BPD and my life

[burning wing]

Hello everyone! I so much want to talk, but I don't have anyone to tell this to. Well, it has been more than a year since I have found out I'm not like all those cool other people and I'm suffering from BPD. And for more than a year I have been in therapy. Not even once have I missed a therapy session, on purpose or not. Not even once have I lost my temper with my therapist. Not even once have I threatened anyone with suicide. I have been doing all the mindfullness things my therapist told me to. I have been listening to him carefully. And what? He still doesn't trust me. These BPD stereotypes are killing me.

Yes, I do feel the pain and I tend to feel it all the time, it's just I put a lot of effort into avoiding conflict and I am trying to do my best to manage being in therapy. Another thing I don't understand is why this hurts so much, even after all this struggle. Do other people who don't have BPD feel the same way? I can't believe they don't and I can't believe that if they do, why are they able to cope with it so well? What is the reason BPD hurts so much? Inability to feel besides contact with other people? But after a year of therapy and a lot of mindfullness exercises I thought I almost got there. I learned to feel many feelings, I learned to identify them, I learned to do all the time just one thing at a time and that's what I have been doing for months. And just a few sentences of harsh criticism from my therapist, mostly unjustified, in my opinion - and now I am all over this again, and again I am dissosiating and losing connection to the world and again praying so that God would take me away. Does that ever stop? Is it even possible to stop feeling such pain someday? I guess I'm just tired. In the beginning, I was so excited, I thought this whole thing would get me out. When I started finally getting to feel, it felt as if I was suddenly awake from an eternal sleep. I thought I could manage to regulate my emotions, I thought I had control over myself. But I was shocked by the way my therapist misinterpreted my intentions (at least in my opinion he did). Why does he even have to say things in such manner? Well, I know he thinks I'm borderline and I will not understand if he just explains it to me, because obviously I'm reckless and do not care about anything at all. Also maybe he believes that whenever I don't sleep or eat, I'm, of course, sitting with a knife in my hands trying to commit suicide, but that's not true.

I guess I'm just losing faith in this whole thing, and along with it, in my life
 

[addy2]

I have found this too, once labelled its assumed we are all the same. I'm never aggressive or rude but its asssumed we are, even by others I got a reply on a post lately saying to ask for something but not aggressively because they assume that because.i have bpd that I react aggressively I never do. I'm part of a pd focus group set up by us and a pd service, our aim is to change the stereotypes of bpd and educate people that we are all different we are called see me before the pd. When in hospital I found it funny they didn't treat me different they treated me as me which helped but they still took my shoes because I as me would run of not because I have bpd but because I get scared and panic but they know that. It seems they don't trust us with bpd they think we lie when we say we aren't suicidal but if we say we are suicidal they don't help anyway. It does hurt having bpd in my experience it will always hurt its how it is. We are super sensitive we feel everything so much better they try to teach us skills to cope with the feelings. Did u tell him how he made you feel and that its not how you are x

[burning wing]

Thank you for understanding, addy2. I agree it is a huge problem with stereotypes. My therapist first diagnosed me with AvPD, and when I first assumed I had actually BPD and told him about it, he didn't believe me at first. But after my therapist finally got to realise BPD was my problem, his attitude to me changed in like a week, although my behavior didn't change at all. It's just so weird. I get it, they may even be trying to help, and with no other information they are using what they can - stereotypes, but that can't be applied to any situation.

Oh, you have been to a hospital and you were treated this way, I'm so sorry

So, after all this treatment, it still hurts?.. It's a difficult thing to put up with. I guess I just was too excited. I believed that could be changed somehow. Somehow some people get fully recovered from BPD, or at least these are some stories I read on the Internet. I don't understand then, why it is this way. From what I understood before, it was due to the fact that originally a person with BPD doesn't feel feelings by himself, only through contact with others, and when others approve of him, the feelings are intensely happy, otherwise they are extremely painful. I thought learning to feel at least somehow could fix that problem.

It's hard for me to openly express my feelings to the therapist, especially that he said something that hurt me so much. It seemed to me his intention was to hurt me, because he assumed otherwise I wouldn't pay attention. That is so not true!... I get it, he wants to help, but why do this? Even now that I can much better express my feelings to others and I do it from time to time, I can't get to express them to my therapist, I can't find the willpower in myself to force me do it, mostly because I feel he doesn't trust me and often gets something not the way it actually is.

