May Is Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Month

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