The Harsh Reality of Living With Borderline Personality Disorder

I was first diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in May of 2017 following an admission to the psychiatric hospital. For many years, I suspected something different about myself and my actions and behaviors. I brushed them off as something that was just normal for me and it was a part of my personality. When the psychiatrist asked me questions, I didn’t realize what he was actually doing was performing an assessment on me. He finished and said “Well, I feel very strongly that you suffer from borderline personality disorder and I highly suggest and recommend that your outpatient program consist of dialectal behavioral therapy.”

Now I had no idea what borderline personality disorder even was, let alone what DBT was. He continued on to say that DBT is typically done in group settings and you attend at least one or two sessions a week, sometimes as much as three. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not do well in settings like that, because I know absolutely no one and am not comfortable sharing things with people I’m not familiar with. I begged him to please not make me do group therapy. He was actually quite mean about it and said that he didn’t believe I would make any progress if I didn’t do it.

When I arrived home I figured everything would go back to the way it was. But my mom thankfully pushed me to go back to therapy and she mentioned that I could always find a psychologist that would do DBT with me one on one. When I first spoke to my current therapist on the phone, she actually said that the first thing she focuses on in therapy is the trauma. We didn’t even talk about my BPD diagnosis or DBT. A few sessions in, I explained to her my diagnosis and what the psychiatrist had said. She herself didn’t really believe me that I even had it, just like my parents and several close friends doubted it as well.

As time went on, she began to learn more and more about me, and she is now 100% confident that I have it, and we do DBT frequently and it has helped me so much. DBT and what it is, is another article for another day. I really want to talk about what it’s actually like to be borderline. Shortly after I was diagnosed, I did an article similar to this where I broke down what each symptom meant to me. But I have learned much more about myself and why I was diagnosed. There have also been a lot of new people come into my life since then, and I would like for everyone to be on the same page about what this diagnosis means to me and how they can further understand it.

The first responses I usually get are either a look of confusion, asking if that’s the same thing as multiple personality disorder, or if I meant to say bipolar disorder. No, it is not the same as either of those illnesses. This is exactly why I want to talk about it today and help educate those of you who are unfamiliar or confused by the term.

Unlike bipolar disorder, depression, or anxiety which are known as mood disorders, borderline personality disorder is characterized as a behavioral disorder, and is better explained as emotional dysregulation disorder. There are more than 3 million cases per year, making it fairly uncommon, but more common than you would probably expect. Symptoms of BPD include emotional instability, feelings of worthlessness, insecurity, impulsivity, and impaired social relationships. Now, you’re all probably thinking that you have several if not all of those. But what sets BPD apart, is the intensity of each of those symptoms, and the level of intensity that its sufferers experience.

Borderline personality disorder is a mental illness marked by an ongoing pattern of varying moods, self-image, and behavior. These symptoms often result in impulsive actions and problems in relationships. People with BPD may experience intense episodes of anger, depression, and anxiety that can last from a few hours, to days, or even weeks or months at a time. Its sufferers may experience mood swings and display uncertainty about how they see themselves and their role in the world. As a result, their interests and values can change quickly.

People with BPD also tend to view things in extremes, such as all good or all bad – or all in or all out. Their opinions of other people can also change quickly and an individual who is seen as a friend one day may be considered an enemy the next. These shifting feelings can lead to intense and unstable relationships. Signs and symptoms of BPD include:

• Efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment such as rapidly initiating intimate relationships or cutting off communication with someone in anticipation of being abandoned

• A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family or friends, often swinging from extreme closeness and love to extreme dislike or anger

• Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self

• Impulsive and dangerous behaviors such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating. However if these behaviors occur primarily during a period of elevated mood or energy, they may be signs of a mood disorder rather than BPD – which is also why bipolar disorder and BPD are often confused

• Self-harming behavior, such as cutting

• Recurring thoughts of suicidal behaviors or threats

• Intense and highly changeable moods

• Chronic feelings of emptiness

• Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger

• Difficulty trusting which is sometimes accompanied by irrational fear of other people’s intentions

• Feelings of dissociation, such as feeling cut off from oneself, seeing oneself from outside one’s body, or feelings of unreality

I myself didn’t believe the psychiatrist until I looked up all the symptoms and found that I suffered from all but one. Since then, I have learned that living with and being aware of suffering from borderline personality disorder is by far, the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

My reality of living with borderline personality disorder is this:

Efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment such as rapidly initiating intimate relationships or cutting off communication with someone in anticipation of being abandoned

Please for the love of god, don’t leave me. I beg of you to please not leave me. I have been left all my life. I have been abandoned by the people I thought never would have left in the first place. I’m paranoid that the people that are still around are going to leave me too. I don’t know what for, but probably something related to my BPD. Looking back, that’s likely why everyone who has left so far has left up until this point. Although, those people have never actually given me a reason. So it probably isn’t related to my BPD, I just think it is. I irrationalize the fact that the people currently closest to me are going to get tired of all my problems, and are going to leave me just like everyone else has. Sometimes I will sabotage what it is that I have with the people closest to me, so that they will leave me now instead of dragging it out and putting me in agony and paranoia of when it is that they’re actually going to leave.

A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family or friends, often swinging from extreme closeness and love to extreme dislike or anger

I want stability more than anything. I have expressed that to Shane time and time again. In reality, I am the one who creates the instability. Instead of allowing someone to leave with no explanation, I will give them a reason. I will test them, push them to their limits, idolize them and make them my favorite person, but then eventually fear that they will leave me, in turn making me fear them instead of love them. This symptom of BPD is likely why my domestically violent relationship a few years ago was so violent. I live with the guilt that I likely egged a lot of his actions on, and created some of the problems that resulted in the violence.

Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self

My entire life I have felt as if I have hated myself and every inch of me and my physical appearance. I destroyed my body for many years with self-destructive behaviors like cutting. I still to this day struggle with an eating disorder which is classified under self-destructive behaviors as well. I have never liked myself. I have always hated my own existence and questioned why I couldn’t just die because it seemed as though I was better off that way anyhow. I don’t see myself in the same way the rest of you do. For every positive thing you have to say about me, I have something negative, if not two or three negative things, to counteract that and convince myself that you are either lying to me or that you just don’t see the real me.

Impulsive and dangerous behaviors such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating. However if these behaviors occur primarily during a period of elevated mood or energy, they may be signs of a mood disorder rather than BPD – which is also why bipolar disorder and BPD are often confused

I am notorious for making impulsive decisions. If there is any symptom of BPD that I exhibit the most, it’s impulsiveness. I do it in a destructive way to be quite honest. It is my way of showing desperation to try to calm the shame and guilt and intensity of emotions that manifest in ways that I am unable to control. It’s a way of punishing myself, because I have felt all my life that I deserve to be punished, as if what I have already been through wasn’t enough punishment. My self-hatred manifests itself by causing me to make impulsive decisions. It’s a warped perception for me to control my overwhelming amount of emotions.

Self-harming behavior, such as cutting

God only knows how long I’ve had BPD. But I started cutting myself when I was about 14. Whether that was just a symptom of my depression or an early onset sign of BPD, I’ll never really know. But my ongoing eating disorder is definitely a symptom of it because I can’t seem to control it. Eating disorders are characterized as self-destructive behaviors and mine has been going on long enough; though no would ever guess I struggle with one just by looking at me.

Recurring thoughts of suicidal behaviors or threats

I have had recurring suicidal thoughts for as long as I can remember. I’m still shocked I made it as long as I did without being hospitalized. I just want to be put out of my pain and misery and no longer have to deal with a life riddled with traumatic memories, anxiety, and sadness. Sometimes it feels as though it’s the only solution to my pain, though I know I won’t ever do it. Don’t ask me what’s stopping me, though. I don’t have an answer.

Intense and highly changeable moods

My moods rely on the behavior of other people. I do not handle insults or criticism well, because someone is basically pointing out what it is that I already hate about myself. If you think of it, I’ve thought of it long before you and turned it into self-hatred that causes my current mood to take a nose dive. I lose control when I dwell on other’s words or criticism. Shame is fueled by my reactions to the way you speak to me or something that you point out. I want to make everyone happy and please every single one of you. But if you criticize me, even if it’s constructive, I will immediately take that as an insult and turn it around on myself. Shame is a constant. There is sadness, anxiety, fear, restlessness, but out of everything, shame is the only constant. I feel shame more than I feel anything else.

Chronic feelings of emptiness

I like to call this the void. I’ve talked about it before. It is the point I reached before I was hospitalized. I didn’t know what I felt other than the fact that it was absolutely nothing over nothing. Shame didn’t even exist here in the void. There was absolutely nothing. I feel way too much on a daily basis. Which is ironic because that’s something people with BPD are notorious for feeling, is way too much of anything. Yet we also suffer from chronic feelings of emptiness. I suppose it becomes the void when everything becomes too, too much. Maybe I want someone to save me. Maybe I’m trying to save myself I just don’t know how to do that.

Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger

This is thankfully something that I do not suffer from with BPD. Although, the only thing I can relate enough close to it, would be my inability to control my way of expressing and communicating. I get extremely angry when someone doesn’t understand what it is that I’m trying to say or express. I get extremely angry when I don’t know how to control my ability of bringing up unnecessary shit. However, my anger manifests itself with crying and shaking and more crying. So no one really knows that I’m angry.

Difficulty trusting which is sometimes accompanied by irrational fear of other people’s intentions

I am evaluating your intentions on a 24/7 basis without you even realizing it. I am reading you and analyzing you to try to figure out what it is that you want to do with me. My first instinct is to protect myself, because I’m analyzing you to basically figure out if you’re there to hurt me, traumatize me, or shame me. If you’re lucky, all three at once. Do I know that you’re not going to do those things? Most likely, yes. Can I control myself and tell myself that you aren’t going to do those things? Absolutely not. So here I am continuing to analyze and figure you out even though there’s really nothing irrational to figure out other than the fact that I’m the one being irrational.

Feelings of dissociation, such as feeling cut off from oneself, seeing oneself from outside one’s body, or feelings of unreality

Dissociation is one of the very few things I don’t know how to put into words. I’ve never known how to explain it. Looking back, I’ve experienced it since I was very young. The best way I know how to tell you what it is, is that it is an out of body experience. You are not you, but you are still you, only you’re you looking at you from a distance. But the you in the distance is the you that you cannot control. You watch and you suffer while something happens wanting to help or protect the you in the distance, but you don’t know how and you can’t. So you sit and watch in agony instead. I dissociate whenever my brain feels like it. Sometimes I’m at home, sometimes I'm reading a book, sometimes I’m driving, sometimes I’m at work, but it doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing, I always have to be prepared for it.

I feel like there are never really adequate words to explain borderline personality disorder and what it’s really like to live with it. No one will ever understand how difficult and how intense it is to feel so many emotions and so many things at one time and react with such intensity. Unless you live with it, you have no way of ever knowing what it’s really like. And believe me when I say, I would not wish borderline personality disorder on my worst enemy. If you struggle with borderline personality disorder and you’re reading this, please know that you’re not alone. And please, if you have the resources and are open to therapy, please seek out a therapist or your own workbook to do DBT, because I cannot even begin to tell anyone of you what it has done for me and how much improvement I have made.

If you or someone you know needs support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or text START to 741-741

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