A Glimpse Inside The Colorful Mind of Someone With Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

In early 2020 and after many conversations with my therapist, I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder at the ripe age of 24. When I began explaining this diagnosis to friends, most of them would furrow their brows in confusion or mistake this mental illness with Bipolar Disorder. When someone asks how it might feel to live inside my skull, I tell them “fun”, because how else are you supposed to make light of an unfortunate diagnosis without making the conversation totally awkward? In reality, it’s a heavy weight to carry.

Truthfully, because less than 2% of the population is known to suffer from BPD, very little research has ever been done on this disorder. What is known, is that some mental illnesses (such as Bipolar Disorder) can be caused by genetic abnormalities or trauma. Borderline Personality Disorder, however, is trauma-oriented.

Imagine happily driving on a bridge, and having the intrusive thought: ‘What would it feel like if I drove my car into the water? How would it feel to be suspended in mid-air like that, for just a moment?’

Imagine mindlessly scrolling through social media and seeing a close friend complain about work or school, only to laugh and think about how much smarter or well-adjusted you are compared to them.

Imagine emerging from a simple shower, staring down your body in the mirror once the steam clears, belittling yourself for every barely-there imperfection. Two hours later, you’ll gaze in joyful awe at every dip and curve.

Imagine fantasizing uncontrollably about every person of the opposite sex who you befriend, and slowly isolating yourself out of shame or resistance to act on those thoughts. Every person. Being single or (in my case) in an open relationship doesn’t do any helpful favors.

Imagine gazing adoringly at your partner sleeping after a long day of work, and becoming angry because you’re still awake with laundry to do. You’re already fighting with someone who doesn’t know you’re fighting with them!

Imagine depressive episodes for days, only to wake one morning in complete euphoria and prepared to conquer the world. The house is cleaned from top to bottom by 7am, and you reward yourself with a $600 shopping spree.

Imagine initiating a conversation with enthusiasm and wishing it would end five minutes later. Their voice causes budding tension in your shoulders. You never want to hear them speak again.

Imagine asking a question and realizing every time how stupid that question must sound, regardless of the legitimacy.

These are only a few of my daily experiences and thoughts. I cope by filtering out the most problematic ones and simply accepting others for what they are. In doing so, I find myself constantly struggling to discern disordered thoughts from legitimate ones. I grasp at empty air trying to find where sensible thoughts end and disordered ones begin. It’s difficult.

Admittedly, my greatest escapes from disordered thoughts are keeping busy with work, school, chores, or taking on other obligations. When my mind is there, it’s busy. It knows what to do and how to respond, with clear guidelines of what is and isn’t acceptable, as well as the need to be morally sound in thought. I struggle to take sick days, mental health days, or breaks from my education for this reason. For me, an idle mind and idle hands are the Devil’s work.

Living with BPD is difficult, particularly because it’s one of many invisible illnesses. Your brain is tied up to a chair, mercilessly beaten by itself. Opening up about the specifics of the thoughts we have is subject to harsh judgement. They aren’t just, “intense highs and lows” or “depressive moods”, rather intrusive thoughts and mindsets that could range from a god-complex to worthlessness in the span of hours. Hence, why BPD is so underdiagnosed. Nobody wants to discuss the graphic details of what goes on in the space behind their eyes, because everyone passes judgement regardless of whether they utter the words, “judgement-free zone”.

Accepting treatment for BPD is just as difficult, because it involves giving shape to these thoughts by speaking them into existence. I have found myself, in some therapy sessions, using the first 55 minutes to complain about trivial issues, and unintentionally using the last 5 minutes to brain-dump all the heavy stuff on my therapist. Oops.

Aside from therapy, there’s a few things that help me manage my mental illness(es), and may help someone else:

· Touch grass. Seriously, going outside even if I feel like not moving at all does wonders.

· Set time aside for self-care, however that self-care looks. It might be a bubble bath and music, a pedicure, or going out to eat for a night as a break from cooking. When your days are filled with obligations and your mind beating itself up, some relaxation is well-deserved, particularly for personal sanity.

· Don’t nap. Some people believe if you’re not awake, you aren’t struggling with those thoughts on repeat. The downside is that it becomes very easy to fall into the routine of sleeping every day, whenever possible, as an escape (AKA: Depression).

· Talk about it. Write about it for catharsis, find a therapist, write in a journal, get those thoughts out of your body somehow. Kinda like throwing up something bad, except for your brain rather than your stomach.

· Try marijuana (legally). These thoughts can give way to a lot of anxiety, and medical marijuana is no worse than taking the prescription pills doctors freely prescribe.

The only way to successfully end the stigma surrounding mental illness is, as always, to talk about it and raise awareness. Those of us who are high-functioning tend to push it all away into a dark recesses of our minds without a second thought, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t taking a personal toll behind-the-scenes. Before we are students, employees, leaders, CEO’s or business-owners, we are human.

One final note on the topic of BPD and other mental illnesses: we are not all of the negative side-effects of our mental disorders. Textbooks may label our thoughts as “disordered”, “manipulative”, “impulsive”, etc., but we have also shaped ourselves into some of the most well-rounded, empathetic, emotionally intelligent, and competent people there are. We are accustomed to high-stress, so we do not easily break under pressure. Our minds crave being occupied, so we are often organized. We exist on a plane of intrusive and burdensome thoughts stemming from trauma, so we have built emotional resilience. We are some of the strongest people you will likely meet.