What does it mean to have BPD? – a collective answer

I wrote a post on what it means to me to have BPD, however it isn’t the same for everybody.

The last month I have been collecting answers to this very question and this post is the result of my research.

Remember, BPD is a serious disability that can ruin people’s lives and should be taken very seriously. This is how it feels to the people who suffer from it, so here goes: the collective answer to what it means to have BPD.

To me it means never knowing how I am going to feel from one moment to the next, it’s never knowing when my next act of impulsivity will strike, not being able to cope with even the simplest emotion and feeling such a burden to everyone around me.

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A very intense spiritual battle. Bpd is a blessing and a curse, truly. Some days I hate it for ruining the present others I love it for helping me see my life, magnified. We’re very special people, how we choose to use what we DIDNT ask for is purely an everyday battle… as is the battle between bad and good. I’m tired… but I know it’s all for a greater reason, why I’m suffering.

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Being scared to get up in the morning, go to work, see friends and see my partner because I’m constantly on edge and petrified of what’s going to trigger me into feeling worthless and abandoned. Most days it’s extremely harmless things that trigger me, and then the guilt cycle begins. It’s exhausting.

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For me:
Never knowing who I’m going to be today, or how I’ll act. Avoiding situations percieved as threatening, easily being torn and broke down, being so tired all the time because of the emotional battle ground that is my mind. I’m very impulsive and it gets me in trouble. I ruin all of my relationships because I don’t believe anyone could truly love me. I love so deeply, I care so much, I know I’m a good person but it kills me everyday knowing and trying to cope with emotional “3rd degree burns”.

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Fighting a battle inside my head every single day that no one can see and no one understands.
Then when I lash out in anger or when I get anxious or scared or upset no one gets why.
Feeling things so strongly and knowing that it’s not normal but also wondering why people don’t feel the same way I do.

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It means that people I havent even met are “aware” or “warned” of me.
It means that even when the proof is there, your peers and mates don’t believe you.

Your school time is only about finding friends you click with because “no friends, no life”.

It means years and years of self work not only on your mind but journaling your emotions, trying to change how you respond to certain things so that the next time something goes wrong you don’t automatically think “I’m going to hurt myself”.

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It doesn’t mean anything in particular to me because I don’t know any different. I assumed everyone thought and felt this way until I was diagnosed.

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Like I’m swimming upstream and the current is so strong beneath me that to everyone else it looks like I’m just swimming along, but to me I’m fighting and it’s exhausting! Always just one minor inconvenience away from drowning.

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Having a monumentally powerful capacity to love, but having to learn to not lose myself to it.

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Having two people inside your head, one is trying to destroy and kill you, the other is trying to save you.

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That I feel broken beyond repair because nobody would take two minutes to understand why I am the way I am. That I push away the people I most want to stay in my life.

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It means feeling more than a normal person, with the bad comes the good. I love more deeply than a normal person, I enjoy life more than a normal person, but when it turns sour as it so often does the opposite is also true.

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I always tell people that I’m like a chameleon. I lack the ability to identify my interests and who I am. For fear of rejection and abandonment I “blend” in with the people I’m around. I adapt to my environment and become a different person every time.

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To constantly feel like im being judged and criticised, by everyone around me, and if someone is in a bad mood or pissed at something, I feel like it is my fault and I have to fix it.

On the flip side, I love my BPD, because I am truly the best friend you’ll ever have, I’m honest, loyal, and know exactly how you’re feeling each day.

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For me, it’s apologizing constantly. Because when something is going wrong, I just feel like everyone else around me thinks it’s my fault, so I need to fix things.
I don’t know who I am, truly. I become the person that everyone around me wants me to be. I mold myself to whatever the situation calls for. I can be the introvert, the extrovert. The loudest one around. Quiet as a mouse. I can adapt to my surroundings and become whatever girl I think I should be.
I see myself being destructive but the “other me” can’t do anything about it. I watch myself ruin things around me while I’m shouting from the inside “Please stop!”
I love so hard and I tell everyone I can that I love them. And I mean LOVE. The deepest, most wonderful kind of love. My emotions seem to be tenfold everyone else’s around me. But they look at me and think that I’m “crazy” or “just hormonal” because I’m a woman.

Then you have the days. The ‘dark days’ is how I refer to them. They happen so often now. When I just feel the desire to die. And I can’t give a reason why. I’m not overly emotional on these days. I’m calm and rational and that’s what scares me. Because I am scared of myself sometimes. I forget days. I have time missing when it’s just a blur. A moving picture in my head that I can remember but it’s like I am just on autopilot.
I worked every day for a week and it’s almost as if I was watching someone else do it. I could hardly recall things that happened. But I would be asked to perform tasks and they’d get done. But it’s like I’d turn on autopilot when I got there and when I get home, it’s off. My interests are forever changing. One day I want to paint, or make soaps or sing. The next day I want to garden or train at the gym or do one specific thing until I get absolutely burnt out on it, never to return to it again.

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I feel like I am a tornado when I am having a bpd episode. I am Strong and will cause a lot of destruction my path is uncertain where I will make damage and aftermath is worst. I have a lot of cleaning up to do for all the damage I caused.

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A horrific war of good and evil inside of me, the good so so beautiful and the evil is pure self preservation. I only want to do beautiful things, be helpful, open to love and opportunity. The evil makes me push away the things I love and want most in the world. I do not think like others, I’ve always felt as if I was backwards. My thoughts, actions, words, it all happens opposite of what I feel and want. The war is exhausting and sad. The sadness is overwhelming, a pit of hollowness that never begins to be filled. I feel like an empty shell with nothing to give and I break everything I come in contact with. Never understanding and never understood.

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I am physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually connected to everything and everyone. I am heavy, but still empty. I am power, without escape. I am happiness, without meaning. I am sadness, but all guilt. I am music, without rythme. I am sweet, but all poison. I am anger, but all trouble. I am love, but through fear. I am hate, but through beauty. I destroy, but to create. I am life, but through death. I embody all identities, except myself. I am missing. I am lost.

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These are only some of the answers I collected, but I hope it helps people understand how difficult it can be, yet also fulfilling sometimes.

Yours sincerely,

Dysfunctional Girl