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A BPD Recovery Success Story

bpd dbt skills mental health Dec 09, 2020

by Holly Marie

I always knew there was something different about me.

I loved deeply, got attached quickly, and suffered greatly at the slightest rejection. I had suicidal ideation at least once and month, and cut myself on a daily basis. My friends were concerned. My family was distraught. No one knew what was going on with me.

It was about 6 years ago, when I was first diagnosed. It was right after the most traumatic thing, which could happen to a first year special education teacher, happened. I’m not going to get into that now, but know that it played a role in my final diagnosis. “You have borderline personality disorder.” Those were the words of my therapist of one year, Sarah.

I felt quick relief, and sudden despair. Thoughts of, “Oh, what a relief! There is really something wrong with me”, changed to, “you mean this is something that has no easy fix like medication?”

Borderline personality disorder, or BPD as it is known for short, is...

Mental Health and Curating Your Space

guest blog home mental health Dec 08, 2020

You get up in the morning. Your sleepless night, tossing and turning, has left you tired and drained. Isn’t sleep suppose to give you energy? Whatever, you’ve never been a morning person anyways.

You sit up, and in that moment, you dread getting out of bed. The pile of clothes on the floor looks like a mountain, your dresser has random objects on it, perhaps makeup, wallet, keys, unopened mail from 6 months ago. You sigh as you dread getting ready for work or school. You somehow manage to make your way to the kitchen to make yourself some coffee. You look in the sink and there’s a pile of dirty dishes, the counter isn’t clean from preparing dinner the evening before, and there are no clean mugs for your coffee. You decide you’re going to spend $8 on a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks drive through on your way to work instead. Then you decide to do something nice and buy coffee from a local coffee shop instead of Starbucks. Support small...

How To Stop An Argument

healthy conflict relationships Nov 10, 2020

Are you hitting a brick wall when it comes to disagreements with someone you love?

Here's how to turn the argument into a peace talk:

Forcing someone to agree with you or admit they are wrong will leave you stuck in a battle you can't win. You can yell, scream, plead, threaten, and pout... but nothing you do will get them to budge an inch. And you're left feeling frustrated and defeated.

If you are sick and tired of arguing without coming to an agreement, I've got three simple steps for you to turn things in your favor.

1. Actively show that you are listening

It's more about what you are communicating with your BODY LANGUAGE than what you are communicating with your words. Make eye contact with the person. Wipe that scowl off your face and show with your facial expression that you TRULY CARE about what they are saying and thinking. After all, isn't this how you want them to...

Threatening To Leave A Relationship As A Coping Mechanism

healthy conflict relationships Sep 15, 2020

Threatening to leave a relationship every time you argue? That was me.

I wrestled with the idea that I could disagree with someone, even be angry with them... and still love and care and want a relationship with them. One disagreement and I would be packing my bags.

Short-term, I would feel free and liberated. I would go do all the things I "couldn't" do because I had been in a relationship.

Long-term, I would get lonely again and come crawling back to the same relationships, over and over again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That's no longer how I deal with conflict in my relationships. But I remember when it was the ONLY way I dealt with conflict.

Why I Would Threaten to Leave:

Small problems can build up over time. Whether it was because I was too infatuated to care about the problems, too busy to address them, or too confused about how to go about solving them... they would continue to built up until they exploded. An argument would ensue, angry words...

Beginner's Guide To Mindfulness

bpd dbt skills mental health Aug 03, 2020

A beginner’s guide to mindfulness couldn’t possibly teach you everything you need to know in order to master the art. Yet even a very basic understanding can give you amazing insight into your thoughts and emotions. Here are a few quick steps to get you started.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is waking up from the distracting influences of life in order to experience it in full. For example, distractions can include things like overwhelming emotions, addictive urges, negative thoughts, and even physical pain. We gain freedom by living in the present moment without judging ourselves or our experiences, and without pushing emotions away by numbing or suppressing them.

How do I begin doing this?

Thankfully, the process is quite simple. The hard part is practicing often enough that the habit of controlling attention becomes second-nature. There are three basic steps:

Bring all of your attention to focus on one thing. Notice...

