“I constantly have to work against my instincts, because a lot of my instincts are trauma responses.”

When I got diagnosed with BPD, I was splitting daily- on everyone. Even on my kids. I have what they call ‘quiet’ BPD, so my ‘splitting’ was mostly internal, although if anyone bothered me while I was splitting, I’d usually flip, yell at them, run away and hide. My internal state was so miserable, because on top of the daily splitting I had absolutely zero sense of self/stable identity. I didn’t know who I was, ever, and that can take a huge toll on a person.

I was diagnosed with BPD in 2020. The symptoms I mentioned above were the most pronounced and difficult to manage back then. The one that is most difficult to manage right now is partial splitting (where I’m devaluing the person as seen in splitting, but also idolizing them simultaneously).

BPD makes having relationships really hard. I don’t have any real-life friends because I’ll split on them and people rarely stay around after that. If they do, they’ll slowly elbow their way out of my life. It’s difficult to keep a romantic relationship too. I have to work against my instincts in order to not split on my partners. I often have low mood periods where I withdraw and don’t want to talk for a few hours, and this can be very inconvenient and even upsetting to partners.

It does sometimes show up in jobs, but it’s not the main thing keeping me from having a career. I’ll split on my bosses (or partially split nowadays) and then I lose all respect for them. Once I’ve lost respect, it’s very hard to take orders from them because of my co-morbid NPD.

I don’t really know how I got my diagnosis, because they assessed me without my knowledge and diagnosed me without letting me know about the diagnosis. I didn’t find out until long after I’d been diagnosed. I actually found out through the local ER when I went in for physical pains. They looked up my record and asked me about my diagnosis, not knowing that the diagnosis was news to me.

I definitely didn’t feel-, and never have felt- like the professionals who work with me are compassionate when it comes to BPD (or any PD). They seem compassionate about the schizoaffective disorder, but definitely not about the personality disorders. Knowledgeable? I guess. But not compassionate or caring.

People around me usually have no idea what I’m talking about when I say I have BPD. They’re not usually curious about it either, which is weird to me. If they are ever curious, I’ll explain that it involves rapidly shifting emotions and lack of identity. Then they usually just withdraw from me like I scare them.

The misconception I’ve ran into most is that, “Everyone has BPD on some level because everyone has mood swings”. I’d like people to know that ‘mood swings’ are a normal part of the human experience, and there’s actually a minimum of five out of nine criteria in order to be diagnosed. It’s a lot more than just ‘mood swings’, and the mood swings that are present are way more intense than normal ones, and are very disruptive to daily life and the internal experience of life.

Having children as a mentally ill person, it’s been hard. Incredibly hard. During and after each pregnancy my mental health declined. After my second (and last) pregnancy, I decided to finally reach out and get help because it had declined that far.

Even to this day, I often think I’m not a good mother and I don’t deserve to have children. I’m constantly scared I’m going to screw them up. I constantly have to work against my instincts, because a lot of my instincts are trauma responses. It’s hard. But my children have made me a better person. If it weren’t for them I probably wouldn’t have seen the need to go get help and to start self improvement. Taking care of them has helped me heal.

Unfortunately I have to face a lot of stigma and people who think that I don’t deserve to have children because I’m mentally ill. A lot of people assume that I hurt my children or am abusive in my relationships to them, when I’m absolutely not.

When someone assumes that, and tells me that I don’t deserve to have children because I must hurt them because I’m mentally ill, it reinforces the internalized stigma of mine, and the idea in my head that I don’t deserve to have children because I’m defective or a horrible person. It makes it really hard to be the parent I want to be when everyone is telling me I’m not.

I think in online communities, yes the stigma around BPD is dwindling. But in real life, there’s a huge knowledge gap that still contributes to stigma. In the psychiatrist community, stigma is rampant. I think in the next few years a lot of the stigma around Cluster B PDs will be erased, but I can only hope.

Unfortunately there are a lot of big names in the Cluster B community that are actively participating in demonizing other people with PDs, especially NPD and ASPD. There’s a few in particular who or even making money off of the demonization of other Cluster B’s. It’s very unfortunate. And it means that stigma would be around longer than I would like.