How I Love Others Through BPD Lenses

I explained previously about my BPD glasses - how it taints the way I process and interpret information. Everything is colored through the lens of fear and abandonment, so a normal situation to someone else may be interpreted incorrectly by my brain. Because of this, I love people weirdly. (And I love weird people but that's beside the point). It's hard to explain but I'm going to try to get you to see my logic - which may in fact be very illogical.  

Once upon a time, in a far away land, I went to high school and it was no fairy tale. I loved people as much as I wanted to love them because I had no idea you were supposed to limit that. I had no idea what normal was and while I never would have admitted it, I secretly knew deep down that something was very, very wrong inside of me. I worked so hard to hide it but it was very un-hide-able. Things escalated out of control. Kids at school noticed something was wrong and they poked fun which only made me act out in worse ways. They asked hurtful questions and called me names. Well-meaning adults asked me the same hurtful questions and planted the same doubts and insecurities in my soul. After awhile they got scared - they had never seen the likes of me before. I got scared because I had seen the likes of me before and I had no idea how to stop it. This thing felt like it was bigger and stronger than all of us and none of us knew what to do. This thing (the thing I now know as Borderline Personality Disorder) was rearing it's ugly head in a mighty way. The kids and adults in my tiny high school acted out of fear; they didn't know what else to do except to isolate me completely. They tore me away from friends, certain classes, sports, extra-curricular activities, and even my privilege of being around kids. Public shame and humiliation was my life for the next year and a half. Everyone knew what I wasn't allowed to do and they knew exactly why I wasn't allowed to do it.

When I truly consider all that happened, I am still amazed that God brought me through that alive. It was the most traumatic thing I ever experienced. He was very gracious to hold me up during that time but I was left with scars, deep anger and a broken heart. I felt devastated by people I knew and trusted. With each tear that fell I became determined to not let this pattern repeat.


But repeat it has, like a bad pop song on the radio, it has gone over and over in my life and it seems like I am unable to get that song out of my head. My life often feels like a car that I'm not in control of driving. I explained this once last year before I ever knew BPD existed (see post here).





With each ended friendship I feel lost and devastated, alone and weak. So I build my walls higher, I make my resolve stronger and I become determined that I don't need anyone. Every action I take is my broken brain trying to learn what "normal people" boundaries look like so that no one sees that I don't have them. It hurts to be isolated for not being normal so I work hard to be seen as normal. It hurts to feel weak so I make goals to be strong. I created this goal to become self-sufficient if everyone leaves. Every action I take is working towards self-preservation, towards avoiding disappointment, towards being totally okay if someone leaves. I want to be fine without anyone's help. I want to be able to shrug my shoulders when someone's presence leaves my life.

When I start to love others, I feel so scared that I will be unable to meet those goals. I feel myself panic as I get close to someone new. The room begins to feel small and I begin to feel like I can't breathe. I want so badly to avoid repeating the pain again but my way of going about avoiding it seems to cause other pains in the process. I feel scared so I put all these rules in place to keep my goals alive of not needing anyone else. I put goals and rules in line so no one ever questions me like in high school or sees that something is very wrong with me or my boundaries. It's not just a casual thing - this feels in the moment like life or death to me. 


When I start to feel warm fuzzies in my heart for others or when I miss them when they are gone, I feel angry with myself for being weak, for letting them in, for loving them too much. I feel absolute terror that I might accidentally let others see what's really wrong with me - the lack of good boundaries. I'm afraid everyone will find out and they'll be scared and they'll take everything away from me again like they did in high school. So I punish myself.

I tell myself I am bad and the consequences for breaking my goal of being okay all by myself are that I need to break the connection, avoid that person, and take ten steps backwards in our friendship. This makes it difficult when it occurs with family members I have to see often or friends I am living in community with. This becomes sticky when it happens with my boss I have to see every day, or with a friend holding me accountable. Things feel complicated and I don't know how to find balance. So if you've ever been loved by me and you feel confused, it's okay, I am confused too!!! 😂


See Chart Above...through my BPD filter, I recognized that I am on the far left of the boundaries spectrum and I'm paralyzed with fear and absolutely terrified of anyone finding out since that has ruined my life before. So I run to the far right side and try to cling to it. When I feel myself start to move in the slightest even the tiniest ity bity movement towards the left direction (such as missing a friend when they are on vacation or wanting to sit next to them or being sad when our hangout day is ending), I over-correct and run as fast as I can to the Stonewall/Isolating Boundaries side of the chart. I would rather people think that's my problem. Healing from BPD, to me, looks like being able to land in the middle easily but I don't know how to ever make that happen.

