i was outright disgusted and ashamed the moment when my inpatient doctor suggested that i might have BPD.. i'd never before seriously considered that i might have a personality disorder. my rational self knew that almost every bullet point she read off of the diagnostic sheet was spot-on for me, and my emotional self was bent on clinging to the reserved and thoughtful fiction of an identity i'd catered for myself. despite desperately trying to hide any outward display of emotional distress, i couldn't help the tears overflowing my eyelids. crying in front of strangers at the wrong time has always been my worst fear, and my whole life has been saddled by an obsession with concealing my emotions to avoid the shame of exposing the ugly truth of BPD. i'm talking about the intense jealousy and betrayal i feel if a girlfriend so much as talks to another male friend, or becoming instantly suicidal upon hearing some casual criticism of my essay from a classmate, or feeling absolutely demolished when someone honks their horn if i don't see the light is green.
BPD is for me is the constant impulses to behave in the most desperate, childish and pathetic ways. and self-awareness is constantly stepping in to denigrate the shit out of me for having those feelings, leaving me so angry at myself. i feel split and paralyzed. it's fucking exhausting, man.
i can really empathize with your words here:
"Being aware and carrying this intense shame feels like literal death… I just keep thinking how it's such a fucking shame that it's come to this…"
the worst, most fucked up game your mind can play with you in this state is to become suicidal out of the pain of feeling so ashamed of yourself, and even more ashamed of yourself for feeling suicidal over it… the cycle spins over and over, becoming a bit more ugly and enshrouding with every turn. this is what keeps me bedridden and useless on the worst days, sometimes even getting to the point where i'm sobbing, holding my breath and hitting myself in the face over and over out of disgust and hate for the fucking thing inside my skull producing such a storm of misery. ending up here is like crossing the event horizon of a black hole, it's so fucking hard to climb out of it with any amount of effort, even if there did appear a path that might lead you to back to tranquility .
"I know I will never feel 'joy' again or whatever it was this disorder allowed me to feel before so was so horribly aware."
i know this exact feeling. i know that any time someone tries to give you some hopeful advice about how things will get better and you will heal in due time, it falls fucking flat. because when you're feeling so awful and all paths lead nowhere but down, time distorts and stretches out or stands still, and any appeal to the the temporariness of the present or hope for the future stops making normal sense.
i think that truly living in the present tense is one of the only antidotes to the hell of BPD depression. if you ask any psych doctor, they'll tell you the same thing, although they recommend trying a nice, relaxing grounding exercise or a cute little mindfulness meditation track… and i'm not gonna shit on those because they do help some people, but they completely misunderstand the psychology of BPD. for us it's a matter of life and death, literally a nervous survival reflex that triggers a barrage of fear and shame and awfulness that sends you off the fucking rails mentally.
i believe that sometimes one can escape from this state by means of a shock, like shocking a dead guy with a defibrillator. to counter such an intense state of nervous distress, sometimes you need to use something with equal intensity, something real and tangible. i've come across a few methods myself, not all of which are necessarily safe or healthy, but have nonetheless kept me from suffering and suicide. after a heart-gutting breakup when i was 19, i used to take my motorcycle out, find a straight road and just fuckin gun it until the front wheel was wobbling and the speedometer wouldn't creep forward anymore. 115mph feels insane on a mechanically sketchy 80s bike without a windshield. i swear that any near-disaster, adrenaline pumping experience like that can grab me out of the darkest pit of lonely despair. (if you choose to try something like this, make absolutely sure that you're putting no one other than yourself at risk, a. because it's obviously immoral and b. because you might feel guilty for doing so afterwards and fall back into despair.)
one of the biggest tells of BPD is impulsivity. if you pay just a bit of forethought and make up your own list of high-intensity activities, you can use that impulsivity to your advantage in escaping from BPD hell. the trick is to only choose from your designated list of things that have an acceptable level of risk, don't just go for the first thing that springs to mind because it's usually a shit option.
things that have helped me at my absolute worst times (not endorsing any of these, just giving examples):
- MDMA (best to take in a cozy environment with a close friend)
- skydiving
- falling in love (it's magic every single time… until the fear of abandonment starts creeping in)
- psilocybin mushrooms (be cautious with psychedelics)
- amphetamines + going apeshit on a drum kit
experiences like these can help us recognize that there is something deep within the mind that is not connected to "who" we are, the personality traits we associate with and the stories that we've written to explain ourselves. at the root of it all is some little thread of something that just notices things, whether they come from outside or inside the mind, from immediate sensation or memory, from feelings of pleasure or torture. the noticer is not what creates the thoughts it notices, they just come in seemingly at random from the vast depths of the unconscious mind. and it's almost impossible to keep the noticer from noticing whatever it's being fed from outside or inside.
but what we can do is to feed the noticer with intense sensations and experiences that are so undeniably real that it's simply impossible for it to realize anything other than what is right then and there. all your unconscious bullshit thoughts will just fall out of it's sphere of awareness and be replaced with the feelings of just existing in the real world, here and now.
and i'm not arguing that you should just submit yourself to hedonism and use drugs or become an adrenaline junkie.. just consider that too much time spent living life only within the internal world can lead to some horrible, disturbing, and parasitic thought loops. and sometimes the most therapeutic measure can be a high dose of real-world experience.
