“I found out that my previous therapist and my psychiatrist diagnosed me without letting me know.”
I would say I started noticing something was not right when I was 14. I was being bullied, so I was experiencing distress on a daily basis, self-harming regularly and even had suicidal thoughts. Although the bullying was partly responsible for it, I think it was just the trigger of something much bigger.
Throughout my teenage years, I was struggling daily because it felt like I was overreacting to minor inconveniences, especially in my relationships, but always kept it quiet as I felt it was abnormal. I was only diagnosed with BPD and depression at the age of 21, so it has been seven years of not understanding what was going on and especially feeling like I was ‘crazy’. Now, I can understand better what’s going on. I was also given a C-PTSD diagnosis later on.
Overall, I experience strong distress day-to-day that can be sadness, anger or anxiety and sometimes lead to crises. These crises can be characterized by having paranoia and suicidal thoughts most of the time.
The distress can be so heightened that I can overdose on medication, spend a lot of money on things I don’t need, or self-harm to soothe the pain. Crises can be triggered by fear of abandonment which is very triggering for me, but I also have other triggers like hearing screams, plates breaking or seeing people that have traumatized me. These can also lead me to having panic attacks and frequent nightmares.
The furthest a crisis can go is attempting suicide, but fortunately, I’ve only attempted suicide once and survived, although medication overdose can also be lethal. Otherwise, my mood is often down and I struggle a lot with daily tasks like cleaning, working or even sometimes eating or showering as I am so exhausted from the overthinking and the overwhelming emotions. That’s why I may sleep 14 hours a day on average. It also helps me escaping the never-ending suffering.
Sometimes, it’s the other way around. I may feel completely empty, have no goals nor any will to live. BPD is either feeling all or nothing. Being overwhelmed or feeling nothing. Either way, it’s led me to procrastinate, be unable to plan, or think through the future. It’s just about hoping you’ll get through the day. I’d describe it as overwhelming and painful, not to mention how hard it is to live it yourself, but especially with other people witnessing your symptoms.
Sometimes, they’re actually the one triggering me, even though they have done nothing wrong, because a facial expression, a different tone of voice, or a sentence can trigger the fear of abandonment and it’s hard to seek help from these same people. It often makes me feel like a burden and unworthy of love. Honestly, there are so many symptoms that it’s hard to describe them all when summing them up, but these are my symptoms mainly.
It’s also worthwhile to mention I’ve lost 10 kilograms as well because of the loss of appetite, loss of energy to cook, or sometimes because I was self-sabotaging. There are some ups sometimes that can feel wonderful, but most of the time, I feel very depressed.
I usually don’t take out my crises on others, even though I can have anger outbursts, but I do take them out on myself by self-sabotaging and hurting myself. It still has far-reaching consequences on my relationships, as people often get sick of trying to ‘rescue me’. Also, I tend to overshare my life or trauma dump which annoys me, but it feels like I can’t help it- I need to feel understood. However, I feel a lot of shame afterwards. I often feel like I’m a very difficult person to handle and feel sorry and guilty for the people around me.
Regarding depression, I asked my GP for a diagnosis because I felt like I was going down a rabbit hole. My therapist and my GP were actually surprised about my request, thinking I was actually not meeting the criteria. He just gave me 10 questions to tick, then said how many points I got and said it meant I was having ‘moderately severe depression’.
Regarding BPD, I was diagnosed later without even actually being aware of it. I had an appointment with my new psychologist who asked me if I knew I had a temporary diagnosis in my folder. I said yes, it’s depression. She actually answered no, it was ‘Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder’, without much explanation. I didn’t know what it meant, nor that it was the other name of Borderline Personality Disorder.
When I Googled the diagnosis after my appointment, I was shocked when discovering it was BPD. I felt like I could never be cured. I found out days later that my previous therapist and my psychiatrist diagnosed me without letting me know. I felt like they failed me, like they had diagnosed me together without even talking to me. They actually apologized to the phone for the way I had discovered the BPD diagnosis.
The goal of my new psychologist was to find out if the temporary diagnosis was right, and after months of therapy, she confirmed I do have BPD. Also, I talked about some traumatic events at some point during the therapy process. She said she would look into C-PTSD as well, and when I was finished after a few months, she wrote on a paper that I probably have C-PTSD as well. This was all confirmed by my current psychologist.
Some health care professionals were understanding and empathetic towards me, some others were not. It would depend who was taking care of me and in which country, as I’ve lived both in Norway and France. In Norway, I would say everyone was treating me pretty gently, whether it was my psychologist, my psychiatrist or nurses in the psychiatric hospital.
However, both of my GPs did not know much about mental health and one of them could be sarcastic when I was talking about traumatic events, or even argued with my psychiatrist that it was not her job to hospitalize me. It made me feel like a burden and like I was not taken seriously. But even though I was so scared of going to a psychiatric hospital, it actually went very well and everyone was understanding and helpful, although I’m not sure they always knew about BPD. No matter what, they would never judge me and it has helped a lot getting back on my feet. However, in France, everything became so much more difficult. The health care system is overwhelmed and people either did not have the time nor the tools to help me.
My only psychiatric hospitalization in France was horrendous. I was overmedicated and treated like a crazy kid. I did not feel understood by my psychiatrist, nor by the hospital nurses either. If I overdosed on medication, they would take all of my belongings off me, give me hospital clothes to wear and would never check in on me or whether I was okay (which was much different in Norway). You often feel like a burden, and I think the BPD diagnosis didn’t help, especially when I was being overmedicated. It feels like they want to give you as much medication as possible to calm you down, but you just feel like you’re high on weed and empty. That is their way of dealing with you.
