I've never really talked about BPD with anyone, besides my therapists, some friends with the personality disorder and my boyfriend, who is incredibly supportive and adamant in making me feel secure about it. Writing about it here has caused me anxiety and worry, because I already know how people perceive those with BPD. It's one of the most stigmatised illnesses, with medical professionals shunning us on a regular basis and refusing to provide support, ultimately leading to a high suicide rate.
Borderline Personality Disorder – BPD – is a personality disorder characterised by instability in multiple aspects of one’s self. It's far more traumatic and debilitating than the limited description you might have heard elsewhere, which almost always focuses on features such as suppoedly manipulative intentions and fleeting emotions. BPD is recklessness, impulsiveness, black-and-white thinking, chronic numbness, failed relationships, fear of abandonment, splitting, a lack of identity, frequent suicide attempts, frequent self harm and ultimately the most intense emotions overriding any sense within you.
As a child, my instability was always put down to other mental illnesses, bullying and weakness. I was ‘too sensitive’, too young and too emotionally invested in the world and my own feelings. People still fail to understand BPD as the catastrophic disorder it is. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know of my own needs and I never have a conclusive idea of what I'm feeling in regards to myself or others. Every emotion is a punch in the face. Everything is transient, coming and going in flashes. I'm never sure of myself.
I don’t think I’m capable of recognising 'true' feelings from those of BPD. I can’t tell if I truly like someone, platonically or otherwise. It’s almost always within a black-or-white spectrum for people I interact with regularly; family, friends, fellow students. Splitting, being the correct term, is a chronic hell. I will either love you or hate you. If you’re a stranger or someone I have no genuine connection with, I will not care for you at all. I don’t care for your safety, well being or anything of the sort. I'm incapable of shifting my feelings at will, but can split on someone at the drop of a pin. The most minor, irrelevant detail can set me off. I feel immune to my feelings. Sometimes, I feel as if every friendship of mine is meaningless, given how often I split on people. The love and hatred are simultaneously genuine, yet nonsensical. People assume I'm fickle, once they notice the splitting. That isn't the case. People with BPD love wholly and infinitely. It’s in our very nature to feel the extremes of love and hate, which paints us as shifty. Every emotion I feel and express is genuine, including the love. If I love you, I will love you wholly and with all of my heart. The sudden hatred typically stems from our fear of abandonment. Paranoia and fear of abandonment make me question other people's love for me on a regular basis, which has led to the death of almost every friendship I've ever had. My fear of abandonment is based on a heightened sense of anxiety and paranoia; every interaction is questionable, everything is a cause for concern. Once I'm fixated on someone, the prospect of them leaving me becomes all too real within a split second, and my will to live crumbles.
I find it difficult to remember particular feelings because I've been emotionally unavailable for so long now. My default setting is that of absolute numbness and emptiness, and feelings intervene sporadically but with a vehement violence. I am stuck in a haze of dissociation, another aspect of BPD that is tumultuous and sporadic in nature. I shut down emotionally now more than ever, simply because my sense of life has become entirely stilted. Emotional numbness accompanied by disassociation and depersonalisation play a big part in BPD, and destroys relationships as well. People feel that numbness, in its vague and vapid nature, is difficult to deal with, much like chronic depression. Any connection I've had has consistently ended on a bad note, due to my impulsiveness, rapidly alternating feelings,frequent splitting and ongoing numbness. People deem me to be far too explosive and haphazard, or entirely disinterested.
Being in a relationship with someone like myself, someone afflicted with an unstable personality, is not an easy feat. It is entirely possible for some, I can assume. For myself, however, trials and tribulations beat me down to the point of deciding to die alone. I really, truly gave up on the prospect of ever finding someone who could love me for who I am, BPD and all. I finally found that someone, which shocked me, and I'd constantly be expecting disaster to strike and destroy what was being made. That hasn't happened, but I still fear it could. Despite these fears manifesting, I know that loving someone with BPD is not improbable. Being in a relationship with someone with BPD is not impossible. I've learnt that now, and it took years for the realisation to come into effect. The memories of old, failed relationships continue to haunt me.
