12/29/2024
𝙅𝙚𝙨𝙪𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘽𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚
What I’ve yet to share with you in any great detail prior to today is that in addition to trauma and physical wounds, I have also been dianosed with Borderline Personity Disorder (BPD).
As you may have read in my blog, Finding Serenity, my last posting when I was in the Canadian Armed Forces was Ottawa, Ontario. While I was there, I had a regular appointment with a civilian medical officer who would take care of my prescriptions. After my initial diagnosis of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder by the psychiatrist that I’d seen initially, I stopped seeing him. I don’t remember exactly why now but it had something to do with him making a s*xist comment saying I was all “yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir” and that was my problem. I didn’t like the guy. Instead of confronting anyone back in those days I would run, so I stopped seeing him and didn’t have a regular psychitrist for medication follow-up. My general practictioner, the Medical Officer I’d been seeing monthly, sent me to another psychiatrist just to get a med follow-up.. I got way more than what I’d bargained for when I met him.
I arrived nervous and filled out a series of questionnaires that I was sure I had filled out a dozen other times. I had been starting to find a little bit of hope and balance for getting better but I think I was high on the fact that we were being moved to New Brunswick finally. My then-husband was close to release and was using his final release move to get us back to the east coast. I was off on sick leave permanently and therefore was able to be attached to the nearest base to await my release.
When I met this psychiatrist, I had expected perhaps a change in medication to further improve my symptoms. What I got instead was a series of questions followed by the news that I didn’t just have trauma, I was developed in it. I was not just a victim of trauma over a sustained period of time, I had been marintated and raised in it. He said that I had Borderline Personality Disorder and that this was why I had such a hard time coping. There would be no medication for it and I would likely manage best as I’d been managing at that point, with my spirituality and yoga.
Wonderful, I thought! I already do those things. I blew him off! What did he know. I had the power to change my circumtsances I thought at that point and so I would positively think my way into being “normal”.
It didn’t quite work out that way. When I released medically from the forces, and separated from my husband at the same time, my BPD flared up and became a major problem. It made it extremely challenging to maintain stability and balance for the three to four years that followed.
Why is this relevant? Because I’m going to share with you everything that I’ve done over the past three years to send my symptoms into remission after having been flared up/aggravated by my release from the military and also my divorce.
A search of the mayoclinic website reveals that BPD is “a mental health condition that affects the way people feel about themselves and others, making it hard to function in everyday life. It includes a pattern of unstable, intense relationships, as well as impulsiveness and an unhealthy way of seeing themselves. Impulsiveness involves having extreme emotions and acting or doing things without thinking about them first.”
Essentially, this disorder affects how you relate to yourself and others as well as how you behave in response to your emotional reactions to the world.
The following excerpt is taken from the book I Hate You - Don’t Leave Me:
Central to the borderline syndrome is the lack of a core sense of identity. When describing themselves, BPD people typically paint a confused or contradictory self-portrait, in contrast to other patients who generally have a much clearer sense of who they are. To overcome their indistinct and mostly negative self-image, borderline individuals, like actors, are constantly searching for “good roles,” complete “characters” they can inhabit to fill their identity void. So they often adapt like chameleons to the environment, situation, or companions of the moment, much like the title character in Woody Allen’s film Zelig, who literally assumes the personality, identity, and appearance of people around him.
The lure of ecstatic experiences, whether attained through s*x, drugs, or other means, is sometimes overwhelming for the BPD sufferer. In ecstasy, he can return to a primal world where the self and the external world merge—a form of second infancy. During periods of intense loneliness and emptiness, he will go on drug binges, bouts with alcohol, or s*xual escapades (with one or several partners), sometimes lasting days at a time. It is as if when the struggle to find an identity becomes intolerable, the solution is either to lose one’s identity altogether or to achieve a semblance of self through pain or numbness.
The family background of someone with BPD is often marked by alcoholism, depression, and emotional disturbances. A borderline childhood is frequently a desolate battlefield, scarred with the debris of indifferent, rejecting, or absent parents, emotional deprivation, and chronic abuse…
These unstable relationships carry over into adolescence and adulthood, where romantic attachments are highly charged and usually short-lived. The borderline individual will frantically pursue a partner one day and send him packing the next. Longer romances—usually measured in weeks or months rather than years—are usually filled with turbulence and rage, wonder, and excitement. This may be related to research indicating hypersensitivity to physical touching and preference for interpersonal distance among individuals with a past history of childhood maltreatment.27
(Kreisman et al, p. 12-13)
At it’s worst, my experience of this disorder has caused me to pick up a chair and contemplate launching it across the room in response to the rage I’d felt in a relationship, unanable to get the attention and understanding that I so desperately felt I’d needed in order to stabilize. Acually, I should say that at it’s worst was me laying in the fetal position in my trailer wanting to harm myself because I’d had the experience of being called weird and overweight by person I wanted to love me. At it’s best, it is in remission and I can live with balance and harmony in my relationships through truth and acceptance that I’ve learned from my spiritual path. We will talk more about that in the remainder of this book. First, let’s talk about the symptoms that one could potentially expect to experience if they are someone with this personality disorder.
From the Mayo Clinic website, common symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder may include:
•. A strong fear of abandonment. This includes going to extreme measures so you're not separated or rejected, even if these fears are made up.
• A pattern of unstable, intense relationships, such as believing someone is perfect one moment and then suddenly believing the person doesn't care enough or is cruel.
• Quick changes in how you see yourself. This includes shifting goals and values, as well as seeing yourself as bad or as if you don't exist.
• Periods of stress-related paranoia and loss of contact with reality. These periods can last from a few minutes to a few hours.
• Impulsive and risky behavior, such as gambling, dangerous driving, unsafe s*x, spending sprees, binge eating, drug misuse, or sabotaging success by suddenly quitting a good job or ending a positive relationship.
• Threats of su***de or self-injury, often in response to fears of separation or rejection.
• Wide mood swings that last from a few hours to a few days. These mood swings can include periods of being very happy, irritable or anxious, or feeling shame.
• Ongoing feelings of emptiness.
• Inappropriate, strong anger, such as losing your temper often, being sarcastic or bitter, or physically fighting.�If you’re someone who knows me well then you’ve been able to quickly see that the psychiatrist that I met with that day was bang on in his assessment, even after having only met me once and having conducted a quick file review. I can tell you that when I read that list, there isn’t one symptom on there that doesn’t resonate with me.
Now, as a patient of the Operational Stress Injury Clinic here in New Brunswick, I’m told that I can manage myself best with therapy. My psychiatrist was extremely content with the fact that I seemed to be in remission with a small change in medication and some therapy. What he didn’t know, and I didn’t have a great deal of time to explain in our short time together, was that I’d managed to put myself remission through (yes, partly those things) but mostly through my fierce dedication to the way of the heart and the path to awakening to the truth of who we are as taught by Jesus.
I’m excited to share with you that I will be writing a book on just that. Are you someone who lives with or is a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)? Had you heard about it before now?
