Does my story sound like BPD?

[Star Gazer]

Apologies for the length, but there is a lot to tell. I am 41 years old and am seriously considering for the first time whether I might have BPD. Needless to say, this has been a devastating process. I am sharing my story here and would greatly any insight or feedback from members, as I know many of you know this illness inside and out. 

Full disclosure: I was actually diagnosed with BPD when I was in high school, following my first suicide attempt. I celebrated my 18th birthday in a psychiatric facility, where my parents sent me after I overdosed on sleeping pills. I did not learn of this diagnosis until 2010, when I approached my mother to tell her my suspicion that my father is BPD - she replied, "That's what they thought you had when you were in that hospital..." I thought this absurd, and believed this was the case until just in last couple of weeks.

My father, as it turns out, is not BPD, but is actually a covert narcissist (one who only displays his evil side to those who are very close to him - only my mother, sister and I have seen my father's narcissistic disorder). Because of this, I spent my entire childhood walking on eggshells in order to avoid my father's narcissistic rages. When he wasn't raging, the tension in our home was thick, due to his sullen, hostile moods. My mother functioned as his enabler - she was not an ally to my sister and me. She did not attach to us as babies, and neither of us (my sister or me) have any memories of her being a comforting, loving, support zone. She was often aloof and irritable, and IMO should never have been a mother. 

Both my parents were physically abusive - usually in the form of whacks across the head or spankings, often for trivial transgressions like leaving the refrigerator door open too long, spilling a glass of milk, closing the car door too hard. I remember running from my mother and her wooden spoon, which she used to smack our legs.

There was more serious physical abuse, also - on four occasions that I remember, when I was very young (starting at age 4) I was beaten when my parents caught me masturbating. For some reason, this sort of healthy self-exploration was enraging to them, and I was terrorized for it with beatings. I remember being told to stand in front of my father's closet and choose the belt he would use to beat me. He had dozens of belts, and I was terrified. 

On another occasion, my mother caught me masturbating (I was maybe 6 or 7 years old), and forced me to watch while she cut up my favorite doll (one of the adoption dolls that were so popular in the 80s), then stuffed it in the trash. 

This was my early childhood - my father's moods and pathological need for control dominated our lives. I could tell story after story after story. As my sister and I grew into teenagers, the physical abuse mostly stopped (there were a couple of exceptions - I remember being struck across the face with a hot curling iron by my father and being slapped across the face by my mother - in neither instance had I done anything wrong). But the "walking on eggshells" feeling was still there, very much so - I learned to lie to my father's face in order to avoid his wrath, and as a result became a skilled liar. 

I would say that my childhood was characterized by abuse and emotional neglect, which I know now are often hallmarks of a BPD childhood. In my senior year of high school, as previously mentioned, I became very depressed for the first time, and tried to commit suicide. This was in late 1992. The following summer I graduated, and was set to leave for college in September. That summer I began acting out - I repeatedly stole money from my summer job, lied, starting smoking cigarettes and listening to heavy grunge music, I began sleeping around with different boys. I felt wild and out of control. The promiscuous behavior continued through my freshman year of college, then I got a boyfriend and entered a very stable couple of years. My social network flourished, and I found some very close friends. I was doing well academically, and I put the breakdown I dealt with in high school behind me.

Then, the boyfriend and I broke up, and things began to shift. We shared a house off campus with two of our close guy friends. I was surprised and hurt when the 3 of them ganged up against me. They seemed to feel that I had become a toxic, conflict-driven presence in the house. They said that of all the arguments they'd witnessed between me and my ex-boyfriend, I was at fault every time. One of them told me later that during that year, following my breakup with the ex, I "just seemed to mentally unhinge." I had no idea what he was talking about, and remembered this time period very differently - I could not see that I was the monster they were painting me out to be. However, his comment stayed with me.

In my senior year of college, I had another breakdown, and again tried to commit suicide. This was following a truly terrible summer when I again felt out of control and was ruining relationships right and left. Six months earlier, my father cut me off financially in the middle of my senior year over a trival slight (I lied about a dentist appt, and only because I knew he would respond with narc rage if I told him the truth) - this set me on a downward spiral, as I had no way to pay rent and living expenses. I lived in a small college town where jobs were hard to come by and paid next to nothing. I began writing bad checks all over town, which got me arrested several times. I was evicted from my house for non-payment of rent. It was just one crisis after another - I was consumed with pain, and felt terribly alone and shunned. My family were not supportive (no surprise there) and in general reacted with cold judgment and disdain. 

That same summer, I impulsively decided to fabricate a medical condition in order to get everyone off my back, and elicit sympathy. I remember when I came up with the idea - I was parked in the driveway of the house where I'd been living that summer. I had four girl roommates and they were all inside, waiting for me. They were angry because I'd been unable to pay them the last round of bills and they wanted their money. Three of them were mean and hostile about the whole thing, and I was dreading going inside and having them confront me. I was overwhelmed with shame and in a panic move decided to say that I had just been informed I was HIV positive. They were taken aback of course, and backed off from pressuring me about the bill money, at least for that night. 

Then, the lie took on a life of its own. I'd been feeling so scathingly judged, especially by my family, and why couldn't anyone see how much pain I was in? No one seemed to care. I felt utterly alone and scared. So I started telling other people about my fictional HIV status - this earned me sympathy and support, where before there was only coldness and judgment. I told friends and family. My mother is the one who figured out it was a lie - she talked to the mean girl roommates behind my back, and told them it likely wasn't true. Once they talked to my mother, their meanness and hostility turned into outright hate and viciousness. Months later, two of them would attack me in a bar (yanking open the door of the stall I was using, and pouring a pitcher of cold water on my lap, then physically attacking me). 

