What is Borderline Personality Disorder

TRIGGER WARNING: This entry mentions sexual child abuse, other child abuse, addiction, self-harm, suicide, & violence.

      After writing the article about my uncle, I couldn’t get the event out of my head. My mood spiraled, insomnia hit, and suicidal thoughts took advantage. So I tried using social media to distract myself. Change the topic on my mind. And it worked because the page was swarming with self-diagnosed people claiming typical traits as disordered and everyday experiences as trauma. I felt so misrepresented, so I made this.

   Yes, self-diagnosers are that obvious. They use pop psychology words. Words like “quiet borderline,” which in its very purpose seeks to create another drama-less form of borderline personality disorder. Those whose lives are, in other words, unaffected by their symptoms. They confuse you about trauma by using the word for every event a teenager would find a big deal, but no one else would. They are making trauma a now meaningless and stupid word that can no longer serve its purpose. They also seem terrible at doing research but claim to be experts. As I looked around, I saw people claiming a diagnosis of CPTSD… except they were Americans. CPTSD does not exist here, so it can’t be professionally diagnosed. It’s simply a concept here, a label given in theory alone, but not diagnosed, to offer better explanations to patients. Our approved version of CPTSD is just a natural variation of symptoms and traumas called PTSD. For example, not all veterans saw action only once. Some saw it daily. And they inspired what we now call PTSD.

   My BPD makes me very emotional towards these people. It fills me with rage and anxiety in one. From my perspective, these people are selfish. How could they expect the world to hear and care for their feelings as they claim to be “hurting nobody” as we outright say to them, “You’re hurting us.” To masquerade as having a disease, I suffer with and describe it as mood swings, fear of abandonment, impulsiveness, and suicidal behavior. Yes, those are the symptoms, but they barely scratch the surface of the disease. All those symptoms have a connection to child abuse. 

Those are also all the symptoms of being an average teenager. If you think I’m nuts now, oh boy, you missed out. It’s a time filled with growth, confusion, turmoil, emotional imbalance, drama, change, low self-esteem, fake high self-esteem that comes crashing down, anxiety, anger, depression, etc. I mean, puberty can look a lot like BPD. It sucks to be a teen. 

   The mood swings don’t just include your literal mood. It includes black-and-white thinking (thinking only in absolutes), feeling emptiness you can’t stand to sit with, not knowing who you are or what you believe because it changes so severely so frequently, having severe anger management issues, severe depression, occasional psychotic breaks, dissociation, falling in love too fast/hard with, often, abusive men, and falling out of love just as fast/hard with said, likely, abusive men, etc.  

   Fear of abandonment is best summarized as depicted in the hit film (the original) “Fatal Attraction” by Alex Forrest. The actress Glenn Close studied BPD with psychiatrists to put on this role. Fear of abandonment in BPD is diagnosed based on the extreme actions undertaken to avoid it, not the feeling itself. These actions can include attempted suicide/murder/self-injury/assault/lies/manipulations to keep an important person, especially a lover, by their side. Oh, sure, we mean our threats. But the threats still exist to prevent the justifiable and fair actions of another person to control their autonomy. That equals clearly defined manipulation.

   It can also include harassing the lover over a cheating accusation, obsessively demanding their location with proof at all times, feeling extreme distress when they are not physically present, causing extreme behaviors like self-harm and destruction, etc., all known domestic abuse behaviors. The lover may or may not be trying to leave in reality. However, in many cases where they were not going to leave, the BPD person’s response and paranoia will push them to leave, receiving a similar or worse response from the BPD-affected person.

   Impulsive behavior includes getting into violent altercations, self/harm, suicide, drug use, alcohol use, reckless sex, self-endangerment, eating disorders, expensive shopping sprees, drastic life-changing decisions, dramatic career-changing, and even murder, etc.

    BPD mainly affects women. However, there’s debate as to the reason why. It’s closely linked to child sexual abuse experiences, of which females are the most common target (1 in 4 girls, 1 in 6 boys). Yet, the disorder can be misused to label a woman hysterical for expressing herself. The disease was initially discovered as a form of  “irrational female hysteria,” after all. And because of Hollywood’s portrayal of crazy but sexy women becoming more popular than ever (I.e., Harley Quinn.), these days many teen girls are actively seeking out a BPD diagnosis.

   The situation is much simpler for men. Men can have BPD. I know because I knew one. He’s not with us anymore. But because of its strong association with women, mental health professionals are unlikely even to consider it when dealing with a male patient. But that’s not all. Men are less likely than women to seek mental healthcare due to our culture’s tendency to represent manhood as strength and insensitivity. They often feel therapy is for the weak and sensitive. Two traits are stereotypically associated with women but not men. Even when they go to therapy, they tend to hold back and not be very open. This unwillingness will make a proper diagnosis difficult. 

   20% of patients in inpatient psychiatric settings have BPD compared to 1.6% among the general population—half of the numbers of either schizophrenia or bipolar. The numbers in prisons are likely the highest of all, as is true for most cluster B personality disorders. 75% of BPD patients survived child sexual abuse, and 20% experienced some other form of child abuse. Only a mere 5% claim a healthy childhood. These numbers make this very much a trauma condition. However, most personality disorders have substantial evidence of being caused by trauma anyways. Yet still, it’s something those who side with the “genetics and biology cause all mental illnesses” camp struggle to recognize.

   So maybe you can see why it’s so frustrating when someone tries to make up a “high functioning BPD” or when a perfectly normal teen who gasps at the things you’ve done in your life like you’re a horrifying, super-villain monster tells you they have BPD. While you live the consequences of the disease, they live none. While you’ve got PTSD from your traumas, and they say they were traumatized by that one single time they were grounded. It makes me wish they’d be grateful. It makes me want to smack some sense into them. Why are you so unhappy with being happy? I can’t even fathom it. Not saying it’s right. Just saying how I feel.

   Back in my mind, the panic sets in. What does this mean for my future? For my kid's environment? Is the world ready to burn? My migraines start. It hurts to think or look at my phone, but I do. Has the whole world gone mad?

   I turn the phone off. I remind myself, “Nothing that will help you is on the internet. These texts hurt so much because they trigger feelings that aren’t related. Ergo, even if the world got its act together, you wouldn't feel better. Healing is at therapy.” And after some time, the world makes sense again. 

   It’s funny how the internet makes a big world look so small. What’s essential in life is often so simple, but the internet makes it seem so much more complex. How many young people are “sick” because their parents give them unlimited access to social media? How many of them have completely forgotten what the real world is like? And how many parents love their kids enough to look them in the eye and confiscate their phones to give them a better life?

-Anemone