I have been learning in grad school that the difference between a mental disorder and a "quirk" is the way it affects your life. If it interferes with your functioning in employment, family, or interpersonal relationships, then it is a disorder. If it's something silly you do, such as checking the lock on the door three times, but it doesn't keep you from having a job or social life, then you are just silly without a disorder. At first glance, I don't have a disorder. When you first get to know me, I don't have anything "diagnosable." I have quirks maybe, things that may seem a little "odd" but I don't act in any way that leads anyone to believe anything is actually wrong.
Not at first.
At first, it's all good. I appear charming and charismatic. Smooth sailing! But then, a favorite person arrives on the scene, and then, well...then I have a disorder. Then my ability to function becomes impaired.
My Favorite.
This is my favorite way to say it!! In all my researching about Borderline Personality Disorder, other people talking about having "a favorite" is my favorite thing!!! This is the main part of my disorder that I never thought could be understood. This is the main reason I felt so isolated for years and years. I tried to explain this phenomena to people and no one knew what I was talking about. I tried to tell counselors but I had to change the subject when I was met with squinted eyes and raised eyebrows. People didn't understand. I learned at a young age that I was different because of this "favorite person phenomena" and that people did not like it. I learned in high school that I had better not tell anyone about this or my life will be destroyed. I learned to keep quiet and I learned that this - this whatever it was - was bad. VERY bad.
The words obsession and love addiction are gross, yucky, disgusting words. I HATE THEM and I NEVER want to hear them again and I certainly never want them associated with me. They were written on me like scarlet letters for the past twenty-eight years until a few weeks ago when I discovered the term "Borderline Personality Disorder's Favorite Person"
It was a sigh of relief. A breath of fresh air. A cold glass of water. It was life breathed into me that there wasn't something devastatingly wrong with me, that I wasn't certifiably insane and most importantly that I wasn't "BAD" or if I was, at least there were others like me.
I LOVE that they call it favorite person. That sounds so much less threatening and scary than what it had been labeled for me before. I was labeled a threat, a scary person. I was told I was sinful. I was told to go away until I could fix it. And I wanted to! I really really wanted to go away and fix it! I felt humiliated at my own feelings and I wanted so much to change it but I had no idea how. I spent so much time in recent years trying to suppress all my thoughts and never let anyone see. I spent so much desperate energy trying to not have a Favorite Person.I will not have another favorite, I will not have another favorite! I pleaded with myself. I made promises to myself. I demanded from myself. But no matter the amount of ignoring, pretending, suppressing, it proved impossible. Those favorite people kept rolling right along, one right after the other. A familiar song kept playing on in my life - New favorite person, extreme high, rejection, extreme despair, new favorite person, extreme high, rejection, extreme despair, new favorite person....on and on it goes.
I kept trying to interrupt the song but I was constantly failing. I see so clearly now how I got so discouraged - no wonder all the cutting, no wonder all the self-hatred. I remember my counselor praying over and over that I would stop having favorites (although her vocabulary was different) and I remember the intense anger I would feel. I was angry with God for making the "rules" so hard that I could not comply. I was angry with myself for not healing right. I was angry with others because I felt I could never meet their expectations of loving others normally. I was angry with my counselor because I felt she expected healing and for some reason no matter how much I tried to work through my past with her, I could never "fix" myself.
Each time I had a new favorite person, I would throw myself into a pattern of self destruction and pain, hoping that if I punished myself enough I could stop the bad cycle. Each time I would sit in a puddle of defeat, believing death was the only way out of this. I used to think if I could just be Christian enough I would be able to not have a favorite anymore. If I could just have my own family, then I would be distracted enough that I would be fine. If I could just get married, if I could just find the right medicine, if I could just go to enough counseling....
For years and years I believed that when I became a mother, I would no longer have a favorite because my life would be full. But last year I became a mother and I loved my kids with my whole heart and my entire day revolved around them...and yet, I STILL had a favorite.
Last year I didn't know anything about Borderline or the favorite person phenomena, but I began to realize I might always have a favorite, no matter what my life looked like. I realized that even when my life was full, my brain still played favorites. I began to try to grapple with the fact that this will most likely continue as a pattern in my life even when I am happily married, even when I am reading my Bible daily, even when I am being supported, loved, cared for, even when I have friends, even when I am healed and full.
The moment I realized this might never go away, things changed for me. Accepting this part of me and learning to work with it instead of desperately fighting against it, has given me an enormous amount of hope and energy that I never thought possible in my life. The defeat I felt every time I created a new favorite friendship was shattering me and the hope I feel now that I am not the most sinful or bad or crazy person in the world for my brain working this way, it feels redeeming.
