Living With Bpd Quotes

You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by.

DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else.

Behind many emotional responses are real issues.  BPD sufferers can be so overwhelmed by their emotional feelings that they feel unable to tackle the underlying cause of the emotion.

Every age has its signature afflictions. Thus, a bacterial age existed; at the latest, it ended with the discovery of antibiotics. Despite widespread fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

emotions of shame, sadness, and guilt are often much stronger and harder to cope with. Some people with BPD seem to spend more time being angry with themselves than with anyone else.

Self-harm or substance abuse being common ways in which BPD sufferers tend to block their unwanted emotions; this is not weakness but simply that the condition makes it so difficult to regulate your reactions.

Most kids who don't feel enough love and nurturance carry around this kind of inner rage- a rage that often lasts throughout adulthood. The people who should have cared for them didn't. The lesson to take away: All people are shit. This is why troubled youth walk around with chips on their shoulders and why they are so hard to help. Early on they learn that people can't be trusted. They often spend the rest of their lives embracing this damaging belief. Seeing the world through shit-coloured glasses, they are hypersensitive to every possible slight or judgement, and they believe anyone friendly or kind must have an ulterior motive. Despite all this, wounded people desperately want and need love. But, terrified to trust, they constantly do thing to test and sabotage their relationships. This push-pull dance is well-known to anyone who's ever been close to a victim of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Those who suffer from BPD are hypersensitive to perceived slights from others and can grow notoriously hostile when they feel dissed.... For survivors of abuse, who you trust is a matter of survival. Its black and white. There can be no apologies. There can be no gray. There are no exceptions.-Scared Selfless

Children who live with a predatory mother become unconsciously preoccupied with reading their mother’s moods. A fleeting glance, a furtive gesture, deceleration, and a shift of direction are signals of an approaching Turn. Bracing, hiding, or merely holding on gives children a much-needed sense of control. Shutting down, avoiding eye contact, and getting away are other means of establishing control.

BPD sufferers experience emotions far more intensely than the rest of the population.  In many senses, this is no bad thing but the lack of control of these emotions is where BPD patients risk self-harm, destructive behaviors and problematic relationship issues with others.

having BPD does not mean that you have a flawed personality, or that you will always struggle with the problems you are having right now. It simply means that you have a pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that may be hindering your ability to have a high quality of life, keep your relationships going strong, or reach your goals.

Many people will take a rational approach, thinking through the pros and cons of an issue.  This is much harder if you have BPD.  In

One of the defining features of BPD is that sufferers have a difficult time in accepting emotions.  This is in large part thanks to the intensity with which they experience them.

Just a small critical or disapproving look might be enough to throw you into an emotional tailspin.

Interpersonal dysregulation means having trouble with relationships with other people.

they tend to struggle in their relationships in two primary ways: unstable relationships, and fear of abandonment.

Because she lives in a state of alarm, she notices things that others miss.

People with BPD struggle with their emotions and are often overwhelmed by them. In fact, some researchers have said that emotion dysregulation is the most important problem for people with BPD

big part of learning to cope with emotions is to ensure that those around you understand what is happening.  It can be hard to talk about BPD, thanks to the many negative depictions the condition has had in the past.  However, ensuring that your family understand how BDP can affect you is essential.  It's particularly important to make it clear that, sometimes, emotional situations can be simply too much for you.

one important thing to keep in mind about BPD is that it comes with a lot of extra baggage. That is, many people with BPD have other problems and may meet criteria for other diagnoses. For instance, many people with BPD suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and/or drug and alcohol problems. People with BPD are also at risk for suicide attempts, self-harm, and other self-destructive behaviors.

A personality disorder is simply a long-lasting pattern of relating to the world that doesn’t work very well. In addition, these problems cause great distress and may create difficulties in relationships or lead to problems reaching goals in life

Though women have struggled successfully to achieve increased social and career options, they may have had to pay an exacting price in the process: excruciating life decisions about career, families, and children; strains on their relationships with their children and husband; the stress resulting from making and living with these decisions; and confusion about who they are and who they want to be. From this perspective, it is understandable that women should be more closely associated with BPD, a disorder in which identity and role confusion are such central components.

When it comes to BPD, emotional triggers are what we need to understand.  Most people with BPD will have a set of emotional triggers which can make their symptoms worse.  Usually it's a very specific set of triggers and these can be highly individual, varying from one person to the other.

Most kids who don't feel enough love and nurturance carry around this kind of inner rage- a rage that often lasts throughout adulthood. The people who should have cared for them didn't. The lesson to take away: All people are shit. This is why troubled youth walk around with chips on their shoulders and why they are so hard to help. Early on they learn that people can't be trusted. They often spend the rest of their lives embracing this damaging belief. Seeing the world through shit-coloured glasses, they are hypersensitive to every possible slight or judgement, and they believe anyone friendly or kind must have an ulterior motive. Despite all this, wounded people desperately want and need love. But, terrified to trust, they constantly do things to test and sabotage their relationships. This push-pull dance is well-known to anyone who's ever been close to a victim of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Those who suffer from BPD are hypersensitive to perceived slights from others and can grow notoriously hostile when they feel dissed.... For survivors of abuse, who you trust is a matter of survival. Its black and white. There can be no apologies. There can be no gray. There are no exceptions.-Scared Selfless

(The false self occurs when people are forced to comply with external expectations, such as being polite or looking attractive, when such expectations might be inconsistent with who they really are and how they would ordinarily act or feel. Over time, living in a perpetual false-self state can become extremely unhealthy as the person loses his or her sense of genuine self.)

People with BPD can be dramatic and charismatic, and they are often quite caring and understanding. Nevertheless, caring for someone with BPD is like trying to hold onto the sun: the emotional intensity of a person with BPD can singe and char relationships. Further, people with BPD often become swallowed by grief or sadness, leaving the caregiver or family member in the dark about what to do.

There is no consensus or agreement on what “emotional regulation” means – either in general or in BPD cases specifically.  Some experts argue that the inability to increase or decrease an emotional response as appropriate to circumstances is a good basic definition, while others prefer a broader definition which looks at emotional regulation as a continuous necessity throughout our daily lives in order for us to be  able to function properly and maintain a healthy “emotional system”.

Criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment A pattern of intense and unstable interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self Impulsivity in at least two areas that is potentially self-damaging Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood Chronic feelings of emptiness Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

Just as we talked about with hopeless thoughts in the last chapter, you can simply let your emotions come and go, and know that you don’t have to act on them in any particular way. In

neuroticism,

People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) struggle with their emotions, their behaviors, and their sense of identity, as well as their relationships with other people.

Emotionally, people with BPD are like burn victims (Linehan 1993a), extremely sensitive to even the slightest hint of an emotion and yet so afraid of their emotions that they seek to do anything and everything they can to avoid them.

People with BPD experience intense emotional pain. They struggle with unrelenting chaos in their relationships with other people; feelings of emptiness, aloneness, and desperation; and a confused sense of who they are and where they are going in life.

BPD also influences the lives of family members, friends, and caregivers. If a chemist were to concoct a potion that would create stress, concern, and heartbreak among loved ones, this potion would probably look a lot like BPD.

Trying to help someone with BPD overcome emotional turmoil is like being dropped into a fighter jet going full speed and not knowing how or where to land it.

BPD is a disorder of instability and problems with emotions. People with BPD are unstable in their emotions, their thinking, their relationships, their identity, and their behavior. People with BPD have rocky relationships and are often afraid of being abandoned. Emotionally, people with BPD feel like they are on a roller coaster, with their emotions going up and down at the drop of a hat.

Dr. Marsha Linehan (1993a), who has developed an effective treatment for BPD (dialectical behavior therapy, discussed in chapter 8), has put the nine symptoms of BPD into five easily understandable categories: (1) emotion dysregulation, (2) interpersonal dysregulation, (3) behavioral dysregulation, (4) identity or self dysregulation, and (5) cognitive dysregulation.

BPD is a disorder that involves being unstable and not controlled in many different areas of life.

Criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder

People with BPD often react to things that might not affect other people quite so strongly.

Detachment is neither kind nor unkind. It does not imply judgment or condemnation of the person or situation from which I am detaching. It is simply a means that allows us to separate ourselves from the adverse effects that another person’s alcoholism [substitute “BPD behavior”] has upon our lives.

