“I believed I didn’t deserve care or treatment as I was doing it to myself.”

I think I was 11 or 12 years old when I first knew something was wrong. I was quite alone and developed a storybook world in my head to escape the difficulties of day to day life. I kept all of this to myself. I was pretty unhappy, as I remember, and tried hard to not stand out or draw attention to myself.

Suicidal ideation was pretty much a daily occurrence for me throughout my teenage years. At 17 years old I was prescribed antidepressants, which -after a dose increase- caused epileptic fits and I was taken off medication. I was 19 years old when I tried to kill myself.

This led to a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, which was given in 1993. I am now 49 years old- I didn’t know until 2021 that I had been given this diagnosis. I read it via my online medical records.

I began to research BPD and have since completed just over a year’s worth of DBT therapy. I now understand how overwhelming my emotions have been, and can be. That my way of coping was literally numbing and shutting myself down. This can still happen, though I would say very rarely. Maybe once or twice a year.

My day to day symptoms are more internalised through thoughts of, ‘You can’t do that’, ‘They are better than you’, ‘You are not good enough’ and thinking everyone hates me. That’s more where my symptoms lie now and I am working towards reducing those self-destructive thoughts and tendencies.

I think I have mixed feelings towards my diagnosis. It is possible I was told my diagnosis at the time because I did receive six sessions of counselling on the NHS prescribed after a psychiatric assessment after a hospital admission. Looking back, I think the assessment and counselling increased my shame and in turn exacerbated my impulsive and self-destructive behaviours like over-eating, alcohol abuse and running away, and at the same time I was trying to ground myself by going to college, looking for work and doing volunteer work. So it is possible I didn’t understand the diagnosis and/or disassociated from it. If there had been a way to move forward with a diagnosis of BPD at that time then it would have been good to know.

I think they just couldn’t help me maybe- it wasn’t possible to effectively treat me, so no one tried. I believed I didn’t deserve care or treatment as I was doing it to myself. Attention seeking is something that springs to mind. Though I absolutely wasn’t, I was in fact in unbearable pain. I know now having spoken with a compassionate psychotherapist that there was no recognised treatment for people with BPD at that time other than managing symptoms. Marsha Linehan’s book wasn’t published until the mid-90’s.

At the same time I have lived for nearly 30 years not knowing the diagnosis, or knowing anything about BPD (other than a kind of stereotyped presentation of it). It has been hard as I have battled to fit into society working out how to behave and how to communicate. Masking my real self and emotions.

I didn’t want to explore the diagnosis within the NHS as I was scared of how I was treated. Mixed feelings of fear, shame, anger and sadness surrounded the lack of care I had in the 1990s. I didn’t believe I deserved care. I appeared to be a burden to the system and a disappointment to my family. The shame has been tremendous.

I felt relief when I found out in 2021 because what I had been through had a name, and it made sense. I am sad that I have spent so much of my life accommodating a mental illness that deserved care and treatment. I am incredibly happy and thankful now that I have been able to have one-to-one therapy and through that process, understand what I suffered was traumatic invalidation. From what I know now, traumatic invalidation is a fairly recent concept in research and it is attributed to being a possible cause of BPD and other mental illnesses.

I have only shared the diagnosis with a few people I trust who are open to a discourse within life generally. People who I know are empathetic and caring; my partner and a couple of close friends. These are people who I have met in the last, say, 10-15 years. I haven’t told anyone who knew me before then. I kind of feel the thought of discussing my life and symptoms might be sad and exhausting. Also it maybe would possibly be easy to blame situations on my diagnosis, rather than looking at their part in a situation or exchange. Like I think it would be possible I would be gaslit if I spoke my lived reality.  That may change as I become more confident with self-validation. It’s not something I find easy to talk about as the memories have been pushed away for a long time.

In terms of misconceptions, the word manipulative comes up quite a lot- that we would do or say something to manipulate a situation to control another. When it’s a fact everyone manipulates environments, situations and circumstances to get something they might want or need. I think for me, I moulded myself to be what I thought a certain person or society would want because I thought that would make me happy.

Another is that we are unpredictable and potentially harmful to others. That we always want something from others, that we are competitive and have no regard for others in our means to get it. There are many other things too; that we self-harm for attention, that we are built wrongly, that there is no hope for people like us, that we are angry and destructive. I’m quiet, shy and sensitive.

What I would say to others who are dealing with someone with BPD is please don’t offer advice, platitudes or opinions. Listen, even if nothing is being said. Take your own time to explore what BPD might be. It is individual. There are resources for the friends and family of the individual with BPD. Let the person know you are there for them, and offer support. This might have to be offered repeatedly in order for the person to believe it’s real and that they deserve that help and care. Patience and consistency is key, as is validating an individual’s lived reality.