Archive for 2020

I think it's completely reasonable at this point to assume everyone's 2020 has been utter horse shit, a write off, a flusher of a year. But for me 2020 has been the most challenging, heart-breaking and life changing year yet - and I'm hoping ever. But I haven't written on here in a long time and I think I owe myself a round up of everything that's happened and to also remind myself that despite all the shit I've been through this year, I'm still here and standing and that is something I should be proud of myself for.

Despite my january relapse, my mental health slowly started improving at the start of the year, I got myself a new job I was due to start soon and had started a relationship with a man from nottingham where I frequently visited him, me and my friends had our usual messy night outs and it seemed like this year would be the same as the rest of them. Until of course March, and the first covid lockdown was announced. At the time I was at my boyfriends and unsure what to do for the lockdown, and after only two months of dating we made the decision for me to move in temporarily.

I then started my new job at a nottingham branch, as a residential childcare worker in a childrens home, and I fell in love with it. I loved my job, every incident of name calling, banter with the kids, talking with the other staff, driving around, it kept me going. And then I relapsed, and again.

I'm fairly used to the highs and lows of bpd by now, but this year was something else, one minute i'd be on cloud nine, and the next it would all come crashing down around me, and I'd be back in handcuffs, by the riverside with my boyfriend crying on the phone to my crying family telling them I'd once again tried to end my life, and this cycle continued until September, where I was finally admitted to a psychiatric unit as an informal patient - I luckily escaped a section - and my boyfriend called our relationship to an end.

So much in my life changed this year, I moved cities, I started a new very quickly very serious relationship, I started a new job and my life I had gotten into a safe routine of crumbled and everything was new, a life of masks and fear and social distancing and for the first time in 22 years I was away from my family and making new routines of my own in a new home with a new man. So it's hardly surprising when all these changes started to take a noticeable toll on my mental health and how I dealt with it, and the topic of an autism diagnosis was brought up for the first time since I was 15 when it was first questioned and never resolved, so I finally plucked up the courage and spoke to my doctor about a referral and I'm now awaiting a formal diagnosis. This year has brought out the worst in me, I've had to adapt in ways I didn't think I'd ever have to and deal with things I'd never dealt with before.

And on the 16th July, we lost my beloved grandad Brian. A man that I will miss and think about forever, truly the most wonderful and gentlemanly man I have and will ever meet. Even when you know the death of a loved one is not far off, and we'd known for a long time this was coming, it never gets easier, that long awaited and dreaded phone call comes and they're just gone. Forever. It really really sucks. And I know I'm far from the only person to have lost loved one this year, and to those of you who also have my heart and love goes out to you, it is awful and something nobody wants.

So there I was, heart broken and at my lowest, sat inside a psychiatric ward for the first time being a patient and not a member of staff. It was only two weeks of an admission, but it was one of the worst times of my life. When they told me after a week that they wanted to discharge me a week later with no changes to my meds or care, I was terrified, but then the day before my discharge my doctor pulled me to one side and told me I'd be moving to a supported living unit called Beacon Lodge in nottingham where I would live with 24/7 staff support for 8 weeks. I thought it was just to get me back on my feet, but eventually when I moved to beacon I was told the plan for me was to help me get onto the nottingham council house list and get my own home and start my own life down here with the help of my CPN's and mental health team. This didn't go quite to plan as 11 weeks later I was still living at beacon and still no luck on the council list. but by week 11 I was told I had a flat, but it wouldn't be ready until february and since I couldn't stay at beacon lodge and start my new job (I was dismissed by my old job and had to find something new) I had to move..

and now it's December, and I'm currently living in a homeless shelter. Which sounds pretty dramatic, but it's okay. It's my own self-contained flat, and sure it smells of weed and it's noisy and it was scary at first but it's a roof over my head with a brighter future of my own flat and a new job to look forward to.

So that's where I'm currently at. It's been the longest, winding road of shit storm of a year, but we've made it. I honestly thought this was the year I'd be gone, the year I'd finally do it, and all I can say is, I'm so glad I didn't and I finally got onto the road of help I need. I have two CPNs, regular appointments with a psychiatrist and plans to start therapy in the new year. Life still isn't perfect, I'm pretty lonely down here with no family and friends and a tier 4 to restrict me seeing them anyway, but the future seems a hell of a lot brighter than it did a few months ago, and even thought it's a small improvement, I will gladly take it with both hands.

I know this year has been tough, on everyone. And if you got to end of this post and you've also had a shitty year, just know that you are not alone. Your feelings are valid and please please talk to someone if you are struggling. I know all too well what it feels like to want the world to just stop and keep that bottled up inside, please let it out.

I really genuinely hope 2021 is better. I have to believe it will be or boy are we in trouble. Manifesting a whole lot of love, happiness and all that shit to every single one of you. Keep going and stay strong.

Meg x

"you used to be this confident, 'didn't need no one person'"

Used to be. Because I'm no longer confident, I no longer think I can conquer the world on my own, I no longer know who I am.

Who am i?

I don't recognise myself in the mirror anymore, I don't know who the megan in the reflection is, or who Megan is at all.

I remember laughing, and happy times, and now I don't feel like I'll ever laugh or feel happy again. It might sound dramatic, but that's what mental illness does to you, it drains you of all positive emotions, makes you forget the good times you've had, and think you'll never have them again.

My mental illness has tore me apart for going on ten years now, and I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling down, of feeling depressed, of losing people because I can't contain myself. I've lost the person I thought I would love forever, because of my illness and what it causes me to do and be like, it's changed me into a person I don't even recognise anymore.

I don't want to be angry, or violent, or lash out, or upset anyone. But that's all I'm capable of doing right now, is pushing people away or making them leave because of how I am. And I can't do it anymore but I don't know how to stop it.

When I feel anger, I don't know how to stop it, I don't know it's coming and I can't stop myself to take a breath, I don't remember what I say to people or what I do, I just remember words and then shaking and feeling this fire within me, and I don't know how to make it stop. I don't know how to stop being this angry horrible version of me. I don't want to hurt anyone, or upset anyone. But I can't cope with this feeling, this feeling of someone taking over me, and making me say these things and lash out, that's not me. That's not Megan anymore and I don't know who this person is.

I have moments, brief moments, where I want to live. I want to live my life and be happy and do all the things I want to do, and then they come crashing down to the tune of the voiceless person living in my head who says no, no you can't do any of those things. This person wants to kill me, whether it to put me out of my misery or to harm me I don't know but this is the person behind the suicide attempts, it's not Megan.

Megan wants to live, wants to move out and get dogs and have their own place and work and earn money to travel, spend time with her family, take her niece places, play with her dog. And for brief moments this seems possible.

When I look in the mirror, I see a hollow shell of a person. A girl lost to her mental ill health, a girl lost in the world, unknowing of who to turn to or what to do. But that's not who I want to be anymore, I just don't know how to find her again.

I suppose the whole point of life is to find yourself, but right now it seems a dauntingly hard task. A task I'm not sure where I can start with. I suppose I go to the therapies I'm offered, live each day and learn who I am.

Meg x

So my last post was all about relapsing, so I guess world suicide prevention day came at an apt time. I want to talk today about suicide, and suicidal thoughts. I've written a post about feeling suicidal before which you can catch up on here, but today I want to come back to the topic

Feeling suicidal is so much more than the want to die, sometimes, yeah that's all I can feel, is this overwhelming sense of "I just don't want to be here", but others it's so much more.

It's feeling like you can't be helped anymore, no therapy, no talking, nothing can help this depression, this sense of worthlessness. It's feeling as though your loved ones would be better off, better off without the burden of taking care and worrying about you all the time. It's not being able to move because your limbs feel like lead, just laid in bed feeling helpless and although life is pointless now. It's feeling like nothing, not one thing is worth feeling in this much pain, not seeing your loved ones, nothing that makes you happy is worth the relentless agony that comes with mental ill health.

When most of us say we're feeling suicidal, what that translates to for me, is that I've had enough of feeling this way, of feeling so overwhelmingly shit that I feel like I simply can't go on. It means I've hit rock bottom, and there's no way of bringing me round anymore, I'm lost in the wilderness of my mental illness, unable to find my way back to stability. It means that nothing that brings me even an ounce of happiness compares to the pain I feel just by waking up to another day of tears and sadness and emptiness. It means I want to kill the dark black hole inside of me that tears me apart, and keeps me up at night.

I've felt suicidal on and off for around 4 years now, in the crux of my ill health, when I was first diagnosed with bpd, and I thought my life was over. But I haven't always felt this way. I've had problems with my mental health since I was 12 years old when I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, but even then I didn't want to die, I just didn't want to eat and gain weight. The last few years my suicidal thoughts have got me at my lowest, crept into my brain in the dead of night and eaten away at my thoughts, or sometimes they've opened my brain during a normal day, walked right in and made themselves at home.

Suicide attempts are aplenty in my past, but they don't have to be or define my future. Nor does it have to define yours either.

I refuse to be a statistic, I refuse to be a sad story, I refuse to be lost my mind and my illness.

I'm going to fight, and if you're out there struggling like me, I hope you will join me.

Meg x

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I relapsed. A few weeks ago on a monday evening I tried to take my life three times, and not for the first time this year. I was subsequently detained under a section 136 of the mental health act twice in 24 hours, and in total spent around 45 hours sectioned and released back home twice, I'm exhausted still, but I am safe. I am home and trying to get some help - as impossible as that is these days - and trying to move on, but I want to talk about it, so I'm here.

I don't ever share my personal stories for pity, or empathy or attention. I share them because I think we live in a world where the only things people share online are positive stories and good things they're doing, and thats just not real, life isnt that rosy and nice. Life is gritty and horrible sometimes and I think it's time we showed that part of it too.

My life definitely hasn't always been rosy. It's been rocky for a good ten years, but you look at my instagram and my facebook and I look fine, I have a boyfriend, a loving supportive family, a job, a flat and a life. But that doesnt equate to happiness, that doesnt take my demons away, or hide the pain I feel. It masks the realness of real life, the sadness I feel deep down and don't share, and I refuse to live in hiding, in fear of shattering the glass of my online life. The shards are already shattered, I may as well carry on and bring hope to people - that no one is ever alone in their struggles, or the only one to feel this way. No one is beyond help, or unable to find happiness.

Relapse always seems like such a dirty word, you think of relapse and what do you think and feel? For me it's shame, weakness and failure. During my episode, I relapsed on self-harming twice. It had been over 18 months since I last hurt myself so the disappointment in myself was real, but something I need to remember myself is that, healing is not linear. It isn't one straight line graph of you starting at the bottom and going to the top, it's a humongous rollercoaster of ups and downs and blips. But that is okay, if you relapse, you are not a failure, you are not weak, you are struggling.

To struggle is okay, it's normal, it's human. But it means it's time to get help, something I'm slowly realising as i get older. I've always been afraid to ask for help, scared to reach out and be rejected as I usually have by my mental health team. But this time it's different, as my boyfriend said to me the night I came home, it's gone too far now, I've hit rock bottom and I have to ask for help on getting myself back up, and I'm trying.

But for now, it's time to do a whole lot of self-care, a bit of crying, and a lot of recovering. Remember, if you're out there and you're struggling, please reach out, get some help, even if that's in the means of telling a friend how you're feeling. And it's okay to have these feelings too, you're human and your feelings are valid.

