Eliminating the Illusions: Part 3

Welcome back, my most wonderous and beautiful Chime! I, Pixie, return to tell you more about some neurological and psychological disorders that I have worked tirelessly to research. I put these in a random name generator to determine which one I should talk about next, and to my utter surprise and glee, it landed on borderline personality disorder. Why do I find this amusing? Well, if you remember from waaaaay back when, I had a therapist who was under the impression that I might have borderline personality disorder. So, I had some interest in covering this topic for you, but I didn’t think it was going to happen so soon.

We’ll be discussing borderline personality disorder (or bpd) in the same fashion as we discussed are previous topics (do you remember what they were). We’ll be covering some common myths attributed to bpd, the real facts behind these myths, and some interesting facts I found along the way. To preface this, because BPD isn’t something most people have common knowledge of, borderline personality disorder is a mental illness which has varying and unstable moods, behavior, and, relationships. It’s commonly thought that childhood trauma can cause someone to develop this disorder, but the actually definitive cause is unknown. Now, who’s ready to learn some shit?

1. You cannot treat BPD-There are actually a number of interesting methods used to treat BPD, all revolving around dealing with the trauma that many psychiatrists point out as being the culprit. This includes dialect behavior therapy, which is a type of therapy dedicated to helping people cope with stress while living in the moment and regulating their emotions, trauma focused therapy, inner child therapy, and medication.
2. People with BPD cannot live independent, fulfilling lives-This is starting to annoy me as a common myth when discussing mental health issues. Why do so many people believe that having a mental health disorder means your life is now pointless and will forever be filled with disappoint since you’ll never succeed at anything. Honestly if you have this belief you can fuck right off. Every single person has something they struggle with, we all just struggle differently, but that doesn’t mean someone is more useless than someone else.
3. BPD behavior is just attention seeking and should be ignored-Noooooooooo! I hate when people say shit like this. If someone is acting in a way that you feel is “attention seeking” it’s probably a cry for help from someone who is desperate and doesn’t know how to ask. If someone is seeking attention, for fuck’s sake, just give it to them. You don’t know what their going through or if what they’re going through could be helped by just sitting down and talking to them (y’all, I’m on one today and I already want to fight but these myths are about to make me rip out my hair).
4. Those with BPD do not commit suicide– FALSE! Literally anyone in the entire world could suffer from something that would make them think they don’t want to live anymore. It happens all of the time. There’s also the problem that BPD is associated with much higher rates of suicide attempts and self harm than most other mental illnesses. Just so you know.
5. Having BPD is a choice-And having epilepsy is choice, and heart arrhythmias, and cancer. Are you following along with my train of thought, because the realist of it is, no, it’s not a choice. No one chooses to undergo traumatic events that will leave them scarred for the rest of their lives and living with a disorder that will adversely and royally fuck up any future relationships they have. Who wouldn’t want to choose that for the rest of their lives? (Pure, unadulterated sarcasm).
