Borderline personality disorder awareness month

May is Borderline personality disorder awareness month so thought would write a post about what it is like to live with Borderline personality disorder. 

Although it isn't my main diagnosis I do have Borderline personality disorder (as well as dependent and avoidant personality disorder). I also have bulimia, eating disorders is how my mental health problems began when I was about 12 or even before....people don't fit in boxes so no 2 people with bpd are the same. A misconception about bpd is people with bpd are attention seeking and manipulative and untreatable so often services won't treat people who they class as too complex and sadly 10 percent of people with bpd die by suicide. 

Personality disorders are caused by attachment issues in early childhood, mine were caused by being adopted after my birth mum died. I've always had anxious attachments since childhood scared of people leaving and dying still my biggest fear but in my case my avoidant personality disorder means I avoid getting close to many people because of the fear of them leaving or hurting me and my dependent personality disorder means when I do attach to people I become dependent on them and am scared of independence because I lack confidence in myself, im over dependent on my parents and also have had those strong attachments with some staff when I was in hospital. People with bpd feel emotions stronger than other people and have highs and lows but unlike bipolar disorder where the highs and lows last for long periods and are caused by chemical imbalances,  bpd moods change more rapidly  and are caused by relationship and environmental causes. So for example you could be happy earlier in the day, someone letting you down could send you so low you become suicidal so therapies to treat bpd aim to slow your thoughts down to rationalise the situations and not act on those thoughts. 

I remember saying I hated life as young as 8 years old and even found a book I had written it in at that age, I was always anxious and depressed as a child and struggled to make friends as I was so quiet and shy and i got bullied at school. I developed eating disorders when I was about 12 and I think that started as a way for people to notice how unhappy I was, how invisible I felt because of how quiet I was and to feel I was good at something as always felt I wasn't good at anything. I always said I deserved to be dead by the time I was 28 as that was the age my birth mum was when she died from septicemia after I was born by caesesarian which I blamed myself for. Apparently my birth mum also had mental health problems which she was sectioned for as she also was suicidal and self harmed and her mum also died when she was 2 from epilepsy which we now know is a hereditary heart condition we also inherited. 

After struggling with Eating Disorders for years and unable to access help for it I began self harming. The first time I self harmed I was having an argument with myself about wether or not to eat the eating disorder voices and my own rational self battling with it I threw a mug in frustration and picked up a piece and cut my arm with it. I was then self harming regularly to punish myself for eating but as time went on I did it for more reasons, to punish myself if I thought I had done something wrong or if I had upset someone or if someone had upset me or made me feel angry I hate upsetting other people or confrontation I would self harm to deal with all my negative emotions. By 2012 I thought I didn't deserve to be alive i had to give up work and a place at uni to train as a mental health nurse because of my own unstable mental health and had given up on my eating disorder ever getting better which I also struggle alot with and makes me hate myself more so I began taking overdoses and that became a combination of self harm and suicide attempts,  each time different sometimes I often had an obsessive thought that I deserved to die so had to act on that thought other times I struggled so much with my eating disorder an anorexic voice saying I couldn't eat, a bulimic voice telling me I could eat if I was sick and myself getting lost in there somewhere I just wanted my head to be quiet and taking overdoses quietened that voice as I was too ill to eat and in hospital I always gave myself a rule I wasn't allowed to eat there although there were times even then I would end up eating,  making myself sick and self harming with broken plates. But the crisis team always sent me home or I had short admissions on the acute ward where I was told it was my choice to self harm or take overdoses but I wasn't in control of my thoughts and emotions at that time I was in crisis I needed help to stay safe. I took about 60 overdoses and developed chronic kidney disease and heart failure and local mental health services said they had exhausted all avenues with me so couldn't treat me. I was diagnosed with personality disorders and my mum found a therapeutic community in London I went to as it was funded by the NHS for people with personality disorders who were classed as too complex for other services but it was an open unit some other patients weren't nice to me and I took more overdoses.  I then got admitted to the local acute ward and was tying ligatures to try to kill myself,  was banging my head on walls and pulled my hair out and got sectioned for a year in 2015 in a locked hospital for ladies with personality disorders. There isn't a certain person who has bpd there were ladies who worked as nurses and carers, artists, musicians,  parents, some people with bpd drink, take drugs or wreckless drive, others self harm, have eating disorders and quietly turn their negative emotions on themselves whilst others can become angry and aggressive verbally or physically to other people. No 2 people with bpd are the same yet NHS treatments are black and white you can either be treated for an eating or a personality disorder you can't be treated for both despite both feeding each other. 

I'm not good with change and uncertainty so lockdown and the prospect and coming out of lockdown and things changing again has sent my anxieties high. 

People with bpd are often creative, more empathic and caring to other people and are strong and brave to fight their mental health and try to find a life worth living.

To be diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder you have to meet 5 of 9 criteria which include unstable self image, unstable relationships, impulsive in 2 areas such as spending, wreckless driving or binge eating, self harm, suicide ideation, chronic feelings of emptiness or worthlessness,  frantic efforts to avoid abandonment,  dissociating and difficulties controlling anger.

My mental health is classed as complex but im told it is treatable and I'm in a therapeutic community to treat it im told if I learn to deal with my emotions better my eating disorders will improve, I rarely self harm and haven't acted on any suicidal thoughts for 2 and a half years and I'm proud that I haven't im thankful my suicide attempts didn't succeed i want to achieve alot more before I die....and I have my pony Warwick who needs me...he was my original reason to stop acting on suicidal thoughts to get out of hospital...