The decline of societal cohesion and the hope that God promises

I am really getting sick of living in this world. I don't mean that in a "I'm depressed" kind of way though. I mean it in a "the world has become so bad I can't stand living in it" way. Thank the Lord that I found my way back to God in the last year because without him I would be completely lost. The rapid decline in the morality and attitudes of people globally is astounding to me. The internet has become a facilitator of this decline, being an intangible, essentially uncontrollable entity. Even the fact that I am able to write this blog post speaks to that fact. No one is regulating me. I can say whatever I want here. I could lie, I could mislead people (to be fair I must say that I have no intention of misleading anyone but rather to help them find the hope in this dark world.) I could post copyrighted material and claim it as my own. I could pretend I'm somebody else. I could post illegal material. I could post harmful material. I could pretty much do whatever I want and have a readily available audience to do so.

Now, there are people out there who use this ability for good rather than bad (I like to believe I am one of them). But the sheer increase in selfishness makes a person question everyone and their motives. The trust is eroding. We are moving away from a physical world into a "digital world". We are voyeurs, we are consumers. Personal relationships are going by the wayside, favored by "digital" communication. The internet has become our world. We say what we want, do what we want. And if anyone tries to stop us from doing what we want, we feel justified in hurting, maligning, or punishing them in some fashion. Everyone must accept everyone and everything they do, because if we don't, we are bigots or uneducated or small minded or fascist. We sympathize with the perpetrators of crimes rather than victims. We glorify violence, we pay to see people stabbed and shot and mutilated, abused and raped and tortured. Our fellow human beings have become mere objects - objects of hatred or objects of pleasure, objects of manipulation and objects to discard. Objects, Things, Commodities. We sacrifice our relationships, our families, for sex with a stranger, for the promise of fame, for a few dollars. We sell others out, we sell ourselves out. We "make a deal with the devil". Just a little more...a little more...a little more. No one will notice, it is gradual.

Days become weeks become months become years. The world of 50 years ago is non-existent. The world of my childhood, a mere 20 years ago, is unrecognizable to me. The teenagers of this world have no idea of a life outside these digital walls.. it has become normal, habitual, ingrained. The concept of love is gone. It has been replaced with a hollow front. Behind it lie ugly things. The ugliness was once held behind the doors. Now it is creeping out, seeping underneath, permeating the structure, little by little, little by little, until we have become so accustomed to the heinous things that happen that we take no notice at all. It is in our faces, daily. The bad has become the good. And do not dare to speak the words I do, for fall in line and join in or you will be annihilated. Do not speak truth, do not speak love, do not speak justice to a world that is blind, deaf and dumb. You will be trampled underfoot like a piece of refuse. You will be shamed into silence for not condoning the wickedness. Yet I take that risk. I am willing to be trampled for the sake of goodness. I am willing to be the lone dissenter if I have to. I am willing to stand up and say, NO MORE. No more selfishness, no more greed, no more arrogance, no more exploitation. No more of the attitudes that saturate this world, 2014. I am willing to take the bullet and endure the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".



Whenever I look at the world, and I feel this horrible crushing weight, when the badness of mankind is so glaring I cannot escape from it (which is often) I think of God. I pray, I turn to him, I read his word. I turn away from the bad, I seek the good. There is nothing lasting at all in this world that man has formed.

"The world and its desires are fading away, but the person who does God's will remains forever." I John 2:19 (International Standard Version)


The world wants you to believe it, the world wants to sell you the lie. They tell you to trust in them. They want you to stop believing in God, to give up. They want you to give up.

Corruption is rampant in this world, everywhere we turn. It is getting harder to find light as the world turns black. I understand this must all come to pass as it is written in his word.

"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. 9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men." 2 Timothy 3:1-9 (English Standard Version)

Several people I know have noted the level of corruption and atrocities occurring on a world wide scale now. They, like me, have noted they must pray daily to keep strength against the terrible messages in this world.

“For this reason take up the complete suit of armor from God, so that you may be able to resist in the wicked day and, after you have accomplished everything, to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, with the belt of truth fastened around your waist, wearing the breastplate of righteousness  and having your feet shod in readiness to declare the good news of peace. Besides all of this, take up the large shield of faith, with which you will be able to extinguish all the wicked one’s burning arrows. Also, accept the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, that is, God’s word,  while with every form of prayer and supplication you carry on prayer on every occasion in spirit.” Ephesians 6:13-18 (NWT)

The internet spreads its vines out everywhere, touches everyone. Anyone trying to put out a voice of hope and encouragement above the din of hedonistic chaos is drowned out. But here I am anyway, doing the best I can to implore the people in this world to turn around. STOP. Assess. CARE. Don't do the wrong thing because "everyone else is doing it." Care about your mind, about your soul. Safeguard it, because it is precious. Don't throw away your soul, don't sell out your fellow human brothers for a few dollars, for a few minutes of pleasure.

"Tell them, ‘“As surely as I am alive,” declares the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that someone wicked changes his way and keeps living." Ezekiel 33:11 (New World Translation)

I will hold onto God's hope, to the hope given by the selfless sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ. The only hope that carries a certain promise of happiness and everlasting life, free from the turmoil of this wicked world.


