r/BPD

Hi guys so i'm really struggling at the moment. I was thinking it would be nice to make a group chat with whoever wants to join, i've seen some purely for either a breakup or specific things but never a general BPD one. So whether you are going to through a breakup, having a rough time with work or anything in general, maybe a lil community to be able to message whenever need be could help?

Let me know what you all think and if you'd want to join!

Like can't anything be for me?

And why am I the one who fucking violated my own boundaries no one else.

I did a lot of bad things recently. I wanted to feel like a bad bitch.. but instead of sitting with it and being my new identity of a bad bitch self.. I had to share it with two people that I dont even care about. So annoying.. it diluted the experience and ability to process for me and I hate my damn self.

For me, I firmly believe my mum contributed a significant majority to me developing BPD so fights with her (which happen quite often anyway) often trigger suicidal thoughts in me. Other times where I have suicidal thoughts is when trivial things happen with people around me but I can feel the internal overreaction that I know is due to BPD, and I just feel this surge of despair and extreme resentment at how I had to develop this disorder as a result of my mum and how I’m stuck dealing with this for the rest of my life.

I know that my suicidal thoughts are passing thoughts (thanks to DBT and schema therapy) and that they will eventually go away. However, I can’t help but feel crazy given how easily I get suicidal thoughts, because I can’t help but compare myself to people without BPD who can regulate their emotions properly without jumping to suicidal thoughts as a coping mechanism lol

I’ve been trying to understand where how or why the pit of emptiness persists in us and for so long. I do so much to try fill the void but it creeps back and I end up just staring at a wall when I’m empty like I can’t get motivated or do anything! It’s a numbness

It’s summer and I can’t even go out because I don’t have friends to go out with, plus all it’s been doing is raining and I can’t even barely leave the house.

I’m so lonely, anyone else dealing with this and wanna chat?

What did I do to deserve this? i mean i kind of understand roughly whats happened but that doesnt make it any easier. okay so my needs werent met as a child, im now im basically fucked for life. is that it?

Obviously there are just too many issues with this; we are a vulnerable group and bad actors would prey on an app like that. I just wish to meet someone who already knows I am damaged and is okay with it. Meeting someone cold, I feel like I have to be normal and I don't want to mislead anyone. I want to just like take a walk with someone and sit down and not talk about anything important, or at all, just hold hands and maybe an arm around me or my arm around her, each of us silently just knowing that that's all we really need to not feel so alone. Whatever comes after that, I have no idea, maybe a conversation would spontaneously appear without any desperation clouding it.

But that is too much to ask, or I don't know who or how to ask.

Whenever I start to get real and intense feelings for somebody, they are literally all I can ever think about. It’s hard for me to wake up in the morning because I just want to keep thinking about them. I can’t focus on work and I space out, because they are just on my mind. I’ll randomly go to the couch or bed to just lay down for even 10 mins, close my eyes, and fantasize about them or make up fake scenarios. I don’t know if “lovesick” is the right word, but I guess it’s what I call it since sometimes I literally cannot get up, because I just want to keep daydreaming about them. I started seeing this guy and things have been great, except I’ve been missing work and coming in late because I just want to talk to him and think about him all day. I don’t know what to do.

I just realized that i dont FEEL like my feelings are real. Not all of them, just some specific ones feel real to me. Those ones i see as real ones are feelings associated with suicidal, selfdestructive or selfharm thoughts. The other ones feel so oddly distant. it`s really hard for me to explain but i wonder if anyone feels something remotely similiar

Hi, I (19M) feel stupid over how much it irritates me. So me and my ex (18F) have known each other since we were 14 and 13, we met in school. We dated, broke up, dated again, and just kept doing that. We've broken up and gotten back together at least 6 times by now. Every time we broke up, it was my fault. I was the one tweaking over her friends, the time it took for her to respond to my messages, her tone in person and over text, splitting on her over something stupid, just all the usual shit that one who displays symptoms of bpd would do. By the time I was 16 I had her totally Isolated just so she could be "only mine". Stuff like that. I'm not proud of what I would do and I'm a changed man these days because of dbt and my therapist.

So considering my behavior that my therapist deemed as symptoms of bpd (because I also had a lot of issues that would ruin my day to day life, not just relationships) and how my mother who has bpd acted and treated me when I was a kid, I feel like I know the signs. My ex displays very minimal symptoms yet she's convinced she has it. Never has she ever tried to tell me to leave my friends, she hasn't freaked out over me hugging them, texting them, she hasn't ever broke up with me, as far as I know she doesn't split (a thing I feel is rather obvious because every time I or my mother split on someone it was very loud and we'd do nothing but shit talk the people, leave them, or just act deranged) she's only had consistent friendships. She doesn't think in black and white. She's very logical and doesn't experience anything that I would personally consider an episode.