Stay safe and stay lovely,

Meg x

Hello again! Today we're talking about unstable self image, the negative and unstable way people with BPD see themselves and how this affects us. To have a stable sense of self you can see yourself as the same person in the past, present and future, and understand who you are.

For those with BPD, it's not as simple. We simply do not know who we are. It's hard to explain, so bare with me through this post. But essentially we are actors, chameleons if you will, constantly changing and adapting to those around us to make the best fit, personality and character for the role. A "normal" person may change who they are, for example, they may be silly and loud with friends, but quiet and serious and professional with colleagues, but for those with BPD this is a much more profound change, we are whole new people, with a whole new set of traits to go with it.

Growing up, I never understood why I couldn't figure out who I was. I feared that simple phrase, "so, tell me a bit about yourself" I didn't know what to say. When prompted in therapies and at school and to write in social media bios, I just couldn't find the words to describe myself, I couldn't think of a single thing I liked, liked to do, who I was, it's like I became this shell of nothingness. I spent a lot of my time growing up longing for something, I didn't even know what it was, but I wanted something that would make me understand the person I was. Now I understand I was looking for a reason to be worthy, a purpose in life.

When I was a teenager, I would copy everything my friends did, the clothes they wore, I bought. The music they liked, I downloaded. The friends they had, were the friends I had. The way they spoke and their mannerisms, were now mine. Everything I did, I did to fit in, to feel "normal". I so wanted to be normal, liked, funny, appreciated. Because secretly in my head, I was fighting a constant battle with my sense of self, of belonging, and with my mental illness. I remember liking books growing up, but my newer friends didn't, so I stopped reading, I started to listen to the same music they did, asked my mum to buy me the clothes they had, I wouldn't ever disagree with their opinions in fears they'd leave me, and so kept quiet.

Now I'm a bit older and understand my illness much more, I have a more stable sense of self. I'm no longer afraid to say to someone "I think you're wrong" or "I disagree" because I have my own opinions and I know them. I know I'm a good person, I know that I like dogs and drawing and writing and that i have a good sense of humour and can be very intelligent depending on the subject (not science pls god no science) . I no longer rely on the people around me to validate my own thoughts and feelings, because I have my own and I am my own person.

I am still a chameleon though, an actor playing a role. Because I have BPD, and that may be how I am for a long time or it may be something I keep working on and learning and growing and grow out of, I don't know. I still look to other people for my way of how to behave, I still get extreme anxiety and have attacks when I'm meant to go somewhere and I don't know what everyone else is wearing, will I wear the wrong thing and be embarrassed? Laughed out of there quicker than I can say panic attack? And I still struggle to define and describe myself to others.

But that's okay, and having an unstable sense of self is okay. I know that I have BPD and that it changes the way a "normal" brain may conceive of everyday things and that's why I react the way I do, I know that sometimes I need reassurance and the approval of others to feel comfortable in being me, and I know that I am a good person and I know I am worthy.

I also know that I am adaptable, I know how to change myself up for new people and new situations and I see this as a positive. My career history and present is with children and adults with mental health issues or learning disabilities and difficulties, and therefore being adaptable is great! I know when I need to adapt my way of speaking and my mannerisms and my professionalism to each and every person and I can adapt who I am to fit in with that person, to build working relationships with people and be onside. It also makes me friendly and approachable to all, I would never want someone to think badly of me so I would never behave so to get that reaction.

I am still learning who I am, but I know that I am worthy and I know I will never stop learning who I am so that's okay. I know what is meaningful and important in my life and that's all that matters. And in time, so will you.

Meg x

It's currently 00:28 on a friday night. Nothing has happened, no one has upset me, no bad things have happened, and yet I'm wide awake on the settee alone sobbing into my phone as I scroll through twitter and open up blogger and try and find the words to explain how I'm feeling. But I can't.

Because as soon as I try and open up to people or write down my feelings, they're stuck, lodged in my throat, trapped and unable to be set free. The words are there in my head a minute ago, I was explaining to myself what was going on and now I'm up and trying to tell someone, they're scrambled up like a jigsaw that I can't fix. No matter how hard I want to fix it, to unscramble the anagrams in my head, to join up the dots and the squiggly lines, that's all they are, shapes and colours where the words should be.

And I cry more, fat sobs streaming down my face, all I want to do is scream and throw my laptop across the room in frustration, because I had the words, they were there in my head I can picture it, but it's muted, the silence deafening.

All I remember, is wanting to feel normal. And I know there's no normal, not really, but I want to feel something that isn't, this. This sadness, this long aching feeling inside my heart, this fuzzy painful stabbing in my brain. I just want it all to stop, to tell the driver "no thanks I've had enough" and get out. But I can't, because this is my brain, my life, my normal. And I hate it, I despise the normality that is the sobbing, the scrambled words and feelings, the silence of explanations I long to have.

Many people compare mental illness to that of screaming into a crowded room and nobody's listening, but to me, it's like telling everyone "oh btw I'm about to scream but you won't hear me" and them saying "ok cool" then screaming intermittently for 22 years, whilst on fire, naked. You see?

The truth is, I'm tired. I'm exhausted by being held captive by my illness, held ransom for happiness by a disorder that says "happiness? 5 minutes only today". I'm tired of a diagnosis that means I'm constantly fighting a battle inside of my head of whether or not I'm worthy of staying alive. Of constantly weighing up the pros and cons of life or death. Because that is my normal. Have an argument with my partner? Kill yourself. Feel sad about something that is totally irrelevant to my everyday life and will pass in a few hours for a normal person? Kill yourself. Feel any emotion at all out of the blue that I wasn't expecting to deal with? Kill yourself.

By now you'd think it would be expected, that I'd know it was coming. But I don't, ever. It's like someone walking down the street with a sign above their head saying "I'm a murderer", who says to you "I'm going to kill you" and then when they stab you, being shocked and surprised they did it anyway. That's what it's like living with BPD. You know full well you will be rocked by mood swings and feel emotions you don't want to feel at any given time, and that you may or may not react in a dramatic way about a minor occurrence, and yet when it happens, you're shocked and appalled that your brain could play you this way again like it did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.

