The first time I went to a psychiatrist, I was mortified. I was referred for psychiatric symptoms postpartum by military doctors. 

The psychiatrist was way older and likely had limiting beliefs about borderline personality disorder. He shamed me for things beyond my control on trigger sensitive topics.

He made me feel inadequate and disempowered. 

I didn’t think I could accept help from him while being treated the way I was. So, I left the office and vowed my life to figuring it out myself for the sake of my child(ren). 

I thought it was just a mindset issue, so my cure would be to read a lot of self help books. One year I had a goal to read 100 books in 1 year. I ended up only  reading 30 or so books over a few months. That's why when I tell you I tried to figure it out myself, I really mean it. 

As my child(ren) grew, I began to get triggered by my kid(s). I was feeling agitated and overwhelmed frequently and had no clue ...

A group of seven EMTs showed up to my front door. Not again I thought to myself, feeling guilty as I saw my husband’s face saying the same thing. 

My husband just got home from a long night shift and was shocked by what he came home to. His wife, the only caretaker for his children, is in a crisis. He was stressed because he knew he wasn’t going to get sleep that day and he wasn’t sure when I would be feeling stable again. He wasn’t used to being the sole caretaker of a 4 year old, a 3 year old, and a 6 month old.

 Ideally, I would have loved to show my children how to use mindfulness, interpersonal skills, and distress tolerance but this was a crisis, which is defined by an event when skills aren’t working.  

Now, let me clarify. I wasn’t preparing to do harm to myself or others. I had just had a medication change that was causing my anxiety to act up and I couldn’t articulate, much less execute, a plan to get my own...

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...

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...

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...

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...