"In the final part of the days, The mountain of the house of Jehovah Will become firmly established above the top of the mountains, And it will be raised up above the hills, And to it peoples will stream.  And many nations will go and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah And to the house of the God of Jacob. He will instruct us about his ways, And we will walk in his paths.” For law will go out of Zion, And the word of Jehovah out of Jerusalem.    He will render judgment among many peoples And set matters straight respecting mighty nations far away. They will beat their swords into plowshares And their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, Nor will they learn war anymore. They will sit, each one under his vine and under his fig tree, And no one will make them afraid, For the mouth of Jehovah of armies has spoken." Micah 4:1-4 (New World Translation)

" And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”" Revelation 21:3,4 (English Standard Version)

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.

War Zone

My world has crumbled down around me

I watched it as it fell, helpless to keep it whole

I could not stop the inevitable progression

First one brick, then another

Til it all tumbled down

And spiraled out of control

And the pain I feel is like a massive missile

Has been projected directly into my heart

Piercing it, exploding with such magnitude

That there are a hundred pieces of me blown apart

Coagulated bits of blood and flesh here and there

A clump of tangled hair

A stump of a limb, with raw nerves exposed

And my mind, just alive enough to see the wreckage and know the end is imminent

Just waiting for that moment to come

Feeling like a thousand eternities

Awaiting the second it will all be snuffed out

And the pain will end

Because there is no one around

To make this swift

No one to show mercy

No one

But me

9/8/2013

Perfectionism, emotional dependence and self image

As I mentioned in my last blog, I've always been an emotional person. I really do feel that my emotions rule my life. Which is not to say that I cannot think about things logically and rationally, but by far my emotional state is the biggest motivator of my behavior. Because of this, I've acquired a lot of maladaptive coping mechanisms to try to function in life and get my emotional needs met.

From as early as I can remember, I have struggled with perfectionism. I held myself to an incredibly high standard and expected myself to do everything right all the time. Whenever I made a mistake I would beat myself up terribly. Of course, children don't analyze their feelings and recognize their motivations for doing things. But I have come to see that this desire for perfection stemmed from an emotional need to be loved, accepted and affirmed. I felt if I was perfect that I would get these things, and therefore would be happy. Of course it never really worked out that way. The harder I tried to be perfect, the more I would fail and negative feelings would consume me. I would feel stupid, ugly, worthless. In my adolescent years, I continued in this pattern of seeking perfection...I felt that if I did everything right all the time, people would love me, and give me those emotional things that I needed. I never really felt that I got that and so as a result, the negative feelings would return, I would become anxiety ridden, depressed and hopeless. In my adult life, nothing really changed. I felt if I was perfect, I would be able to acquire the love and acceptance that I so desperately craved. Nowadays my perfectionism has gone the opposite way. I realize I cannot be perfect. I realize I am doomed before I start. It keeps me from doing a lot of things because I fear that I will fail and be unworthy. It is a hindrance to me, but I don't know how to stop the feelings, how to stop this incessant need to be perfect.

Again, relating to my negative ways of coping, I have come to realize that I am extremely emotionally dependent on others. All my life I have been a person who is very sensitive...someone who needs a lot of assurance from others, particularly those close to me. I have tended to latch onto one particular person and rely on that person for everything I need. At times it was friends, other times it was romantic relationships. I would wrap my life around that one person, do everything with them, to the point where everything else just fell by the wayside. I really believe that I have relied so heavily on others because I have not been able to provide myself with the emotional things I need...I expect others to do it for me. I have trouble comforting myself, feeling secure by myself, feeling like a worthwhile person. So I cling to the one person I feel can provide those things to me. At times it has backfired. I have been dependent on people that did not treat me well, that hurt me very deeply. But I simply was afraid to be alone. I needed someone to take care of me and so I tolerated the bad treatment. It frustrates me so much to realize this because I don't want to be dependent on others. I wish I could make myself feel better. But at times, I become just like a child, seeking out that love, comfort, support, protection, feeling like a helpless invalid, unable to care for myself. It is a difficult way to live.

As a result of this, I struggle with defining who I am, with my sense of self. If others treat me well, I feel good, competent, worthy. If others treat me badly I feel bad, empty and worthless. At times it even has nothing to do with other people. At times it shifts without reason. My idea of self fluctuates frequently from one extreme to the other. I find myself questioning, who am I? My perception of myself changes, my goals, my core values, everything. I go from being extremely conservative to extremely liberal. I go from being intensely religious to completely non-religious. Again, I go from seeing myself as awesome, wonderful, perfect, to horrible, ugly, unworthy. This constant fluctuation leaves me feeling confused and lost. At times I feel so certain of who I am and at others I feel I don't have the slightest clue. I could be pushed in any direction the wind blows me.

So I am struggling with all of this now, all of these non-bipolar related issues. I don't know if I will ever be able to work them out, if I will ever be able to change. I don't believe that medication is the answer...I realize these emotional disturbances have probably been caused by environmental factors rather than some chemical brain imbalance. The question is, when you have always been this way, how do you ever fix it?

