Quiet BPD

[Sslsh]

Anyone else has quiet BPD? How is it like living with it?

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is associated with suicidal behaviors and self-harm. Up to 10% of BPD patients will die by suicide. However, no research data support the effectiveness of suicide prevention in this disorder, and hospitalization has not been shown to be useful.

Research has shown that about 75% of people with BPD will make at least one suicide attempt in their lifetime, and many will make multiple suicide attempts. People with BPD are also more likely to complete suicide than individuals with any other psychiatric disorder. It has been estimated that between 3% to 10% of people with BPD complete suicide, which is more than 50 times the rate of suicide in the general population.

 

[Al Cappella]

Yes, I think I'm a quiet BPD. To describe what it's like—roller coasters come to mind. The stats you list all apply in my case: multiple attempts over the years. Living with it is mostly sad, you feel like a kid with his face pressed against the glass of "normal" life, but you can't participate. People are quickly unnerved by our type of emotional intensity, especially when it's anger. Conversely, everyone else's lower emotionality feels flat by comparison. Mostly it's just exhausting. Trying to keep all that under wraps takes so much energy, I eventually started avoiding people altogether.

 

[lili]

I have borderline but I don't know what quiet means. I guess I try to hide it but hiding it is only successful to distant friends or casual aquaintances. The closer someone gets to me, the more they get to know the borderline and then it's imposible for me to hide it.

It's like a roller coaster ride because of the mood swings. I think borderline can have some of the craziest mood swings because they can happen in one day. In the morning you can be laughing and smiling but a few hours later you can then impulsively be ready to kill yourself and can throw stuff around the room, cut yourself or other desperate attempt to numb the intense feeling down. If someone is there to help and says the right thing, they might completely remove the desire to kill the self and trigger another mood shift.
So it feels very chaotic to outsiders I can imagine.

The fear of abandonment or loneliness is very intense. There's often trauma linked to it from childhood or adolescence. And there's often desperate attempts to avoid this, and it can unintentionally come off in bad ways which brings shame into myself and even more desires to kill myself. These fears are unbearable. Sometimes it can be that I have to go back home and I have that horrible painful feeling of knowing I will be alone, and a friend saying goodbye to me can feel like I'm not going to see them in two years but it's a totally exaggerated stupid feeling. This can make me feel very empty inside. And sometimes even make me want to kill myself.

Theres a lot more to borderline than this but this is just my personal take on it as a person with borderline and I don't want to force you to read an essay here so I'll stop. As far as mood swings though, for me I feel there are always triggers. Sometimes it's extremely hard to detect them, but they never happen out of nowhere in my opinion. Although for people who dont suffer through borderline and just witness the mood shift it might appear like it comes completely out of nowhere.

 

[willshe777]

I'm also diagnosed BPD (well technically GAD, depression and cluster b personality disorder/comorbid) I refuse to take the meds for the individual symptoms and when am sticking to DBT am pretty stable. I've seen a lot of those charts and posts on social media about then bpd subtypes but only have seen YouTube psychologists address it. None of the ones I've worked with have suggested a subcategory, however if I'm going by what's suggested on the web yeah I can identify with the quiet type. I don't lash out, or very rarely do….and when i do it's usually just the incoherent dramatic crying and screaming fits. I've never physically hurt anyone or insulted anyone, I tend to turn the rage inwards and do struggle with a number of self harm habits.

 

[nena21]

bpd. deffo not quiet. I think quite bpd is without the anger and aggression. which im jealous of cuz nothing worse than insulting and abusing the ppl who love you...

 

[freedompass]

Yeah I am diagnosed BPD too on top of bipolar. I don't seem to have the impulsivity and have never self harmed or attempted ctb, but I have definitely had the aggression and been verbally and even physically abusive in past relationships. I decided never to try to be intimate with anyone again because it went so badly. I just felt frantic with the abandonment fear, sadly people are often not understanding or forgiving because they have no idea how horribly intense the BPD person's emotions can be.

 

[nameeater]

I have discouraged/quiet BPD. I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy.

I've attempted suicide 20-30 times, most of them genuine but some genuinely just for attention. I have lost practically everything that has mattered to me. The majority of my friends left, I dropped out of school when I was fifteen, etc. But, I don't care. Not really. I've been put on so much medication that I constantly feel numb, and indifferent to everything. I mostly spend my time trying to cope with said boredom, usually just numbing my mind by playing video games for hours at a time. I can't even get a job, or perhaps go back into education due to severe and continuous psychotic episodes. It's hard to want to make changes in your life when you think that you're trapped within a simulation, deal with never-ending anhedonia and have a one-sided codependent relationship with your ex boyfriend of two years (whom you haven't even properly spoken to since the breakup).