People wonder and ask me what having BPD means to me, and how it affects me, well this is it. It's essentially a lot of "you should kill yourself" mixed with a lot of crying, many questions and a lot more stupid metaphors about life and how you feel. And that is my reality, my normality and my nightmare. Welcome to my brain.

Meg

Welcome to another post in the understanding bpd symptoms series, today were going to be talking about a sensitive subject, suicidal ideation And thoughts. So please read with caution and only if you’re on the right mindset to do so.

I’ve written an entire blog post before on suicidal thoughts which you can read here, and have been very honest here on my blog about my suicide attempts and feelings before. In total I have attempted suicide four times, three of which have resulted in police action and obviously, none of which have been successful.

Suicidal thoughts and feelings when you have bpd is so much more than just “feeling down” or “having enough” it’s the feeling of complete sadness, of giving up completely. You feel so lost, so out of control, so unloved and hopeless that you feel suicide is the only answer. And it can take a simple argument with a partner, argument with a friend or even a slight mishap for you to spiral completely out of control and attempt suicide, only for you to wake up the next morning in a complete change of mood and get ready and go to work as if nothing has happened.

All of my attempts have been as a result of my impulsive behaviours, an act of non rationality that I wouldn’t normally do and resort to. My attempts are usually fuelled by an incident, from an argument to a panic attack to a slight mishap, I’ve been led to my lowest of ebbs and resorted in a suicide attempt. This can spring from absolutely nowhere, from a night out of happiness and dancing comes my darkest of feelings, comes the lowest of sadness and the last resort I fear to feel.

There’s no knowing when these feelings will arise, will it happen after every argument? Every panic attack? I’ve been drawn to my emotions and suicidal thoughts on many occasions, but only four times I’ve acted on them. Why these four? I couldn’t tell you. Nothing has been different except my mind and my thoughts and the voice I hear at night, the voice that tells me how to feel, how to act, how to react. It feeds into my dark thoughts and feelings and impulsively asks me to act on them, eating away at my darkest desires.

And obviously this leads to complete heartbreak to those around me. My friends, my family, my boyfriend. And then can lead to police or ambulance interference, even resulting in a temporary section only to be released back home. But in the moment, I can't think about anything else, work, friends, family, hurting those around me, nothing can break into my mind and stop me from getting what I so desperately want. My boyfriend described my last attempt as feeling as though he was talking to a toddler that wanted something and they would do anything to get it, I will lash out, swear, shout, anything.

And I lose all focus on life, I forget about the good times, I forget that I don't actually want to die, because I don't. All I want is for the pain to go away, and for whatever has happened to go away and the only way I can do that is if I go. And that's what it feels like to be suicidal. It's so many things, but to me, it's just not wanting to live with this illness anymore, a disorder that keeps me running back to the edge again and again.

But I am here, I have survived and I am safe. And I will continue to be here, to fight my thoughts and my illness and stand up tall once more, I hope many more will do the same too. Life is too precious and short to try and end it all, there are so many good moments waiting to be felt for everyone.

Meg x

I wrote a post quite a while ago now on Borderline Personality Disorder and Relationships, which I can't stand to read back as it involves me gushing about my ex, but I wrote about what it was like living with borderline personality disorder as well as being in a relationship. I wrote in my post The Stigma Of Boderline Personality Disorder that one of the stigmas of BPD was that we are unloveable and can't be in long term relationships which is completely untrue of course.

Of course we are loveable, just like the next person we can be good and bad at things and that includes relationships, but we are just as capable of communicating and changing and evolving. We can love very deeply and very emotionally, and this is where the stigma really comes from, is people dating us, not understanding our condition enough to be supportive or helpful, ending the relationship then labelling us as "psycho", "clingy and needy" and "difficult to be with".

One of the traits of BPD is emotional dyregulation, meaning we can feel incredible highs and lows and this can transition very quickly, one minute we can be ecstatically happy and hyper, the next we are feeling incredibly depressed and suicidal. Meaning we fling from emotion to emotion very quickly without warning. This can be completely exhausting for us, and also for those around us trying to play catch up with what triggered the first emotion whilst we’ve already moved on and gotten back to our usual version of “normal”. These outbursts or episodes of emotions mean we also get into fits of paranoia and irrational thinking, things like “no wonder they don’t love me when I act like this”, “surely they can’t cope with my mood swings, they’re going to leave me”

“They’re going to leave me”, a phrase someone with BPD will utter thousands and thousands of times daily about a loved one. We are so unstable in our emotions and sense of self, and so filled with self loathing and wishing we were different, that we are caught up in this idea that no one will ever love us for who we are. That no one will love us for our true selves, will love both us and our disorder we come with. And so we fear the abandonment deeply, who could love someone this damaged, this unwell, this “crazy”?

The fear of abandonment in people with BPD is a huge aspect of our disorder for some, for me it’s a daily occurrence that I ask my boyfriend “do you love me?”, waiting for the answer to turn from “of course I do” to the resounding “no” I hear him respond with in my head before I’ve even asked the question. Waiting To be denied of love and affection, that slash of rejection itching to slice my heart open again.

A mere disagreement, the act of saying sorry for a tiny thing, even the whiff of tension in the air and we are thrown into disarray, convinced this will be the straw that means they’ll leave. And if they’re going to leave, we should leave first. They can’t reject us if we’re already gone, right?

Countless times I’ve had a disagreement with a partner and gotten myself into a whole sobbing tangle of a mess, convinced I’ve pushed them away for the last time, that I’ve said the wrong thing too many times, that I’ve missed opportunities to apologise once too much, and I’ve sealed my fate myself. When in actual fact, it’s just a disagreement, just an argument between a couple, just a few tense words shared.

