Borderline personality disorder, have you met one?

[BossyPaws]

I have recently been diagnosed with BPD after years of feeling like an alien sent down to observe the human race.

But now I'm curious, what do other people see?

Have you ever met anyone with BPD and how did they present?

Obviously to me I'm totally normal and everyone else is odd but AIBU to be really, really curious as to how my condition presents to other people?? Please be honest, I'm impossible to offend.

@BossyPaws

They think my BPD has been caused by PTSD from childhood. It's funny because I never thought it had effected me but when I opened up to the psychiatrist about it he was aghast at how I'd gone on so many years with no intervention.

I'm a community mental health nurse so work with people with BPD (or EUPD as it's often called) every day.

Many, like you, have been damaged by childhood events and there is a school of thought that many have been misdiagnosed and really should be diagnosed with Complex PTSD. I certainly think that with that diagnoses there would be more sympathy and understanding. A PD holds a certain stigma.

@Neverseen
Have you ever looked into PMDD? It’s an extreme and more serious form of PMS.

BPD and EUPD are the same thing. EUPD was meant to erase the stigma of BPD but I actually think the wording is worse!

I have BPD. I very much fear abandonment but I keep it in my head mostly so I don't burden other people with it. I can have extreme reactions so have trusted friends who I can check in with at times to see whether my reaction to a situation is proportional.

The funniest thing is that people often tell me I have a very calming energy and come across as very grounded & centered. I can't think of anything less true but shows I hide it well!

There's someone where I work who has borderline personality disorder, and I will be totally honest: I find her very difficult. She is fundamentally a nice person, but she likes a lot of attention and is also quite pushy - if she has an idea (usually an idea for her to do something and for my team to promote it or help her with that), she doesn't seem able to take no for an answer. So she'll email someone in my team in the morning with a random idea, then before he's even had a chance to discuss it with me she will email him again the same day asking if he's read her first email yet, and then if we reply and say we don't have the capacity to help her because it's not a business priority or isn't an appropriate thing for work, she takes it extremely personally.

It's all just very needy and she genuinely doesn't seem to understand that we can't devote that much time to the ideas of a single employee in an organisation of 2,000 people.

Someone in my team produces our monthly staff newsletter and a couple of years ago she wanted to be in all 12 issues and would get in touch every month with him. I had to explain to her that we'd already featured one of her endeavours in an issue that year and that we're not able to have the same people appearing repeatedly because we're a big organisation and we need to be more representative. I was incredible gentle when I explained this (I know she has borderline personality disorder because to her great credit she is very open about it) but she slammed her notebook down on the table and stormed out in tears. She apologised afterwards and we're all good, but it's obviously quite tricky to handle at work.

She did have extended period of sick leave a while ago and seems on a much more even keel now - she is honestly a well-meaning person who wants to do good things, but very full-on and very everything-is-about-me-and-my-needs, if you get what I mean.

Zombie thread

I’m diagnosed BPD and CPTSD, as well as depression anxiety etc tick all the boxes for a broken brain.
No one really notices anything “different” about me, some people i work with know, some don’t.
No one really treat me any different but there two colleagues I’m close with and they can see when I’m heading for a meltdown before I even do.

@Svadhyaya

I can relate to this:

The funniest thing is that people often tell me I have a very calming energy and come across as very grounded & centered. I can't think of anything less true but shows I hide it well

^^that’s me to a tee! I’ve never been diagnosed with BPD but for me, the fear of rejection/abandonment & difficulty with romantic relationships & feeling worthy are the big ones. I’m hugely focussed on others, their needs etc. I don’t self-harm and never have so I probably don’t have it but I’m interested to hear it’s not always externalised.

Well, we are told off for armchair diagnoses, but I'm having a massive light bulb moment with someone I know now so this has been very educational for me.

I don’t know anyone who is officially diagnosed (that I know of) but I do strongly think that a family member is. I have a background in psychology but I am not a psychologist so this is just my opinion but I feel she fits the framework. She takes offence at absolutely everything, the whole family walk on eggshells around her. She starts fights constantly, flits from one relationship to the next which always ends terribly, yet they are always the love of her life from the get go and she will move them in and get pregnant straight away. She wants lots of children yet isn’t hands on with the ones she has and gets annoyed at them when they seek attention, is often neglectful yet will pander to friends children. She has gradually isolated her mother away from the wider family and is always the victim. Her mother has not helped the situation at all as even when she was a child she would pander to her, avoid any upset- not tell her off for some really terrible behaviours and things she said, always supports her over her other child etc. I think she is scared to upset her because of her temper but this has only made it worse. The things she puts on social media are terrible when she falls out with her mum but when they make up she constantly posts about how amazing her mum is. She flits from one extreme to the other and sees no irony in some of the things she comes out with. She expects so much from everyone around her yet doesn’t do any of the things she expects for others, if this is brought up she just can not see the hypocrisy and goes to straight to extreme anger. It is sad, as I feel she is desperate for the ‘perfect family’ as she sees it, yet her behaviour drives everyone away. She has systematically verbally attacked one after the other of her extended family, and she then flips to her mum so her mum can’t then talk to that person either. I wish she would seek help but I am not sure she would ever do that, as she genuinely seem to see herself as the victim in everything and doesn’t think anything she does it wrong. It has caused a huge rift in our family unfortunately.

