The ups and downs of living with a personality disorder can be mind boggling. There’s no wonder that the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) gets confused with Bipolar Disorder when a person exhibits the “hot and cold” or “roller coaster” emotions. Behind the ups and the downs is a person who just wants to be in control of their emotions.
Two of the main drivers for BPD are the desire for attention which the inner disdain makes impossible. The book “I Hate You–Don’t Leave Me”[1] talks about how people suffering from BPD want to have meaningful interpersonal relationships, but they do not see themselves as being worthy.
Katy Perry’s song Hot N Cold talks about being “hot and cold”. Going from “yes” to “no” and this is the reality of living with BPD. You love someone one, but then you feel like you are not good enough for them, so you push them away. After you push them away, you regret it and try to make up.
BPD, also, makes it difficult for the person to understand what is real and what is not. The person perceives that there is a problem and gets upset. Taking them from 0 to 60 in a seconds that would make a drag racer jealous. That person is going to go through ever emotion until they come crashing down at the bottom of the roller coaster to a halt. That moment when they realize that everything they were upset over was nothing.
The worst part is that most people who suffer from BPD are not diagnosed or untreated. They don’t know that they are riding the emotional roller coaster. Their mood swings are dismissed or ignored.
I learned about my BPD after I had been through sixteen years of treatment. I did not know symptoms were. I had never heard of the disorder before.
But knowledge is power and learning about the disorder has helped me to see where I need to grow.
My Journey with Depression and Anxiety 