I'm still lost about what to do with this and how to change the lens on this part of my glasses. I truly feel like this is my best attempt to be healthy, my best attempt at preserving my life. I don't know how to logic this one out because to me, it makes sense. I hope this helps explain why I am passionately friendly and then passionately resistant. It's truly only out of my great love for my friends that I attempt to push them away!


I don't know what the other option is. If I let myself love people, what if I can't stop? What if I move over to the left side of the chart and can't move back? What if my friends move away? What if they ask me to no longer speak to them? What if they decide they don't want to be friends anymore? Or what if they get other friends that they become closer to than me and then they don't have time to hangout with me anymore? I have to be able to be okay with that. I have to be fine when that happens. When I love people I don't know how to be okay without them, so the goal becomes just to not love people hardly at all. It feels lonely and isolating but I don't know the alternative. When someone insists on loving me anyways, I 100% of the time will do something self-sabotaging to try to scare them away. It's a lose/lose for both of us. I want to feel close to people but this happens and I don't know how to change it.  

I have learned that this doesn't make sense to a normal person but in my brain it is honestly perfectly logical. I get that I truly have a disorder because even writing this all out here it still looks perfectly sound to me! It makes sense to me!! But I have learned through the years that to a normal person reading this, it might not make any sense to them. This is the best I can explain it. I am open to questions or comments.

Run for the Border(Line)

Hello! I want to say first and foremost thank you for being here. I have learned through this process how much I value other's time and attention and I don't take it lightly that you are here and caring about me by taking time to read this. Previously, I haven't shared my blog because I wanted to be able to write whatever I want whenever I wanted without feeling censored. Yet I fear my attempts to become exceptionally free have made me exceptionally hidden. I want a place to be painstakingly honest, so I am still doing that...only in a more open way. I feel tired of hiding and I want no more secrets.

This is your trigger warning and my plea to turn back - this is real, honest, vulnerable, and at times gut wrenching thoughts. At times, the things I say here (or have posted in years past) may sound scary or make you uncomfortable and I apologize as that is not my intent. We can talk about it. I'm posting this to start the conversation so please feel free to push back, to ask questions or to share your thoughts.

Be forewarned!

If you've known me for any length of time you have seen my life work in a circle of ever-destructive and contradicting patterns. It's such a curious thing. I have sat in front of some of you (I'm looking at you Deanna and Darcie!) for hours and hours and even years and years as we've analyzed and tried so hard to dissect and figure out "what was wrong." 

I fought tooth and nail that I did not have anything diagnosable because at that time no diagnoses I knew about seemed to fit and everyone - friends, family, and counselors agreed. We puzzled together until our puzzlers were sore trying to figure out what could be causing this seemingly never-ending cycle of pain and hurt. I even have journals from 10th grade where I created a name for this...this whatever it was... because I felt like I had invented a new disease no one had before! I felt like an alien and totally at a loss about what to do or how to "fix" it. 

But as it came to pass, I was sitting in a grad school class last month beaming over recently having passed a personality test when our professor casually brought up the subject of personality disorders.

"Personality disorders don't show up on this test" she said.

I flipped to the back of the book to glance through them and there it was. A personality disorder. It listed all these symptoms. All these clues. All these behaviors. It described my life. I felt devastated! After my years of seeking to prove I did not have a diagnoses, there was a diagnoses staring me straight in the face and it was one I could not argue with. I tried to close the book. I tried to forget about it. I tried to pretend I hadn't seen it. I decided I could dissect the criteria later and maybe I would realize I didn't have it after all. But later that night when I was alone, I opened my book back to that spot and with each new sentence I read, I felt more and more seen and heard and understood. The more I read, the more I related to it. 

You have to understand the amazement in this discovery. Imagine having something that no one you have met has had!! Imagine having feelings that you could never explain to anyone! Imagine sitting in counselors offices for twenty years - TWENTY YEARS - and trying to explain to them why you are doing what you do and they scratch their heads and mumble something about unresolved trauma. Imagine trying to figure out what it is and having no name to call it and no way to describe it and constantly feeling like you are a fish born into a world of dogs and then twenty-eight years into your life someone tells you about the ocean that you didn't know existed.

