Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms - Unstable Self-Image

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 

My Version Of Normal

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 

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms - Suicidal ideation

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

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms - The Fear Of Abandonment

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

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms - Mood Instability

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 

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms - Paranoia

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 

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms - Chronic Emptiness

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