My mum was diagnosed with BPD. She was severely abusive. There is question over whether she actually/also has ASD. She also has a trauma background and CPTSD.

[quote Nouveaunew]@Svadhyaya

I can relate to this:

The funniest thing is that people often tell me I have a very calming energy and come across as very grounded & centered. I can't think of anything less true but shows I hide it well

^^that’s me to a tee! I’ve never been diagnosed with BPD but for me, the fear of rejection/abandonment & difficulty with romantic relationships & feeling worthy are the big ones. I’m hugely focussed on others, their needs etc. I don’t self-harm and never have so I probably don’t have it but I’m interested to hear it’s not always externalised.[/quote]
Yeh the fear of rejection is a biggie. I think even those of us who don't externalise it feel the same inside, it's just that either we have the self-awareness not to externalise it OR we've learnt not to because it wasn't safe for us to express these feelings in childhood so we turn it inwards on ourselves instead.
I think what others see as my 'calming energy' is actually me disocciating.

These posts make me so sad though that people have had such difficult with BPDers in their lives. It is such a stigmatised diagnosis and I can see why. It's fucking horrible and I'd give anything for it to go away. Every day is incredibly exhausting just trying to be a functional member of society.

So glad this thread has been brought out of zombie mode. I have a diagnosis of BPD which was brought on by childhood trauma. All I will say is that therapy and quetiapine saved me. I'm now at the point where I'm even coming off the quetiapine. It's hard work but dealing with the trauma was the answer.

@FoxInABox

That family member sounds beyond difficult! I honestly don’t know how anyone could cope with someone like that in their lives. It must be so upsetting.

@Dogknowsbest
That’s wonderful you got some relief from the therapy and medication.

I don’t think I have BPD. I think it’s PMDD all right. It’s the intense feelings of guilt and shame that i struggle with the most. I can feel this over the smallest of things.

@Svadhyaya
Every day is incredibly exhausting just trying to be a functional member of society

That sounds very tough. Dissociation also sounds difficult but I don’t understand it, to be honest.

Tbh I just find romantic relationships exhausting and anxiety-provoking. I have longstanding friendships but I have to be careful not to get too close as being lied to etc hurts me so deeply (& let’s face it, people lie etc!).

One of my former closest friends was diagnosed with BPD, she became my stalker. I had to move house and change my work location, it was terrifying and also very embarrassing to tell work that I was being stalked by my friend.

Many years later, she has been through a lot of therapy and I'm guessing has the right medication, we have a friendship of sorts. She reached out to apologise via a mutual friend and I was happy to hear her out. We text occasionally and have met up for coffee once or twice. The friendship we had won't ever recover. Although I appreciate she was mentally ill at the time I couldn't ever let her get close to me again.

@Tiredemma

Theres a huge issue around women with Autistic Spectrum Conditions being misdiagnosed with BPD.

Yes, I've come across this too.

@Melodypond17

My daughter has BPD. She is also on the autistic spectrum, has fibromyalgia, suffers from PTSD and has serious gender issues. She seriously struggles with everyday life and it is heartbreaking to watch.

💐

@LadyShmuck
I just wanted to say that what you describe above is traumatic and scary. It’s stories like those that stigmatise personality disorders. I guess the important thing is having it under control so the person’s goodness can shine through.

There’s a self test here:

psychcentral.com/quizzes/borderline-test

Do most people with BPD self harm and engage in reckless behaviour? For some, is it more inner turmoil and fear of abandonment and intense relationships?

[quote Nouveaunew]@Svadhyaya
Every day is incredibly exhausting just trying to be a functional member of society

That sounds very tough. Dissociation also sounds difficult but I don’t understand it, to be honest.

Tbh I just find romantic relationships exhausting and anxiety-provoking. I have longstanding friendships but I have to be careful not to get too close as being lied to etc hurts me so deeply (& let’s face it, people lie etc!).[/quote]
Disocciating is kind of being 'not there'. I often don't realise I'm doing it, it happens automatically, I'll just slip away to a place inside my head and not respond to any outside stimuli. It must just look to onlookers that I'm standing there serenely!

Yes the friendship thing is difficult. People in general can be a massive trigger and yes I understand about lying & betrayals cutting really deep.

@Svadhyaya

Thanks for explaining dissociation. It sounds like an inbuilt self protection mechanism.

Yeah people are a major trigger for long lasting emotional upset. I honestly find being around people wonderful as I love company but I’m often upset at what’s been said (which I usually hide/internalise). My biggest trigger of all for upset is when people misinterpret me or make assumptions. The upset from that can last a long time. I’ve been frequently told I’m too hard on myself. I have struggled with romantic relationships.

