As stated previously, every week I am planning to have a different guest author who suffers from BPD write about their own story of struggle and recovery against this horrible illness. Literally, their articles will explain to the world what BPD means to them (the individual authors) and how it has affected their everyday lives.
This week’s entry is from Sharon, the author of the blog “Day in the life of a Busy Gal…” Sharon was diagnosed 10 months ago with BPD, and since then, her life has forever been changed:
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I’ve only known about my BPD for 10 months, initially it was a shock, terrifying. Then it was a relief – now I finally knew the ‘why’ for all the difficulties I’d been suffering for years. Now, following another crisis, it’s like this life sentence I can’t escape. As yet untreated, no way of knowing how well, if at all, treatment will ‘help’ me overcome or control it. To be honest, a diagnosis of cancer would almost be easier to cope with – there’s less stigma attached to that diagnosis, people ‘sympathise’ ‘understand’, treatments are known to work or ‘not’, you know what to expect. BPD on the other hand is contested, stigmatised, poorly understood and even less sympathised – just look at the labels that go with it (inaccurate as they are…) ‘attention seekers’, ‘manipulative’, ‘deceptive’, ‘demanding’, ‘destructive’, ‘obstructive’, and ‘dangerous’.
I have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, well maybe that’s not even accurate given the ‘advise’ they give me. One will torment me with paranoid thoughts, whilst the other argues that there is no justification or reason for these thoughts. One will tell me I ‘deserve to enjoy myself’ and encourage me to partake in activities that will actually be detrimental to me in the long run, even though they may be fun at the time, the other will just ‘criticise’ and punish me for even ‘thinking’ of having fun. At my first therapy appointment the therapist suggested these are my ‘critical parent’ and ‘free-child’ (of Transactional Analysis) and that I am lacking a ‘Nurturing Parent’ and ‘adaptive child’. Thankfully at the moment my ‘Adult’ self is in control, but when I am in a manic phase the Free-child takes over – I do bad things, ignore the rules, and take risks, it loves freedom and wants me to do as I please regardless who that harms – even myself. The critical parent brings about my depressive, physical self harm and suicidal phases; it hates me and wants me dead.
I have never hurt others intentionally or directly with my behaviour, but indirectly and unintentionally I have caused more hurt and upset than I want to think about. Just by the sheer fact of hurting myself with cutting, overdoses and doing a ‘Britney’ (chopping my hair off) let alone the sexual promiscuity, mistrust and cheating all these things hurt those closest to me as much as they hurt me.
Because of BPD I have nearly lost the best thing that every happened to me, been made homeless and nearly lost my job. But as with all bad things BPD has its good elements, in the end it was my BPD that saved me from losing the best thing in my life, BPD has given me the drive and passion that enable me to study so hard, write so well (and so much). Despite this, the bad outweighs the good, I am holding my own for the time being but live in constant fear of the next ‘manic’ or ‘depressive’ episode and worry it will ‘finish me off’.
I know this has been a really depressing piece, but I do have hope, honestly. I’m taking each day a step at a time, I finally have a therapist – hopefully that will help; I’m currently in control, getting back to work and maintaining a ‘balance’. With a bit of luck, the love and support of my fiancée, family and friends, and some real help (for the first time in my life) with the therapist I will learn to control this thing that is my curse, my demon rather than it controlling me…