But I HATE diagnoses! I grew up in the counseling world, trained with a very internal locus of control. This means I believe I have control over my actions and what happens to me. While this is not a bad belief overall, it can cause problems when fully lived out when you believe you are at fault for absolutely everything in your life. I was trained and told by many counselors to "never be a victim" and taught that depression and anxiety are merely signs of someone who didn't get enough sleep or sunlight or didn't exercise enough. I didn't believe in brain chemicals. I believed whatever was wrong with me could be fixed if only I could do the right thing, if only I could find the right eating or exercise regiment, if only I could read the right Bible verse or pray enough times...if only I could do things right for once then maybe my brain would work perfectly fine. Although this had been proven false in my life many times, I find myself still having a difficult time accepting that I may have a diagnoses. I wanted to believe (and still do) that I have control over my brain and if I wanted to be healthy bad enough then I would be able to be. If only I could try a bit harder!! I am trying to understand this isn't true and having a diagnoses doesn't mean I failed at trying hard enough.

I thought having a diagnoses was a death sentence. Except worse because it was a death sentence I could never tell anyone about because no one would understand me and they would treat me weird. I finally felt peace when I decided to accept this like a cancer diagnosis. I don't mean any disrespect to people who truly have cancer because that is so serious, but in my brain associating this disorder with something like depression doesn't cut it for me. People get cancer and they didn't do anything to deserve it. People get cancer and it's not because they didn't try hard enough. People get cancer and it's not because of the way they were raised or because of some trauma in the past that they didn't work through well enough or because of their lack of trying to be healthy. People get cancer because some people just get cancer. Of course the environment and genetics play a major role but the bottom line is, when someone gets cancer we don't spend years trying to figure out how or why and we don't waste time trying to imagine how to go back in time and avoid the cancer. Instead we spend all our time and energy trying to live in the present treatment and work towards remission. We would never tell someone with cancer that maybe they aren't thinking enough positive thoughts or maybe if they tried to get more sleep their cancer will go away.

When people get cancer they can do one of two things. 1. They can sit there and wait to die. They can have the victim mentality and they can let it eat up their body. OR 2. They can sit up and look at the doctor and say "what can I do to fight this?"

I’ve decided to fight it. I decided to ask how and what to do. But it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of help and a lot of support.

It's interesting to me that the Lord did not reveal this diagnoses to me earlier when I was searching for so many years but maybe I wasn't ready before like I'm ready now.

Okay ready? I'm going to say it. Ready? 

Okay.



Ready?




Okay.


Okay. Okay okay. Here it goes. Okay.







Borderline Personality Disorder.


It sounds kinda yucky even though I've come around to it. It sounds scary. I hate the name personality disorder - that in and of itself just feels negative like there is something inherently wrong with the person of me. If someone told me they had that, I would probably wrinkle my nose and furrow my eyebrows. Actually, I still do that when I say it.

So now we know. Now we know it has a name. Now we know it's a thing and I didn't invent a new disease! (Bummer though because I was excited to have my own Netflix documentary) It's crazy to me how I believed diagnoses to be a death sentence and yet feeling like I have something that other people have had before has been a breath of life. Feeling like I have something that I can work on, something tangible that I can say and explain and study...that is the furthest thing from devastating, it is hopeful.

Now that we know, I wanted to have a conversation about what it means. I want to talk about what this looks like and how it practically plays out in my life. I am still learning and I have a long ways to go, so I am sharing with you and you can share with me and we can learn and I have hope that maybe someday my life can be better. I have hope that maybe I can not always live in the shadow of this but rather speak in my thirties about the time in my teens and twenties when I struggled with a mental illness.

There's a lot of technical jargon that I've been reading through for school but I'll spare you the clinical terms and instead just tell you how BPD looks in my life (In no particular order)

1. Fear of abandonment. I live in immense fear or friendships ending and usually that fear causes them to end. I don't know what this looks like for anyone else but for me it looks sort of similar to short term memory loss.

A friend can text me at 10am but somehow by 6pm I feel like we haven't spoken in ages! I feel lonely and I want to reach out but I realize we just spoke this morning so I try to hold back. Somehow I begin to believe my friend no longer wants to be my friend and we probably shouldn't talk anymore.

We can spend the whole day together and in the car on the ride home, my brain convinces me that was our last time to hang out because my friend is probably exhausted from me. I suddenly feel really sad that we had such a fun "last" day together and I feel hurt and neglected since I'm convinced now we won't be able to hang out again for a long, long time. Within 10 minutes I can run from warm fuzzy feelings to feeling abandoned and unloved. This is exhausting and tiresome and is shaped from fear. So. Much. Fear.

