Borderline Personality Disorder: Preying On the Moment

- Unknown

[The following are views expressed by an individual with BPD and not necessarily actual research]

Living on the edge became a catch phrase for indulging in the moment. Then, there is carpe diem, seize the moment. The lifestyle had appeal for forgetting everything in my past. I sang those words in my sleep, when I did sleep. It gave me an identity. It gave me purpose; a flow of metaphysical jargon charged my being. This was jargon I knew so many people craved in their lives, or did they? I felt privileged to have such knowledge. And, yet, every time I quit a job because I got tired of the game, I would sink into others whom were willing to understand how bad the world was and comfort me with the affirmation that it will all work out, until that became trite and I began feeling like a bum who was using people. I loved my family and my friends. However, could never show it. But, seize the moment! After a while the escape into drugs, humor, laughter, and feeding off of any knowledge I could find all became old. There was no where else to go. I couldn�t conceive of the future and my past began to haunt me. Soon, I became wrapped in paranoid tendencies, all ego based. I felt as if I was loosing my mind, I could no longer conceive whether the people a few feet away were really talking about me because I heard the word "she". I was scared of people, and when I walked into the store I could feel my "prey" eyes go on alert, afraid (without realizing the emotion) that someone was about to attack verbally, visually. It was never kinesthetically; I was too smart and reasonable to think someone was out to get me. I entered a county therapy session soon therein. I had no money, no job. I knew that it was up to me now. I had three options: go on suffering, start my life completely over or die. I chose to start my life completely over. However, the suffering didn�t stop immediately, and it still goes on but not as frequently. In between, I entered a hospital due to suicidal tendencies. I wanted to die. I wanted the pain to end. I had no fear of death. But I had a fear of hurting the ones

To start with, forgive me for the title, but I believe we have to have some humor about things.

During my first attempt back to school, I had the privilege to write an article recently on adrenaline. Adrenaline is a substance secreted into the bloodstream and reacted to by specialization receptors throughout the body initializing a "flight or fight response". Writing this article brought back memories quick. Criterion #4 in the DSMIV states: impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). This is not to say that all adrenaline junkies have BPD, and not all persons with BPD are adrenaline junkies. But the driving force behind impulsiveness may be not only to escape, but eliminate the state of mind that we are currently in through triggering our adrenaline mechanisms using drugs, sex, road rage and such. The importance of recognizing the "flight or fight response" is that often the form behind the disguised fear is our emotional imbalance. I began recognizing that my emotional extremes were often followed by a streak of impulsiveness. On a personal note, my extremes went from speeding down the highway to manipulating people to buy things at my job to debating with someone for the sake of being "right". Yes, I have done drugs too (not proud of). All of these things fed my ego when I had no identity to call my own. In retrospect, I relied on every event to surface this extreme adrenaline surge in order to exhibit a form of power over myself, others and circumstances. So the question is what state of mind are we running from?

False Evidence Appearing Real: Raising the States

The state of mind that riddled me internally and externally, which does many persons with BPD, is fear of real, or imagined abandonment. This fear encompasses the whole being. It is an overwhelming feeling often associated with anger or sadness. In elaboration, one person ends a phone call which causes the other person (with BPD) to feel as though it is his/her fault. When I entered the clinic, before I was diagnosed at the hospital, I tried explaining these overwhelming feelings I kept experiencing. I had to keep pointing out that although, in my reason mind, I knew none of this was real, I couldn�t break the feeling within the emotion mind. This is the state of mind we with BPD are evading during our extreme escapism. Fear isn�t a singular state and it doesn�t show itself with claws and a dagger. Instead, it is based on a charismatic feeling that whispers consistently that the result of another�s action or the result of a situation is our fault. The words are so dreadfully painful; we may try to keep the person from leaving, or keep the situation from changing. What happens then?

When I wasn�t fighting my fears, I was fighting my past failures. Although, I understood your past doesn�t equal the future. In a moments notice when I was alone, I would swim in and out of my lost love or how I shouldn�t have said that to my mother, or what was I going to do to make the day go by faster tomorrow. Now, these may seem normal worries the difference lies ability to swim back out of the emotional state of failure after the thought has passed. Normally, these episodes wouldn�t last longer than a day. But, what a day in hell! Especially for others around me. These were the episodes that would lead to sporadic actions. As time passed, during my treatment I began to realize that it wasn�t the events or actions that I had failed at. It was how I was re-presenting them in my mind which merely appeared as failure. We have amazing ways of creating stories within our mind that are never what actually happened, but are the result of us re-presenting the events in our mind. But, there remained one physical truth that proved my failure: my incapability to hold a job, a relationship or maintain a skill long enough to be successful at them.

What I Have Learned About Success and BPD

Once the BPD has come to terms with some of the basic symptoms present in the BPD diagnosis, success for the person with BPD is inevitable. Persons with BPD are extremely resourceful and creative people. The BPD person has the capability of immersing themselves whole-hearted into a project for hours to learn or accomplish a task. I personally call this identity-emulsion where we find a temporary identity in ourselves in relation to some external system, person or thing. For example, the average person when reading a story only relates to what is significant in his/her own life. The BPD is not like everyone else, the job they choose to immerse themselves in cannot be mindless. For instance, standing all day on an assembly-line would be dreadfully painful. Often, we borderlines have a natural identity with perfection. The problem arises when we let the obstacles of daily life raise our emotional states or non-emotional state. For the BPD seeing the whole picture can be difficult. Because we naturally exist in the "now", all we get is glimpses of the whole. The solution is use our tendencies to always be "right" and perfect towards the whole concept of success.

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