I am planning to write about what happened and the last two months, but in the mean time here is the first part of a series of posts I have written called BPD and me.
BPD
and me
BPD at
it's core is behaviour that alternates between extremes. My emotions
often feel like I am stuck in the middle of a storm, being pulled
this way and that. My emotions appear out of nowhere and can go from
0 to 100 in 2 seconds flat. I often don't know what's triggered the
strong emotion in the moment, and it's taken me a long time to figure
out how to pin point the
trigger. Because I have no control over my emotions I also feel like
I have no control over the behaviour I have in reaction to them. The
wild, angry, impulsive behaviour is an attempt to gain control over
the emotion. I am aware that I can be full of rage, unpredictable and
volatile. And I am ashamed by it and always vow to do better. Then I
get triggered again and the same cycle repeats. I am not deliberately
trying to hurt or upset anyone.
Borderline
Personality Disorder basically means I exhibit a chronic pattern of
behaviours based in my personality, which essentially means they
affect everything: moods, actions and relationships. There are 9 main
diagnostic criteria and a number of subgroups of the disorder. This
means no one person with BPD is alike.
Extra
sensitive and highly reactive emotions – Emotional dysregulation
I
have emotional dysregulation which means I am at the mercy of my
highly tuned emotional system all the time. It's like taking a bath in boiling water that everyone else
insists is lukewarm. You might feel a twinge of irritation but an
emotionally dysregulated person feels instant rage. Something that
might make you feel slightly embarrassed might send me off to drink shots of vodka and/or cut myself to obliterate the feeling of overwhelming shame.
People
with BPD have emotions that come up quickly and change quickly. I can
flip from laughing and happy to shame and then anger and then sadness
in a very short space of time and those emotions are very intense.
My emotions can also last for a lot longer than other people's do. A vivid memory for me is going to the movies to see 'The Book Thief'. If you've seen it you know it is a sad movie but not probably the saddest you've ever seen. For me, I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I cried for two solid hours afterwards. So hard that I burst blood vessels in my eye. At one point I struggled to breathe because I was crying so hard. I ended up having to drive to my parents house and they sat one on each side of me, holding on to me while I had a big meltdown over it. I remember Dad being so baffled, he kept asking me what was wrong and I just kept repeating the movie was so sad. He said "But you've seen sad movies before....'. Yes, I have, and they don't all do that to me. But on that day, that one triggered extreme emotions in me and I didn't have the capacity to deal with it.
Shame
is something I feel very strongly and is a big trigger for me. It reinforces those experiences from my childhood that taught me that there was something wrong with me. In the scenario above, I felt a huge amount of shame for over reacting so much to a movie. It wasn't that my parents did anything wrong. But my Dad's confusion triggered shame in me, because I felt that my reaction was wrong or bad as it was so out of proportion. I didn't understand why I was so emotional, and neither did they. Through this misunderstanding I felt invalidated and very deeply shamed by the strength of my emotional outpouring. It took me a long time to understand that invalidating experiences can be ones like these where people I love are trying to help me and inadvertently reinforcing my negative self beliefs. And this comes back to my being extra sensitive - my emotions are dysregulated, therefore my reactions are quick, intense and out of proportion to what others would do. People's confused reactions can invalidate my experiences (Like the bath - it's not that hot, its only lukewarm, what is your problem?!) and cause shame, which perpetuates the cycle.
Sometimes
I can appear emotionless as I have learnt to squash my emotional
sensitivity in certain situations because of the disastrous
consequences that it has had in the past. Subconsciously I've learnt
“emotions are bad, I shouldn't have them” and so when I have big
emotions I try and suppress them which usually results in an eruption
at a later date. Often this will happen in the context of work, where something will trigger me but I will try and not react till I am 'safe' at home. When my daughter was younger (and even now) I tried to avoid letting her see me cry. So I suppressed anything upsetting. For a long time (years) this meant I couldn't cry. I'd done such a good job at suppressing upsetting emotions that they came out as anger and rage and impulsive actions rather than sadness and tears. This ultimately is what lead to my biggest major depressive episode aka 'my breakdown' in 2013.
In my next post I will explore another of the subgroups of the disorder.
Until next time....
Ka kite anō
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