But this emotion is tenfold within us, the fear of abandonment bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to rear its ugly head once more.

I’ve often felt my illness has been my downfall in my relationships. Quick to blame the disorder and not the ex. How could it be their fault? I loved them didn’t I? But they never loved me, how could they, and who could blame them for not loving a monster with a personality disorder?

But in reality, it’s the ugly voice of the BPD, the voice that tells me I’m unloveable, I’m not worthy of being with or worthy of a sense of self. I know that deep down, but in the moment, that brief moment of a tense conversation with someone, my response in instantly “fine, leave me then”, because surely that’s where this will end? Why prolong the agony when I can walk away now Scot free, untouched and unrivalled in my abandonment issues.

And it’s so hard to get out of this mindset. Once you’ve set your sights on leaving thats all you can think of, every conversation, it’s a sign you’re not meant to be, every argument, it’s one closer to the final showdown. I simply cannot be loved unconditionally and not wait for the moment it’s all going to end, I am so consumed with the expiration date of my romance, that I ruin what’s in front of me.

But I don’t ruin it, my illness ruins it, my brain, my mindset, the way I see the world ruins it. I am not unloveable, I am worthy of love and affection and I will fight til I believe that’s true wholeheartedly.

Until then, please don’t leave me.

Meg x

Welcome back to the BPD symptoms series! Today's is all about emotional dysregulation or 'mood swings', one of arguably the most stressful and distressing symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and the most recognised. From a quick google search, emotional dysregulation is defined as the following;

Emotion Dysregulation may be thought of as the inability to manage the intensity and duration of negative emotions such as fear, sadness, or anger. If you are struggling with emotion regulation, an upsetting situation will bring about strongly felt emotions that are difficult to recover from

Basically, those with BPD often struggle to regulate their emotions and feel them as rationally and as intense as a 'regular' person would, instead of feeling happy, sad, nervous etc, we feel elated, depressed and incredibly anxious, think of it as emotions times by a thousand, and happening every few hours, or minutes rather than every few days or one mood change a day to a 'regular' person.

To someone without BPD, you may feel regularly stable the majority of the time, and then one day you see something that upsets you, you have a little cry, talk about it, accept it, move on and go back to your regular stability fairly soon. Someone with BPD however, has a day that typically goes like this; (based on my actual day today, one of many)

You wake up, you feel unsettled in a way you can't describe to others. Something in your bones doesn't feel right, it feels on edge, tightened, and you know today is going to be rough. You get some info on your financial state, and begin to sob in bed uncontrollably, you can't wake your boyfriend because you want to let him sleep, you panic over the news, and then decide to try and get over it so you pick up the hair dye and change your look as you planned to do. You go about your day feeling still on edge, but ever so lightly bouncy, you can do anything! Go for a run tomorrow? Absolutely! Do the food shop today no problems? Of course! Manage a whole month on barely no money and be okay? Why would that be a problem?

Your boyfriend is up and about and you instantly jump on him, "wake up!" you think, it's time to play! Running around the house, playfully tapping him, he says "calm down" to you, why would you need to calm? Why would he think that? You're happy, isn't he happy you're happy? But he knows what's coming, it's time to do the food shop, and the knot's in your stomach, the lump is in your throat and you don't want to talk. "Meg, can you just wait for me to grab this?" But you can't just wait, you need to get going, to keep moving, before the anxiety hits you, before the panic inside you reaches up your throat and grabs the painful lump in there for itself. "no! let's go" you snap, why doesn't he understand? Why can't he feel the way i do? You get to the car, a bounce back in your step, "let's go to aldi whilst we're out shall we? May as well get some bits" the moments of anxiety forgotten, you bop and sing your way to the next store, where the cycle repeats itself.

And you're home. You feel a bit more relaxed, maybe the mood swings are over for today? It's been a bit intense and hard so far, but it's over now! You're fine, you're playing animal crossing on the sofa and nothing can go wrong. You facetime your family, you facetime your friends, it's pub quiz night - corona lockdown night! You've had a great time, but didn't someone make that one comment? They must have meant it, do they hate me? Have I done something wrong? Of course I did, I'm a terrible person, these people don't want to be my friend, they must be lying to me. Oh god, the tears are falling, you turn to your boyfriend, tell him you love him and, the tears are flowing now, giant sobs erupt from your mouth, he drags you onto the sofa "what's wrong baby?" but there is nothing wrong. That friend didn't mean it, it was a joke! But what about the future, when coronavirus lockdown is over and you move home? Patrick won't be there, oh god, he's not going to be there. You're crying harder now, the sobs uncontrollable, why are we crying again? Shouldn't I be replying to my friend, checking instagram, checking how my blog post went down from today? No? Oh, I have to keep crying, but why? Why is everything so loud? And then my hands are banging on my head, "make it stop, make it stop!" I don't understand, I thought we were fine? But we're rocking ourselves on the sofa, crying and wailing, one hand holding Patricks, the other grabbing fistfuls of hair, trying to pull it out, maybe if I pull out my hair this will stop? Maybe if I punch myself in the head this will all go away! Fast forward twenty minutes and I'm in bed with Patrick, "can I pop your spots?" "only if I can tickle you" and you're giggling and laughing, what on earth happened earlier? That wasn't me. Then Patrick leaves, you're scrolling through your socials and the tears are falling again. Why do I have to be like this? I'm so tired. I just want to go to sleep.

You might have read that and thought, "wow, bit long, bit dramatic", welcome to our lives. Our lives are long, are emotions are dramatic, are moods are erratic and we're ever so slightly going insane. At least that's how it feels. Everything feels a certain way, and it's rarely good. Anger feels like a deep burning pit of rage, and sadness feels like there is no way out, only depression and hopelessness. Happiness feels like being high on life, nothing can bring you down, you can do anything, and anxiety feels like you will never accomplish anything, you will sit and wallow in despair about what could be forever.