Fortunately, I found an empathetic and understanding psychologist who never judged me about these labels and took me as I was, which was not the case in other places. I felt accepted and in a place of trust and safety. These kinds of experiences are rare in France unfortunately. The GPs barely knew anything about the diagnosis either and could prescribe any medication without checking whether it was okay. I don’t know if the borderline diagnosis played a part, but I could literally get any medication I’d wanted, if I wanted to, even though they knew I had overdose issues with medication.
Having a BPD label in the French healthcare system is basically like being the bad kid. You’re often seen as crazy as well. My consent was barely respected during my hospitalizations, I went through so many horrendous things because I was obliged to abide by their way of wanting to heal me, without taking into account my opinion in the process. I was even misled on the medication I was given, or made to feel guilty if I would want to discuss whether a medication was okay to take (for example, changing an antidepressant overnight).
Being open about your Borderline Personality Disorder is very difficult overall, but I would say it kind of depends on the environment and the people around you. I had the chance to make friendships with other mentally ill people, or even people who were diagnosed with BPD, and it was a game changer. You don’t even have to explain- they understand what you are going through right away. It helps a lot. Otherwise, it is overall difficult in a lot of areas. There are some friends whom you know you cannot really be open about it with, or they are going to be annoyed or call you an attention seeker.
I’ve struggled a lot talking about this with my family and I most often mask the symptoms and what’s going on. What’s going on inside my head is something they would not understand, or they would get anxious about and it worsened the situation. I find it especially difficult talking about the topic at work.
I should be having accommodations for being disabled, but instead, I just mask the symptoms and act as if nothing is going on even though I’m dying inside. It was easier at university, although even getting accommodations is one hell of a ride in itself, but teachers were mostly understanding, thankfully.
I find it so difficult to talk about it at work as I’m supposed to be ‘productive’ and ‘act normal’, so I’m masking so many things which then result in an outburst at home. However, I can’t keep going this way because it’s hindering my productivity in the long-term as I might get burnt out. Nevertheless, I still can’t help but be fearful of talking about it because of the ongoing stigmatization of the diagnosis. It makes me insanely scared to open up about what I’m going through or even mention I’m disabled.
I’ve also had a lot of backlash because I was open about my diagnosis. I know I may tend to go into oversharing mode sometimes, so I would understand people got annoyed, but I got stabbed in the back so many times for showing some minor symptoms or saying I have BPD. I had people calling the emergency room without even letting me know because I would cry or be upset about something. It makes me feel like I’m crazy and hysterical, and I hate it. I feel so disrespected, like I don’t even have a say in the conversation.
Honestly, it’s so much harder opening up about the BPD diagnosis compared to depression. Everyone knows what depression is, even though there are so many misconceptions about it. I’ve had rough comments about my depression from friends, families or even doctors, but BPD is so much more stigmatized.
When I mention depression, I feel like people may understand better that I’m having a rough time. With BPD, it’s rather like I’m crazy and helpless. I know that the symptoms that have been pointed out in a mean way were the ones from BPD. I’m sick of being called attention seeking, or made to feel like I’m consuming everyone’s energy when I’m dying inside and trying to be careful about other people’s boundaries all the time.
My BPD diagnosis has been used against me as well. If I was in an argument, people would assume I’m wrong right away, just because people presumed I was having BPD symptoms (irrational anger, for example) when I wasn’t even going through that. So because I had BPD, I was immediately ‘disqualified’ from the discussion. These kind of things happened much less with depression, though I struggled opening up about it and you often feel like a burden.
BPD and depression combined make me feel like a burden 24/7 to others. Masking is a strategy that can help in a lot of situations where I feel unsafe, and I would say I feel unsafe very often. I have a few people whom I know I can open up to, but not as many as it should be. Sometimes, people don’t even know what BPD is, and I get so afraid they’re going to Google what BPD is and read some s**t about it. I feel like a lot of things out there about BPD are so dehumanizing.
When the label of BPD is placed onto you, there might be a short sense of relief as it feels like there’s a reason as to why you’re acting this way and for your behavior. However, on the one hand, the more you think about it, the more people around you- and especially psychiatric services- make you feel like you’ll be forever ill and you’re just too difficult to handle. While it takes a long time to recover and your daily life is impacted, I don’t want to be made to feel like I’m helpless and I’ll never be ‘cured’.
On the other hand, loved ones place a lot of expectations on your recovery. I feel the disappointment in other people for still aching and not doing better. Most of all, I hate how the BPD label is placed onto us as if we were just sick people with a bunch of symptoms to cure.
Why don’t medical facilities take into account that most of us have had to deal with multiple traumatic events? That mostly women are diagnosed, who have been victim of sexual assault early in life? That a lot of research says that BPD is the new ‘hysterical’ diagnosis, but it just sounds less problematic? It would feel so much better if people knew why I am the way I am today, and not just a bunch of symptoms and labels.
Most of us had to deal with horrific events. Let’s open the discussion about this. People think we’re ‘overreacting’ or ‘crazy’ but they don’t know the underlying reasons as to why our body has adapted to react this way. Our body is trying to protect us from traumatic events. I wish people would talk about this. Talk about our lives, our pasts, not just a label the psychiatric system decided to put onto us. Maybe knowing the underlying reasons would create more empathy towards us and change the perspective on who we are.
We’ve been made to feel unsafe our whole lives because we have lived in chaotic environments very early in our lives. A lot of us had to grow up on broken foundations at early stages of our lives. How are we supposed to know how to navigate this world, build sane relationships and know who we are and trust ourselves and others when we’ve been made to feel like people around us are unsafe most of our lives?
We’re always hypervigilant about everything because that’s how we protect ourselves, as past events have showed us people and the world are not to be trusted.
