Sep 2018 – Bee: Inside My Mind

I haven’t posted in a few weeks because I haven’t been in the right headspace or physical space… I started treatment for my Borderline Personality Disorder this week, Emotional Coping Skills Group Therapy, which was causing me a great deal of stress and worry. Last weekend I was in London and the week prior to that my parents, who are a significant part of my life, were on holiday so I subconsciously planned in far too many activities so that I wouldn’t feel the need to reach out to them if I had a bad day and make them worry. That, alongside normal day-to-day stress at home and work, has led to a rollercoaster few weeks that has made me sit back and really appreciate the people I have in my life because I honestly hate to think where I would be without them.

For a start, the people I have at work. This treatment programme will be taking me out of the office for an afternoon each week for fourteen weeks and the fear that this would mean I’d annoy my colleagues was causing me a whole world on stress on top of the treatment itself. But they have been wonderful, and really I should have expected nothing less – from the encouragement and positivity before my first session, to the reassurance that it was all okay and the immediate interest they took the next day it made me really stand back and appreciate the support that I have from all of them. They’ve made something I am petrified of that little bit less daunting and I know that, on a bad day (like the one that left me in tears on Friday) they all rally round and make the effort to understand and help me work out what’s going on and find solutions and coping mechanisms. Whilst my parents were away I had a day of horrendous dissociation which put me close to crisis and I was ridiculously grateful to have someone I could ask to go on a twenty minute walk around the grounds so I could talk through how it felt and ground myself – knowing that there are people I can explain even the most confusing and ridiculous sounding aspects of my mental health too without judgement, who will do nothing but try to help and support me. Thank you all.

Next, the people I’ve had in my life for years – the best friends who have put up with so much of my mental health it is unbelievable, yet are still there for me every single day. Having a friend that, when I was particularly concerned about my parents going away I could nominate to be my surrogate and text all my worry instead so that I wouldn’t ruin their holiday; and that same friend who I could call on late in the evening before I started my treatment to come round and keep me calm because I was getting into a state. Or friends that I know I can message and talk about all the random rubbish and they will tell me the truth and make me see sense, but also take the time to understand and learn about what is going on so that they can help me get better. Even the fact that they are still willing to socialise with me despite the days that my mental health has gotten in the way and made me rubbish company, they still give me the chance and for that I am getting the opportunities to practice and keep getting better. The last few weeks have been hard, but having people to socialise with and talk to when I need to sort out my head has kept me grounded and stopped me locking myself away and letting a depressed mood take over completely, and despite the bad days and how close I have been to spiralling downwards they have helped me still have good days, so for that I am extremely fortunate.

But one of the biggest challenges I have faced, and one of the appreciations it has made me want to make sure is out there for the world is for my parents. Not having them here for a week and actively trying to keep going on my own and not contacting them, even when I was close to crisis, made it impossible to ignore just how much they are a part of my day-to-day life – the normal conversations and contact that anyone would have with their children but also just how much they provide a support network. How often I have a bad day and ring my mum to cry or talk it through so that I can hold it together in front of the rest of the world, or a bad emetophobia day where they provide a significant coping mechanism. Proving I could do it by myself was important and another important step in my recovery, and allowing them time away to relax and not worry about me was even more so, but it also made me grateful for the fact that I do have them there – they are my biggest cheerleaders and people I can turn to no matter what and I am ridiculously lucky to have them. With their support, and the fact I can turn to them on the bad days but equally celebrate the good days with them, I have made it through mental health struggles we weren’t sure I would beat and it is that that gives me reassurance that, with their support, I can do it again this time. So thank you Mum and Dad for everything you put up with and everything you do.

Above all these last few weeks have made me remember just how fortunate I am for the people I have in my life, but also that we need to appreciate those people we have – I am not always an easy person to know, when my mental health is bad and confusing and hard to understand, but they’re all still here and because of that I have a much greater chance of recovery. So never forget the people in your life and always remember to say thank you, and return the favour when they need someone on their side too. So, for all the wonderful people I have in my life – don’t forget I’m always here for you too and I love you all.