[addy2]

I never heard that before, my understanding of bpd was that we feel too much it was compared to that of a burns victim, we have no emotional skin and the slightest thing hurts. I mean we live in a hightened state most of the time and then things trigger us into a higher state and we have difficulty regulating the emotion so alot of people with bpd hurt themselves to numb the pain or sometimes for a release. I have heard people recover and maybe they do but we are all different so maybe some do and some.dont. I have other dx along side bpd and struggle with them all. Sometimes therapists can do things we don't understand why I struggled with my dbt therapist it turns out he was trying to help but at the time i couldn't see it.

[burning wing]

That is true as well. I guess there are many theories, and most of them have something in it. I'm so sorry you have something to struggle with other than BPD, BPD is enough by itself, and with other dx, it should be so much harder. You're so strong to keep going regardless of that.

I actually understand my therapist is trying to help, I just feel like he misinterprets my intentions and his trying to help becomes ruining what's been achieved. All people make mistakes, and therapists are human as well. They are prone to mistakes just like all of us. I'm more upset about myself, that it hurts so much. I don't know how on Earth I will organize my life with this baggage in it. I can't approach most people without getting hurt in some way.

[Saharah Blue]

I feel easily let down by others, disappointed,hurt, and then angry because I can't regulate it. I don't know if I buy into the fully recovered thing, which is why I don't leave the site because I need the support. I mean how are you suppose to just fix emotional regulation? If it were simple then BPD wouldn't be considered a serious illness in my mind.

One thing I found after I had practiced mindfulness for sometime was that the thought distortions were still ingrained, I actively had to work on a replacement strategy to train my brain to stop thinking so hard about everything. I started being more physically active, rather that get mired in thinking. I would change up my moment. Many times that actually meant going out and physically breaking a sweat. I started loving kindness meditation to move away from the constant drum of I just want to die. When I really put the work in, I found I would wake up to this thought in the morning and be full of dread, I was astonished how much gunk I had in my brain I was wasting energy on, no wonder life exhausted me.

The happiness didn't start happening until I was able to let go of the over analyzing and thought distortions. I was literally just sick of feel like crap.

I still deeply struggle with interpersonal relationships though.

[burning wing]

Saharah Blue, I would really like to agree with you. Although some people consider a borderline personality as a kid who hasn't emotionally grown up. Even though I don't fully acknowledge this point of view, and I don't view myself as an underdeveloped person. For me, being overly sensitive isn't equal to being mentally a child. I can be sensitive and still can be responsible, and even though sometimes I can't control my actions, still I do my best at keeping my responsibilities, and I think most people do. But still, some people think this way, and I often feel guilty for just having BPD. Not that I have done something really bad to someone, or that I yelled at someone and lost my temper, no. I just feel guilty for my inability to fix myself. I feel like I should be the one responsible for my emotional wellbeing, and I can't regulate my feelings properly.

I have put a lot of effort into this thing, I've been reading books not only on BPD, but also on emotional intelligence for regular people, and I thought I could fix this. Here in Russia, the 'not properly grown up kid' theory is most popular, and many Russian websites which are kept by psychotherapists express this point. Not that they blame us, no. But the idea that maybe other people and me were born the same way, and then we grew up and I couldn't do something other people did, even though many of them got traumatized as well, hurts by itself. A lot of people have childhood trauma, and not all of them suffer from BPD or any PD at all. I live in the dorm, and other girls here have no idea I have BPD. Often I can't help crying and I need to hide, just because I'm afraid they'll find out, and also because I'm ashamed of what I'm feeling and my inability to fix it. If they see me crying, they'll persistently ask what happened, and the answer "it's just that woman over there said to me that the breed of her dog wasn't my business', they won't understand.

I have been told a lot that I am a depressive moaner or that I am weak by people who have no idea about this. But I can't help feeling guilty or weak due to this BPD thing, like it's my fault I have it, or that it's my fault I can't fix it. I feel like I'm inferior to other people because of my weakness, although at the same time I perceive myself as a strong person, and this only makes things worse.

I totally agree with you that simply fixing emotional regulation may not be easy, but therapists suppose we should be able to fix it.

You did a really good job on letting go of all this thinking and analyzing. It really makes things worse, once a thought appears, it triggers an emotion, which triggers another thought, which triggers another emotion, etc. I thought I was done with it, but apparently I wasn't. I guess I should work on it.

[Saharah Blue]

buring wing,

As humans we are all a work in progress because we don't ever stop growing, maybe our growth has been interrupted by trauma which has now set us back, but that doesn't mean that we can't keep learning new things every step of the way in our lives.

Looking back a little like you I put a huge effort into weeding the issues of my mind because I knew there was beautiful girl inside that wanted room to grow and be safe to do so and it was my job to make sure she had that chance.