I Walk The Line

Borderline Personality Disorder (DSM 5)

Diagnostic criteria

Proposed criteria (alternative model)

@positiveseed

Trauma travels through family lines until someone is ready to heal it.

There’s a negative feedback loop that occurs in my head at times like these.

I wake up late/low on energy, which is a sign of depression. I take time to try and figure out if I am, in fact, depressed. I look back on my moods and reactions over the past 24-48 hours, and acknowledge that, yes, I’m probably depressed. I see how much time has passed. I get angry at myself, but don’t have the energy to do much about it. I realize I’m low on energy, which leads me to thinking about depression, which consumes more time, which makes me angry. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I want to share something with you I’ve learned over the years, through many mental and emotional up and downs. I used to think that depression was just a state of mind, something that could be dealt with and shaken off like a cold breeze or an old, dried-up skin from a snake.

That’s incorrect. Depression is not a state of mind. Depression is a disease.

It is a chronic, recurring, subversive condition. It doesn’t necessarily have a root cause or origin, but it does have various triggers both obvious and unknown. Coping with it is not a simple matter of ‘cheering up’, as nice as that would be. It can be managed with medication and the victim can take other steps to try and blunt its effects, from physical activity to social interactions to less healthy things like big piles of chocolate.

The worst part about it, though, is that it’s invisible.

I’m not going to say it’s anything like other invisible, chronic conditions, like lupus or endometriosis. Depression does not cause physical pain or make physically demanding tasks more difficult in and of themselves. It does, however, have physical effects. The lack of energy is the most obvious one, but the mental state can also amplify physical problems like sore muscles or headaches.

You can’t necessarily call in to your boss and say “I can’t come into work today, I’m depressed.” Due to a lack of education and understanding, a lot of employers will simply say “Get over it, get in here, and be productive.” The culture of employment in general and corporations in particular tie the worth of the individual into what they can produce, and a depressed person can be less productive than normal, which reflects badly on both the individual and their supervisors. Unsurprisingly, this can aggravate the depressive state and lead to another, insidious downward spiral.

Another aggravating factor is when the patient has bipolar disorder. With the awareness of this disorder and its swings comes a vague fear of it. Having gone through some pretty nasty swings myself, I know how quickly a hypomanic state can come over me, and how blind I can be to its negative effects and how it colors my perceptions of and interactions with others. So, when I’m depressed, I know that it’s possible the opposite state can happen if I’m not careful, which makes me afraid. Being vigilant of my mental and emotional state and trying to manage things in such a way that can forestall or completely prevent an extreme swing requires more mental energy and attention, which leads to me feeling drained, and see above for the end result of that little condition.

So how do I cope with it? Well, if you’ve read this far, you’ve helped me do just that.

While I don’t believe you can just 'get over it’ as much as I did in my younger and more ignorant days, I still believe that talking about a problem helps a person deal with it. It’s like an ancient magic in which you use the true name of something to alter, control, or destroy it. It’s difficult enough to internalize and analyze one’s feelings when the negative feedback loop is running at full capacity. Talking about it, especially with someone who is either trained in enabling the victim with coping mechanisms or someone who can actively and effectively sympathize, makes a huge difference in pulling you out of the miasma. I cannot overstate the difference that a good therapist and good friends have made in keeping me in this world.

Even writing about it helps, and while I don’t enjoy having to put other work on hold to get some of this crap out of my system, it’s better to do that than let this fester. I may feel better soon, or later, or not at all, but I think putting these words down will help keep things from getting any worse.

I can’t just stop the loop in its tracks. But with words like these, I can try and slow it down, hopefully to bring it to a gradual halt.

I am not a natively optimistic person, I’m not a “look on the bright side” pollyanna who ignores negative things.

But breaking your cycle of negative thoughts/fixations by spending a little bit of time every day going “you know what, I heard Judas Priest on the radio today and found out that Rob Halford wrote a book and that’s cool” or “wow the sunset was very pretty so even if everything else sucked there’s that” or “my social media friend is having a good day” will make you feel better and will make the world seem like less of an oppressive, insurmountable slog of misery IF ONLY because your negative depression brain isn’t getting constant reinforcement from your negative thoughts.

I know it sounds like I’m saying “Think happy thoughts to make the depression go away” but what I’m saying is “make yourself think about happy - or at least not actively miserable - things once or twice a day to remind your lying piece of shit depression brain that not literally every single thing in the world contributes to your misery”

'let's try this: if i told you that you would never, ever fall in love again, what kind of plan would you make to ensure your own happiness moving forward? what would you work toward? what would you do more of?'

'you need to begin by painting a picture that doesn't include love. you need to stop making room in your life for someone else's love and start making room for yourself instead. [...] when you can imagine a beautiful life even in the absence of romantic love, finding love or losing it again won't seem nearly as scary.'

'you must break this fixation on love as the cure all to all of your ills. if you found love right now, you would run it straight to the ground in seconds. you need an outward focus that has nothing to do with guys.'

'it's time to forget about being lovable. and in fact, it's time to forsake someone else's idea of what gives you a spark or no spark. block the "other" from this picture. no more audience.'

1.         to put on             your best outfit             and feel             like you’re dressing             a wound.