6. People who have BPD do not help themselves-Am I almost done with the really stupid assumptions? Nope, not one little bit. Mind you, I also signed up for this, and I’m still excessively pissed off about the whole thing. Okay, to even begin to touch the bullshit that came with this myth I will have to get my hands way dirty. Some individuals in the world actually think that when someone suffers from a mental illness they are lazy and unmotivated 100% of the time, and therefore, they have no capabilities to seek help. That’s the most bullshit thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and I had some pretty fucked up things happen to me. (fun fact: bullshit appears to be my word of the day) Obviously, there are plenty of people who seek help when their in a tough spot and can’t seem to find their way out of it. That’s how we find out that people have these disorders, and that’s how people get treated. Is everyone just under the assumption that people are diagnosed and *bam* their instantly being treated for their illness? I can’t even fathom the thought process behind this one. Let’s move on before I lost my mind.
7. Children and adolescents cannot be diagnosed with BPD-This myth actually stems from a common controversial discussion that many therapists, counselors, and psychiatrists are still having today. It’s whether or not children should be diagnosed with psychological and neurological conditions even though their bodies are still growing and adjusting to their own chemistry. Remember how I ranted about this a while back? Well, I remember. So, when it comes to deciding whether or not a child needs to be diagnosed with BPD, everyone has a different opinion, and some say that it’s perfectly acceptable and even to some degree necessary to diagnose an individual as soon as possible so that treatment can begin. A lot of mental health care professionals will wait, though, until a child turns eighteen, that way they can be more sure of the symptoms actually pertaining to a disorder, and not a shift in hormones or such.
8. BPD is a variation of bipolar disorder-This is a common confusion and one that I completely understand, because it is so incredible easy for someone to get mixed up diagnoses because some of the symptoms overlap. Bipolar disorder does a damn good job of taking and displaying common symptoms of other disorders and certain individuals will show symptoms at different frequencies. It’s also really common for someone with one disorder to later be told they were misdiagnosed because they originally showed symptoms more commonly associated with having bipolar disorder, but when a new psychiatrist monitored them, they determined that the actual diagnosis should be borderline personality disorder. It such a common occurrence that some people skip the back and forth diagnoses and go straight for the dual diagnoses, telling people they have both. Sometimes they do, but I’ve been on a few groups where people struggle to see one or the other as something they suffer with.
9. BPD is only found in women-Again, this is bullshit. Men and women develop BPD at equal rates, though some symptoms may be more prevalent in men than it is in woman, or the symptoms may appear differently. I also have this theory that women are thought to display their symptoms more openly than men because it’s a lot more obvious for some reason if a woman is, say, having super risky, unsafe sex. Or if they’re spending exuberant amounts of money on stupid things, or if they’re self harming, participating in reckless behavior, etc., etc. I can see where people’s thought are in regards to this myth, but it’s just not true.
10. If you know one person with BPD, you know them all-I really don’t want to justify this with a response, but I have a duty to you, my readers, to follow through with what I said I would do, even if it pains me in so many ways. NO TWO PEOPLE ARE THE SAME, SO NO TWO JOURNEYS ARE THE SAME!! I’m sorry for yelling at you, but I don’t think enough people understand this concept. No two diabetics experience their illness the same way, same goes for cancer victims, muscular dystrophy, scoliosis, COPD, (insert more examples if you feel necessary to do so). It enrages me so badly that there are people out there who assume that having a mental illness makes you just like every other person that has a mental illness. Just because something is a rose doesn’t mean it’s going to be identical to the next rose on the bush.