These emotions run deep within us, we can feel them in our soul, in our bones, our very being. We don't ever just "feel a bit down" we feel the deep worthless pits of depression run through us, our blood turning icy cold as it dawns on us we will never feel the warmth again. We don't just get a bit miffed, we feel the burning rage of anger bubble and boil through our veins, the need to punch, hit, throw, smack something desperately running through our minds to fulful the need of anger.

And rather than feel all these emotions few and far between, we feel them all. Sometimes all in the space of a day, or all in the space of a few hours. And it's painful. It hurts our sensitive souls, we want to feel happiness, feel the elatedness we get ever so rarely, and hold onto it. But the mood must swing, and until we learn to wield these emotions with therapy and a lot of time and patience, this is how life is.

Meg x

Welcome back! Today's symptom is paranoia, something I've experienced for a long time as a symptom of my borderline personality disorder.

Paranoia
Someone who has paranoia has unreasonable false beliefs as a part of another mental illness

For me, paranoia is something that creeps into my thoughts daily, my main triggers and paranoia's are;

believing my partner doesn't love me and will leave me
believing people are talking about me including my close friends
checking people's messages for proof they're talking about me
that people are pretending to like me
that people are laughing at me behind my back
that strangers are out to hurt me or are talking about me
that strangers have entered my room or home

These are just a few of the million things that run through my mind daily, but for me my paranoia comes in bouts of severity. A really bad day will include my not talking to my friends because I'm convinced they all hate me and are pretending to like me, that they are talking about me behind my back and laughing at me. It means I spend my day crying, convinced I have no friends and that they hate me , something I have no proof or reason to believe but something I can't get out of my head no matter what.

This is something I struggle to talk about with my friends, it's hard to tell people you love that you're convinced they hate you, and I can't imagine it's the best of things to hear either.

When it comes to my relationship, my paranoia means I am constantly asking for reassurance, and can come off incredibly needy. I'm constantly asking my boyfriend "do you love me?", waiting for that answer to be the "no" I hear in my head everyday. In old relationships and something I've thankfully cut out of my life, I used to check their messages, convinced they were talking about me to people, everytime a message would pop up I'd want to know who it was from, the unknown sending me into a paranoid spiral of sadness. I don't check people's messages anymore but this used to extend as far as family, checking their phones to see if they're talking about me convinced they were. There's no reason for this belief, but paranoia doesn't ask for reasons, it does what it wants and makes you believe whatever it wants to.

At times, my paranoia has morphed into night terrors, where I'm awoken by a bad dream, and I'm convinced there is someone in my room, I've had this my entire life for as long as I remember. As a kid I would be convinced there was someone lurking in the darkness of my room and have to sleep in my parents bed, even at 22 I've jumped in bed with my mum due to a bad night terror, and frequently wake up screaming. Just the other day my boyfriend was joking about clowns, and the moment he turned off the light and left the bedroom I spiralled, I could see the clowns in my intrusive thoughts, and I was having a severe paranoia episode that they were around me, I ran into the living room screaming, not able to settle constantly looking around for the clowns I was convinced were there. As soon as I laid down I could see them behind me, convinced they were there.

In reality I know my paranoid thoughts aren't true, I know my friends aren't laughing at me, I know my boyfriend loves me, I know my family only mean well when they discuss me privately and I know there's no one that could enter the flat and hurt me, but in the moment, it's so real and raw it's terrifying.

Ever wondered what it feels like to constantly think people are against you? That you're fighting a constant battle against loved ones and strangers that they don't even know exists, an imaginary wall you have to break down everyday just to talk to people, it's exhausting and it's scary and it's sad. It fills me with so much sadness that I spend most evenings overwhelmed by all my paranoid thoughts that it all comes bubbling out and I can't cope with it anymore.

The only way out of it for me is to talk it through with someone, especially my boyfriend, telling him what's on my mind and having him reason with me to find out what's triggered it and what's upsetting me, I also like to use the STOPP method, which you can read all about here in this post, and sit and do the following;

what has triggered me
what evidence I have to believe it
Stop, and think about it rationally, what's really going on?
talk about it with someone
think it over and be rational and logical

It's hard, but the best thing you can do is put your rational head on and get into wise mind (my fellow DBT people will know what I mean), and think about what's really happening and what you can do to combat it.

Meg x

Welcome to the BPD symtpoms series! Today we're talking about chronic emptiness, which a quick google search defines as;

Feelings of emptiness—a lack of meaning or purpose—are experienced by most people at some point in life. However, chronic feelings of emptiness, feelings of emotional numbness or despair, and similar experiences may be symptomatic of other mental health concerns, such as depression

Emptiness is something I've felt for a long time during my mental health struggles, and something that will always return to me, hence the chronic. I didn't know what I was feeling when I was younger, I just felt this overwhelming sense of dread and doom, this numbness throughout my whole body that I couldn't put into words if I tried. At the time I would deal with it badly, self-harming to try and get some feelings I desperately craved back to me, I didn't understand that this emotion would come and go as part of my disorder, back then I didn't eve know I had a disorder, all I knew was this feeling would haunt me, and I couldn't cope with it.

And I still get that numbness now, this feeling like nothing is real, that I can't think or move, only feel this emotion wash over me. My boyfriend says he can see it happening as much as I can feel it begin to happen, he sees me disappear, my emotions, my personality, my entire being just slowly slipping away into nothingness, as if the lights are on, but no one's home. But to me, even the lights are out, I am left a hollow shell of nothingness, unable to do anything but wait. Wait for it to pass, for it all to be over.

