BPD Thoughts

6.19.2018

Hi, I have borderline personality disorder. I don't expect you to know what it is, most people have never even heard of it. Actually, a lot of people who have this disorder are often misdiagnosed as someone with bipolar disorder. I've done you a favor and put together the 9 specific characteristic criteria and some bonus facts of people with this disorder. 

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

9 specific Diagnostic Criteria

1. Affective (emotional) instability including intense, episodic emotional anguish, irritability, and anxiety/panic attacks.

2. Anger that is inappropriate, intense, and difficult to control

3. Chronic feelings of emptiness

4. Self-damaging acts such as excessive spending, unsafe and inappropriate sexual conduct, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating.

5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-injurious behavior such as cutting or hitting oneself.

6. A markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of oneself (one's perceptions of oneself, one's identity)

7. Suspiciousness of other's thoughts about you, and even paranoid ideation, or transient and stress related dissociative episodes during which you feel that you or your surroundings appear unreal.

8. You may engage in frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

9. Your relationships may be very intense, unstable, and alternate between the extremes of over idealizing and undervaluing people who are important to you.

"People with BPD have turbulent moods that can range from anger and irritability to depression and anxiety. They may feel a deep emptiness inside that reflects their unstable self-image and lack of clear identity or direction in life. Fear of abandonment and difficulty being alone lead them to become excessively clingy or dependent on others, which may push away the very people on whom they depend. They tend to act on impulse without considering the consequences and have difficulty regulating their emotions, especially anger, acting out by hurting or mutilating themselves, such as by cutting themselves. Impulse behaviors may take the form of spending sprees, gambling and drug binges, unsafe sexual activity, reckless driving, binge eating, and shoplifting." Essentials of psychology concepts and applications, fourth edition, pg 518-519.

Splitting, the tendency to view others in either all good or all bad terms, and to abruptly shift from one extreme to the other in one's perceptions of others, is a common process among people with borderline personality disorder. About 2 to 4 percent of the general adult population are affected by the disorder. Women are more frequently diagnosed with the disorder, but it is unclear whether women truly are more likely to be affected, or simply more likely to be diagnosed. 

I fit all 9 criteria, some more than others, and it becomes quite intense in my head sometimes. I have also experienced splitting before, but its not too common for me. 

So, this will sort of be like my own virtual journal of how I'm feeling, or the random shit that runs through my head on a daily basis. Oh, I forgot another important part, I hear a total of 14 other voices talking in my head at all times. Its quite loud up there, and any chance I get to escape it feels like a vacation. Recently, I've been stuck and its been nothing but torture on my mental health. I don't have friends, I don't get to have social interaction like normal people do. I'm quite alone, and life becomes unbearable sometimes. 

I'm hoping this will become an escape for me, and maybe you'll enjoy the journey as well. Or, maybe you'll just be grateful that this is my life instead of yours. Either way, I hope you find some kind of comfort from reading my mental notes to myself. 

Welcome to the shit show, y'all.