I think it's significant that's it's called "borderline" because that is so often how my life feels -- Always passionate but always on the border between passionately good and passionately bad. Always on the border between love and hate for others and self. Always on the border of wondering if this is safe or unsafe, if I am loved or unloved. I could always go either way. My life is walking a thin tightrope and constantly working to remain upright. Balancing is exhausting. Most people's brain's balance this for them but my brain doesn't.

I can hear someone reading this and thinking “well just don’t think that way!” I’m trying, friends, I am really trying. The efforts that you see are LIGHTYEARS better than what they used to be. One of the most discouraging times in my life was when church friends I had come to know and love, criticized me for some behaviors and told me they no longer wanted to be around me. Nothing ever felt so ironic in my life because I was such a better version of myself than I had been previously!! They should have seen me when I was 13!! or 16! or 21! You should have seen the havoc I could wreck. You should have seen the carelessness with which I destroyed everything around me.

But I do care now and I am trying. It feels hard. Successes are slow and long coming. The brain is not easy to re-train.

2. Constantly suicidal - I've always believed I will eventually die from committing suicide. I know how crazy that sounds and I know for you reading this that might feel scary or shocking but I am being honest about the thoughts in my head. It's not devastating or scary to me, it's simply a fact. I have notes written to the important people ready and when I gain new close friends I add a new note to them. Once while going for a long run, I planned out this whole idea of how I could do a suicide photo shoot before I die where I would get these cute pictures of me taken in front of a street sign that says "dead end" and a picture of me with suitcases and then I would post them on my social media before I left. It's easy for my brain to decide to die and it is not unusual. This is not a cry for help - I AM NOT currently suicidal. I do not need you to worry about me or call me when you read this. I am simply stating the fact that ending my life feels comforting to me and always has. I used to think everyone felt the same way as me but I have learned now that this is true mental illness because everyone, does not in fact, feel this way.

3. Lack of Instincts/Lack of Understanding "Normal" - One MAIN struggle with this diagnoses is that MY INSTINCTS ARE WRONG so I am always trying to fight them and this creates a constant war inside of me that is difficult to navigate. Imagine being a porcupine without knowing when to shoot off quills or imagine being a skunk and not knowing who to spray. When someone nice approaches you, you quill them or spray them and they get scared and run away! But when you are in the presence of danger you remain still. It's backwards. That's what this diagnoses is!

Here's a good way to explain it: Imagine a severely autistic person who does not know when it is appropriate to say "hello" to someone so they scream "HELLO!" during a prayer but are silent when introduced to new people. This autistic person can be trained how to do this properly. They can learn through negative and positive reinforcement how to say hello when they meet someone and how to be quiet during prayers. But even when learning, this is not instinctual. They have learned and they are following the "rules" someone has trained into them but it will never come natural to them. That's how my brain works. I have trained myself how to respond but it's a struggle. It's not natural. When I interact healthily in a special friendship, it's because I have trained myself to follow the rules.

If you have more questions about this I'll be happy to explain further. Basically, I used to love people as much as I wanted but people got scared so now I have tried to "fix" it. This causes a lot of problems because now I am not allowed to "miss" people or act too loving to them. When I do miss people or show love to them, I get scared that they will get scared and I feel like I broke "the rules." I learned and created each new "rule" through trial and error and broken friendships. Each friendship that ends adds more rules to my list with the goal of trying to train my instincts to be better. This is totally exhausting! 

4. Favorite person - this needs it's own post. This is so complicated and so intimate that I cannot adequately describe it here but this has been by far the most wonderful part of learning about this diagnoses. Having a favorite person my whole life had me convinced that I truly belonged in the nuthouse and never being able to adequately explain it to a counselor has been the most isolating thing of my life. I have never met another person who has favorite people like me, but now reading through other's posts who have this diagnosis has been eye-opening. I cannot believe this is a real thing and there are other people like me!! I cannot believe the relatable words others are using to describe this phenomena, one that I felt alone in for so long.

5. Belief that I am bad/Self punishment/Overcorrection - this is so complicated but basically I believe I am bad and ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING I DO stems from that belief. Borderline Personality Disorder is like wearing a bad pair of glasses and everything you see and think is processed through those bad lenses.

This relates back to #3 - Lack of good instincts - because when I feel my instincts have failed, I get angry with myself for not following the "rules." It's complicated but here's a real life example to try to tie this all together:

A friend was gone on a family vacation for a few weeks. I missed her. I wanted to talk to her but was trying to hold back because bothering friends on a family vacation is definitely against "the rules" that I have learned. After several weeks of not seeing each other, she came back and came over to visit! I was so excited and showed my excitement and even told her that I missed her! But just like the porcupine who misfires his quills, alarm bells went off in my brain: "You are not allowed to miss people!!! You cannot miss your friend when she is gone for just a few weeks!! She'll be scared if she knows you missed her!! That's not normal. You are breaking the rules!!!"

