THIS IS NOW AN ARCHIVE

First off, sloooow down, yeah? An accurate diagnosis is a blessing because it’ll help you receive the treatment you really need. This is a positive thing!

Secondly, BPD is not something you have to struggle with for your entire life. I stopped meeting the diagnostic criteria less than four years after being diagnosed and less than a year after graduating treatment. I no longer feel the way I did while sick. Other people have recovered as well, with DBT being known as the most effective treatment.

Your high levels of emotional sensitivity will likely be with you for all your life, yes. Your sensitivity is a part of you, not a disorder. But you can learn to both mellow that out a bit and to cope. BPD develops when that sensitivity has led to a lack of functionality in life, and so it can go away as you begin to gain that functionality back.

I can’t speak for every person with BPD because everyone has their own, separate experience. But when I struggled, yes, I was incredibly easy to influence. A lot of it had to do, I think, with my symptom of identity disturbance pairing with my fear of abandonment. Disagreement was scary because I didn’t have a strong sense of self to defend and I often feared I’d lose the people I didn’t agree with completely. This led to me “agreeing” with a lot of things that I didn’t actually agree with, which in turn further strengthened my identity disturbance and fed the cycle. 

To combat this, I turned to strengthening my value system and self validating. A lot of the shift came from taking action, too. I had to test the waters a bit before I started feeling more comfortable disagreeing with people. By that I mean I’d speak up here and there about disagreeing with something around the people I trusted. As I noticed more and more that the people worth having in my life wouldn’t up and leave me for doing that, I gained more confidence in doing so. It’s a process but it’s an incredibly liberating one. It leads to much more open communication and, in turn, far healthier and long-lasting relationships in general.

Being highly defensive has been common for me for similar reasons, I think, but this has changed a lot since I’ve better come to understand dialectics (two opposites/points of view can both be true/there is no right/wrong when it comes to emotion or personal experiences). That leads me to believe it’s rooted (for me) in the symptom of black and white thinking.

To this day I can struggle a lot with defensiveness, especially in the heat of the moment when I may not be seeing the dialectics of a situation clearly. I think that can be pretty common for anyone though, BPD or not. 

cont: on Facebook (where we communicate the most) and she hasn’t responded. I don’t know what to do. yesterday I send her a message telling her I wanted her to talk to me and that she could tell me what was on her mind and that I missed her. I also said that I’d move on if I didn’t hear from her in a week. idek if she’s looking at my messages. is there anything I can do better? I don’t want to overwhelm her but letting it go on shaky grounds feels… well I feel sad thinking about it.

Okay, so first: I’ve always suggested that when people start labeling people as their favorite person in this particular way, that they read this post. Your own experience obviously may not line up to what I’ve had to say there, but I still think it’s important to consider in case the label is making things more difficult.

I’m not familiar with your entire situation and typically try to stray from giving advice, and therefore I don’t feel comfortable telling you exactly what to do. The only thing I can really suggest is that you respect her boundaries. If she isn’t replying, let her have her space. Maybe that’s what she needs right now.

So one of the most important things to recognize in recovery from BPD, in my opinion at least, is that emotions and behavior are separate. Whereas your emotional experience is always valid, your behavior is not. 

Also, it’s important to note that while your emotional experience is always valid, that doesn’t mean it always fits the facts, nor does it mean our emotional intensity is accurate. And when it doesn’t fit the facts or the intensity doesn’t match the situation, discomfort is usually a lot stronger than it needs to be. 

You can check out when emotions fit the facts and I think that might help. As a general rule, if your emotion doesn’t fit the facts or the intensity of it doesn’t, applying the skill of opposite action is recommended.

If you’ve been diagnosed with BPD, then you meet diagnostic criteria. Plain and simple. :)

If you have not sat around and decided to fake symptoms, planned them out, etc., then you’re not faking it. There’s a standardized image in most people’s minds of what BPD is “supposed” to look like, it seems, but in reality you can’t paint over everyone diagnosed with it the same way. A lot of those misconceptions are based in stigma and unfortunately, I’ve noticed that it can lead to a lot of shame and self-invalidation. I dealt with it, you’re dealing with it, and I’ve watched others deal with it as well.

I know the diagnostic criteria has shifted with the new DSM, but when you think about the original way that many of us got diagnosed, you only needed to meet 5/9 of the criteria. There were so many different combinations that could have lead to diagnosis and each and every symptom could present differently in one person versus the next. I know a lot of people with BPD and I can honestly say none of them are the same or have shared the exact same experience. Don’t doubt your own experience just because it’s different from someone else’s. It’s still yours and your symptoms have still been difficult for you to manage. The skills of check the facts and self-validation might help you more.

hi, i was wondering if u knew of any bpd...

Going off of this, I’m not sure I have enough information. 

However, I will say a couple things: 

Extreme feelings of emptiness are very common in BPD and this could be what you’re experiencing. If it is, distress tolerance skills might help. The ones centered around activity, such as playing a game or doing crafts, have always been especially helpful for me. 

It’s possible that what you’re experiencing is a symptom of your depression. If you think this could be the case, maybe consider letting a professional know.

I’ll also add this: From personal experience, I know that one of the most confusing parts of BPD recovery has been the “boredom.” I’m not entirely sure how to explain it. My emotional state used to be so incredibly heightened 90% of the time that, in a way, it was exciting (albeit painful). When I was sad, I was really, really sad. When I was happy, I was on a complete emotional high (and let’s not even talk about the crash that would follow). 

Now that I’m recovered, that just isn’t the case. My sadness can still be difficult, but it doesn’t reach where it used to very often or for nearly as long. My happiness is still really nice to experience, but even that is less intense. A lot of the time I think I feel “flat/numb” but really, that’s just my emotional state hanging out at baseline. It’s all definitely taken some getting used to. At times, when I’ve been bored or even only mildly happy/content, I’ve even questioned if something’s wrong because for so many years of my life I was used to those extremes. But over time, it’s become far more familiar and less scary to feel things less intensely. 

Recovery is absolutely worth it and I can genuinely say I’m far more comfortable living my life at baseline. Promise.

The consult team and I once answered a question similar to this.