“During episodes I act unpredictably and can lash out.”

I have ‘quiet BPD’, which basically means that most (but not all) of my BPD characteristics are directed inwards instead of externally. My condition makes it extremely difficult for me to keep friendships and relationships consistently and healthily.

My BPD also causes me to unhealthily fixate on people that I like which usually ends in that relationship being destroyed due to obsessive tendencies and increased self-consciousness/attention-seeking around them. Outside of my relationships with other people, it makes my moods very volatile and easily drastically changed, inflates and deflates my ego constantly, and keeps my self-image very poor.

My boyfriend is my FP (‘Favourite Person’) and has been for quite some time. The biggest effect this has on me is that my emotional state is 100% tied to his, and to the quality of our relationship; I can’t be happy if he’s not happy, and vice versa. It also causes me to tend to take everything personally, including things in the past or out of my control, and it takes a lot of focus and practice to not dramatically overreact at every single thing. I also experience episodes of severe anger that are triggered by bad things happening to him.

In addition to my FP I also fixate on more ‘minor’ people in my life in a very intense way. These usually last a few weeks to a month or two, and the friendships usually end up stopping because of the behaviours I described earlier on. These fixations make it feel like everything revolves around the person in question and I get very attention-seeky, self-deprecating, etc in an attempt to find support and reassurance from this person.

That second case is less intense than a FP relationship, but I do feel like it’s still influenced by my BPD needs and behaviours.

My FP relationship and the more minor obsessive relationships that I described are also very volatile, and my opinion and attachment to the person can change on a whim. I may feel as if I desperately need them one minute and then if they do something even as minor as not responding to a text quickly, feel as if they’re a danger to me and that I need to push them away. This is more applicable to the latter category of relationships because I’ve been with my current FP for years and know that I am safe with him even during paranoid episodes. It can make things very confusing for him sometimes.

During episodes I act unpredictably and can lash out at inappropriate stimuli. Luckily he’s the opposite of me in that he doesn’t take much of anything personally and knows that my reactions aren’t his fault, so he isn’t hurt by them; if this were different, I don’t feel as if the relationship would be able to be healthy.

The ways my BPD affects me makes communication absolutely essential in our relationship. I’ve learned to communicate all of my feelings and triggers and he knows how to listen and use that information to help me and to keep himself informed on why I’m acting in the way I do.

I haven’t been able to receive any treatment for the BPD. It’s extremely difficult to find help for anything in my area, but especially something as stigmatized as BPD.

I’m a lot more cautious with the way I approach relationships/friendships because I know the ways that I tend to fixate and act unhealthily when I’m not careful. I constantly work on fact-checking myself on the ways that I perceive people versus the ways they actually are, and I try to control myself even more when I know I’m getting too attached to someone.

Before I was aware of FPs/BPD this was all really confusing to me, and I’d alternate between thinking it was something everyone experiences and thinking that there was something unique that was wrong with me.

My biggest development- and also best advice- is that communication truly does make everything easier. If you communicate about your needs and triggers and moods with your FP, even if they’re irrational, it’s so much easier to get through it without damaging the relationship irreparably. Putting it all into words can also help to rationalize it for yourself which is also super useful.

I’ve also learned to separate myself from my FP when I’m feeling especially harmful, which helps doubly because after the episode ends, there’s less damage done and less to apologize for/feel guilty for (and I definitely know that that guilt can trigger further episodes in the future – so avoiding it as much as possible is great for everyone involved).