The #1 Tip To Stop Self-Injuring

bpd dbt skills Aug 03, 2020

It’s not easy to stop self-injuring on your own, but there are a few quick tricks you can use to catch those urges before acting on them. All emotional responses can motivate us to do things, but sometimes these things aren’t great for us in the long-run. So how do we stop ourselves from acting on these urges when they are SO STRONG? Here’s my #1 tip to stop self-injuring before it happens.

Change Your Body Temperature to Stop Self-Injuring

It sounds too simple to be true, but simply by changing your body temperature you can have a significant impact on your mood, thoughts, and urges. To stop self-injuring, we start with the body.

Emotions have a physical response that comes with them. By changing the physical response in your body, you can actually produce a change in the thoughts and emotions! Changing a physical response in your body is quite easy, in fact.

All it takes is a quick shower, a dive in a pool, or a few jumping jacks to not only change your...

Why BPD Makes It Hard For Me To Accept Help

bpd Aug 03, 2020

When loved ones intervened in my self-harm attempts, dysphoria made it hard for me to see or accept the help for what it was. As they tried to remove the sharp object or called emergency services, I would scream and fight like a wild animal. At that moment I truly believed they weren’t there to help. My brain and body were flooded with the message that I was under attack.

Overwhelming fear says “this person is threatening me”

The Borderline Personality Disorder brain has trouble with overwhelming emotions that can hijack information-processing and behavior. Overwhelming fear says “this person is threatening me!” Whether it is a real or imagined threat of abandonment, the threat of being rejected, the terror of being out of control…the fear response takes over.

Overwhelming anger says “this person is attacking me”

Overwhelming fear leads to anger as a...

When BPD Leads to Rejection and Abandonment

bpd Aug 03, 2020

THE BRUTAL TRUTH

When BPD leads to abandonment and rejection, you learn quickly. Soon, you fear abandonment by all the people you love, and you start to see abandonment everywhere. To avoid being rejected, you push them away before they can hurt you. The result? No one can abandon you, because there IS no one.

Then the loneliness hits. You may or may not realize what just happened. But the end is the same. They leave and your worst fears are realized. Abandonment. Rejection.

BUT WAIT…

Borderline Personality Disorder can make relationships confusing.

I’ll be the first one to admit dropping someone like a hot potato at the first sign of potential rejection. Before mastering the DBT skills, I saw everyone as a threat to my fragile heart. If I cared about them in the slightest, they had the power to hurt me and I simply could not afford that most of the time.

Sometimes I actually managed to convince myself I didn’t need anyone. HA!

That wasn’t me...

5 Areas of Instability in Borderline Personality Disorder

Uncategorized Aug 03, 2020

A major characteristic of Borderline Personality Disorder is instability in a number of areas, mainly an instability in mood and relationships. There are many other areas of life that are thrown off-balance as well, including one’s self-identity, decisions, and perception of the world. Below are five areas of instability in Borderline Personality and some tips on how to find balance.

Much confusion comes from a lack of consistency in feelings and thoughts…

Our self-identity develops from consistent traits over time. But for the person with Borderline Personality Disorder, moods can be inconsistent. It’s difficult to determine what you like or dislike, what makes you happy or what makes you sad. Depending on your momentary mood, one situation may excite you and then the next day that very same situation will overwhelm you.

The same goes for people. For example, one day you may love everything about your partner. Then your mood changes and all...

The Brain Activity Behind Borderline Personality Disorder

bpd Aug 03, 2020

In this post, we will look into a brief overview of the brain activity behind Borderline Personality Disorder. In addition, we will look at how these processes affect our behavior in ways that require more than self-control to change.

The Limbic System

The limbic system is a set of brain structures including the amygdala and the hippocampus, among others. It is one of the oldest parts of the brain. If you can imagine the idea of the caveman, you can imagine the importance of functions like survival instincts. Also, the fight-or-flight response to predators or danger, memory, and a reward system for learning new behaviors. The limbic system uses an tricky balance of brain chemicals to perform these functions,

Amygdala and Hippocampus

The amygdala and hippocampus have been shown to be smaller in people with Borderline Personality Disorder, using imaging like fMRI scans. These brain structures are related to memory recall and learning. ...

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