Imagine depression and anxiety. Imagine the constant inner turmoil and pain. Imagine your happiest moments, your loudest laugh. Everything is exacerbated with BPD. Every feeling is heightened and multiplied and aggravated. Every conceivable feeling I ever experienced in my relationships inevitably lead to the downfall of them, and the accompanying break-ups, because everything was too extreme in my mind. Thinking about previous relationships takes me back to such painful memories. The eons of depression and hypomania, suicide attempts and self-harm ruined me. I stayed with them even though things were constantly at a breaking point, ridden with toxicity, I begged to stay with them, ridding myself of dignity in exchange for company, all because I couldn’t imagine living without them. These words feel so foreign now because I feel nothing towards them. It’s as if they never existed. But back then, I couldn’t let them abandon me, or take everything I put so much effort and emotion into away from me. It felt like armed robbery, for me to be with someone and for them to break it off when things didn’t seem to be working out. In hindsight, it would have saved me a lot of emotional pain if we had broken up much earlier on. Those months were a waste of my life, as I searched for a sense of worth in someone else. Someone who didn’t truly understand me and my disordered personality. Someone who was no longer emotionally invested in me as I was for them. They told me multiple times that I played the victim card and that I was manipulative, when I'd be in deep distress at the prospect of a break up. I openly expressed my suicidal ideations, which were not with manipulative intentions but of a genuine, urgent need to die.
Attempting to kill yourself or threatening to do so when someone tries to leave you is emotionally abusive in its most basic nature, but I didn’t realise this. A lot of people with BPD do not realise this. The sheer panic and anger is genuine, because it feels like a life-or-death situation, but there is no malicious intention in the process. This is difficult for an outsider to see.
These people were abusive in the most blatant sense, yet I was gaslighted time again and again. Still, I experienced intense grief with the ending of the relationship. They had crossed an imaginary limit that I then accepted as the end, and it felt as if a part of me had died. I should have known from the beginning that an unstable person such as them would never be compatible with an unstable person such as myself, but I ignored the blatant signs in exchange for temporary love, attention and bullshit. There's always this need for validation and attention that can never quite be fulfilled, and I tricked myself into thinking it was being fulfilled in the most treacherous connections. Cue the impulsiveness and reckless behaviour.
Things are somewhat different now. I am emotionally clueless with the few select friendships I have, as I split on people frequently. My friendships are tumultuous and haphazard and my relationship with my family is also rocky, constantly on the brink of burying itself under the rubble of conflicting feelings.
I've become aware of these aspects of myself, though. I would never be able to identify these traits within myself before. Since attending Dialectal Behavioural Therapy for over a year, I'm able to identify so much within myself and attempt to put the fire out, before it ravages everything in its path. Trying to halt the trajectory of such intense emotions is no easy feat though, and I constantly end up back at the square one.
Despite the hellish nature of life, I've recognised some people who genuinely do care for my well being and existence, and I've consistently been on the path of bettering myself, for the sake of our connections. If it's a connection that is genuinely worth investing my time and effort into, that's made obvious by my repeated references to communicating effectively. Communication is key. If you explain BPD and its effects on you to your significant other and figure out how to deal with individual feelings, your emotions will be so much clearer to decipher. Making better choices for yourself and others will be easier. Talking about misunderstandings, misinterpreted feelings and behaviours will ensure there is an open understanding between you and your significant other.
Often, simple reassurance helps immensely. It feels like a chore to ask for it but seeking and receiving reassurance and validation for my feelings has helped lessen the intensity of hard-hitting emotions greatly. My mind works in extremes, after all, so I tend to misread situations often, which makes the resulting array of emotions incredibly conflicting to deal with. Simple reassurance has allowed me to calm down almost instantly. I've been lucky enough to have a partner who is wholly committed to supporting me, despite my illnesses, and being able to communicate effectively with each other has saved us from what could have been awful scenarios so many times. This is the one relationship where both parties have consistently sought out realistic conversations in order to defuse tension created by me splitting or experiencing intense emotions. I sometimes still feel so starstruck that someone cares for me this much, as it's genuinely such a foreign feeling. From what I've explained about my illnesses, especially BPD, to my partner, he's always taken it upon himself to support me wholeheartedly during my highest highs, lowest lows and the numbest inbetweens. It's fucking surreal.
Dating someone with BPD means you might be dealing with someone who self-harms, is reckless with sex and food and driving, has an indefinite sense of self, attempts suicide, abuses substances, has gone through childhood trauma, and more. There's an underlying sense of wanting to destroy myself on a regular basis, because I base my self-wroth on the success or failures with other people. There are aspects of my own experiences I haven’t written about here, because they branch out into their own disorders/ issues. Everything interlinks. The thoughts and emotions of a single day can extend endlessly, and these anecdotal points barely skim the surface of several years with this disorder.
I just wish people were willing to understand the sheer tenacity I possess, for surviving with this blighting disease. It tears me the fuck apart, more so than it could ever do to someone else. The stigma of BPD functioning exclusively as manipulation and rage has been so damaging, and has destroyed the prospect of people seeking help. I want things to change. I want people to be willing to listen to us, and not brand us as liars or attention-seekers.
Living with BPD is hellfire in itself, but with the right support, it's possible to survive. I often lose hope in this pain ending, but having the right people around with an understanding of BPD makes my life bearable.
Zack