Those afflicted with BPD suffer from emotional instability—in Katherine’s case, almost always caused by feelings of rejection or abandonment. They suffer from cognitive distortions, where they see the world in black and white, with anyone who isn’t actively ‘with them’ being considered an enemy. They are also prone to catastrophising, where they make logical leaps from minor impediments in their plans to assumptions of absolute ruin. BPD is often characterised by extremely intense but unstable relationships, as the sufferer gives everything that they can to a relationship in their attempts to ensure their partner never leaves but instead end up burning themselves out and blaming that same partner for the emotional toll that it takes on them. The final trait of BPD is impulsive behaviour, often characterised as self-destructive behaviour. In Katherine’s case, this almost always manifested itself in her hair-trigger temper. When she was enraged, it was like she lost all rational control over her actions, seeing everyone else as her enemies. This manifested itself in the ridiculous bullying she conducted at school, in her lashing out when she failed her test and in the vengeance that she took on her sexual abusers. It is likely that she inherited this disorder from her mother, who showed many of the same symptoms, and that they were exacerbated by her chaotic home life and the lack of healthy relationships in the adults around her that she might have modelled herself after. With Katherine, it was like a Jekyll and Hyde switch took place when her temper was raised. The charming, eager-to-please girl who usually occupied her body was replaced with a furious, foul-mouthed hellion bent on exacting her revenge no matter what the cost. In itself, this could have been an excellent excuse for almost everything that she did wrong in her life, up to and including the crimes that she would later be accused of. Unfortunately, this sort of ‘flipped switch’ argument doesn’t hold up when you consider that her choice to arm herself with a lethal weapon was premeditated. Part of this may certainly have been the cognitive distortion that Katherine experienced, telling her that everyone else was out to get her and that she had to defend herself, but ultimately, she was choosing to give a weapon to a person who would use it to end lives, if she had the opportunity. Assuming that this division of personalities actually existed, then ‘good’ Katherine was an accomplice to ‘bad’ Katherine, giving her the material support and planning that she needed to commit her vicious attacks.

folks with NPD have shallow emotional lives because so much must remain hidden, both from themselves and from others. This shallowness makes them hard to get to know, because there doesn’t seem to be much of a real person beneath the façade. This is the opposite of most people with BPD, who feel and express a very wide range of emotions.

Parents with BPD may feel threatened by children’s normal behavior. As children grow and become more independent, the parent may feel abandoned and subsequently become depressed and may rage at the children. The parent with BPD may also unconsciously try to increase a child’s dependence. Children thus may have a hard time separating from the parent or feeling competent at handling their own lives. When children become angry themselves, the parent may act in invalidating ways or rage back, thereby escalating the situation.

When we’re lonely, most of us can soothe ourselves by remembering the love that others have for us. This can be very comforting, even if these people are far away—sometimes even if they’re no longer living. This ability to hold others close, even in their physical absence, is called object constancy. Many people with BPD find it difficult to evoke an image of a loved one to soothe them when they feel upset or anxious. To someone with BPD, if that person is not physically present, they don’t exist on an emotional level. That’s why your loved one may call, text, or email you frequently—just to make sure you’re still there and still care about them.

She hits you hard and she hits you fast, and before you know it, you are sucked into her paranoid, codependent, and self-absorbed world, where nothing matters but what she needs, what she wants, and what you owe her. I cannot live like that anymore, and I cannot live as though someday, she will be my mom, because she never will be. I have finally come to an acceptance of the fact that I never had parents, and now I have half of one. Chapter 1j: The End?

BPD is a disorder of instability and problems with emotions. People with BPD are unstable in their emotions, their thinking, their relationships, their identity, and their behavior. People with BPD have rocky relationships and are often afraid of being abandoned.

One way that some people with BPD shut the door on aggression toward others is to stifle any expression of anger. Although the fear and avoidance of any level of anger has its own downside (like making it hard to stand up for yourself or deal with the life problems that lead to anger), it does help debunk the myth that people with BPD are especially violent.