It does pass. Eventually. I begin to feel the light wash back over me, the feelings returning to my body, thoughts and words rush back into my head waiting to be said aloud. Emotions my regular self feels slowly tingling back throughout me. But I know it will return. I know soon, in a few hours or a few days, this nothingness will dawn back on me, and disable me from doing anything but feeling it right down to my bones. And I will lay there, and feel it, staring into space wondering when it will all be over once more.

Feeling "empty" or your own version of "empty" (this can vary from borderline to borderline in how they deal and suffer with the disorder), can feel like staring into the abyss, waiting for someone or something to drag you back up to shore, to feel the air in your lungs and the sun on your skin once more. It's hard to explain to someone what this feels like other than in deep and slightly obnoxious metaphors, but it's a real feeling that many of us dread to encounter in our days.

All I ask during these times, if you have a borderline friend who tells you they are feeling emptiness or numbness, is that you be kind. We are trying, but we are fighting an invisible and untouchable enemy. Remind us that these moments, although dark and painful, are also fleeting and will pass, we will come out of this and feel the warmth once more, that it's okay to feel empty, and sad, and hopeless. But this will pass, and it will be okay.

Meg x

So May is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month! As my blog is mainly aimed at informing people about and helping people with BPD it would be rude not to honour the month! This month I'll be posting two blogs a week, one every Monday and Friday each focusing on one of the symptoms of BPD and how it affects me and how I combat it. So tune in for those! Make sure you follow me on twitter, bloglovin and instagram to know when I post a blogpost! For all my BPD blog posts check out the link at the navigation bar on the blog that says BPD or click here to explore!

What Is BPD?

So let's get started afresh, what exactly is Borderline Personality Disorder? A quick google will tell you; (it's worth noting BPD is also known as EUPD or emotionally unstable personality disorder)

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a disorder of mood and how a person interacts with others. It's the most commonly recognised personality disorder.

In general, someone with a personality disorder will differ significantly from an average person in terms of how he or she thinks, perceives, feels or relates to others.

BPD is a type of personality disorder mainly characterised by intense mood swings and the inability to regulate emotions as per the norm. People with BPD are often diagnosed with other conditions, such as anxiety and depression. BPD is made up of 9 symptoms and characteristics and 5 are needed for a complete diagnosis, which can take a long time to obtain and can be a difficult process.

Symptoms of BPD

So there are nine main symptoms of BPD, and you need at least 5 for a diagnosis, but you can have 6, 7, 8 or all 9 symptoms, meaning there are over 200 (I've forgotten the exact number!) varieties of BPD symptoms you could have and be diagnosed, meaning everyone with the disorder is different and suffers in different ways. Personally I have experienced all 9 throughout my life and I vary from time to time.

FEAR OF ABANDONMENT - the chronic fear of losing the people around you, pushing you to do anything to keep them around or even push them away from you so that you're the one to leave first not them
INTENSE EMOTIONS - having intense mood swings that can change very quickly, so you can go from being stable to extremely depressed or extremely elated in minutes and this can be short lived or last a few hours before swinging again.
DISTORTED SELF IMAGE - the frequent not knowing of 'who you are' and not having a strong sense of self or identity, changing how you look and your likes and dislikes to appease people around you rather than for your own satisfaction
RELATIONSHIP TROUBLES - finding it hard to make and keep relationships and friendships, due to the fear of abandonment and trust issues causing you to believe people coming into your life are to be trusted
CHRONIC EMPTINESS - the chronic feeling of numbness and nothingness dawning on you
IMPULSIVE BEHAVIOURS - using impulsivity as a coping mechanism with things such as money, drugs, sex etc, acting before you can truly think about your actions in order to feel better or feel something
SELF-HARM OR SUICIDAL IDEATIONS - people with BPD often use self harm to cope with feelings of emptiness and the physical pain bpd can cause. Many often suffer with suicidal thoughts and ideations daily.
ANGER - intense feelings and bouts of anger for no apparent reason, feeling like a pit of fiery rage with no rhyme or reason
PARANOIA OR DISASSOCIATION - feelings of someone or something being out to hurt you, not trusting those around you and paranoid thoughts often. Disassociation is the act of feeling disconnected to your thoughts and feelings, and can often lead to breaks in the memory when disassociating.

Common Stigmas Of BPD

I recently wrote a post going into full detail on 10 myths around bpd which you can read here, in which I talk about ten common myths people believe about those with BPD. These are things such as; we are manipulators; we are evil people; we have no empathy; we are incapable of love; we are incapable of being helped.

Many people believe that those with BPD are hard to treat and difficult people to deal with, rather than actually sitting down and finding out how to help us. I'll be the first person to admit I can be difficult to deal with and hard to cope with, but once you get to know me and my triggers and understand why I act the way I do, I can be helped and calmed down and dealt with accordingly.

Quick google searches will always come up with negatively written articles on BPD and negative questions about BPD.

It's unknown to me where these ideations came from, but they have been there long since before I was diagnosed. I once stayed in a crisis home where a support worker once told me I "shouldn't want a BPD diagnosis" as it can affect my life negatively and people will think of me in a bad way due to my diagnosis, and people may think I'm lying or manipulating them or be denied access to therapies due to my disorder. It can be very hard for those newly diagnosed and wanting credible and true information on BPD when all that is readily available is negative news and myths around the disorder, hence why I made this blog in the first place.

What causes BPD

It is unknown the true cause of BPD, and is thought to be a mixture of genetic and environmental factors. It is thought that many people in one family can have a diagnosis of BPD and this makes it more common for the children of those with BPD to also suffer, but this isn't always true.

A lot of sites and professionals say that BPD is often a sign of trauma or abuse or stressful experiences in early years such as sexual abuse, neglect, losing a parent, feeling unsupported in the family home etc. But this isn't always the case, for example, I was never abused or experienced trauma in my life, and grew up in a happy home with my parents but still developed BPD.