Feeling broken

Well I don't really know where to begin. I've been going through a rough time lately. I'm feeling pretty depressed, pretty down. But I don't really think it is bipolar related.

I realize that I have always been an emotionally unstable person. As far back as I can remember, even into early grade school I recall having emotional problems. Getting older, into adolescence, I had a very dysfunctional home life, and that only contributed to my feelings of emotional instability. I remember being about 15 years old, going through hell, and thinking "When I get older, things will get better." But the truth is, they never have. I'm turning 30 this year and mentally, I don't feel any different than I did back then. I suffer with anxiety, perfectionism, dependence, unstable self image. I feel as if there is an empty hole in my soul that I have been searching all my life for something to fill. And at times, I do feel better, and I'm able to function, and I don't think about it. But ultimately, it is all just a cover, and the emptiness always returns. I regress into a helpless, child like state where I need others to care for me, to protect me, to validate and affirm me. I try to alleviate the feelings of anxiety and self loathing in unhealthy ways, by both isolating myself as well as clinging onto the people close to me in my life. I have always been a person who is extremely sensitive, someone who needs a lot of love, a lot of affection and affirmation. Most of my life I don't feel that I received that which in turn, has magnified all my emotional issues. I feel lonely, confused, lost, broken. I have a pervading sense of being worthless, useless and empty that continues to plague me no matter how old I get or how much time passes. I wish I could be a "normal" person...a well adjusted person, a functioning person. But at times I just don't know how. I feel like I'm constantly using defense mechanisms to prevent myself from feeling so much negativity. Everything ties into everything else, and if only it could be a simple fix to say "Do this and that will go away" but with our mental health it is never that easy. The mind is the seat of all we are as human beings. When our minds are fractured and broken, it affects every part of our lives. So I'm left here now, not knowing what to do, feeling helpless and longing for elusive happiness and stability.

Sinking into depression for the first time in years

I’ve been feeling for awhile now that I’m probably going into a depression. It’s been pretty confusing because for the past 6 months I have been up and down so frequently and sometimes “mixed” so that the up and down can’t totally be distinguished. But after my most recent episode where I had intervention from my doctors to keep me from being hospitalized (I wasn’t feeling depressed at all) my meds have gotten switched up a lot and I do think my current meds are keeping the manic portion of my illness at bay. I  haven’t had any weird thoughts or actions in a few weeks. However, my doctors warned me that depressed often follows mania, and so they are on the guard and want me to be aware too. And I can safely say that they are right, and in my case, depression is definitely following this manic or mixed period.

It’s weird, because the term depression gets thrown around so much now that it has no real meaning anymore. Anyone who has a bad day says “I’m depressed.” Those who actually suffer from depression as a mental/medical illness know that it can be unbearable. I hate the way that I feel right now for a lot of reasons. I hate it because I thought it was gone. I haven’t felt this way in many years which in itself, confounds me. In the past few years I’ve gone through a lot of rough times, situations that 95% of people never have to deal with. And through all of that, I was able to somehow stay strong, despite the fact that I had no real support system and I have been living with this illness all my life. I guess it was just in remission at the time. I remember even thinking to myself then, how every day was kind of the same…one went into the next…no real super highs or super lows. And it basically stayed that way for the bulk of two years. It was great, looking back in retrospect. Not the horrible things I went through of course, but having the stability to be ABLE to make it through and be no worse for wear, essentially.

Now, I’m here in this situation and I don’t know what to do. And I keep telling myself, I need to change something. I need to be proactive, I need, SOMEHOW, to thwart this depression, to quell these feelings. Yet I can’t. And I realize now, that is the worst thing at all in life. To have these feelings…for no reason at all…at to be unable to stop them from happening. The sense of helplessness and hopelessness only contributes to the feelings of despair. I want to sleep all day because I cannot bear the thought of muddling through the 12 hours until it’s time to go to sleep again. There is no joy in my life now. And I don’t know why. That’s the worst thing. I don’t know why. There is no reason. It is a feeling…it exists…no matter what I do, what I change, it persists. And I feel so sad…I feel sad just because that is the way of this illness. But I feel even sadder because I cannot do anything about it. It is my lot in life. It’s endless; cyclical; repetitive. It makes me want to give up completely. Because who wants to life a life so completely out control? A life where you are blown to and fro, and the actions you take are dictated by a cruel puppeteer that rules your mind totally? There is no out; no escape. At times the life I live seems worse than death. I admit that over the course of my life I have contemplated suicide countless times. After my one and only actual attempt, 5 years ago, I thought I would never think or feel that way again. Yet here I am, and the thoughts recur. I want to blot them out. I want to stop everything from happening. I don’t want to die…I’m not suicidal. I just want to go back to the time when I was happy…when I had stability. I want to go back to the time when I was satisfied…when I had control over my mind, my life, the things around me. I want to know a life that is different from this…this constant torturous merry-go-round that I ride.