It is so interesting to me that in every article I have read about BPD's Favorite People, none of them ever suggest to stop having a favorite, they simply give tips and tricks on how to live your healthiest life with it. They empower healthy choices within the situation. They give work-arounds and good boundary ideas and encouragement. I have yet to read something clinical that is critical or tells me to avoid, to ignore, to turn it off, to try and stop, or to "heal" better.
I remember so vividly my first favorite person. I was four years old and she was a cool older pre-teen. I remember the moment I met her and the moment she left and I remember the next person who came into my life when I was five to replace her. I can make the whole list for you of every favorite person I have ever had and exactly how long the relationship lasted.
"How do favorite people work?" you ask. Beats me! It's the craziest thing I have ever experienced, like straight out of some teen fiction novel with wolves imprinting. I haven't read anything yet that can adequately describe all of it, but Jacob imprinting (yes, my friends, I am comparing a real life devastating phenomena to a vampire teen fiction novel) is honestly a good way to describe it. I have no control over it and I don't get to pick the people it happens with. If I could, I would! It's like some cosmic force pulls my heart in and I am enthralled in platonic love that can often be misread or misconstrued since people have no frame of reference to compare it with. Most people only experience two types of loves in their life - one type for their family and friends and one type for their crushes/boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses. BPD favorite person love is a whole different category of love. When people see it, they can't fit it into one of the two types of loves that they've experienced, so they get scared.I love writing about this because this is something I felt shame about for so long. This is something I felt no one could possibly understand about me. I had years and years of people scrunching their noses and asking, "Do you have a crush on her or something?" Nope. I don't. I am saved by God, loved by God, choosing God and someday I'll marry an amazing man. I am struggling with a mental illness that has a type of intense attachment that you haven't seen before. It's a third type of love that you haven't experienced. I can't tell you exactly how favorites work but I CAN tell you how they don't work. It's not an idol. It's not a crush. It's not me trying to find my identity in someone else. It's not a sin. It's just the way my brain works. Accepting that I play favorites, because that's how my mind works, and trying to learn how to honor and worship my Creator in the process, that has been the most freeing thing of my life.
(Side note: this does get into a sticky topic of where the boundary lies between mental illness and God's laws. What is the answer for the Christian person diagnosed with anxiety and yet facing the reality that God says worrying is a sin? Where do we draw the line between what is mental illness excusable and what is sin? Idolatry is still wrong no matter what, even if you have a mental illness! I will write a future post on this and delve into this topic but for now, I am resting assured that all these struggles I had for so long were not me failing God or God failing me, but rather, it was the result of the fallen world I was born into that caused all types of sickness, illness, and sin to abound.)
Imagine a person with an intellectual disability believing if they could only pray enough, their brain would work like everyone else's. It won't friends! It won't. Imagine those with cancer believing if they could only "get it right" and not sin for awhile, their cancer would be healed. God is The Healer and He does heal people, but it is not by anything on our efforts! It is not because of our sins that we struggle with illness and disease and it is not by purifying ourselves that we are healed or made holy. God alone does the work and He does it in His timing and to whom He chooses. I have come to understand, much like an intellectual disability or autism, that this is how my brain works and I can learn to work with it. I see for the first time now that I can still be pure and holy and honorable before God without feeling like I am living in sin because of my brain working incorrectly. I had so many people tell me I was idolizing others, tell me it was a sin to love anyone that much, tell me I was sinning for finding my identity in others. It's so difficult to function when you feel like you are a sin for being you, a sin for being alive, sinning from the moment you wake up to the moment you close your eyes. But I want to take off the BPD lenses and think differently. The way I want to see this part of my life now, is what a blessing it is that I always get to have someone so special in my life. I always have someone who means the world to me! What a blessing it is that God has given me such a tangible way to understand His intense love for me and His unfailing favoritism of His children.
Accepting that this is the way my brain loves and trying work with it has changed my prayers profoundly. What used to be devastating and desperate pleas to make my life as short as possible so I don't have to sin by being awake, have turned into prayers learning how to ride this roller coaster with God by my side.
Make my favorite person ever point me to You. Let me worship You instead of any favorite person. Let me love You more than I love any favorite person. Let me hold them with open hands because they don't belong to me - they are yours and you have blessed me with them for a short time. Let me never cling to them but instead be thankful for every moment with them and know that you are my steady rock. Let my heart seek to be with You first and foremost. And if You choose, if you will allow me, God, make You my favorite person. But if that cannot be so here on earth, let me worship and honor you in the meantime, until we meet face to face when You will forever and ever be my heart's sole focus and absolute favorite.
Helpful Links:
What it's like to Have a Favorite Person
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