I'm just interested in other people's experiences and wanted to share my own.
I had been unhappy for many years, I had undiagnosed BPD but I always knew something was very wrong. I had been suicidal before but apart from one time when I was 16 never gone through with it. I believed I was flawed, defective and no one would ever want me. I began to think that once I turned 30 if I was still unhappy I would think about suicide, as a logical step not a knee jerk or spur of the moment thing. I questioned the point of life if I was always going to be unhappy.
Later that year I fell out with someone who I considered to be a good friend, as his girlfriend had been nasty to me. I never expected him to side with me over her, but I had told him I didn't feel comfortable coming to his house anymore to see him because of how she was to me.
He responded by sending me a four page email telling me all my faults, all the things I'd done over the past several years which were wrong, or showed me to be wrong, he criticised everything I did and even said I was weird because i did not have a boyfriend and had been out with unsuitable men. It was very scathing. He dressed it up that he was trying to help me but it was not an email that came from a loving place. He also brought other friends into the email, giving examples of when I'd upset them to prove his case that I was 'had something wrong with me'.
After reading that email I began to question whether everyone saw me that way. I honestly believed this guy was a good friend who liked me, despite the fact that his girlfriend didn't (we had been friends in the past but fell out). I then began to question whether I should go up to the railway station and throw myself on the line. I don't think I'd have actually done that but the thought was there.
Shortly after this I had a nervous breakdown. I had decided suicide was not an option, as I'd read a book about mediums who'd contacted the spirits of the dead who'd commited suicide and the message in the book was that you would live again with all your problems so there was no point.
For a week though, every bone in my body was willing me to kill myself. I had to struggle to resist the urge. I felt like i had a stone in my stomach, a stone of pain. I was crying every day, stopping only when I was at work but beginning again when I got in the car to go home. My flatmate didn't want to know. She knew I was in a lot of pain and she ran a mile in the opposite direction. I thought about telling her what was going on but knew she feared I would be a burden on her so I didn't tell a soul. She had moved in with me as a friend, but now spent 90% of the time at her boyfriend's house so she didn't really live there anymore anyway, I was all alone. I actually felt like I had been cut off from the world, no one cared if I lived or died. I have parents, but didn't want to speak to them at this time.
I had decided not to kill myself but accept my fate in this life. After about a week, the intense urges to kill myself and crying stopped, I had a quasi spiritual experience where I realised that my life's purpose was to work on myself.
I did go to my doctor who just put me on happy pills and referred me to a telephone assessment service which was crap. They said I had depression I said I was sure it was more.
Then purely through chance i was referred to a Cognitive Analytical Therapist through being diabetic and struggling with it. I didn't think anyone could help me but within a few weeks I had a therapeutic breakthrough and realised that perhaps I was not such a lost soul after all.
Since then i have been undiagnosed with BPD and am functioning pretty normally now. I do believe the 'breakdown' was all part of the recovery. I had to reach that rock bottom and make a commitment to life before I could get better.
Thanks for reading my story.