I come from a family of severe mental illness. Both my parents are unmedicated bipolars, my mom has bpd plus a long list of other shit that messes with her emotional regulation and moods, my dad has NPD, all of my siblings are autistic, and my therapist is urging me to get a psychological evaluation because he thinks I'm bipolar and he's worried about me facing another psychotic episode. He considers me pretty much in remission with my bpd symptoms.

I grew up with and practically raised my siblings. I know what an autistic meltdown looks like. That's all I see when she talks about why she thinks she had bpd. Autism. She has sensory issues, meltdowns with sudden schedule changes, rituals surrounding routine and food, self harm when she's having a meltdown (particularly hitting herself), she's dysthymic, stuff like that. Her dad also displays a lot of signs of autism. Yet she's convinced it's bpd.

I know it's wrong to just dismiss people and their concerns with mental health and that maybe I should be more supportive, but bpd ruined my life. It ruined my childhood because of what my mom did to me every time she'd fly into an episode, over half of my friends were lost because of my episodes, I was nothing but dysfunctional and so was my mom. I blew my life up more times than I can count. I dropped out of school multiple times because of it. So when I look at her and watch how high functioning she looks, I feel nothing but angry. It feels like she's treating it as a small issue and not something that destroys people's lives. She's never blown her life up. She's never blown our relationship up. All her relationships are stable. I don't fucking get it.

It makes it hard to talk to her. I guess I just need advice. I'm thinking maybe I should just tell her to not talk about it with me. That's probably the best thing to do, right?

Thanks for listening, and wish you all well.

i’ve been extremely low, snapping on the people i love and i haven’t been to work this week at all…the only thing thats made me happy/relieved was smoking my pretty little joint and it felt like a complete 180.
i don’t want to rely on it whenever i feel this way, so i wondered if anyone has any advice for getting through these tough days without needing to smoke up to feel better? i’ve been doing breathing exercises, but it can only do so much…

I am really struggling lately with this mental illness. I have been diagnosed for around 7 years now. Lately I have been having very frequent episodes I cannot control. It is completely destroying my relationship with my partner who I live with. He looks completly exhausted and dead inside when I looked into his eyes this morning after yesterday’s episode which is adding to the guilt and shame I experience after every episode. I have honestly been feeling like I have lost all hope and suicidal thoughts are very heavy lately.

I wanted to see if there was anyone else with diagnosed BPD who when having episodes they feel like they are literally possessed by a demon? I know that may sound absurd but yesterday it literally was like the movies where someone is possessed by a demon. My voice even started to change to a demonic voice. It also felt like I had this angry entity within me then suddenly it would leave and I would feel calm and the “real me” would come back almost begging for help then it would return again. I do not actually believe I am possessed by a demon just to clear that up but I am interested to know if anyone else with BPD experiences this or whether I should perhaps go back to the doctors to seek another diagnosis that I may have. I do not hear things that are not there nor see things that are not there during episodes. Just extreme unvalidated anger where I feel like it’s someone else taken over my body and mind and I have no control during episodes.

Thank you for anyone who would like to share similar experiences. It may make me feel a bit less alone in this awful illness. 😞

Am I overreacting to something my therapist said about BPD clients?

I had a therapy session today where we somehow got onto the subject of boundaries with BPD clients. My therapist told me that he used to work with another therapist whose client with BPD developed romantic feelings for him and things got really complicated. He said he had wondered why that had never happened with any of his BPD clients, and then realized there are certain things he naturally does early in treatment.

One example he gave was that he intentionally mentions that he has a female best friend and refers to her periodically because he wants his BPD clients to understand that a close relationship between a man and woman can be platonic and that the therapist/client relationship isn't romantic.

He then asked if I remembered him mentioning his female best friend to me. I did. In fact, I remember thinking at the time, “Why does he keep specifying that his best friend is female? Why is her gender relevant?” I had assumed he was just sharing normal things about his life. Finding out later that at least part of it was a deliberate technique aimed at me because I have BPD made me feel weirdly manipulated and stereotyped.

I responded, “Well, I’m asexual, so…” because I genuinely have never experienced romantic/sexual attraction to anyone and wasn't even sure how to participate in a conversation about potentially falling for my therapist.

What bothered me even more was the assumption behind it. I know that attachment and transference can be intense for some people with BPD, but why assume BPD clients are likely to develop romantic feelings for their therapist in the first place? And why use a strategy with me before I had ever done anything suggesting that I was attracted to him or would cross a boundary?

