My Borderline

Dear Diary,

 

Reading the Buddha and The Borderline, struck me with some many emotions. As I was reading the second chapter, I got to thinking about my own experiences with BPD. I looked back at the symptoms and decided to answer the questions.

 

 

• Efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, such as rapidly initiating intimate (physical or emotional) relationships or cutting off communication with someone in anticipation of being abandoned
  • Yes, the minute there is even a hint of possible abandonment, my brain goes into the hyper drive. Why are they going to leave? What are they leaving for? What did I do? I deserve this? I wasn’t good enough. They don’t think I’m good enough. Why do they not like me anymore? They hate me, no I hate them. I need them to leave. I need to get them to leave me before they can walk out. I have to prepare…
  • After the fight that follows these thoughts, I beg and beg and explain that they can’t leave me. I can’t live without them, they are my everything. I have even cut during one of these fights just to get him to stay. I have locked doors, blocked doors and stolen keys just so they couldn’t leave. I have went to extremes to make someone stay and then to change their mind.
• A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
  • Relationship’s never last more than two years romantically and friendships are barely a year
• Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self
  • I change who I am depended on who I am around. My musical taste changes, what movies Im into, how I dress, how I spend my time. I don’t know who I am. I change so much. The only things I know is I like science, cars and painting, but then again when I really think about it, I only like science because my dad told me too and it was the only time I could bond with him, I like car because once again my dad pushed me into it, and with painting I wanted to connect with my mom in someway when I was growing up. When people ask me what I like to do or what Im into, I say anything. I say that because I am into anything, it just depends on when.
• Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating. Please note:If these behaviors occur primarily during a period of elevated mood or energy, they may be signs of a mood disorder—not borderline personality disorder
  • I get into these impulse where all I do is spend, until I have no more money, I engage in sexual activities with anyone that takes me on a date, or I drive like my life doesn’t matter. Honestly the reckless driving is my go-to impulse. I just get the urge and I take off in my car. There was a time when substance abuse was just as bad my driving urge, but I am sober finally.
• Self-harming behavior, such as cutting
  • I’ve cut my fingers because I knew no one would question Band-Aids on my fingers. I could also say that they were paper cuts ofr something like that
• Recurring thoughts of suicidal behaviors or threats
  • I have threaten needing to go back into the psych ward because I didn’t trust my thoughts
• Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
  • I have horrible mood swings. I go from hyper happy to crying within minutes and then there’s the rage. It is exhausting.
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
  • I just feel like I need something more all the time. I never feel like I have enough, or am complete.
• Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
  • I see what is referred to as “the red”, the tunnel vision. Nothing else matters but the anger and why I’m angry. The rage last for maybe a couple of hours and then like a switch, Im okay again or within another extreme of an emotion. And I get so mad at little things. Things that one shouldn’t get mad at.
• Difficulty trusting, which is sometimes accompanied by irrational fear of other people’s intentions
  • I am always second guessing why people are around me, even my own family. I don’t understand why anyone would stick around me. It just doesn’t make sense.
• Feelings of dissociation, such as feeling cut off from oneself, seeing oneself from outside one’s body, or feelings of unreality
  • When I get really stressed out, I feel out of myself, like Im not really there. There has to me a lot of stress to make this reaction happen, but it happens. When it does, Im a zombie to reality. My mom has noticed this and even asked if I was still there.

 

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Things That Still Bug Me

Dear Diary,

 

 

I was thinking about A and how much shit I put up with. Our first moment talking, I was the one who asked him out. He later told me that the only reason he swiped right (yes we meet on Tinder) was because of my ferrets. Then out first date he was over two hours late, I had to ask him to kiss me, and he was planning to just take me back to his house. On my birthday, he was dancing with other women. I had to make him start looking at me as more than someone to sleep with. He would ignore me on purpose, and as a punishment even though he know how it would drive me crazy. He made a lot of comments about other women, like how he could please any women. He was disgusting. And in the time that I needed him most, he couldn’t man up. My dad even said this.

