Diagnosis of BPD/Borderline, and making sense of the chaos

Hi everyone…it’s been a long long time since I’ve written!!! Life is so complicated, as it always is J There are ups and there are downs and in betweens.

Today I want to talk about a subject I have not discussed much on my blog, and that is Borderline. I myself was diagnosed with borderline last year when I went through a particularly heinous episode of a couple of months that pushed me back into counseling and psychiatry after a long break during my pregnancy. I did not know what was going on with me at all…it was very extreme. I was fighting with my husband all the time and having these rages that would start at my toes and literally go up through my head like a white hot heat. I’d never felt anger like that before, like some crazy wild animal – the intensity was far beyond what I had ever experienced. Having mostly been an inward turning person throughout my life, expressing angry rages outwardly was scary to me, yet I felt completely out of control of my emotions and behavior. I began having traumatic flashbacks to my childhood that would hit me out of nowhere, while shopping or doing laundry or driving. I began having panic attacks where my heart would race and I would be short of breath, hyperventilating, sometimes for hours. I began severely dissociating (although I did not know what dissociation was at the time). I would be walking and talking and having no idea what I was doing, where I was going. I felt very “muddled” in the head during those times and would find myself putting garbage in the refrigerator or driving off someplace where suddenly, nothing looked familiar and I had no idea how I got there. My emotions would fluctuate between extreme and overwhelming to numb or non-existent. I literally felt as if I were going crazy and KNEW I needed help. I did not recognize the person I had become.

So, on top of having bipolar, I was diagnosed with borderline, and initially, I actually felt relieved. I thought “Ok, this makes sense” and did a lot of thinking back on my life and feelings and behavior. I came to recognize a lot of things that I never did before, almost like blinders coming off. But then after a couple of months, it started having the opposite effect. The more I learned about borderline the more bleak it seemed. People view those with borderline as “crazy” “unpredictable” “angry” “mean” “unfixable” and whole host of other very negative descriptors. There is very little understanding out there about it. Much like when I was diagnosed with bipolar, I did not like the idea of being lumped in with “those people” especially since I DO NOT do some of the more egregious things that many borderlines do (verbally assaulting others, physical aggression, manipulating behavior). I can’t say that I have NEVER been mean to another person verbally but overall, it is not what I would consider a part of my “personality”.

So that brings me to the other point that I didn’t like about being diagnosed, and that was the label of borderline itself. The name “Borderline Personality Disorder” originated when it was believed that the disorder existed on the “border” of so-called neurosis and psychosis. This is now known to be untrue but the name remains. It has insane amount of stigma associated with it, probably moreso than any other mental disorder. People just hear the word borderline and they immediately get a horrible idea in their heads and think you are the scum of the earth. Which, honestly, I know I am nowhere close to being!!! I’m sure there are some borderlines who ARE that bad but again, I’m not a ticking time bomb walking around hating everyone and just waiting to unleash my anger. Quite the opposite. I’m generally a quiet, meek individual. Growing up my anger and negative feelings were turned inward toward myself and came out as depression, suicidal thoughts, self-injury and those types of things, rather than angry tirades and verbal abuse of others.

I really think that “Borderline Personality Disorder” is in itself a misnomer. I do not believe it is a disorder of personality, which implies that it is some sort of core fault and that those with this disorder are “bad” people. The truth is that with more and more research being done into BPD and mental illness in general, the more the findings are showing that it is a complex interplay of both nature and nurture that causes these disorders to arise. In the case of borderline, individuals are believed to be born with a highly sensitive temperament which, from the start, predisposes them to various issues. So there’s the nature, the hereditary element of it. Then add in what is described as an “invalidating environment” in a child’s formative years – that can be anything from being ignored or criticized by their caregivers all the way through severe forms of abuse or neglect. So there’s the nurture aspect of it. The outside factors that influence and shape a person’s neural pathways in the brain which then control their thoughts, beliefs and behaviors later in life. It’s a big can of worms, essentially.

So, the idea of this being a personality disorder just doesn’t sit right with me. When you take into account that the vast majority (some studies have said as high as 80% or more) of people with BPD come from traumatic or abusive backgrounds, it really seems like a way of punishing the victim unfairly. Truly, BPD to me does not seem to be a personality disorder, but actually a disorder of trust and attachment which was skewed and malformed at a young age. As a result, people with BPD struggle with relationships and their sense of self/identity. Most of the classic BPD issues (fear of abandonment, lack of trust, love/hate relationships, outbursts of anger) can be traced back to events which occurred in the person’s life. They weren’t just born “bad”…like a malleable ball of clay, young children are impressionable and shaped by the experiences around them. I think if people understood this basic premise they would understand those who suffer with BPD a little more and try to understand what hell it must be (and I can speak from experience, it is at times) for the person living inside that body and mind.

Now, that is NOT to say that because those with BPD come from backgrounds of trauma that they can just throw their hands up in the air and say “This is how I am. I can’t do anything about it,” and just subject others to inappropriate behavior. Just because things happened to us as children, doesn’t give us a right to say “It’s somebody else’s fault” and subject others to the same things we were subject to. There again, I see another distinction between myself and the “classic” borderline individual – I recognize these areas I need to work on and accept that. I’m not happy just living in chaos. There are many BPD sufferers who choose not to do anything about it, and to me, that isn’t OK. We didn’t ask for these problems but the fact is, they are there. And they must be dealt with. Those with BPD (like myself) do have the capacity to improve, we do have the ability to get better at managing our intense emotions and relationships with others. But that can only occur when we accept WHAT IS rather than denying it.

So I guess in that sense, the diagnosis has helped me. I’m understanding more and more about myself as time goes on and working hard at getting better control over things, which probably never would have happened had I not gotten the diagnosis. After I was diagnosed with bipolar 4 years ago, I automatically lumped all my emotional states into that, but now I see that not all the emotional issues I have are bipolar related. Many of them are borderline related. The causes are different, treatments are different. I finally, in my third decade of life, feel like things are starting to make sense to me. I feel much better than I did then, emotionally. I feel stronger. For most of my life, I felt weak and fragile and wore a mask to hide all those so called imperfections from others. I’m finally starting to actually FEEL the inner love and peace rather than just pretending that I do. DBT has helped tremendously with this. It is hard work but I recommend it to anyone suffering with BPD who wants to better their life situation. We cannot control our genetics or what we were born with, we cannot control past events or things that were done to us when we were small and powerless. But now, we are grown, we DO have a choice. We do not have to be angry, sad, helpless. We can begin the process of healing, of taking back the power that was stolen. The power is all inside of us…we just have to believe in it.