. I have this illness. There are treatments for it, but in the world Dean is in he can’t receive treatment, so it is likely these behaviors, ways of thinking, and heightened emotions will continue. This is an explanation for a lot of behavior I’ve seen people pass off as Dean having anger issues, or just saying he’s unhealthy, but I think it can all fit into one category. Even with this, I still think there’s a lot to love about Dean.
And at the end of the day, he’s a fictional character. He can’t be hurt by our interpretations of him, but if you feel like you relate to him because of these actions no one can tell you you’re wrong for that. Emotions are valid, but any negative actions that are harming you or others are not. If you do relate to this post, and to Dean in this way, and think you might have BPD, or if you do have BPD and are going untreated, seek help. DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) is specifically structured to treat BPD, so take care of yourselves, and I hope you enjoyed this insight into Dean Winchester.
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