How I Experience BPD ( Whether I Deserve A Badge of Honour).
CW: This is not psychological advice. This is just a first person narrative. Mentions of self-harm and suicide.
Being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder has suddenly pushed me into a pool of déjà vu. Such a major diagnosis often overwhelms people. It took a toll on me as well. I was scared. I cried for days. And I wondered what sin of mine punished me into this lifetime of hell. I asked my parents if they would abandon me too. And slowly as I learnt about the disorder all my actions started making sense for me.
I come from a family with an intense history of mental illnesses. And if your immediate family do not support you, there is only so much that others will be willing to do. In between my relapse and subsequent diagnosis I saw a few important people depart from my life. I begged one person to stay because I was scared beyond life to go through the whole process alone. Too many years of bottling up trauma has left me terrified to go through life alone.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is particularly identified by extreme emotional dysregulation. I am often surprised by how easily I get overwhelmed by the slightest of trigger. I do not have a handle on how I might react to a certain incident. Sorrow, anger, irritation and frustration are my best buddies. Something as simple as a taunt activates something painful inside. I never seem to forget that incident or forgive that person. I do not understand moderation, so any emotional expression is extremely intense and painful. When I cry and I cry very often, it pains, physically, as if my soul is pulled out of my body and is being crushed by an iron hand. I do not know how to shield myself from this pain.
What causes this you might ask. There’s both nature and nurture aspects to this. The relationship with primary caregivers determine a major portion of how a child develops personality traits. Not feeling assured and secure within the home leaves a child with unstable emotions and a fluctuating sense of identity. Instances of abuse are no good as well. Sexual abuse on top of everything just acts as the cherry on the path to developing a cluster B disorder. It was as early as 10 years into my life that I was subjected to some vile touches by an evil evil man with my parents being hardly 10 meters away. I do not know till this day how I should have acted that day to save myself.
My best friends from childhood aren’t humans but nightmares and an intense fear of the dark. Abuse, torture, manipulation and cheating in more than one relationship kept on adding to the deep terror inside me. I lost my control over my mood. I cannot be certain if at any given point I will be cheerful. At this stage it does not even have to be a specific trigger to push me into a low. My prized friend depression comes armed with all its weaponry. Insomnia and too much sleep attack together. Its confusing to say the least. I cannot seem to get any sleep without sleep medication on some days and on other days I can sleep 24 hours without interruption without ingesting any sedatives.
Fear of abandonment and an all consuming sense of emptiness come naturally with BPD. Once I develop an attachment it is impossible for me to see a life without/beyond that relationship. I cannot believe the depths to which I have gone to save a relationship because I cannot bear the pain of separation. This is particularly in the case of Favourite Person (FP) relationships. For a person with BPD their FP is someone they are emotionally dependant upon. The FP dictates their mood, self-worth, identity and so much more for a borderline. While positive actions from FPs can obviously uplift the mood, provide safety and warmth; a slight change in their actions can cause extreme emotions of dysphoria and despair. Its always a slippery slope. I seek constant reassurance and validation from the FP because I have grown in an environment which disregarded words of affirmation. For me, I am always searching for a partner and a home. A functional, emotionally expressive home to break away from the patterns I grew up in.
Impulsive actions is what most people understand BPD as. Emotional dysregulation, extreme pain and crushing loneliness is often too much to take care of by a single person. I have lived in a perpetual state of emotional exhaustion for more than three years now. And when the pain in the mind gets more than one can bear physical pain seems to be the only release. By banging my head against the wall, pulling my hair or slitting my wrist I am not only providing a release to the inner turmoil I am also causing a distraction for myself. At times it becomes a desperate cry for help, to be seen and heard by by people close to me, to be held and affirmed and to be told that things will eventually be okay. Trust me it is never an act to threaten anyone, because we do not harbour evil intentions. We just seek a release for our pain and if we could we would have really loved to show the intensity of our pain which makes our bodies shrink and all reason crumble. I have once slit my wrists very deep and stared at it nonchalantly until my head felt dizzy from all the loss of blood. Those five/ ten minutes of peace were priceless because for once my brain wasn’t obsessing over my emotions. Physical pain can be very insignificant in front of living in a constant state of fear, emptiness and indecision.
Borderlines live on the extremes — it is either black or white for us, no in-between. And we split. Splitting is when we see a person as either completely good or completely bad. Its when our brains refuse to see an individual as a complete whole. It is essentially a cognitive distortion but for the moment it becomes the entire reality for a person who is splitting. It might be momentary or might last longer but it is again an extremely draining experience. I remember I once split because my then FP did not introduce me to their colleagues. In a moment of self doubt, extreme confusion about how to feel and similar experiences in the past, I split on my FP. While I wanted them to come and console me I was also extremely disappointed at them. Needless to say things didn’t end well.
BPD is so much more than these few symptoms. Yes, living with someone who is borderline is tough. Living with someone who has all the aforementioned symptoms but isn’t diagnosed yet is even tougher. But no, we aren’t subjecting you to violence because we want to release all our repressed anger on you. We simply do not possess the emotional skills to react in a “socially acceptable” manner in certain instances. We go to extremes to protect ourselves from being hurt — black and white thinking, verbal aggression, hostility or borderline rage. These aren’t intentional or malicious attempts at manipulation but are reactions to symptoms we suffer from. This is not a justification because such a pattern can very well affect the mental health of the other person involved. But this is an explanation. And explanation is not justification. Asking for a few considerations because we have certain triggers associated with certain things do not mean we are imposing our trauma on you or asking you to be our caretakers. But a disorder of this intensity means that we will always need some extra help. We will always need some humane empathy and compassion not emotional distancing and careless taunts. While our attachment style is insecure we are also one of the strongest lovers out there. Yes, people often do not possess the bandwidth to have a partnership with a borderline. People might want to detach themselves from a borderline because of the toll it takes on their mental health. Fair. Absolutely fair. But what isn’t fair is invalidating us, comparing your experiences to ours and underplaying us, deciding if anything should be a “trigger” for us at all, and most of all making us feel as if we are “choosing” to act in the ways we do and hence and can “choose” to stop. My personal favourites are “Everybody goes through what you are going through”, “Its not such a big deal, learn to deal with it, everybody does” and “Its not only you with a illness, everyone has one”. Who takes care of the breakdown and episodes that follow these invalidation? Who takes the blame for them? Its rarely the one who says these things because they are simply being the objective and rational one, right?
Abandonment is like throwing us into a deep dark pit with no means of climbing up. But if you do have to, abandon with respect, not by doubting our diagnosis and certainly not by telling us that we are sharing our experiences to gain social media clout. Medication and therapy are exhausting. Narrating and breaking apart one’s life again and again to gain a single insight or to learn a skill is the most painful exercise that there is but the ones who have access and the means go through it with hope of a better day. Some of us share our experiences on social media platforms with the hope of finding a community. And its a personality disorder for God’s sake, WE DEFINITELY DIDN’T CHOOSE THIS LIFE. I didn’t choose the sword of disassociation and sensory overload that hang upon my head at all times. I didn’t choose the feelings of depersonalization and derealization that pull me down on a weekly basis. This is without the co-occurring disorders that we get on a discount sale with BPD; for me these are major depression, anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I definitely did not lie through my diagnosis. I am not seeking pity. I am still debating what fault of mine brought this disorder upon me but I am trying, trying my best to pick myself up. And I am doing this without anyone holding my hand or without anyone for a reassuring hug. But explaining this to every new person I meet is painful. Hence this informative insight into some parts of my mind. This blog is the result of a week long episode and multiple breakdowns. Treat it with love.
