Guest Post – Borderline Personality Disorder and Me

I’m very pleased to be hosting this guest post from Sarah and hope it helps to raise some awareness around Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD.

“BPD – Borderline Personality Disorder, also sometimes known as EUPD – Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder.

I’m not sure which name I like better, borderline just makes me think they have no idea what’s going on while emotionally unstable makes me think I can’t control my emotions.. OK that’s true at times.

I was young when my brain started doing strange things, so young I don’t remember it being any other way.

I remember at a very young age laying in my bedroom crying as I thought my parents bought me something to make me think they wouldn’t get rid of me – HELLO ABANDONMENT ISSUES!

I remember in primary school thinking the others implanted things in my head so they could know what I was thinking. I remember running the bath taps, so I couldn’t be heard crying, while my brain wondered why am I me? Why this brain, why this body.

Looking back, I was dissociating.
However, I never told a soul. As those abandonment issues, well they made me think that if I told people they would leave me.

If the people who conceived me didn’t want me, the people who were meant to love you unconditionally, why would someone else? Especially when I was broken.

Of course, now I realise that love was there. That’s why I was put up for adoption. However, a child’s brain doesn’t understand that.

It wasn’t until my teens people realised something was awfully wrong with me.

We had moved, I’d lost that support system, the people at school to the mickey out of the way I spoke and dressed, instead of being a smiling welcoming force.

I lost myself even more, trying to fit in.

I remember a Scottish girl moving to our class, she was placed with the same group of people I was. People would giggle if I was off as she would ask where I was.

Looking back, she got the same treatment as I did, they giggled at the way she spoke, she retaliated telling them first to stop and later, giving them a slight kick under the table. In the end her Mum moved her schools.

Unlike me who kept it all inside, didn’t tell a soul and instead tried to reinvent myself, change my accent, no longer wear those clothes.

In year 9 things came to a head, I came down with the flu and tonsillitis a combination which lasted from October until the following Summer when I had a tonsillectomy. In this time, I was started on anti-depressants and had begun to self-harm.

However, I returned to school for the first part of year 10.

I have never coped with winter, it is my worst time of year and by the January I was frequently trying to take my own life.

An act that should have worked on more than one occasion, but by some miracle didn’t.

My original psychologist told my parents not to worry about these attempts, I was obviously getting better, or I wouldn’t bother trying to take my own life.

The hospitals psychologist felt different a third opinion was sought and I was placed in an adolescent mental health unit where I spent the next year.

I don’t think anyone ever worked out if it helped me, it perhaps saved me as I was unable to continue with attempts on my life. However, being around others who were having mental health issues made me worse in some ways.

It wasn’t until I was 18 I had my diagnosis confirmed to me. Perhaps as BPD is a one they don’t like making, it is controversial, and I don’t think doctors like dealing with it. Perhaps as it isn’t easy to treat.

There is no pill you can give someone to ease the symptoms. Though they can be given for co-existing issues, for me I take them for my depression and anxiety.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Mentalisation-Based Therapy (MBT) are the most commonly offered therapies for anyone suffering with BPD.

However, personally I’ve never found any type of therapy to work, bar art therapy where I could work out my feelings into a creative outlet. I don’t do talking.

I guess for me I’ve learnt to live with my BPD, yes have up days and down days. Yes, sometimes I feel like I’m well someone else, who is somewhere else.

However, I try and talk to myself and my partner, we talk it through, we distract, we survive.

I often think I will never stop some form of self-harm, I will always have some sort of destructive behaviour inside me and I will always fear loss and abandonment. 

My emotions have a mind of their own and if people around me are feeling negatively I often will too. 

Sometimes I zone off into my own place and feel as if the world is passing by without me. Yes, all those BPD factors are still there, better controlled, better understood, not quite as in your face, but still there.

But that’s just me now, BPD has in many ways shaped me into who I am, helped me in some ways become stronger, helped me look at life in different ways.

Of course, I wish I didn’t have to deal with it. But as a disorder I will live with for the rest of my life, I can only try and make it easier on myself and those I love.

And hopefully help those who fear those with BPD due to the media realise, we are human, we just want to be loved, but our emotions aren’t quite wired the way they should be, and we have a very prominent self-destruct button.

We are more likely to harm ourselves, than anyone else.

So please be our friend, laugh with us and hold us when we cry. We need support and understanding, not popping into a box.”

Author Bio: 

Sarah is the creator behind Life In A Breakdown, UK Bloggers and Simply Saving and one half of the duo behind UK Lifestyle Hub.  She suffers from a number of chronic health conditions and is often found cuddled up on the sofa with a movie and her pets. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram too!

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