The Borderline Legacy

This is quite a negative post but a lot of people I know with BPD, including myself either don't drive or have a job or both. I wondered why this was. Is it because of our childlike mindsets? Our inability to regulate our emotions or our constant fear of abandonment?

In my self-help group, out of about 10 people only one person had a full time job and drove. One person had a job but didn't drive. I know people in their thirties, still living at home unable to drive. 

I fear that I will become this legacy. I am holding down a job, just about, at the moment but the thought of driving lessons makes me want to run a mile. And I live alone, but in my dad's flat so I always have a parent available if needed and barely pay any bills. I have it quite easy some would say, but I disagree. No-one with Borderline Personality Disorder has it easy.

I am scared of becoming jobless, relying on benefits, alone, unable to drive and look after myself. 

Is this fear irrational? I don't think so. 

I found this quote which is quite derogatory but holds some truth:

The boss gets painted black as soon as he says something the BPD doesn't like. The interpersonal relationships with coworkers go south. The BPD acts impulsively, not considering how their actions may affect their job performance. They are often involved in substance abuse. They don't care about money until they spend it all and need some.

This is somewhat true for SOME people with BPD but not everyone. I've been in the position of the boss being painted black, relationships with colleagues becoming damaged and acting impulsively by resigning. But not so much the rest of it.

I still wonder, why people with BPD seem to be one step behind the rest of the population. Is it their legacy? 

BPD Patients Are Being Let Down By Services

Mental health services in the U.K are failing patients. Southern Health and Sussex Partnership both had to apologise for failing patients on multiple occasions, leading to deaths of both patients and members of the public.
It is a vicious circle if you need mental health help. You tell the service that you feel suicidal but they dismiss it and tell you to 'have a bath' or 'light some candles.' THIS DOES NOT HELP. I don't even have a bath!!!
They don't believe you when you say you are suicidal, then you attempt it and they are sorry but not sorry enough and they send you home, back to danger, back to being unsafe, scared, alone and depressed.
It feels like you have to be half dead to get help. It has got the stage where you have to harm yourself to get the help!
Don't even get me started on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) stigma in mental health services, The amount of professionals I've seen who, the second they walk in the door I can see in their eyes they are already writing me off, as an attention seeker, drama queen. They don't take me seriously.
According to the NICE guidelines for BPD (that don't sound very nice!) patients with BPD don't benefit from hospital admissions as their condition cannot be resolved with medication and they need to learn to live in the community. That is all well and good but when you are suicidal you can't even get out of bed, let alone live or function in the community and the majority of people with BPD suffer from depressive episodes. Apparently (according to an old psychiatrist I saw in one of my admissions) "People with BPD like the attention and like being in hospital."
Yes, I love it! I love being shut away from my family and friends, having to ask for my tweezers or plug my phone in to charge at the nursing station. I love being sat on a hospital bed looking outside and wishing I was hanging from one of the trees.
Apparently we also get attached to members of staff, but quite frankly we can get attached to anyone very quickly and very intensely as it is a symptom of the disorder.
BPD often comes with other mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, eating disorders and OCD, so if we are not hospitalised for our BPD we could be hospitalised for a different condition. Also, the medication we take is often for the depression or the anxiety, not the BPD itself.
Due to the high impulses of BPD sufferers we are at risk of dying from impulsive self-harm or accidental death. And we often abuse alcohol and substances which puts us even more at risk.
To conclude this rant I would like to express that BPD is a serious mental illness and at least 70 per cent of people with BPD will attempt suicide in their lifetime and between 8 and 10 per cent of people with BPD with complete suicide which is more than 50 times the rate of suicide in the general population.
to point out that
So yeah, don't take us seriously, we are just attention seekers!

BPD Stigma

Borderline personality disorder is misunderstood. People think we are attention seekers, bipolar, psychotic, selfish, incapable of healthy relationships when actually we are just humans struggling to cope with an overload of emotions in a messed up world with too many expectations and pressures. It can be alienating, exhausting, depressing and crippling living with BPD but we try our best.

Extreme Mood Swings: Sudden Depressive Episode: My Experience

Low episode....if you can call it that. I don't know how to describe it. It came over all of a sudden, out of the blue like a dark cloud on a sunny day. Suddenly I want to be dead, to sleep, to feel nothing. I feel nothing, but a painful kind of nothing, not sadness, this isn't sadness. This is something more.
It is the BLACK DOG. It is depression. It is a depressive episode. I don't know how long it will last, hopefully a few hours, not days, not weeks, or months, or years.
I am stuck in treacle, I can't move, even typing these words is too much. The light is too bright. I want to be in the dark in a fetal position, under a blanket, warm, away from the world.
What do I do? Do I give in to the demon telling me I am pathetic and better off dead and find a way, in this safe, restricted envrionment, to kill myself? Do I go to sleep? Do I take a sedative? Do I read a book, but how do I read when words don't make sense and they just move around in order. Do I listen to music? But sad songs make me cry and happy songs annoy me.
Do I lie on my bed staring into thin air and let the feeling pass?
Chocolate. Books. Dogs. Music. Things I love. Right now, chocolate is poison, books are annoying, dogs are ugly and music is too loud, too stimulating.
I will have to ride the wave....an emotion can only last for so long, so I have been told, so I will ride the wave....it is at it's peak, but it will dip, it will come crashing down, back to the shore.
I will wash up on the sand and the sun will shine again and life will be worth living.
These are the days, the hours, the moments, that are so fatal. These are the suicidal episodes. But I won't let them win, I won't become a statistic, a sad news story, a corpse in a coffin, I will stay alive. All good things come to an end but all bad things do too.
If it's not OK, it's not the end.
I will fight this beast, this slug, this black dog, this demonic monster.
Tomorrow I'll be on top of the world.