One by one, friend after friend turned their back - the people who'd been supportive of me after I told them about being HIV positive. Of course I can't blame them. I absolutely hate myself for my deception, and have never really understood why I did such a thing, other than as a ploy for sympathy - I was absolutely desperate for someone, anyone, to be nice to me. After my family's rejection, I couldn't handle another minute of unkindness. It was the only way I could think of to get love. 

Following this incident, there were a few months of distraction when I got involved with a new guy. I was head over heels for him, and he ended up abandoning me, without warning, and got back together with an ex-girlfriend. We had moved to a different city about four hours away, and two months after we got there, he skipped town one night with all of our money on him, heading back to the college town where we'd met. During the break-up confrontation, I impulsively lied and said that I was pregnant, so that he wouldn't leave me. This lie completely unraveled within a week, when his sister and his ex-girlfriend confronted me with a pregnancy test.

A week later I tried again to commit suicide - 25 Tylenol. Someone told me once that you have to be sure not to take too many, otherwise your body will just puke them up. I didn't die. 

A year after that terrible, terrible summer, I moved to a big city far away. I was 23 years old, and determined to move on from all of that. I started a new life and made many new friends, and have been relatively stable ever since. That whole awful summer became my shameful, dirty, awful secret, one I haven't talked about since, with anyone. The toxic shame is so intense, to go down that road in my memory, is almost overwhelming. I have tried, all these years, to just put it out of my mind as much as possible. I basically sealed that whole time period in a vault and shoved it in the dimmest, dark recesses of my memory.

Until now.

Two years ago (summer of 2014), I got into a relationship with a man I believe is a sociopath and narcissist (he reminds me a lot of my father, actually). He began showing his true colors after about 6 months, through intense episodes of verbal and emotional abuse. He has been physical with me on two occasions. I have been unable to extricate myself from the relationship - I leave him, but always go back. This has caused me endless distress and suffering. I seem to have an extraordinary ability for dissociating from his abusive ways - after one of his rage episodes, or displays of disrespect and ugliness, the sense of injustice and outrage I feel quickly fades away. I call it "abuse amnesia." 

The relationship has triggered intense fear of abandonment issues for me, and in general the stress from the constant conflict and walking on eggshells has caused me to feel unhinged and out of control, in a way I haven't felt in 20 years, since that awful summer from hell. I now believe that this boyfriend is supposed to be a messenger in my life, pointing the way for me to go back and deal with the past - the trauma of my childhood, the toxic shame of that summer, the breakdown in high school, all of it. I'd worked so hard to put all of that out of my mind, not understanding that this is not the same as resolving and dealing with it. Dissociating from it was not a healthy way to process what happened and heal, even though it may have been a necessary coping mechanism for me at that time.

My life, as I said, for the past 20 years has been relatively stable - no other breakdowns or ruined relationships. The one exception would be in the work arena - I have a pathological inability, it seems, to keep a job. I also have a pattern of becoming intensely excited about a job, in the beginning, and then I lose interest in it. For a while I will be hating on the place, seeing everything that's wrong with it, and when I finally get to quit it's ecstasy. Then I barely think about it again. I've done this with career tracks, jobs, moving destinations. I once worked really hard to put myself through a two year school program, then only worked in the field for 6 months. I quit the profession and didn't look back. I just lost interest in it completely. I've always marveled at other people's ability to stay content with one job for years and years. That kind of emotional stability is totally foreign to me. 

When I read about BPD, I finally have an explanation for that whole time period 20 years ago - the breakdown in high school (when I actually was diagnosed with BPD at a mental hospital) and the summer from hell. I finally understand why my moods are so unstable, why I throw myself with such passion into some idea or job, only to completely lose interest after a year or two. I finally understand why I have been struggling so hard to leave my sociopathic/narcissistic lover (they say that sociopaths and borderlines go together romantically like peanut butter and jelly). I finally understand that the traumatic abuse I suffered growing up, thanks to having one parent whose a narcissist and the other who is his enabler, has had a heavy price to pay. Just putting my childhood out of my mind, and dissociating from it, so that I can still have a relationship with my parents, is no longer going to cut it. The buck stops here. 

I felt compelled to share my story here, and to say, first, thank you SO MUCH if you've read this far. I would greatly appreciate any advice or feedback or insight you might care to share. Does this indeed sound like BPD to you? 

 

 

[Moppet86]

Hi Star Gazer,

 

I just wanted to reach out and say thanks for sharing your story, that must have taken a lot to get it all down to post here

With regards to your question, unfortunately, I'm not a medical professional so I can't and wouldn't want to say "what you have written sounds like BPD" because I have no medical or scientific basis for judgement or diagnosis; that would have to come from someone qualified to make such a diagnosis.

I can only speak from my heart and experiences...

I was diagnosed with BPD in February this year, after 15 years to-ing and fro-ing between my GP and the county Mental Health Team and a plethora of misdiagnoses; what I can say is that a lot of what you have written resonates with me deeply - I have had felt and understood on a personal level some, many, of the things you have described in terms of how you were/are feeling and certain behaviours (the job thing! Oh my goodness the job thing - that is me allllll over). So for a start you aren't alone in feeling those things and reacting the way you do, I am dead certain there are many of us who do.

Do you have a GP/Doctor you can speak to to get some help in ascertaining the best course of action for you? Or any other support systems you can utilise? 

I am a few months into DBT and while I'm not finding it a breeze, it is starting to make me re-assess and address my behaviours and I do feel that in time it will have a significant impact on my life for the better and was developed by someone who had BPD, you could always have a little look and see if it's something that might help you. As previously mentioned though, a Doctor would probably be the best place to start.

I do hope this (probably overly long, sorry :S) reply has helped even one tiny little bit , keep your head up and know you aren't alone in feeling the way you do.

 

Take care