“I was unaware at the time that a diagnosis had been made.”

Thinking about my Borderline Personality Disorder and Schizotypal Personality Disorder, I first noticed symptoms when I was 14 when I first got the BPD ‘favourite person’. It wasn’t too bad the first time it happened, but my mental state did worsen afterwards, including developing hallucinations. As far back as I can remember I’ve had symptoms, like thinking people on the TV could see me after the show was turned off for a few days, and that my parents could read my mind, but I never thought these weren’t normal.

I saw a psychiatrist for my psychosis-like symptoms, but the following year, my condition worsened a lot. My worst symptoms would probably be interpersonal obsessiveness, emotional instability, secretiveness and fear of socialisation.

Generally, my psychosis-like symptoms get worse when my emotions get more intense, like when I’m stressed. They got the worst they’ve ever been the second time I had a favourite person. When they were the worst, I was tried on lots of different antipsychotics, so the effect they had on me was that I appeared considerably less emotional on the outside. At the time, I was less secretive, so my friends and family knew about it. I generally don’t leave the house anymore, so I don’t really have to mask.

Because I got so attached to one friend when I was 15, I would steal things for them to prove my love for them. A lot of this I think put my other friends off me, even though, to this day, I believe they were leading me on just to see how obsessed I’d get. Lately, one of my friends has even told me to kill myself.

I’m currently 17, but have had to drop out of school due to my thoughts making it near impossible for me to focus. Most of my friends ignore me if I message them, my parents tell me to organise meet-ups, but they always make excuses not to come. I also find myself unable to get closer to people, and also feel physically sick when I have to socialise from about a day before to a day after.

I don’t see a psychiatrist anymore due to them not being able to help, so I sometimes talk to my parents about what’s bothering me. They can’t handle it though and cry sometimes when I tell them.

I definitely had quite a bad experience in the mental health system. When I was 15 I ended up overdosing, so my psychiatrist sent me to a psych ward for evaluation, as he’d been unable to figure out what was wrong with me. Despite it being a horrible two weeks, they told me that their guess was STPD. I was unaware at the time that a diagnosis had been made. I only found out recently that I had been diagnosed when I was seeing my GP about a health check for my driving permit.

The next year, when I was 16, the psychiatrist started discussing BPD with me. I was also unaware that he had diagnosed me. Earlier on, I had tried CBT and ACT therapy, which didn’t work. I have also been on many antipsychotics and antidepressants, which only made things harder. I have also done DBT, which hasn’t helped either. A lot of psychiatrists would take everything I said with a grain of salt, and then misinterpret things I’d said. Especially with my experience in the psych ward, the psychiatrist kept trying to say that it was good. This is why I have stopped seeing professionals, as even if they wanted to, I don’t think they can help.

I would try other types of therapy, but find myself quite unable to talk to people about the things that bother me the most, as I fear they’ll tell my parents. I also can’t really see them being able to help, as I don’t really have a sense of self anymore and that makes knowing how I feel very hard. I also find it hard to put my thoughts into words, which has recently resulted in me making no sense.

Generally, I play video games to escape a little, which can help as I find comfort in the characters. I’m not really allowed to join communities online, as my parents are quite protective. A lot of my friends also had BPD, so we’d sometimes talk about that, which was good, but I found it very disheartening how disrespectful they were about other mental illnesses.

I find that most people have never heard of STPD as there isn’t really much knowledge about it at all, but people assume by the name that it’s like schizophrenia. With BPD, there are a lot of misconceptions about people who have it being manipulative, which most of the people I’ve known with it haven’t been. I wish people knew that just by telling someone to think a certain way, it won’t be helpful at all, as it can be very hard at times to live with personality disorders, or any mental illness for that matter.

I feel that people in the media should do more research about personality disorders, and especially look into the experiences of people who have personality disorders for more knowledge rather than simply making assumptions based on how someone may appear or behave. The advice I would give is to try everything and anything, then you will find at least one thing that makes everything at least a little better. And just keep going, keep trying until you find that thing.