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...

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...

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. ...