Treatment of BPD

BPD can be treated with psychological therapies, mainly DBT (dialectical behavioural therapy) which is a talking therapy specifically made for those with BPD and emotion dysregulation. The goal of DBT is to break free of your brains current way of thinking and change it to a more positive outlook and one that isn't damaging to your mental health.

Mindfulness exercises are also very widely acknowledged as a treatment for BPD and can help people to cope with their emotions and dealing with them accordingly.

Hope you enjoyed this loooong ass post about BPD and hope you tune in every Monday and Friday for a new post each day!

Meg x

I've talked about my various experiences with my mental health throughout my life here on my blog, but one thing I've never really spoken about is my experiences with intrusive thoughts. There's no real reason or secret behind this, I guess I've just never taken the time to sit down and talk about how they affect me, even though they are a big part of my mental health and illness.

So what are intrusive thoughts? For those of you that aren't familiar this is a quick google definition;

Intrusive thoughts are unwanted thoughts, impulses or mental images that often cause significant anxiety, stress and impairment within an individual's ability to function. These thoughts may surround the fear of committing an act one consider to be harmful, violent, immoral, sexually inappropriate, or sacrilegious

Intrusive thoughts are basically images or things that run across your mind throughout the day which aren't necessarily nice or pleasant to endure and there's not a lot you can do about them. A google may tell you that if you endure intrusive thoughts you have OCD, which isn't true. Anyone can experience intrusive thoughts, those that have them more on the extreme and violent or abnormal nature may indicate a mental health issue such as OCD, but it can also be down to anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses so don't jump to any conclusions without speaking to a professional if you are experiencing this.

The thing is, everyone can have intrusive thoughts. Have you ever gotten a new phone, been sat in the passenger side of a car and thought about just launching out the window and watching it smash? Or stood near the edge of something and saw yourself jumping right over? These are examples of intrusive thoughts. They are also very common with new mothers/parents who envision their baby being harmed or dropped. We think of these things because we are so anxious about them happening, and it's the worst possible scenario our brain can come up with, so it flashes up to us.

Intrusive thoughts can be sexual, they can be violent, they can be of inappropriate images, and they can be terrifying, they can keep us awake at night, have us screaming out from how real they feel, and be an awful thing to live with.

For me, I've experienced intrusive thoughts as long as I can remember, I would sit in class next to someone, and have constant images of me stabbing them in the leg with my pencil running through my mind, I was terrified, I thought I was going mad and that I was some demonic psychopath in the making at just 12 years old. When in reality, this was a big part of my anxiety, I was terrified of hurting someone due to my mental health issues, I was so scared that one day I would lash out that it was all I could picture in my head.

My intrusive thoughts tend to get more and more frequent and loud the worse my mental state gets. So on an average day I might not have any, but on a bad day when I'm struggling I could see all manner of things in my head, things that make me cry, scream and hide. When I'm feeling particularly suicidal, I picture me harming myself, violent, vivid visions of something happening to me or me doing something. And this image doesn't just fade away, it stays, the more I try to block it out the worse it comes back, rearing it's ugly head bigger and bolder than before. In all my suicide attempts, I've had awful intrusive thoughts that have pushed me to the edge, every time I attempted to harm myself, I watched myself do the acts in my head over and over again, my inner voice telling me I had to do it over and over again until I snapped.

In particularly bad episodes, I will have intrusive thoughts about being harmed by strangers in my home, the other week, Patrick and me were messing around and he was pulling funny faces at me, they reminded me of clowns and Patrick made a passing joke before leaving me to go to sleep. The minute he left, I began screaming and crying and ran to him in the living room, he couldn't believe it, I was fine two minutes ago. But the intrusive thoughts had gotten to me, as I laid in the dark room all I could imagine and see running through my mind were clowns coming to hurt me, they were jumping up from behind the bed, creeping up behind me opening the door, I sat on that sofa and screamed and sobbed, my head constantly bobbing around to the areas my mind were telling me someone was, I was pacing the flat, checking behind the doors, in cupboards, behind the bed, convinced I would find the thing my mind was telling me was there. But of course nothing was there, my mind was just at it's old tricks.

One reason I don't talk about my intrusive thoughts a lot is I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed and terrified of some of the thoughts I've had in the past. When my anxiety was particularly high and I had trouble leaving the house, when I did, I would find myself having terrifying sexual intrusive thoughts about strangers. Mainly them just being naked, or touching me or making me touch them. I would sit and squirm and cry on the bus on my way somewhere, unable to get my brain to just stop. I was convinced there was something wrong with me for a long time, I thought I must be a pervert or have a sexuality problem or addiction, I couldn't fathom why I was having these thoughts until I finally opened up to a therapist about them, I didn't even tell her the sexual content ones, I couldn't bare to tell anyone I was so ashamed, but after a while I figured out they were intrusive thoughts and did a lot of research and realised I wasn't alone.

So many people experience these thoughts just like me, and so many believe they aren't normal, that they're going insane. You're not alone. I promise these thoughts are normal, they're terrifying and they feel oh so very real but I promise you they aren't. If you're really struggling with your thoughts you should seek help, this isn't your life forever. The best thing you can do that my therapist once told me and I never forgot, is to let them happen. Realise that this isn't a reality, it's an illusion your brain has imagined up for us, and it will pass. The harder you try not to think about it, the worse it becomes. If I told you not to think of a white bear, you can think of anything, but not a white bear, eventually, all you will think about is the white bear. Intrusive thoughts are the same, if you battle and battle against the thoughts of you hurting your partner or hurting yourself, the worse these thoughts will become.

Always remember; this isn't real, this will pass, and I am safe. You have endured these thoughts before and you will endure them again but they will not and cannot hurt you. It will be okay.

Meg x