Anyone know or love someone with BPD?

[Hatethisheadofmine]

I am currently being assessed for Borderline personality disorder and as hard as it is for me living in this head of mine, I feel so sorry for friends and family and in particular, my wonderful husband who has to try and live day to day with a wife with mood swings that are more volatile than the British weather!

just wondering if anyone here knows or loves someone with BPD and, if so, how do you perceive and get on with said person?

Have you been subscribed medication and are you taking it? My LO is much easier to be around when they are adhering to their healthcare plan and not self medicating.

I am wondering if my bf has BPD. He is a wonderful person, warm and loving but at the same time struggles with personal relationships. He takes things very personally, which can lead to him getting into conflicts with people unecessarily, as he thinks everything anyone does that impacts him negatively has been done purposefully against him. He can be very self focused, and hugely negative toward himself (feels shame and embarrassement where it woudn't be expected). He's very insecure in the relationship, despite my giving him lots of reassurance. He's often catastrophising in ways that just seem strange to me ... ie imagining I'm going to leave him when I've never given him any indication of this. Is this BPD behaviour? I've started to look into it and some of this seemed to align with it.

I’ve got BPD. I know looooads of people who have it too. You’ll be okay. Just as PP said, you just need a little more patience and reassurance. You’re not unlovable x

@Justanotherusername27 Do you mind me asking what you take/do to manage it? Some days I feel like I’ve cracked it then other days I feel like it’s breaking me. There’s yesterday I was near suicidal in the morning over the silliest thing which even when I think about it too long I can justify why I was upset even though logically it was a minor thing

Healthcare plan is currently being worked out, I really cannot wait until it is, I said to my husband the other day I was would rather feel numb to everything good and bad rather than feel like this

I had to cut my friend off because of this. Her behaviour just wasn't compatible with a healthy friendship.

Difficult to do as she was scared of abandonment but I couldn't take it anymore, mentally.

That was a bit of a shitty thing to do if she’s got a mental health condition

I've got mental health issues myself and I couldn't let her drag me down further than I already was.

And having mental health conditions doesn't mean everyone around you is obliged to put up with shitty and nasty behaviour for years without any consequences.

im interested in this

I've got EUPD and have a string of failed relationships.
I'm having weekly therapy now and on 4 different meds and seem to be on an even keel at the moment.

It’s good you are getting treatment OP.

My mum now now aged 88 has BPD and refused to acknowledge it or have any sort of treatment. She has been a nightmare for many years. I went no contact with her for 5 years after a particularly nasty outburst but was persuaded to get back in contact by my only sibling. My sibling actually fled abroad and has lived there 35 years to escape her.

If she had attempted treatment, I would have been more understanding, but I will only be free when she dies, sadly. She has nearly driven me to suicide in the past.

I have BPD.

Relationships are hard. We feel/see/analyse everything. Sadly I was in a relationship with someone who'd deliberately trigger, cheat and gaslight me, causing me to react. If I was worried about something (the good old black white thinking) he wouldn't have time to reassure, it would be straight into an argument not solving the issue that was making me feel uneasy, thus making it a million times worse. He'd relentlessly dump me (triggering abandonment), he'd ignore my texts, wouldn't respond, again triggering me... he knew which buttons to press!

Since being single/kind of (but not really, no labels) seeing someone who makes me feel safe cause I know he won't do anything to hurt me, I trust him, there's no pressure there .... my BPD has quietened down considerably.

My advice, stay single until you can find someone who'll have the patience and time to reassure and support you when you need it. That makes so much difference.

I do. What I've found is not to take some of his responses to heart. He can say things that seem a little unreasonable and can be quite quick to anger when in certain situations. But it's just him expressing his emotions. It's totally forgotten about a couple of minutes later. So I kind of sometimes have to think, that's his illness saying that, not him. I actually suffer quite a few MH issues myself, and at one point thought I had BPD also. So I guess we have a fair bit in common which helps.
He is a wonderful, intelligent, sensitive, kind, gorgeous and funny man. The BPD is only one very small element but it does affect his own feelings of fitting into society.

I have a friend with BPD. I’ve been friends with them for years but it gets to a point where you can’t cope with the volatile behaviours. They are one of the kindest, funniest, clever, creative people I know and I love them a lot but the other side is abusive, anger, screaming and watching them abuse their partner and kids is totally heartbreaking. I agree with pp that sometimes you have to walk away for your own protection. I have been so much more patient and let things go way way more than I would if it weren’t for their mental heath condition but there is only so much you can take before it gets too much and it’s not shitty or nasty to walk away when you can’t take any more. In my case it was my friend who walked away as they perceived that I was being an awful friend. Weirdly they have lost almost all of their friends because we have all been awful to this person. I’ve genuinely tried and would love to rekindle my friendship at some point but they need to take some responsibility.

Sorry for referring to them as them. I don’t want this to be too outing. It’s actually hurt my brain using they/them pronouns and makes it harder to follow I’m sure!

I have eupd plus other things and I feel so sorry for my family and partner they don't know what version of me they are going to wake up to and feel like they are walking on eggshells.

