Borderline: Misunderstood

Living with BPD can be difficult. Many people with it are terrified of abandonment and may go to extremes to avoid it, or can have intense changes of mood, often swinging from one extreme to the other in a matter of hours. Others take risks or harm themselves, and many have suicidal thoughts.

Borderline Personality Disorder: Fact and Fiction

This emotional instability leads to some people self-harming or abusing drugs and alcohol to cope. One in 10 people with a BPD diagnosis kill themselves. Though that case may seem extreme, others believe it is indicative of problems in the provision of care for those with personality disorders. The report concluded that there is still variability in the availability of services and said that it is unclear whether quality of care has improved.

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Although services exist, the study suggested that fewer individuals with the diagnosis made contact with psychiatric services compared with those with conditions such as depression or schizophrenia, and their probability of withdrawing from treatment was considerably higher. Keir Harding, an occupational and dialectical behavioural DBT therapist, agrees.

Harding has worked for nearly 10 years in specialist services for people with personality disorders and founded a consultancy, Beam , to fill a gap in services. For many people, it can seem impossible to even get a diagnosis. GPs often fail to spot personality disorders to begin with. Grove, a year-old journalist, was initially told she had BPD traits during an assessment for psychotherapy, but she never had a full assessment for BPD.

During a course of psychotherapy, Grove began to think that BPD might be the source of her problems. Grove was considered manipulative and attention-seeking, not ill, because of her frequent episodes of self-harm and suicide ideation. Strick had a similar experience. Successful diagnosis is not the end of the line, however, and problems persist throughout specialist services. In order for that to take place, you need to come into our world.

Just like a child needs to be understood, those of us with BPD have certain perspectives and parts of our personalities and thought processes that will never be grasped if you try to love us and do not have an understanding of those parts. Yes, we can have a dark side. We also have a side that is light, love, loyal, generous to a fault.

We want you to be happy. We want you to love us back.

The pain we feel when we hurt others or are misunderstood as to our motives is enough to make us want to take our own lives. That is our reality.

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It is a pain that others cannot understand who have not walked this path. It rules us, defines us and makes our lives hell sometimes. We want to be and act the way you want us to, and we try so hard.

Our loved ones walk away in frustration and we are left with the pain. I have come to understand that many of us will never be understood in this life. It is up to us to try our best to change and adapt ourselves to the norms of society. A society that is foreign and scary to us. We will go to the ends of the earth to show our love for you, but it is misconstrued.

Borderline Personality Disorder: Fact and Fiction | Here to Help

To you we are over the top, too much, our ways are to grandiose for you to consume. What we feel is wanting good for another is seen as manipulation and trying to force ourselves, our needs and our wants on you. Like a big happy dog, filled with joy and love, we are all over you, licking and jumping and asking for total attention. We retreat with our tail between our legs, realizing that we are too much. The other disorders that cloud our minds, like obsessive-compulsive disorder OCD , bipolar, depression or panic disorder , blend into our efforts to make us even more misunderstood.

The medications we take have a way of changing us also. In the ocean of confusion we face day-to-day, we seek that one thing that will anchor us to us.

• Having Borderline Personality Disorder Leaves Me Feeling Misunderstood | The Mighty;
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Yet, there is no such thing as stability in our lives. There is no such thing as peace. We are so used to the turmoil that we give in to it. All I ask, on behalf of all of us fighting this fight and trying to please you, be understood and exist with you, is that you try to understand us and how God created our brains. The path is long and hard and I would not want to be you on the journey any more than I want to be me.