Later he also made another generalization about BPD and said something like, “Psychopharmacology doesn’t work for you guys. I don’t know why—it should, but it doesn’t.” I know what he meant clinically, but the “you guys” wording bothered me too. I’m realizing I'm really sensitive to feeling like someone is seeing “a borderline” instead of seeing me.

I’m not upset that my therapist has boundaries. Obviously he should. What bothers me is finding out that something I thought was genuine personal sharing was partly a technique designed to manage a problem I had never shown any signs of creating.

Am I overreacting? Would this make anyone else with BPD feel stereotyped or uncomfortable, or does this sound like pretty normal therapeutic boundary-setting that I'm taking too personally?

First of all I recognize that what works for individuals will vary greatly from person to person. So while some of these may be problematic for others they may at the same time benefit some.

For instance I’ve seen a lot of practitioners advocating for snapping of rubber band but also see this can be used for self harm and I’m unclear how beneficial this would be.

Another example is writing on wrists in red ink to simulate self harm. This one I haven’t seen as much but seems quite clear to me how triggering and socially inappropriate it may be.

Any other classic examples people can think of?

In the whirlwind turbulence of my relationships, both platonic and romantic, I’ve always landed in this situation where I’ve overwhelmed the other person, monologued too frequently about my pain and emotions, and the person blows up at me. It always feels like it’s with little warning. Historically, I try to take the dialectic approach that two things can be true—they should have told me that they needed a break, or that I was being inconsiderate AND I should have been mindful of the space I was taking.

But you don’t know better until you know and experience consequences of your actions. I feel betrayed in a way by all the people who never were truthful with me and explained the impact of my behavior. I figured it out way too late after I’d already lost pretty much everyone.

Should I feel compassionate towards people for being afraid to communicate with us? We can be very intense and volatile. I can see how it’s hard to tell someone you care about that their behavior and reactivity is too much. But I’ve never actually outwardly crashed out on anyone—ever. My BPD traits are very inward, with the exception of the emotion dumping. My behavior can be considered inconsiderate, but not abusive, or consciously malicious. I end up feeling like the worst person alive, because of how much I don’t want to hurt people.

I’m having a hard time grappling with the contradiction that both of these things can be true. If they were both true, how come I could never repair those relationships? Why could we not both come to the table with our part in the mess and meet the other where they were?

I’ve been told my an ex before that I should have just known better than to be so intense and intolerable of my emotions and monologuing with no prior explicit indication that it was a problem. I have a lot of shame around my BPD traits. So much.

Why can’t people just be upfront, in plain language and say “this is too much for me right now?” Or “I don’t have the capacity to go over this topic again”

Sure, it would have hurt my feelings, but I would have gotten over it eventually and learned, and saved that relationship potentially.

Idk.

I put bad stuff in quotes as it might not be super bad but just annoying to others but I'll get these strong urges to just cause 'chaos' (mostly online, trolling/messing with people, etc). I can feel the urge all in my body and it honestly sucks, and once I do start the adrenaline kicks in and I start just being more annoying. Wanting to know if anyone else deals with this and if there's healthier alternatives

I have started having self harm episodes again. I am sometimes in so much pain that I get nosebleeds from crying. Like it makes me light headed and that is followed by nosebleeds. My self harming becomes manipulative too. But in dark times sh seems like the only escape. You cannot see how much my head hurts from emotional pain but you can see a cut on my skin. all I wanted was to be seen :( But everytime I self harm I ruin everything. I ruined my birthday like that, how do I stop?

genuinely i can count on one hand the amount of times i've been angry at someone other than myself in the past year. and i can count on one hand the number of times i've raised my voice at someone in my entire life. i have never yelled at someone, ever. but if i'm mad at myself? it's volatile, i can explode at myself. i punch things to hurt my hands, i pour boiling water on myself, etc.

this probably has a lot to do with how i was raised. my parents shouted all the time so i became very quiet and slow to anger in response. but because BPD is stereotyped as having explosive anger and yelling at people, i kind of feel like an odd case. so, anyone else feel the same?

I love it so much, it's my favorite thing in the whole world to not be able to regulate which causes blow ups and acting out!! I see one little thing and my brain says one little whisper of a thought and I'm spiraling like something intentional and awful happened!!! Yay!

Lately, I've been finding myself wondering if even it's possible for those of us with BPD to actually have long-lasting, contented, "healthy" relationships. So, I'm curious what you guys' experience(s) are with this. Maybe it's just me that feels like I'll be single forever haha. Or that it's less stress to be single....

Have any of you had a long-term, happy relationship that worked out (or is still working out)? If so, what were some things that you think helped you and your partner to make that work?

I'm just curious what you guys are practicing, implementing, and maybe what your partners are, that really helps things work for you, helps to minimize the anxieties, etc.

Can't wait to hear from you guys.