No, it wasn't.

I'd tell anyone going through this kind of assessment to get an autism and ADHD assessment first tbh. Too many people are misdiagnosed with bpd/EUPD.

Whilst true, I've also seen instances where both have been diagnosed in people.

I have ADHD and I can see some of the aspects. However, I'm not abusive and I don't scream at my loved ones.

A lot of conditions can seem to overlap.

I am in a relationship with someone who has BPD and quite honestly I wouldn't do it again, knowing what I know now.
They have a tendency to 'split' during relatively minor arguments and become absolutely filled with venom and rage. Never physically but on an emotional level it is really hard to absorb. The rest of the relationship is amazing, but these episodes are so extreme that it is deeply damaging, both to the relationship and to my emotional wellbeing.
I understand these responses come from a place of fear and insecurity and do my best to understand and combat them with love, but it can take days for them to come out of it.
I would strongly encourage anyone with a diagnosis to seek all the therapy and support before entering into a relationship. and I would advise anyone considering a relationship with someone with a diagnosis to understand how hard it can be and ensure their own mental health is up to it.
I apologise if this sounds negative, but it's my personal experience and based on many years of being close to the condition.

I had a friend who I suspect had EUPD. She would swear at me and insult me when she got drunk and if I took too long to respond to her messages - like if I took a couple of hours to respond to a text.

In the end, similar to the poster above, I had to end the friendship after she kicked off at me again, by this point the kicking-offs were in the double figures. I don't think I did anything wrong. I couldn't take it anymore for my own mental health.

But there must be loads of people with EUPD and you don't know it because they manage it so well and have strong relationships. I'm not qualified in any way, but I think a major thing with EUPD is having insight into your behaviour. My former friend truly believed the world was against her. I feel sorry that she couldn't change her viewpoint, we could have all been friends and things could have been so different. She sabotaged everything and it was all her head.

I've had to cut out a friend with bpd. A lot of people have to because if someone doesn't engage in treatment then it can be so destructive to people around them. A mental health condition doesn't mean other people have to let themselves suffer abuse. Even if that abuse isn't intentional.
However I also have friends with bpd who you would never know unless they told you. And they've taken responsibility for it, they engage with treatment, they are doing well.
It's a vast spectrum. I work in mental health and have seen people hospitalised with it at one end..then as I said I also know people who you wouldn't even know had it.
I think as long as you maintain insight, follow your treatment plan and don't suddenly decide you are cured or the diagnosis was wrong (like the friend I had to cut off did) then it can be something which doesn't impact your life much at all once you have it under control.
You need to remember that it will always be there.. it won't suddenly vanish, but it can become and aspect of your personality that you can just deal with without much thought. The emotional disregulation will always kinda be there but you can learn how to not let it effect your behaviour and how to lessen it's impact on how you feel, quickly get through it etc (I don't have bpd but I do have pmdd so have struggled with disregulation myself and know it is something which gets easier over time)

A really important aspect with insight is to work on accepting responsibility and acknowledging your roll in addressing the situation, whilst also treating yourself with kindness and patience. Sometimes people with bpd find this hard as they can easily slip into oscillating between hating/being angry at themselves and then at other people. It's hard for them to hold a more nuanced view because of experiencing intense emotional reactions. But it's really important to be able to take responsibility whilst simultaneously treating yourself with kindness and knowing that it's an illness and doesn't mean you are a bad person. And that taking responsibility for your behaviour towards others doesn't mean hating or being angry at yourself. In fact turning anger on yourself will only make things worse.

Definitely agree as this was me. I thought I had BPD but I am actually ADHD. It hasn’t made a huge amount of difference really. People around me still don’t make allowances and I really wish I was just “normal” and could think and fit in easier.

My BIL is in a relationship with someone with BPD. He is quite vocal about being unhappy because of how he struggles with her BPD and behaviours, but is staying because he thinks it's better for the DC to have a semi stable home life rather than one stable / one unstable one.

We don't see her / interact with her ever really, we did try to at the beginning but her BPD really impacted how she interacted with people and tbh she wasn't the sort of person we want to spend time with (how much of that is personality and how much is BPD I couldn't tell you!). We try to be supportive in ways that don't involve much direct contact, we will pick up DC from activities / sort weekend plans when she's working or having an episode and BIL is stuck at work or similar then BIL will get them etc but it's a tough relationship to manage. It sometimes feels like he's stuck in an abusive relationship when she has bad episodes with her BPD, but we just try to support him as we can.

Yes I have ADHD and fear abandonment because I just don’t seem to fit well so people don’t warm to me when really I want nothing more then to be made warm and accepted. I don’t shout or abuse either, I hate loud noises.

@BPDotherside My ex I’m sure had BPD. The arguments were terrifying. In that moment there was just pure hate and it caused me all sorts of mental and physical issues. They got over quickly and slotted back into the nice split and I was traumatised. That fear of abandonment was awful to be on the other side of. I have adhd and my fear of abandonment just causes me to go quiet and dwell about it, never explode.