Living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

If you have been diagnosed with BPD, are ‘living’ with BPD, or just suspect that you are displaying BPD symptoms or have an undiagnosed but mild form of BPD, then the first thing I want you to know, is that there is hope.

 

I have been living with BPD for most of my life, but was officially diagnosed back in 2017. Living with BPD is tough, it’s hard and sometimes feels insurmountable. Other people just can’t understand and look at you as if you’re one of many things (crazy, spoilt, bad tempered, overly emotional, overly sensitive, erratic, hateful, manipulative etc…) and yet at it’s core, these perceptions (and indeed outward behaviours) are often the knee-jerk responses of a person suffering from BPD that simply feels alone, unfulfilled, or has a void somewhere in their life.

 

A BPD diagnosis is a start to making your life that little bit better, but it won’t make living with BPD any easier until you can find the right help. BPD is a powerful, emotional illness. It can eat away at the very foundation of who you are as a person and at the same time, because of the emotional reactivity that it creates - alienate those who are closet to you. Even mild BPD can magnify every single emotion that a more level (*ahem, ‘normal’) person would experience by a factor of ten.

 

And this is what BPD is essentially all about – at least it is for me and has been in my experience. Borderline personality disorder for me, turns (or rather it ‘used to’ turn) almost everything I feel on its head and then I express it often as anger, despair or simply just by giving up. It can be toxic, make deeper human relationships almost impossible and without beating around the bush, can be a pathway to self-destruction.

 

I have lived BPD, I have all the classic BPD symptoms and I’ve looked for and tried a number of Borderline Personality Disorder therapies, namely DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy), but I was never able to find someone who was a BPD specialist or a BPD therapist close enough to me that I could visit.

 

Moreover, the thing I wanted, yearned for more than anything, was a BPD therapist, who has BPD themselves.

 

I have to be brutally honest, there is no ‘quick fix’ to BPD but there are ways to manage it, mitigate the more powerful effects it can have on your life and eventually come to terms with it as a part of you. For some, DBT, talking therapies, CBT and many other treatments/therapies are the way forward and I am by no means a BPD specialist or trained in treating people with BPD, I want to make that clear to you.

 

However, as a person living with BPD, I am not just able to empathise, but also using NLP I may be able to help you make that initial switch, if only for a moment from the emotional, to the rational.

 

The journey I have taken both alone and with loved ones, has been long and arduous, yet in hindsight, full of love. When I look back at all the strong emotions, the lowest of the lows, I just wish I could tell my younger self that, "everything is going to be okay... I promise".

My own BPD is no longer a 'disorder' to me - it is a small piece of magic, a gift. When I tell my husband and children, "I love you more" – for me, I win - my BPD biologically says that I feel emotions more intensely than the average person.

​

For some BPD sufferers, a huge void is there for life. Mine went one day… Having children did not fill it, marrying my best friend did not fill it... something just clicked the same way that switch from 'love' to 'anger' used to. But this time it was a permanent switch as if for the first time ever, my rational mind had taken the reigns slightly more than my emotional mind.

​

BPD has impacted my life hugely - the lowest low was being homeless, jobless, penniless, no partner, with almost no friends and nowhere to go. I am living proof that BPD can be managed. You always have a choice - you are in the driving seat and all of this for me, did change. But I had to work at it, and so will you.

​

If you’ve tried other BPD therapies and discovered they weren’t for you, or you simply want to try something different, or are even at the beginning of looking for help with your BPD diagnosis, then why not let’s have a chat?

​

As I’ve said before, I am not a BPD specialist in the clinical sense, nor am I a trained BPD therapist per-se, I offer online NLP therapy, but that's not to discount its uses. I live Borderline Personality Disorder every day, I know and understand how all consuming it can be and with NLP therapy, there may be some ways you can approach living with BPD that you may not have tried or come across before.

​

I’ve written my first blog about my lived experiences and the signs and symptons of BPD, so do check it out if you are pondering whether you may have the condition. Otherwise, do get in touch (see at the bottom of the page), who knows what good things may happen….

 

BPD related blog posts: