I’m a 34 year old woman, diagnosed twice, with BPD. Feel free to ask any questions you have about BPD. Keep in mind I also have ADHD, OCD and social phobia (although with no cooccuring personality disorders) so my replies may be tainted by my other disorders.
Keep it respectful, of course.
And yeah, I’ve been in therapy for 6 months now, and I am fully aware that I have BPD.
That’s more than half the battle there.
That’s true, denial is a big part of this disorder. :o
Being borderline dyslexic, I opened this thread thinking it was about Boogie Down Productions.
How do you deal with the problem of your inaccurate memories of events, especially events with a partner? For example, if you get into an argument and you believe that they did something horrible to anger you, but in actuality it was something like ‘what does this menu item mean’ or ‘you didn’t fold the clothes the way I want you to but didn’t ask you to’. Do you believe your partner about the argument, or have some other technique for sorting that out? I broke up with someone who I’m pretty sure had BPD (met 8/9 of the diagnostic criteria) some time back after a tumultuous relationship, and one of the things I realized by the end was that she wasn’t living in the same world as I was.
Also, what do you think of the book Stop Walking on Eggshells?
Hi. I have Asperger’s Syndrome aka Autism and Moderately Severe Depression. I am not ashamed of my condition.
That is part of who I am.
It is a big part of most disorders. I am an Aspie and proud of it.
Hi there,
I don’t think memory problems are only specific to romantic partners, although they may get the brunt of it because of how much time we spend with them + attachment issues. There are a few things that I can think of in regards to your question.
One, hypersensitivity. That, and feelings = facts. Those of us with untreated BPD can be hypersensitive and see negative connotations to completely innocuous statements and facial expressions. I can go into the etiology of this, but yeah, it’s a big part of the disorder.
Another thing I can think of is, those of us with BPD tend to have faulty memory. Our hippocampus tends to be smaller than “normal” peoples’. Emotional memory seems to be the most affected, so this means that events with emotional connotations can be remembered incorrectly. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it can tie into our general hyperbolic responses to events, past, present or future. Some people call this confabulation, some ‘gaslighting’, others ‘pathological lying’, but I don’t think this is intentional on the part of the person with BPD.
If you gave a specific example, it might help me to answer your question better.
As for SWOE, I read a bit, but it’s written for SOs of people with BPD, not for those with the disorder. I don’t think her information is entirely inaccurate, in fact it’s far more accurate than a lot of the stuff you hear from so-called ‘experts’ online, but there are a couple of things she’s said that I vehemently disagree with.
Denial in this case would be different. Many people with personality disorders, including BPD, deny that they have any problems or disorders. In fact, it’s YOU that has a problem, not them.
Nimply,
How long did it take between the start of the BPD symptoms and the moment you accepted you had BPD?
What was the process of realizing and accepting you had BPD?
Thank you for sharing. I do not know if denial is part of Asperger’s – for me it was bragging.
Do you have a past of broken friendships/relationships?
After you recognized your disorder, did you attempt to heal any of those relationships?
Hi, Michael.
It’s hard to say. I suspect it started in childhood, but I cannot pinpoint an exact time it started. My childhood memory is extremely poor, but I remember a couple of incidences that were pretty BPDish which lead me to believe I’ve had this disorder for, well, almost my entire life.
When I was 10, I was beaten up during recess. I was bullied a lot in school, but never beaten up. I was sitting in the corner after recess in class while the teacher called my mom. I wasn’t crying, wasn’t doing anything really except sitting there waiting for her to come. When she did, I threw a fit, started crying and acting dramatic, or emotionally hyperbolic.
Another thing, when I was 11 or so, my best friend since I was three years old didn’t speak to me for a week or so. I felt this was abandonment and felt extremely angry and hateful toward her. I wrote on her house door how much I hated her, and how I would “get her back”. I did have ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) though, so I don’t know if that was due to the ODD or the BPD.
I didn’t realize I had BPD for a very long time. I was always introverted and a bit shy, so I didn’t have many friends and very few boyfriends.
In 2005, I was in the ER for pneumonia, and since I have asthma they gave me oral oxygen. I forget what it is called, but it’s like a puffer except a constant stream of it. I hated it because it made me agitated, so I ripped the mask off and screamed, “I’d rather die than breathe this crap in again!” They hospitalized me for 72 hours and the in-house shrink dx’d me with BPD.
I knew people with BPD and said, “wait, what? Why BPD? I don’t slash my arms open!” After that I started seeing a psychiatrist for 7 years, once a month, that mostly just managed medication for me and gave me life advice. All this time I thought BPD just meant that I had problems with anger, anxiety and depression. I didn’t really understand what it meant, although I did accept the label, but not ‘fully’.
January of this year, I gave birth. I started to become severely depressed. Sick with worry. I said to myself, I need to control my anger because my daughter deserves better and I want to be a good mother for her. My mother has BPD too (along with Paranoid Personality Disorder) and I didn’t want to screw my daughter over, you catch my drift?
When I enrolled in therapy, the therapist agreed that I had BPD (although not severe - according to her, more along the “mild” or “tendencies” line) and she started psychodynamic therapy + DBT. The more insight I gained, the more I read about BPD, I realized it wasn’t just a problem with anger, but a host of a lot of shit. I went from acceptance, to denial (“maybe I have something else?”) to acceptance again.
Hope this answers your question.
I’m currently married, but I only had 2 serious boyfriends before my current relationship. None of them ended due to my BPD AFAIK, I never raged at any of them, just didn’t work out. But they both lasted under a year.
As for friendships, there are two friendships where I am sure I screwed the friendships up to some degree. But, I’m going to wait until I am recovered (I am not, yet) to decide for sure if it was mostly my fault, mostly theirs, or something else.
I will say though, I have done some things to others that looking back now, weren’t very kind, and I regret that deeply.
I have a couple of different psychiatric diagnoses, and a couple more that I suspect I could get if I wanted to. I tend to feel that these are, at least in my case, not truly separate and independent problems, but more likely “one big ball of wax” that can be interpreted in different ways depending on what model you apply. Do you feel that way about your multiple diagnoses, or do you see them as separate things?
Do you drive a BMW? Ever ridden a BSA? Have a CCW? Ever gotten a DWI?
No offense, but I had to go look half that shit up! Help a brother out here! Spell it out for us!
My understanding is that BPD can be tied to neglect during the first 2 years of life combined with a genetic propensity. Do you think that fits?
What kinds of therapies are you trying?
At first I was confused about whether BPD meant borderline personality disorder or BiPolar disorder.
In my case it was more the opposite. I’ve long thought it fit me. I had a therapist who agreed, but didn’t want to officially label me with it.
To be honest, I still don’t know which one we’re talking about.