All that said, I know I’m not diagnosed with BPD and nor do I have to deal with the whole range of challenging symptoms but I do think I have some traits/symptoms of it rather than the whole disorder maybe. I once rang an exBF’s phone 20 times after seeing a message from his exGF to my exBF’s father on my exBF’s father’s Facebook page.

A lodger.

Absolute horror show. Brought danger to my door with various sexual partners, put themselves in danger repeatedly, turned up on various TV things with an entirely different name and identity depending upon whatever the TV thing was about, eventually found subscriber based online sites and makes a bloody good living with constant fawning and praise from randoms as a result of all their heavily monetised disasters, accidents and awful circumstances mostly entirely self inflicted, treated rent as an optional extra and would get all teary when they were gently reminded that it was late. As if anything that had (or hadn't you never could tell) happened to them in the past made it OK to not pay the peppercorn rent they were being charged. And you don't say there's no money when you then casually mention 6 hours later than you've just booked flights to x country for the following weekend.

The most irritating 'disaster' SM event was the 'I was a victim of a ---phobic attack, sob, sob, I have no money because she stole from me' that led to a fuckton of donations - when they actually threatened some girl in a club with cutting her face for rolling her eyes and walking away from where they were holding court - and the girl turned out to be very well able to defend herself. Oh, and only the day before, I'd overheard them subjecting DP to homophobic abuse because he 'wasn't manly enough and should be wearing a dress and pinny'.

It was actually scary when I was going to tell them to make alternative arrangements because I was half expecting to have to call the police to get them out or have them announcing to people on SM that I was bullying them and my identity so I would be on the receiving end of abuse from randoms who had no idea what they were really like. However, thanks to the latest Poor Me post, somebody had offered them somewhere to stay to 'get away from the danger' and they were already packing when I knocked on their door and asked if we could talk.

I wasn't forgiven for accepting the last week's rent, though. But going by the thousands of people that are on their SM and the pathetic gushing praise about what an amazing, beautiful person they are, I'm sure they weren't short of cash for more than about five minutes.

After they left and I'd had to replace everything in the room that they'd contaminated with sweat and BO and clear tons of crap they'd left behind I decided that I'd rather risk homelessness than EVER have a lodger again. Just in case they also casually mentioned after they'd moved their shit in that they also had a BPD diagnosis and they'd jacked their employment in so they could now 'devote their energies into making the break into show business' - like that lodger did.

BPD without treatment/therapy definitely damages and harms people around the sufferer. It's what makes it so important to keep trying to manage the disorder - the cost to both the person and everybody around them.

Ex boyfriend was diagnosed when we were together.

He had a very abusive past and I should not have been with him. He could be very caring, absolutely hilarious, very intelligent, very handsome. He couldn’t deal with the slightest argument…he’d totally over-react and talk absolute nonsense in a weird attempt to ‘win’. He once stormed off and then took an overdose. He was incredibly irritable. He invented stories that he had to believe in order for him to deal with his bad behaviour. I’m a very authentic kind of person (aspie) and I’d try to break down the barriers he’d created which always went badly. He doesn’t seem to have much sense of what people think of him and thinks that his past abuse should be forgotten. I’d say he’s also a fragile narcissist and doesn’t have much of a conscience.

I think my mum has borderline too. She also creates these stories and she absolutely can’t cope with the fact that she might have done things wrong or treated people unfairly. I have to agree with everything she says and if I don’t all hell breaks loose and she’s incredibly unreasonable, passive aggressive, toddler-like. She’ll turn to someone else and try to get them on her side. It’s incredibly frustrating but she has a good heart. She definitely has a conscience.

Are you absolutely sure you’re a borderline? Just that the borderlines I know are very easily offended. Lots of aspie women are misdiagnosed as borderlines and I would say that when I was younger I had borderline traits. It’s just that once I realised what I was doing, I was able to stop and once I reached the age of forty I started to very rapidly mature emotionally. I don’t think a true borderline matures in this way they’re not self aware enough.

Some of the traits are similar to ADHD
My cousin has BPD. She is beyond unreasonable; she is also a narcissist. She has to win at any cost.

I know someone who has it, a family member. They are emotionless, manipulative, cold, thoughtless, erratic, chaotic. They only ever think of themselves and what benefits them but don't care about anyone else at all. They get fixated on people or things and then get bored and move onto the next. They can't hold down any relationships (friends or romantic) and make the same mistakes over and over again without learning their lesson. They can't hold down a job and they don't want to. They have lost custody of all of their children, couldn't look after any of them but just kept having more. Luckily now too old to have anymore, the poor children suffered and it was truly heartbreaking to watch. They can't look after themselves let alone a child/children. Also problems with alcohol abuse and self harm.
So my experience of a family member having BPD has been a living nightmare.
No matter how much me or any of my family care and help it's never appreciated and makes no difference. It's just so sad and it's really draining. Sometimes i just have to have a break from contact with them for a few days to give my head a break from it all. It never ends, it must be hell for them living like that.