At stage 1, the relationship begins with passion. You hold your partner in high regard, praise them, give them all your attention and hope or expect them to do the same. You probably,and without realising it, inflate the positives and might feel like they are “the one.” As the relationship progresses to stage 2, you become more sensitive to words and actions that could possibly hold even the slightest hint of negativity. You may fixate on the smallest of things like a late reply to their text or a missed call, and begin to question their motives and interest. This comes from a place of anxiety, a fear of abandonment and low self-worth. The symptoms of BPD will start to flare up and interfere. At stage 3, the relationship can take on a different tone again. You might start testing out your partner,deliberately push them away or behave unacceptably .You might cause arguments for no reason just to see how willing they are to fight for the relationship. Stage 4 rolls around and you will start to distance yourself from the love of your life, letting the relationship spiral downward because at that point, you are convinced that they are going to leave you. This is really painful for you. You don’t want them to leave, and they don’t want to leave you either. When they express confusion, you will hide away your real feelings and pretend that everything is fine. Stage 5 may be where the relationship ends, especially if your partner isn't aware yet that you are Borderline or just what that means ie this is the playing out of symptoms and not what you really want. Borderlines experience intense mood swings, ranging from sadness at the loss of the relationship to anger against the other person. The fear of abandonment becomes a reality and it fuels your emotional lability. There may be attempts by them to resolve things but if the relationship is really over, then we’re at stage 6, where the Borderline might spiral downward and experience a bout of severe depression. They may give into their thoughts of low self-worth and even resort to reckless behaviors and self-harming to seek distraction and relief. If the relationship hasn’t ended, the cycle may start all over again. The occurrence of this cycle and its intensity depends on whether or not you are managing your illness by seeking professional help, and if you have other sources of emotional support. The BPD cycle is not a sure thing to happen for people that have or know someone with BPD, nor is it an official symptom of the condition. However it is really very common and even if not officially a symptom ,it is symptomatic. The idea that people with BPD cannot ‘hold down’ relationships, however, is a misconception and as a matter of fact, many people with BPD do have healthy and successful relationships, especially if they have been in, or are going through therapy. Because of the intensity of their emotions ,Borderlines can be the most loving, caring empathic and fun partners. 6 “SOMEONE…HELP ME, PLEASE.” - DIALECTICAL BEHAVIOR THERAPY “I just got diagnosed.

developing a personality disorder: Living with a mentally ill parent or a parent who has a drug or alcohol abuse problem. Having little to no contact with your parents due to their busy work schedules or being taken care of by extended family, such as living with your grandmother. Having little to no support after experiencing trauma like rape, bullying, being chronically ill, surviving a car accident, etc. Being a victim of poverty and discrimination.

Avoidant Personality Disorder As a defense mechanism against feeling rejected by others, people living with avoidant personality disorder tend to avoid social interactions. This is because they are extremely sensitive to perceived judgment, as a result of their chronic feelings of inadequacy. Symptoms associated with avoidant personality disorder include: Being extremely sensitive to criticism. Feeling inferior to others. Avoiding group activities that require interaction with others. Extreme shyness in interpersonal relationships. Fear of embarrassing themselves in front of people. Dependent

Schizoid Personality Disorder A personality disorder characterized by a consistent pattern of detachment and signs of disinterest in interpersonal relationships. This pattern may also cause people living with the disorder to show very little range of emotions when engaging with others. Symptoms of schizoid personality disorder include: Little interest in social and personal relationships. A tendency to spend time alone. An inability to pick up on social cues. Being perceived as cold or aloof by others. Little interest in sexual activities.

People with BPD continually feel a dark hole of emptiness inside them. This symptom is hard to explain if you haven’t experienced it. So try this. Close your eyes. Imagine you’re about to move to an unfamiliar city where you don’t know anyone, and where everyone speaks a different language. You’re going by yourself because you have no family. Now, take away all of your spiritual or religious beliefs. Then ponder what makes your life meaningful. Now pretend you can’t do or have any of those meaningful things anymore. From now on, you’ll be living without meaning. That’s how people with BPD feel, more or less all the time. This is why they may grab onto you like you’re a life raft on the Titanic. Being alone leaves them without a sense of who they are—or causes them to feel like they do not exist. They have faith that you will fill that deep, empty hole for them. But, of course, you can’t. No one can do that. One man with BPD said it was like trying to fill the Grand Canyon using an eyedropper. This emptiness is behind the chaos that people with BPD routinely cause. Your loved one gets so angry because you cannot fill that hole. And they believe that the reason you can’t is because you aren’t trying hard enough. You didn’t spend every moment with them. You didn’t fulfill their every need. You tried to have a life of your own.

Because the symptoms—splitting, intense push-pull interpersonal dynamics, displaced anger, and lack of sense of self— parallel those seen in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), we have proposed that the four Stockholm Syndrome-conducive conditions not only give rise to the syndrome, but may eventuate in BPD if abuse is sufficiently severe and long-term. In less severe cases, the victim is likely to show only borderline personality characteristics (BPC). We conceptualize BPD and BPC as survival strategies, wherein the syndrome’s psychodynamics are generalized to persons other than the abuser/captor. We also propose that BPD and BPC can develop at any age, even in adulthood, as a consequence of prior chronic, long-term interpersonal abuse (Graham and Rawlings 1991).

Most parents have enough on their plate than to worry about making their own lives even more complicated than they already are.

Getting feedback that mirrors how you think or feel about yourself can be comforting; it might make you feel as if things make sense. In contrast, hearing something that does not fit your experience can be jarring and upsetting. Even people who have negative thoughts about themselves would rather hear negative things than positive things about themselves