In general, they hold up fine if you have a sensible recoil setup... say 18-20lb Wolff variable spring and a buffer on a steel guide rod. There is no free ride, but the wearing and tearing that 10mm guns supposedly suffer is hugely overstated in my experience. If you shoot lots of jacketed ammo at maximum speed you could eventually wear the barrel out. My main concern would be the extractor, I understand that higher pressure cartridges in general are tougher on them & I know that both myself and a friend of mine had 10mm 1911's break chucks off their stock extractors. Might never be an issue, but if you are paranoid I'd throw an AFTEC extractor into the mix.
For personal defense? I can't prove it to you, but I'm a firm believer that more is better as long as you can hit with it at a speed that is acceptable to you. At some point you have to decide where the tradeoff between rate of fire and power kicks in for you and choose accordingly. If .40 S&W recoil feels like a total joke then 10mm is a logical step up. If it is borderline-disturbing then a better choice might be .45 ACP, which to me is a creampuff to shoot in a 5" 1911.
Personally, I don't go for the absolute maximum in 10mm power for self-defense ammo. A Pro Load 180gr Gold Dot at "only" 1200 ft/sec gives you the sectional density of a 230gr .45 ACP heavyweight, and the muzzle energy of a 165gr .45 ACP +P lightweight, which to me is a fine combination. The nice thing about 10mm is that if you want really heavy AND fast loads for hunting or back-up against moderately sized mean critters, the potential is there whenever you want it.