 

Dear Diary,

This past weekend was really nice. I needed to get away and get out of my head. A helped take care of my sister over the weekend when she got dunk. It was interesting to see this on the outside. I am normally the one that is that drunk and needs to be taken care up. It is scary to see, but also I learned. But on the way to home, A bragged about how his hand could please any women…

 

Dear Diary,

This past weekend, A and I went camping up by Glenwood Springs. On the way back we were talking about the traffic. Country Jam was going on. He made the comment that they were fake county girls and were easy and he would have to remember that for next year.

 

Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder

Well It’s Over Now( written in June)

* This post is a little scrambled. I was written in a Daily Thought Recorder. How it works;

1. You describe the Event is detail
2. What was the Impact of the Event
3. What was the Intensity of the Emotions
4. What were your Initial Responses
5. Thought Fallacies (finding and labeling the distortions of the thinking)
6. Reasonable Responses (talk back and change the distortions to more reasonable thoughts) With this you use the Common Thinking Errors, this was in my *Thinking* post.

With all that being said, here is how the break-up started.*

Day 1 and 2:

Event: A got a part time job at a bar that he starts this Friday and he will work Friday, Saturday and Sundays. He didn’t tell me he applied, we had plans like a wedding to go to soon. We never talked about him getting this job, or the fact he was low on money. I then got really mad and started a horrible fight. I attacked him with words. He was hurt, and wanted to leave me alone. I started cutting myself, trying to get him to pay attention and start fighting again. It didn’t work. I cried myself to sleep with him laying right by me. He then went to work and didn’t say goodbye. He then came over, attacked me with words, called me names and left. Before he left, I gave him the book Stop Walking On Eggshells.

Impact of Event: rage, sadness, abandonment, no understanding

Intensity of Emotions: 10, 10, 10, 10

Initial Responses:

• Maybe he just is setting me up to break-up with me (Emotional Reasoning and Catastophizing)
• He’s just like them all (Dismissing the positive and All or Nothing)
• He is standing me up like every other guy (Dismissing the positive)
• Why am I like this (Labeling)
• He wants to sleep in his house because when I’m like this I am mean and hurtful. (Labeling)
• I hate being in my head ( Emotional Reasoning)
• I want to stop thinking and feeling (Emotional Reasoning)
• He wants to leave (Emotional Reasoning)
• He can’t stand to be around me (Emotional Reasoning, Flaw)
• He made me waste my make-up (Blaming)
• He got want he wants, he will never takes me out (Assuming, All-or-Nothing)
• It’s good that I know he didn’t like to dance, it makes sense why he found a way out of being with me (Blaming, Emotional, Assuming)
• I wish I’d never meet him
• He’s going to leave me and be happier (Assuming)

Reasoning:

• He is only doing this so he can be more comfortable
• He still wanted to try and work on us (as of last night)
• He stayed last night

 

Day 3:

He ignored me all day and then said that he didn’t know if he wanted to be with me.

Day 4, 5, 6, and 7:

No contact. This drove me crazy. I was crying, and doing a lot of self destructive things. Being ignored triggers me to become my worse. I was Borderlining.

I couldn’t eat, sleep, do anything productive. I feel behind on my summer classes to the point I wasn’t sure if I was going to pass them. I was a horrible time. All I could think is how worthless I was, how I deserved this and that he was better off. I want to call him and beg him to come back. I wanted to beg him, because I knew it had worked once before. But this was different. I had never been ignored for this long. I couldn’t figure out how to talk to anyone, I was locked inside my own head.

Day 8:

He finally decided to talk to me. He was done I begged him for another chance. I told him that I would do anything that he wanted me to do. I told him that to at least notice that I didn’t go crazy when he ignored me. This (to me) was proof I could get better and that I was. He didn’t care, but somehow I got him talk into talking with my therapist.

My normal therapist was out of town that week, but my IOP therapist said she would talk to him.

He said that he was scared of what I would do to any children we had, he didn’t think I was mentally ready for a serious relationship, he was scared of me in a way. Even though he wanted to talk with her without me, I listened in. There was no way I was going to be able to not listen. My mind was going too many places to not listen in. Looking back, I wish I would not have, those words sometimes haunt me and they have taken a every long time to recover from.

