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A Living Nightmare: Living with Borderline Personality Disorder By: Angela DeSmidt - Kimber My name is Angi DeSmidt-Kimber and I would like to talk to you about what it is like to have Borderline Personality Disorder and how it has effected me, my family and my life. I have been sick most of my life but was not diagnosed with BPD and Bi-Polar 2 until I was 14 and in the juvenile system. My earlier years were quite troublesome and a lot of therapy, but I was still quite a trouble child. I set my room on fire, punched holes in the wall and tore wall paper off of the wall. Up until I was 14 I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and with that came a lot of therapy, drugs and trouble in school. My parents then put me in the system as a china and I was sent to many different group homes but it was Orchard Place that finally gave me the right diagnoses and put me on the medicine that I needed to be on. I lived at OP for about two years and then I was placed into foster care till I was 18. After I turned 18 I lived at home with my parents. That didn't go so well and I again was put into the system but this time as an adult. I was then in and out of group homes until I was 19 and then finally went to live in my own apartment. Things slowly got worse and I ended up trying to commit suicide, but it failed. My dad then got me into a nicer apartment and again things got worse and again I tried to commit suicide this time almost succeeding but someone found me and I ended up in a psych unit where I got the dr. that I kept for three years. Thru the years I haven't gotten much better and the struggles still continue. There have been more than once that my parents have gotten a call from the hospital saying that they don't think I will survive. My life got to the point where I started doing drugs and alcohol to the point where it almost killed me. On July 5th 1996 I had a heart attack. That night as I struggled to live and pleading with God to keep me alive I started thinking why did all of this have to happen to me, what did I ever do to deserve this illness, you know I have the worlds biggest heart what did I ever do, why me? You know to this day I still wonder what I ever did to deserve this and why I have been put thru what I have. Well my life doesn't get much better, in 1997 I married a man who I thought loved me to death..well I was almost right, the abuse I went thru I almost did die. The sad thing about it was I kept living with him thru all of the abuse because my illness kept telling me that I wasn't good enough fro anyone but this. My social worker kept asking me about my bruises but I kept telling him that I fell or that I tripped. He constantly was asking about them, but I never told him the truth in fear that my husband would strike back, it wasn't until I was beaten to the point of bleeding to death from my pregnancy and bleeding internally. When he finally went to sleep, I ran out and kept running until I reached the apartment where the missionaries lived and fell down by the dumpster to sleep and to go in and out of reality from loss of blood. The missionaries found me the next morning, while one of them went to call 911 the other one stayed with me and kept praying over me, I woke up off and on and I told the missionary that my husband had done this to me and to help me survive, he then cradled my head in his lap while waiting for the police and ambulance to come. I woke up the next day with those missionaries by my hospital bed and they told me what had happened, the police went after him and arrested him. My dad helped pay for the divorce but to this day he still does not know what had all happened to me. My bpd led me into that situation and many more yet to come. BPD has destroyed my family because I blamed them for what had happened to me and the abuse that I went thru when I was six to when I was 12. That abuse to this day has torn apart my family because they don't believe that it had ever happened. I also blamed my mom for my real mom abandoning me and giving me up for adoption. I have struggled with my identity, who I really am, my life and why I go thru the things that I have gone thru, and I struggle with my emotionality and the emotions that I go thru. Everyday I have to get up and tell myself that I can make it thru this day. It seems that almost everyday I fall apart and want to end my life because I see that there is nothing good in it. In 1997 after my divorce I went into another group home in the town where I now live. I didn't like that home and tried everything to get out of the home but it didn't work, until I was in their casla program and was staying there for respite after I had just had a major car accident. Well something's happened and I told the staff that I was going to commit suicide and walked out of the building, mind you this was in the middle of winter and all I had on was a short sleeve shirt and shorts and sandals. I left about 11 pm at night and the cops found me about 2 am sitting on the steps on the front of a church about one mile from the home. I asked the officer whether or not someone had called the police on me and he said that no, no one had reported someone missing, I had then asked him how he found me and he told me that they saw me earlier but couldn't respond to me because they were on another call but when they were done they just went around on their route and he came to find me, plus I wasn't that hard to spot because I was on the church steps in the middle of the night. Well that was one of my many attempts to die and not the last. Again this all had some effect on my family and a lot of it was me causing it. Thru the years growing up there were many fights and a lot of violence to the