Chance to share
This thread is for those who identify as BPD, whether professionally diagnosed or not to discuss their journey through life and love.
This is cool. I was glad to find a thread like this. I like to write but have stopped trusting my motivations/perceptions about my writing in the past. Since I learned that my behavior matches BPD traits, I don't really want to advertise that fact. And even the people I know in my therapy groups, where I can talk about this stuff, have limited patience with me because of how I have fucked them over with drama and other things in the past.
I say I stopped trusting my motivations for writing because I see now that part of me was looking for attention, to get a reaction, and to provoke/slightly disturb others through my writing. That all felt good when I was unaware of my BPD, but now that I see what a serious problem it is, indulging in this doesn't seem healthy. I do miss being able to express myself, though, so that's why I was happy to find this thread.
-Was it you, a friend or a mental health professional that came to the conclusion that you have BPD
It was my therapist who suggested I look into it. But I had been amassing this list of confusing/odd symptoms for a lifetime with no way to tie it all together. Things I noticed - like never remembering what I looked like in the mirror - to things I never thought of as odd before therapy, like always getting so worked up and making really dramatic deals about exciting ideas and also pretty mundane pains.
-To what extent do you experience splitting?
I am not sure I know what this means. Ok, I just looked it up. Of course. It is hard for me to do anything but splitting. I actually was paying attention to my intense predilection to identifying people as good/bad or worthy/worthless yesterday. I get to hire a team of 15 people each year and am in charge of selections/interviews. I brought a bunch of colleagues in as a panel for the second interviews, and got to see how forgiving/balanced their evaluations of people were - genuinely weighing both good and bad, whereas my drive was to put each person into one camp or another. They were either awesome/exciting or problematic and not to be trusted in my mind. It was weird to see this tendency in action, alongside other peoples' evaluations, because most the time I do this I just believe it and don't really question my thoughts around it.
-How do you cope with the rages/dysphoria/fear of abandonment in both romantic situations and within other aspects of life.
I stay away from people. For about 4 years I haven't gone on a single date while I have been in therapy, and have let a lot of the superficial relationships which propped up my sense of self superficially fall away. This is after I seriously hurt someone (again) in my last relationship and was finally forced (with the help of my therapist) to see my behavior for what it was. I have never really been held accountable before. I really want relationships, but jut figured out this BPD thing like 1-2 months ago, and it seems like kind of a tall order to think about how to go about relationships responsibly. As I understand it, relationships are hard enough for people whose thoughts match reality, much less for someone with as distorted perspective and paranoia as I bring along.
In some situations, however, I can't avoid it, like in work. I received 2 promotions in less than a year, nearly doubling my salary, and yet came away from my most recent salary discussion feeling like I was being pinned down and devalued for not raising the offer when I asked. It took my therapist pointing out that the promotions were a vote of confidence for me to see how crazy my head was.
-Self sabotage and Self Harm? What have you done in the past, and what are you doing to break this cycle.
God, the list goes on and on. Every relationship with promise I have sabotaged through some acts of jealousy, retaliation, unreasonableness and/or betrayal on my part, all thinking I was entirely justified.
My career has been sabotaged multiple times, first by my refusing to pick a direction thinking I had forever and something would fall into my lap (I am only learning now you have to work for things), later by getting sick and then by starting a business without any idea really what I was doing and totally forgetting that I lied at the beginning to get in the door to a big contract.
One time after my first girlfriend exposed the fact that I didn't have any real feelings for her but was just going through the motions trying to look like I thought people were supposed to when they dated, I slipped into this deep dark abyss of realizing I had no idea what my real feelings were and eventually held a candle under my forearm until I could definitely feel something. I still have the scar.
I am not sure but I think medical issues may be my biggest form of self-sabotage. It is hard for me to differentiate what are real medical issues, but I have a convenient tendency of getting sick when it will save me from facing some difficult reality in relationship or life. The most striking example is coming down with a rare auto-immune blood disease after landing my first real job out of college and seeing the bleak outlook of working life for the first time. I loved getting sick and being saved from the responsibility, being babied and given all the time I wanted to try real life again. Of course it came at quite a cost. I lost ten years of my life, and live with the condition in my body which requires visits to the doctor every two weeks to get an infusion of what is currently I think the most expensive drug in the world. So my life is pretty limited - not that I really realize it, but my therapist points it out.
-Psychiatric treatment - Med combinations/Therapy - What's worked and what hasn't?
No meds, just an odd therapy described as psychodynamic with a focus on relationships, practiced by a woman influenced by buddhism who sees it as an act of love to call out bullshit the instant it shows up. I have been going to a combination of groups and individual sessions with her three times a week for the past 4 years.
-Interpersonal relationships?
This is where I am stuck now and what sent me on the web search that found this thread in the first place. Discovering this BPD thing, like I said, sort of shatters the fantasy that I will be saved by the next relationship that could be right around the corner. I can see now that the people I am drawn to and excited by have their fair share of problems too, and that for me drama/intensity is one of my highest values in relationship - not stability. The kinds of practices that lead to trust and allowing each other to relax in relationship are pretty much anathema to my sense of what is right. I crave human contact, including human touch and intimacy, but am like that fire-breathing dragon who scorches everything close as soon as I open my mouth - and have fun doing it, not understanding the other person doesn't like being burned.
I am kind of stuck at the moment because I am not ready to resign myself to not having a relationship. But I see this long uphill climb ahead of me now - and this is after 4 years of therapy just discovering/seeing the problem - and am being asked by life to downshift a few gears and make peace with the boringness of life that stability requires - like doing my chores and budgets and committing to exercise and healthy practices - which would be totally new for me. It just feels wrong. But I can kind of see that if I can't follow through on promises I make myself to clean up my apartment or leave the house at a certain time, then I won't have much luck being there for another human being in a way they can rely on. I guess this is what is next if I want to grow, but I just wish there could be an arrangement like a fuck buddy who would accept me as I am and not ask too much.
Guess that's it for now. Thanks for the chance to write.
