Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
What Are The Symptoms:
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You feel very worried about people abandoning you, and would do anything to stop that happening.
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You have very intense emotions that last from a few hours to a few days and can change quickly (for example, from feeling very happy and confident to suddenly feeling low and sad).
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You don't have a strong sense of who you are, and it can change significantly depending on who you're with.
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You find it very hard to make and keep stable relationships.
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You feel empty a lot of the time.
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You act impulsively and do things that could harm you (such as binge eating, using drugs or driving dangerously).
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You often self-harm or have suicidal feelings.
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You have very intense feelings of anger, which are really difficult to control.
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When very stressed, you may also experience paranoia or dissociation.
For reference and further information visit:
The World In My Head
So, what’s it like to live with BPD? Well, it’s hard; that goes without saying. It’s tumultuous, unstable, unpredictable, and impulsive – it presents a false reality, or a mixed up one. It can be dark and lonely; vacant; empty, even when everything else seems full. Its very nature is hard to pinpoint and thus, near impossible to navigate.
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BPD feels uncertain – in fact, the only thing certain about BPD is its uncertainty. BPD is fragility in emotions, behaviours, relationships – a fracture in your self-image. It cumulates a great instability that finds you rocketing back and forth between emptiness and empty fulfilment, a roller-coaster of anger and sadness and hyper-euphoria, and an extreme love and hate for the people you know (seemingly with little to no reason at all). It is not surprising that BPD is also known as “Emotional Unstable Personality Disorder” – I cannot begin to express the unshaken instability it brings; it is heart-wrenching, exhausting and debilitating.
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The best way I can describe it is to ask you to imagine you have run a marathon; 25 miles of hard-work and endurance. Your limbs are aching, your head is throbbing, and your lungs feel like they’re collapsing. You haven’t trained for this and you can feel the side effects of it everywhere in your body. You finish the race but the judges won’t let you stop, giving you no time to catch your breath and rest before they tell you to start running again. This is my experience with living with BPD; a life with no emotional breaks, constantly exhausted and out-of-breath, my body and mind aching from the uphill battle.
If I look back to my childhood self, this is not the place I thought I’d be. I have always struggled with my mental health; from as young as six, I battled anxiety and depression, much like my parents did and so many other people my age. However, I always thought I would “grow out of it”. Still, when I look in the mirror, the reflection is still jagged and splintered, and I do not have a clear picture of who I am. Though, I do still hope to grow out of the distortion, instability and mental exhaustion one day, or for it to get better enough that I can truly focus on the people and things I love. I know I won’t feel and be this way forever, but the truth is that it’ll get worse before it gets better. But I’m prepared to fight; this is something I must work to overcome.
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I hope to help others who are going through a similar experience; you are a fighter; a warrior; you are a flower that is not done blooming. I know you’ll get through this. It is cheesy but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This is one step in the step ladder of life; it may be a steep one, but it is still a step.
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BPD is part of me but it does not have to be me.
Where Can You Find Support:
