"To really break down the stigma surrounding BPD people really need to stop looking at is as 'the other'." Photo: Supplied
By Ruth*
“Knowing someone with borderline personality disorder is like walking on glass, eventually you’ll be cut.”
One of the first times I spoke on the stigma associated with borderline personality disorder on social media, this was the response I received. From a friend.
It’s a common line people throw around about us pesky borderlines that’s often met with an empathetic nod, and a sort-of BPD horror-story back and forth; “My sister in law, oh she’s so manipulative I’m sure she has BPD”, “My ex accused me of rape, but they’re lying, they have BPD”.
It’s as if BPD is readily positioned as the key driver behind “undesirable traits”, as determined by the observer. Many of these observers feel perfectly comfortable spouting their prejudiced ideas at me because they know me, I’m their friend. I’ve come to their house for dinner, and I’ve even looked after their kids. How on earth could I possibly be “that crazy”
Some of the traits recognisable in someone with borderline personality disorder are frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, impulsivity and recurrent suicidal behaviour in the form of gestures, threats or self-mutilating behaviour.
I live with constant reminders that this world is not safe. That even in my all-welcoming, educated, left wing, mental-health-stigma-bashing bubble, my illness is the reject “black sheep” that nobody cares to understand. In my experience, opening up about my BPD runs the huge risk of having my every thought and feeling pathologised, losing friends, losing career prospects, and having my BPD being used as an excuse for abusing me.
When it comes to social attitudes surrounding BPD I find there’s two types of people: those who are unaware of its existence, wholly confused by the film Girl Interrupted and liable to react in fear should they encounter a person with BPD who is struggling. Then there are those folk who have only heard bad things, things bad enough for them to decide they want nothing to do with us even when we are struggling.
For the most part I don’t blame either of them. Having something that’s commonly known as a “personality disorder” made me want to run from myself. Like I was some kind of faulty product, carelessly constructed, neatly packaged by the manufacturers only to disappoint whoever tore off my pretty veneer to discover my multiple flaws.
“Personality disorder” sounds like the kind, medical way of saying “I think you’re a pretty crap person”. There was a time in my life I would’ve thought the same thing. It’s a little bit more complex than that. Simply put, personality usually refers to our thoughts, feelings, the subsequent behaviour and the driving mechanisms behind those three things.
It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not I’m a crappy person. It has everything to do with my genetic predisposition to wonky neurochemistry, being an exquisitely sensitive wee soul and having a fairly traumatic, not at all typical or fun childhood. I’m not a movie villain, I just hurt a lot.
It’s highly unlikely that you’ll meet two people with BPD who act in exactly the same way, just as it is highly unlikely that you’ll meet someone from your bank with the same pin number as you. Given this information, not only is writing off an entire group of people because of one bad experience a really bad thing to do, it’s unsupported by the very manual that defines the illness.
To really break down the stigma surrounding BPD people really need to stop looking at it as “the other”. People need to recognise that we are all a little bit borderline, we all strive to feel accepted, loved, safe, free from pain and valued for who we are. We all feel. We all feel big things sometimes which get in the way of having our needs meet. We have all at one point or another behaved dreadfully when our feelings were too much, or when under stress or when we’ve felt rejected.
What might separate me from you is I feel it all, all the time and feel way too much of it. I’m floundering around on the extreme edges of human emotions.
These extreme edges can be a blessing at times. When I’m happy I’m enigmatic. When I love it’s fierce, passionate and loyal. Having had experienced all the feelings, all the time can make me a very empathetic person.
The flipside is the negative emotions are unbearable and wreck havoc on my life. Having BPD is often described like being an emotional burns victim, you feel so raw, and being in the world is agonising. It’s in these moments I become impulsive. I’ll do just about anything to get some relief. I pinball from one crisis straight into another with little room for problem solving, it’s just survival mode. I’ll go on spending sprees, self-harm, attempt suicide, drink, chain smoke, fuck, be a massive public hot mess online, feeling ashamed about my behaviour while not really knowing what else I can do.
When I lose people, no matter how it happened or who is at fault the grief is extraordinary. It confirms already difficult to shake beliefs that I’m unworthy of love and friendship. It honestly feels like someone I love has died. The fear of having to relive one of the most painful experiences known to humankind can lead to some desperate actions.
I need constant reassurance from my friends that everything is ok. I’m constantly vigilant and hyper aware of any sign that someone might abandon me. From a terse phone call, to an un-replied text message, to the slightest grimace on a person’s face. All these things will build up to cataclysmic confrontation.
I’m just so convinced others hate me it’s frustrating for the people trying to get through to me. It’s difficult for people not to take it personally, to not be annoyed that despite their best efforts, we’re here again. To them I can seem ungrateful, mean, and self-involved, when really I’m just needing gentle reassurance that everything is ok and nobody is going anywhere.
Needless to say my friends who have stuck around are pretty tough.
Despite my pain and chaos I’m still here. One of the most devastating myths surrounding BPD is that we are untreatable which couldn’t be further from the truth. In recent years therapy has proven successful, none more so than Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. It was created by a psychotherapist and fellow BPD sufferer Marsha Lineham. DBT, in short, is about bringing together the rational and emotional parts of ourselves to create a wiser, calmer mental state. The success rates are huge, with 80 percent of participants having no symptoms of BPD after 10 years. Fifty percent of participants report a reduction with the first two years. I’m almost at the end of my first year of therapy. It’s hard work, it means putting most of my life on the back-burner until I’m better but it’s working.
Unfortunately, this treatment is not available to everyone. The medical community has played a stronger part than most in stigmatising BPD. Lecturers in psychology still find it acceptable to compare us to Darth Vader in front of their students. I’ve had nurses refer to me as an adjective rather than a person and heard psychologists say that treating me would be like toilet training a toddler.
Many therapists are reluctant to work with us so DBT remains inaccessible to the majority of Borderline sufferers. This is an illness in which 10% of the people living with it will kill themselves and it’s treatable. The misconceptions about BPD are killing people and it could be completely unavoidable with some education and empathy.
Living with BPD is like living in a world that is almost shunning you for being too human, and despite your best efforts trying to get support is like coming up against a mean invalidating brick wall. You feel worthless and every media outlet, medical professional and misinformed jaw mover is telling you that you’re a terrible human being. You’re feeling hopeless and treated like a hopeless case with no access to life-saving treatment. All we do is feel too much. It’s time people change their ideas around BPD and started seeing us for the exquisitely sensitive emotional badasses that we are.
*Only last name omitted to avoid Google searches.