point where my parents couldn't have any any friends over or have any parties because they were afraid that I would go off and then embarrass them. The diagnoses of borderline personality disorder is a difficult one to have and I swear that the nine criteria that they use in the DSM4 were based on my life. The criteria is as follows: 1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment ( do not include suicidal or self -mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5). Well lets see.. I definitely do frantically avoid real and imagined abandonment. Let me give you an example of this for me. When my family and I go shopping I have to be within their sight or I have to see them and if I can't I flip out real bad and frantically start go looking for them or if their phone is busy for more than one hour I have a tendency to get even more frantic and I have been known to call the police on them to make sure that they are all right. 2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. Again let me see how this has affected my life... well i feel head over heels in love with my ex-husband, the last few boyfriends that I have had I have told some of my most personal details; as for friends I have literally hated them to a point where I wanted revenge and I would go about and do it. As for my family this is where the love hate relationship comes in ; where one day I would hate them and the next day I can't stand to be without them. 3. Identity disturbances: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. Well again how does this apply to my life.. I feel that I don't know who I am or why I don't have an identity and just a name. There are some days where I don't even know who I really am. There's where that applies in my life 4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g. spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating) Note: do not include suicidal or self mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5. Ok again lets us see how this effects my life. Well for starters I have an eating disorder called compulsive overeating, I have a need to spend money that I don't have for the feeling of power. So that is where this criteria fits in my life, which just shows so far that I have the first four criteria for being diagnosed with BPD. 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self -mutilating behavior. Well I don't even need to explain where that fits in my life , all I have to do is show you the scars on my arm and that will explain most of it plus all of the attempts that I have made and all of the threats that I have made also, but thanks to a very supportive team those behaviors have calmed down some but they are still very much a part of my life and no matter how hard I try they will always be there just like the urge for a recovering drug addict who always has to fight the need to do drugs. Well I guess now I am clinically diagnosed with BPD since I now at least have five of the nine criteria need to be properly diagnosed. 6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g. intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days) Well this I know definitely fits my life. My emotionality goes from the extreme to being real calm. The problem that I have is that I tend to make mountains out of molehills so to say. I can take a little thing that might not be so bad and totally take it so out of proportion and get so upset that I get suicidal, the other thing is that when I get this way I have a great support team to help me calm down when I am in those moods. This one also affects my family too because I get into that love-hate relationship and they end to get the blunt end of it most times that I am in those moods. I wish that I didn't take it out on them so much since they have been there for me since the beginning and have put up with most of my crap and it has almost totally destroyed them and their emotional capabilities to handle me anymore. 7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. I can tell you right away that this is one of the biggest criteria in my life. I am constantly feeling like there is nothing in me and that I am hollow, empty, that there isn't anyone in this body and that it is just a shell. This one hits the home the most because I feel it everyday, and struggle with it everyday too. 8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger ( e.g. frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights) I know that this one is definitely in my life because I have a lot of outburst of anger, I throw temper tantrums often if I don't get my way and there are plenty of times when I get angry for no reason and I can stay that way for a while. Now I have eight of the nine criteria for being borderline so I guess its official, I'm BPD. 9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. Well this one doesn't happen to me very often but it does when I get very stressed out and then I go into my child stage where I curl up in a corner and hug my teddy bear and then just cry like I did when I was younger. Well I knew that I had all nine of the criteria but to look at how I can change those and to try to get better is going to be one tough road ahead of me. I have one person on my support team who keeps me looking at the fact that I can be a "bad" person or a "sick" person but wouldn't it be a lot better if I tried to be a "recovering" person who is trying to recover from a illness. This person has meant a lot to me and is helping me change the way I think so that I can get along better in my life. This illness has taken quite a toll on me and on my family especially since I take most of my problems out on them. My family has stuck with me even though I don't show much appreciation for them and I don't tell