[ May is BPD ( Borderline Personality Disorder ) awareness month & I wanted to drop this here, for my followers to see.
Why am I posting this, you might ask ? Yes. I HAVE BPD. I’ve had it for at least 10 years in various levels of severity. BPD isn’t the only personality disorder nor mental disorder I have either, & I am not scared to say it.
BPD awareness is close to my heart. I try to make sure I tell to every single person I plan to become a closer friends with that I have this disorder & ask them to try to understand me the best they can. Hell, I sometimes don’t even understand myself… Because of this ( these ) disorders I have always been more or less misunderstood & I have never really “fit the norm” how people should behave. I just… Didn’t understand how emotions work, like many other BPD sufferers. I didn’t know how to voice them out in other way than anger or over-reacting that stems from neglect I had to endure ever since I was a toddler — that is how I learned to survive in the middle of abuse. I am not saying this as an “understand me because I am a special snowflake”, no, everyone should TRY TO UNDERSTAND each other REGARDLESS.
How can you become better at understanding us ? By listening. By asking us questions & not second guess. Educate yourself on the subject if you have a friend, a family member or anyone close to you that suffers from BPD. Or educate yourself even if you don’t, the more knowledge the better.
Now to the stigmas. I am sick & tired of people stigmatizing ANYTHING & I want to debunk these from my personal perspective. Sometimes we do it without even realizing it, stigmatizing… Which we should try our best to break free from.
I am not selfish. I have too many things I need to deal with every day, I might not be the best person to put other people’s needs first as well as someone that isn’t dealing with extreme mood swings that can last from literally 15 SECONDS to couple of hours. I do care about you. I just sometimes don’t have the strength to carry both of our burdens.
I am not manipulative —- I just don’t know how to voice my strong emotions right without sounding hostile or pushy.
I am not an attention seeker. Once again, I just don’t know how to voice my emotions out early enough before I’ve bottled everything up, then everything just explodes because I become so overwhelmed & it seems like I am making the situation a horrible shit storm of drama.
I am not treatment resistant — I thought I was, but my medications are set & suit me. I attend therapy & have been for 1.5 years & it helps. I do not abuse alcohol, drugs or sex, I am actively combating self harm & suicidalness every single day. I will never be cured, but I will be better.
Only thing in this list I can agree with is BPD people being difficult because being difficult is SUBJECTIVE. We as humans don’t have an “one size fits all” base for our tolerance — all of us tolerate certain things to certain extents.
I am not a monster.
Unless you really know me & we have a mutual understanding between each other you have NO RIGHT to stigmatize me or say what kind of a person I am. So many people start to abuse me & tell how horrible person I am because I am behaving in a certain way because I just don’t know better. I don’t know how else to behave. & I know it’s wrong if I behave badly, I am not perfect. But you still have no right to verbally abuse me. Hell, you have no right to do that to ANYONE.
My disorders do not determine me. My disorders are not ME.
These stigmas just make everything worse, for everyone. These stigmas surrounding us make us BPD sufferers AFRAID to admit we have BPD. We are AFRAID to seek for help. We’re AFRAID to even talk about the subject in any way & we keep suffering, feeling alone in this hellhole of a world that might never understand us.
Don’t succumb to the stigma. Don’t be afraid of someone with BPD, some of us suffer in silence & struggle internally, some of us voice our emotions out in a very immature way, we’re not all the same.
Imagine someone whose most outer layer of skin has been peeled completely off. You are red & raw, even a soft breeze of wind hurts. Even the smallest touch can make anyone SCREAM from pain. That is what BPD emotions are like.
We know how we behave is not right, but we most of the time can’t help it. We learned these ways to behave from trauma — we had to do SOMETHING to survive & now we are stuck with a certain way of behavior, a survival method that might get triggered by even the smallest things. We feel like we are in serious danger & we need to defend ourselves at least somehow. We know how we have learned to survive doesn’t work anymore, some of us are in so much better place than we were before but we just can’t break free without professional help or dedicated self treatment, such as Mindfulness, yoga & meditation.
Not all of our bad behaviors are BPD based, but it’s very likely most of them are. You don’t need to understand us, just at least try to.
We are not perfect. You aren’t perfect either. We all make mistakes, some just more than others. Deep down inside we are just like you. We are human, we are flawed & we feel emotions. We are trying our best to be “normal” & not hurt anyone.
For other BPD sufferers — there is hope. Someone loves you. & you should love yourself, too.
This has been a PSA. Thank you for reading. Thank you for trying to understand. ]
