My names Lizzie, I'm 23 and I struggle with BPD. BPD is short for Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD has many traits including emotional instability, impulsive behaviours, shutting off from everyone, not opening up about how you really feel, convincing yourself things that aren’t true and forever second guessing yourself and situations.
BPD affects my mood on a regular basis. One minute I could be feeling on top of the world but in a few seconds my mood changes to the complete opposite often with no trigger. There are good days and bad days, sadly there isn’t an in between. The bad days though can truly feel like life is ending and not worth it. In the past this has led to self-harm and suicide attempts, but this is NEVER a fix for the problems you are dealing with, your brain just finds it difficult to regulate emotions. With the help of my friends and family I’m still here! I think there is such a bad outlook on BPD. It makes us sound like we are self-destructive and have something wrong with our personality. If anything, people with BPD feel more at one with their feelings, even it is more extreme. In the past and still to this day relationship with friends, family and partners can be very difficult.
Sometimes I don’t know how to express how I feel so I will either not say anything and keep it to myself or I will go to the other extreme and burst into disruption (even if it’s something little). I feel I get too invested sometimes and that’s when I get my feelings hurt. When I’m like this I call it my ‘Werewolf Lizzie’ state. I don’t feel in control of what’s going on and sometimes I don’t remember some of the things I said or did. When I’m in 'Werewolf Lizzie' state I don’t always think rationally either. Before I realised I had a problem, I used Alcohol to cope with my feelings - to take the edge off.
I came to the realisation that I had a problem when I couldn’t even go somewhere like Starbucks and not put vodka in my drinks. I hadn’t realised how bad it had gotten. It was embarrassing to open up about my difficulties but people with BPD try and find help in anything. The thing I struggle the most is overthinking about what other people say and think about me. Someone could make a comment and I'll read too much into it - It just eats and eats away at me, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days and my mind never stops. I may have asked my friend how she was doing and she said she was doing okay but in what I interpreted to be a funny way. My mind goes straight to "what have I done?", "why do they hate me?", "why do I always make people dislike me?", "it’s all my fault?" etc etc. Those thoughts just go round and round, it drives me insane!
However much I hate having BPD it’s given me a bigger insight into the world. I can emphasise when other people feel sad, angry, anxious. I’ve found wonderful friends on Twitter who also suffer from BPD and we all stick together to show we are still human.
Written by
Elizabeth Nay