them thank you and I love you enough. They don't quite understand what it is like to have Borderline but they still support me and they do care. I sometimes wish that I didn't have BPD and that my life would be a lot easier but I can only guess why God has let me go thru the things that I have gone thru with. With my religion and beliefs, I believe that in heaven before I was born here on earth I was given the choice to take this life and I choose to take it. Now you probably wonder why I would choose this, well I can't answer that but I do know that God has my whole life planned and I am hoping that it will get better. This person that I mentioned before who is on my support team and has kept the faith in me is a very wise man. Only one other time has someone had that much faith in me and it was my psychiatrist. This persons name is Ken and he has had many years of experience in the mental health field. All you have to do is look in his office and see all of the degrees and certificates and awards, you would know that he is very knowledgeable in the mental health area of life. He has done so much for me including taking time out on his weekend to come and get my medicine from me so that I wouldn't overdose because I felt that I couldn't handle having them around. He even has helped my team come up with a plan that has worked wonders since I came back from my last committal. I don't know how I will ever be able to repay Ken or how I can ever thank him but he has been a real life saver in my life. He is the executive director of a mental health center where I live and a very wise man. The way that you can help someone who has borderline personality disorder is to be supportive, just listen when they want to talk, don't try to give advice at that time until they are ready to hear it, try to set up a very strict crisis plan that they need to follow no matter what the circumstances might be for the crisis. Also try to remember that a borderline can get very obnoxious and mean when in a crisis, this doesn't also apply to everyone but I know it has for me, although I am getting much better at that point. Since I have had guidelines placed on me I have done much better and because of it when I do good I get some kind of reward, lately its been a poppy seed muffin since I like them so much. Another thing you can do to help is not to get angry if they self-mutilated or keep threatening suicide, just keep talking to them and try to persuade them to get more help, like going to the hospital to be evaluated, but keep telling them that you love them or care about them if you are a professional. I know that when I am really out of it, it sometimes takes a big kick in the butt to get me going and that is what happened this last time. A lot of mental health providers won't take borderlines because we can be so complicated and frustrating that we tend to burn out the providers and that is why a lot of them won't deal with BPD. I have a wonderful therapist who puts up with a lot of my crap but she has stuck with me and has helped me try to re-think my thinking and I have been able to trust her. Now trust is another issue that BPDer's go thru. All of their live they have been mistreated or abused and so trusting someone is a very big part of their life and to have a support team that understands that helps a lot. You know I hope that I gave you a good picture of my life and how borderline personality disorder has affected my life and still does to this day. The reason why I say that is because of my illness and the depression I have been unable to complete college or hold down a job or better yet to be able to keep friends. I have been in college four different times and I have only been able to complete one semester, but from that semester I got three A's and one B, so I know that I can do it but my depression gets in the way or I get so sick that I get my rear committed and have to be in the hospital for a while. Right now to help with my recovery I go on the internet and I moderate a borderline personality disorder chat room for people who have BPD and I have been also appointed to answer letters from families who have someone with BPD and from the consumers themselves. To do this I am hoping that in the process of helping others I will be able to help myself in my recovery process, it also helps to have a very supportive support team and on my team I have about eight people who really do give a damn about me and sometimes that gets real hard for me to accept some days, but then a lot of things are hard for me to accept. I can't understand why people do care since I feel that I am not worth it, but that is going to change since I am trying to accept me for who I am. It also helps that I have a church who is very understanding about my illness and doesn't look at the fact that I have one but instead looks at the person that I am on the inside. I hope that I have helped you understand what BPD is like and how it can almost destroy someone but yet how in a sense it has saved my life because I am a stronger person and I think that I will be able to handle more stress as it comes by, but I also need to stay on the medicine and take it everyday and to be more honest to my team when I don't take it and I also need to start retraining my thoughts to be more positive and I think that will come thru time as I work on my issues with my therapist, my doctor, and the other members of my team. I again hope that I have helped you in understanding what it is like to live with BPD and I hope that I have helped you in the most way that I can know and that is to be able to tell my story and I hope that I can give more insight to what it is like to live with Borderline Personality Disorder.
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