I think that the codependecy, or "favourite people" aspect of BPD is easily the worst part. I am completely and utterly obsessed with someone that wants absolutely nothing to do with me. I've lost count of the amount of times I've had people close me describe me as creepy, weird, insane and other similar insults. I'm well aware of how irrational and odd my behaviour is, yet knowing that does nothing to change it. My rational mind knows that harassing my ex boyfriend through alternate accounts will drive him even further away, yet I continue to do so as in hopes I'll get some kind of reaction. Yet, I simply lack the ability to see that it's wrong. I have people tell me it's wrong, creepy, etc. but in my mind, it's the same as him doing whatever he can do to get away from me (even going as far as forbidding his friends from interacting with me, never mind just talking to me). In my mind, I see it as others saying that it's completely okay for him to make me miserable for his own sake, but when I do it I'm a terrible person. Him breaking up with me mere hours after my suicide attempt was fine, and I'm the one to blame for having a full blown breakdown during a time of need. Perhaps this is due to my lack of empathy caused by my autism, but even so, I have absolutely nothing left while he has everything going for him (university student, high income job, etc.) and therefore believe I'm allowed to be at least a little bit spiteful.

Due to BPD being almost exclusively a trauma disorder, only we can truly sympathise with each other. But, even so, you will never be able to fully relate to another person. It truly is a lonely disorder. My abandonment issues came about as a result of my mother's suicide before I had the chance to turn five. My hypersexuality that started around the age of nine, is a result of multiple instances of sexual abuse from different people throughout my childhood. My rapid mood swings can be accounted to my father, who would regularly berate me and cause me severe distress whenever I did something he even slightly didn't like (one specific example comes to mind, when eight year old me said I wasn't going to bring a bag to my school dance which resulted in him kicking it around the room, then throwing it straight at me while screaming and swearing). But, my trauma is mine. I'll never meet someone that went through the exact same things I did, and therefore will never meet someone able to fully comprehend what I am going through.

I look forward to the day I finally go through with ending my life. It's the only way I'll be freed from this miserable way of living.


Sorry this is so long, I have a bad habit of rambling and repeating myself lol

 

[Disappointered]

I'm convinced I have this. I've started the process to get diagnosed but really I am hoping I can CTB before that...of course.

As a MH professional I know full well the stigma of having a PD diagnosis. Perhaps working in this field has prevented me from accepting I have BPD? I also am very unsettled by the concept of 'personality disorders' and pathologising people's survival behaviours. Plus as others have said above, it's essentially (C)PTSD.

It sucks. Willing to chat with y'all if you like.

It does seem a bit like CPTSD but I guess there are things that make it stand out. Is it just a matter of degree?

 

[stillthinkingabtit]

I'm convinced I have this. I've started the process to get diagnosed but really I am hoping I can CTB before that...of course.

As a MH professional I know full well the stigma of having a PD diagnosis. Perhaps working in this field has prevented me from accepting I have BPD? I also am very unsettled by the concept of 'personality disorders' and pathologising people's survival behaviours. Plus as others have said above, it's essentially (C)PTSD.

It sucks. Willing to chat with y'all if you like.

I don't think I've been through something extremely traumatic. Yet I know I have a lot of BPD traits. What is wrong with me? I feel like I don't really have a reason to have BPD because I didn't suffer enough in my childhood

 

[Venus13]

Yes. I don't have a good relationship with it, just a deep sense of shame and denial about my internal wiring. I was severely abused and neglected as a child so I guess developing a balanced personality was impossible.

I've tried to cage in the patterns. It's a constant recalibration of emotions. It's bursting and drowning feelings. I don't get angry often, I somehow dismantle that particular response. I'm high functioning. I beg for permission to exist and be loved through external levelheadedness and material success. Inside I'm a storm that's barely holding on.

I found this description which fits it pretty well: "Deep inside, you may feel that your emotions are wrong, you are 'too much' for others, your existence itself is a burden, or you don't deserve a place in the world. You would rather be in pain than affect other people, so you hold everything in. People with Quiet BPD tend to have an avoidant attachment style; many have comorbid Avoidant Personality Disorder traits."

To have this on top of CPTSD is nothing short of a curse. It'll probably take my life.

It does seem a bit like CPTSD but I guess there are things that make it stand out. Is it just a matter of degree?

I have both and they manifest differently in my opinion. This is my experience: CPTSD is very primal, it touches on the basics of surface behavior to survive. It locks you in or makes you run or fight. It's very bodily.

Borderline digs further into the sense of "self", and it's very psychological. It's much deeper to me. They do overlap, but I would be much more comfortable saying I have CPTSD and I AM borderline. CPTSD is not me it's the body doing what it does to get me safe, my borderline traits feel like what and who I am. Sad and scary to be honest because you feel like if people find out what you are they'll leave and that fear of abandonment kicks in strong.