In a desperate attempt to appear normal I decide I should "even things out" (as well as punish myself for breaking the rules) so I should not speak to her for the next several days so she knows I didn't miss her that much, I should refuse to text her back and act aloof when seeing her in public.

Sounds crazy right? But in my brain, it's like clockwork. It happens without any internal discussion. It's completely automatic. Suddenly, I am home and missing my friend more than ever since I have ignored her and wasn't friendly when we saw each other when all I really wanted to do was hug her and talk to her but I'm so so scared she'll think I'm not normal. Meanwhile, my friend is left scratching her head wondering what the heck happened, wondering why I appeared aloof for no reason, feeling bewildered at my behavior and exhausted by me and probably feeling like taking a break from me which causes me to panic further since I now believe I have ruined our friendship. It's a vicious cycle. It is totally and completely exhausting. Have I said that yet?! It's all consuming and constantly ruins friendships -- which major sucks since that's exactly what I'm trying to not to do!

If I could tell my close friends a few things about this diagnoses and they would only listen for a moment, this is what I would say:

1. I’m sorry - this is not a self deprecating I’m sorry but rather an empathetic true apology for the ways that I am selfish, the ways I have pushed you, and for the high expectations I have. I’m sorry that the world is sinful and yucky. I'm sorry that this happened and I am sorry that we are all living in the consequences of the world. I understand that I am no more messed up or special or different than anyone else. I am strong like others and I struggle like others. I am going to fight this and I need help. I am sorry that some days with me are tough.

2. Understand that I am afraid. When my actions don't make sense it's because I am acting out of a place of immense fear. Please communicate that you still love me (if you do).  Isolation and loneliness breed the fear. When I act bad, it’s not on purpose. I am not a victim and I have choices and I can choose, but patterns aren’t easy to break. Sometimes I do crazy, impulsive, or extremely hurtful things but it's not on purpose. This is a diagnoses and a disorder because it is a pattern of thinking ingrained in my head and if I could change it really easily, I would have by now.

3. Please spend time with me. I love spending time with you. It's the supremely important thing to me. It's my favorite favorite thing to spend time with people I love!! If you have to change plans with me, please try to give me as much time to adjust as possible and explain that it's not because you don't want to be with me. I know sometimes it's not possible to keep plans because life happens and I get that (I don't really "get that" but I'm trying to!). I am so desperately alone that I never miss out on times with friends so when you miss out on time with me, it feels like the ultimate rejection. I am working to not view it through those BPD lenses but when you don't spend time with me, I immediately believe it's because you don't like me and never will again. I immediately believe I did something wrong and ruined our friendship. I am working on changing those beliefs. If you have to cancel plans with me, please know it takes me some extra time to adjust. Please be patient and understanding. Please know that I value our time together as gold. 

4. I have good in me but there are days when the good won’t win. I am fighting this but there are days when I am exhausted and I take a break from fighting it or days when I flat out don't know what to do. You have my permission to lovingly call me out and push me back in line. I will probably argue with you but inside I will feel loved and cared for. Please be patient with me.

5. Pray for me. I feel nervous because some people who get diagnosed with cancer feel this false hope that God will miraculously heal them. Some people change their eating habits and they eat all the right cancer-fighting super foods and they have others lay hands on them and pray...but at the end of the day they still have cancer. I believe God can absolutely miraculously heal but I also believe sometimes He doesn't. I believe I have to still do my part by going to chemo treatments. I want to fight this. I want to beat it. I think I can do it. But boy am I ever resistant to treatment. So pray for God's healing if you want to, but more than that, please pray for life in the present moment with this diagnoses to be fruitful. Pray specifically that God will help treatment be sought, treatment to be successful and eventually that this will go into remission and that we can call me a BPD survivor.

For further insight (as if you did not already just read enough!) check out these two posts by others like me!

10 Things I Wish My Loved Ones Knew About Borderline Personality Disorder

Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder We Don't Talk About

I hate disappointment so I work hard to not put my hope in things that can lead to disappointment which unfortunately seems to be everything. I live life as a rule without hope. But this year, I am practicing hoping. I am trying to hope that recovery is possible, remission is possible, healing is possible and that abundant life is possible even during this. I am a little on the border 😂 of fear and hope, but I'm leaning towards hope.