I know I flew through those myths really quickly when compared to my other posts, but I’m in a weird mood today and I felt it was more important to just get it all down now rather than wait for inspiration to hit me so I could write out this long elegant piece of art, only for it to take me another two months to find that inspiration.

Moving along, you will notice the following posts are all about the interesting facts I found in regards to bipolar disorder (if you don’t find this interesting, tough luck buttercup, I’m bored and need more reasons to get upset by your lack of interest in this amazing topic of discussion).

Borderline personality disorder affects more people than you think it does. In fact, with 1% of US adults affected with this disorder, it beats bipolar II disorder and schizophrenia combined. So, it baffles me how more people know about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia than they know about borderline personality disorder. That also means there’s a greater chance that you know someone with BPD than someone with B2D. Check on your friends people, it could mean the world to them.

Also, BPD often (96% of the time to be accurate) coincides with other mental health disorders. Some of these include bipolar disorder (which we already discussed) and obsessive compulsive disorder. It makes sense to me, especially when you consider the symptoms of BPD (anger issues, feelings of being cut off from reality, abandonment issues) and it’s easy to see where these disorders overlap with each other. I’m seeing a lot more cases of BPD and bipolar overlapping, but I have seen some cases of anxiety, depression, and eating disorders coinciding with BPD.

It’s also been discovered that people with BPD are extremely empathetic people. This is believed to be due to their hyper awareness to other people body language so that they can identify key characteristics that hint at someone wanting to leave them. In reality, they over exaggerate a lot of what they are seeing in their minds eye. If their significant other wants to go out with friends and on the way out they give the individual a weird look, that individual may spend the rest of the night over analyzing their whole lives to double check what they did wrong that would cause their partner to give them that look, even though it may have just been the partner thinking something offhanded and just happened to look back. This can translate to overly empathetic, because they do the same thing to other people. They can pick up on that little squint in your eyes, or the way you tense up, over exaggerate it in their minds, and come to the conclusion that you are struggling with something, maybe to a degree greater than what you really are, but they feel the intense need to help you, it’s a people pleasing issue.

It’s also widely accepted that people with BPD are very creative and artistic people. I guess when you have so much bullshit going through your brain, a great way to express yourself is through art. Some people just happen to have a really talent for that, I am not one of those people. If I could give you some examples, I promise I would, but I can’t, so I shan’t. (That’s an actual phrase I use in real life btw.)

They also experience emotions at an extreme level. You think you’re mad, people with BPD experience rage over that thing that made you a little upset. You’re sad that you burnt your toast, a person with BPD might think it’s the end of the world. I would like to mention, I don’t have BPD, and I don’t know anyone who openly discussing having BPD, so every piece of information I give you about this is taken strictly off the internet, not from any personal experiences I have.

People with this disorder also experience something called Borderline Obsessions. This means that they became fixated on something for days, or even months. From what I can find, this sounds more like they read about something, like griffins, and feel the intense need to learn every little thing about griffins. If they are artistic people, they might go so far as to draw them for days or months, pointing out every little detail of what a griffin is through their art. This can be an extremely consuming symptom, because they don’t even look up from what they are doing until they absolutely have to and they can lose track of time, forget to eat, drink, sleep, shower. It sounds like an incredibly taxing symptom to suffer with.

Also, and this one was really surprising and completely out of the blue to me, but people who are diagnosed with BPD have an increased chance of being left handed or ambidextrous. I have no idea why. I do know that which hand is dominant on a person has as much to do with environmental factors as it does literally anything else, and people who are left handed are at an increased risk of developing a mental health disorder at some point in their lives than their right handed counterparts. I would love to know the information behind this but there is not nearly enough research done on this so I don’t even know where to look for this information.

Along with being extremely creative, people with this disorder have very active imaginations (this should have come sooner on the list but I have a certain order I put notes for reason and I’m just going with it, sorry for the inconsistencies). They can plan out these epic fantasy lives for themselves in such extreme details that they can also get lost in them and completely dissociate from reality (ties into the feelings of being cut off from reality). This was another symptom that lead one of my therapists to believe I had BPD. I too can establish very detailed and creative fantasy worlds and get lost in them. I then translate that into an epic novel that doesn’t seem to do my imaginary world justice, so I scrap the novel, destroy the fantasy and hope the next one is two shades better than the old one.

The key symptom that kept me from being diagnosed with BPD is people with this disorder mirror other’s personalities. I have a very distinguished, and very disturbing, personality that cannot be replicated by anyone (many have tried). For example, they are known to become obsessed with a movie, tv show, or book series, and immediately start acting exactly like their favorite character. They also copy base character traits from their close friends, and when jumping between friend groups, they can become completely different people. You think it gives you whiplash, these poor people have such shattered self esteems that they cannot feel comfortable enough to be themselves, they feel like they have to be somebody else.

That is the extent of the research I can do on this particular topic. If you want to learn more, do your own research. I’m here to add more knowledge to what I already have, so while you may be missing the overall definition of this disorder, I already know it and I didn’t want to go over it again.

Don’t forget, I write this more for me than I do for you, and I’m in a very off mood while writing this post. I’m doing my best, but my best might be better if you were so kind as to donate to me so that I can do more for this blog. (I know that was the absolute least subtle way of asking but I’m going straight for it.) Please like this blog, leave a comment, or send me any questions or requests for future posts.

Fly high, glorious and magnificent Chimers!

“The role of the therapist is to reflect the being/accepting self that was never allowed to be in the borderline.”

― Michael Adzema