Bee x

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a mental illness that is surrounded by stigma and considered by professionals to be a severe psychiatric disorder yet, despite the negative connotations and complexity, being given a diagnosis was in some ways a positive as it has made so many things in my life make more sense. There is so much involved in it that it simply wouldn’t be possible to fit into one post, so today we are just going to start at the beginning: the criteria of BPD and what it means to me.

To be diagnosed with BPD you must meet five out of nine diagnostic criteria (symptoms) as defined by DSM-5, and these need to have a significant impact on your life. Below we will look at them in their most basic definitions as the complexity and variety of individual symptoms and manifestations is extensive, and with each one I will include just what it means for my diagnosis and how it started to make everything make sense.

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
1. I will do anything to keep people happy, often to my detriment, and take the smallest inconsistencies as a sign that I’m hated and not wanted. I incessantly apologise and constantly need to check and validate that things are okay, people still like me and I haven’t done something wrong. This is due to an intense fear of rejection and not being good enough. All of a sudden this diagnosis made the way I behave make perfect sense.
A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationship characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
1. Unhealthy previous relationships and the way I go through phases of viewing the validation from certain people in my life as being of upmost importance fits into this criteria perfectly.
Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
1. There are days I look in the mirror and don’t recognise who I see. I will cling to any opportunities to define myself by an activity or a relationship, just so that I have something solid that I can hang my identity onto. This criteria made me notice just how much my self-image differs depending on my mood or who I’m with, it is never consistent and that is one of the primary reasons I’ve struggled so much with my confidence.
Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating).
1. Fortunately, this is one of the criteria I meet less but I still haven’t escaped completely. I do things to extremes – I will be compulsively saving and then sporadically become obsessed with a concept so buy everything related or try to cheer myself up by spending money I later regret. Or it will be little things like sending impulsive messages or making sudden decisions on things that ordinarily I would think through and plan. And I become easily obsessive so a substance abuse problem wouldn’t be difficult to imagine.
Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour
1. This criteria made behaviours I’ve had since I was a child make sense – predominantly dermatillomania (compulsive skin picking). As a child they thought I had a skin condition and even tried to treat it. But now it makes sense that it is correlated to stress or low mood – it is rare I don’t have areas of skin that I am picking at especially my fingers or my head. And one of my coping mechanisms for emetophobia has always been digging my nails into my arm. Between the two I meet this criteria without even thinking about it. And, although I’ve never made any concrete plans, I do get suicidal ideation.
Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
1. Mood swings. No doubt about this one – I can wake up in the morning feeling on top of the world and it takes only the tiniest trigger for it to spiral downwards into anxiety or depression or something equally as unpleasant but, on the plus side, it also means it doesn’t take a lot to trigger a good mood and bouncing back. Having a diagnosis gives some hope that, with the right coping mechanisms, I can get these triggers under control and maybe start to find some stability.
Chronic feelings of emptiness
1. Between the mood swings, depression, anxiety and dissociation sometimes the emptiness is a welcome relief but there are without a doubt days that I feel completely numb to the world and with it comes intense feelings of worthlessness and loneliness which certainly isn’t pleasant.
Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g. frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
1. Of the nine criteria this is the one I identify with the least – only very occasionally do I feel intense anger and, although sometimes I can be extremely childlike in my five minute tantrum of showing it, I don’t think it is any less than anyone else.
Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
1. I get days where I think that everyone is talking about me and looking at me, and days where I feel completely detached from the real world and like I’m in a bubble, add in the seizures which are a dissociative symptom all of their own and I have certainly got this criteria covered. But it’s such a strange feeling that dissociation will have to be covered another time. At least having a diagnosis, alongside the NEAD diagnosis, means more hope of getting it all under control.

So, that’s the basics of BPD – although there is so much more depth to each criteria and so much more that people go through alongside this. And, although I was certainly guilty of googling it prior to my assessments, it is such a complex disorder that no one should take this list as a way to self-diagnose – a diagnosis can only ever come from a medical professional.

Hopefully this has given a bit on insight into BPD and how I got this diagnosis, but please do not hesitate to comment any questions you have.

Bee x

Month: Sep 2018

Appreciation Post: The Importance of a Support Network

Borderline Personality Disorder: What it means to me