After they were done talking, he was still ready to leave me. I used mindfulness and some DBT skills to handle him coming over to get his things. I even gave the jerk a  hug. I was using my distress tolerance skills, regulating my emotions, and using interpersonal effectiveness. I had to use a observe breathing technique, use my self-soothe kit, and I continued to catch myself starting to act instead of just feeling. I thought I was doing really good showing him how much I changed within the last week. Looking back, I think I did learn how to better handle “extreme” moments, but I was really just acting like I had changed a lot. I know it was going to take longer than a week to really implant these skills, but I had to show him I was different. I had to prove to him I was worth his time. It didn’t work. I even gave him my Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotional Regulation, and my Distress Tolerance worksheets, mind you they were all filled out to catered what he might want to read and not what would actually help me.

Before he left, he told me “maybe in 5 years we could try again.” I held on to this for months. That was until I remembered I had told him this is what I told me crazy ex when I finally broke up with him. I was now the crazy ex and he drove away.

Milk and Honey ( written in June)

Dear Diary,

 

I let A read what I wrote in the ‘Milk and Honey’ book. I haven’t asked him about his thoughts but I want to. He is an amazing support system, but I have my fears. I’m scared about him leaving or me becoming too overwhelming or too much for him. I honestly feel horrible that I made him fall in love with me and made him want a relationship with me only to dump all these problems on him. He says that he isn’t going to give up on me and that he wants to stay with me. I’m just so use to people leaving when things get a little too hard or extreme, I’m just waiting for the pattern to repeat itself

After the Hospital (written in May 2018)

Rules of Engagement

1. Always tell the truth — I need to tell A why I am so sad. I need to tell him that Mother’s Day really affected me. The lose of our girl really made me think about losing my son. I need to share with him about my aunt committing suicide via alcohol. I need to tell him about my summer schooling cost and the fact that I’m in an IOP program. I voiced that I was scared about him reacting negatively and wanting to leave again, but he said he wouldn’t

I need to let him in more. I need to also tell him that when I;m not ready to talk to not push. When he pushes, it puts me into a fight mood and I don’t want to fight with him when it doesn’t really involve him. I don’t want to take my problems out on him. I also need to talk about my “plans”, so he knows. If he wants to be a pillar for me, then he is going to need to know all the darkness. He needs to know how fast my mind goes into a dark place. I need to share m demons, instead of hiding every bad feeling, or every bad thought. No matter how dark. These thoughts need to come out.

My aunt passed away May 17th. She drank and used pain pills until her liver failed. She had a chance to save herself, but wanted to give up. She was done with life. It was extremely sad. I was able to see suicide on the other side. My mom even came up to me and told me to “get my act together” because she doesn’t want to plan my funeral. It was eye opening. It was heart breaking to lose my aunt, but I watch the way my grandparents responded. Seeing that helped me not even want to think about attempting to commit suicide again.

Over the weekend I was able to see all of my cousins and all of their kids. I got to play with all of the young 2nd cousins, but it was good to see everyone even though it was because of the funeral.

I also used the rules of engagement to communicate with my boyfriend. I didn’t brush what was bugging me to the side and I used the “I feel statement”. It really worked. I told him that I felt hurt and like I did something wrong. He decided not to come to my aunt funeral with me and then proceeded to ignore me all day. I explained this to me and I felt like he listened and understood. I was mad at him until I was able to talk about what was bugging me. It was really nice to not keep everything bottled up. Last night B (my sister) and  watched 13 Reasons Why together with me. there was a scene in that show that caused me to have a horrible flashback. What happened in that scene is exactly what has happened to me. I had to leave and go down stairs. Even though my ex did that to me many times, one time continued to replay. All I could hear was “Did I just rape you?” in his smug voice. It was on repeat. When I went back upstairs, A wouldn’t touch me or talk to me. I got to the point were he was able to have his hand on my leg as long as I had my hand on his. I told him I was going to have him leave, but he didn’t want to.