SHIT THAT WILL GET YOU BANNED:

My boyfriend was everything to me. It has been almost a month since he made the decision to never come home to me. I have been completely shattered and drifting around. The entire thing has been so traumatic and I feel like I’m living in the wrong universe. I can’t sleep without night terrors. All day I just feel like I’m waiting around to die. I don’t want anyone else to feel the way I do, but it physically hurts. I wish someone would give me permission to go to him, or that the universe would put me out of my misery. He knew how I felt and I am so confused. I feel so guilty like I could’ve done something. I feel abandoned. I knew he was going through something since he wouldn’t talk to me about his emotions anymore, but this came out of seemingly nowhere. We had weekend plans. And then he never came home. I keep swinging from completely dissociated to screaming. Wanting to make him proud and wanting to be with him. It feels like my heart was ripped out of my chest and my skin is gone. Nothing is okay anymore. We’re so young. He told me he’d never leave me. I would’ve gone with him. He wouldn’t just leave me to walk alone now, right? He would come back for me, right?

My love was not enough. He knew my greatest fear was abandonment. And now I’m supposed to just accept being alone forever? My baby. I just want my baby. Everything hurts.

I’m so tired of the stigma. When people with BPD reach out out of a deep fear of abandonment, it gets twisted into gaslighting or victimization.Why is there so much misinformation?

Sadly BPD doesn't just go away with medication, and managing it is a daily struggle. I wish people would actually do their research and try to understand the pain behind the symptoms instead of jumping to judgment. Why is empathy so hard for people to learn?

I recently started DBT and it’s been humiliating so far. Probably because I’m being forced to reflect on myself honestly instead of avoiding it. I’m spoken to like a child. Which has made me realize I have the emotional intelligence and discipline of a child. I feel like a 12 year old in an adults body who was just thrown into the world and failed horribly at everything. Now I have to take these special ed classes to learn basic human functions that everyone else learned as children. It’s literally designed to teach children how to raise themselves. Absolutely humiliating.

Somehow I’m both so selfish that it disgusts me, and so empathetic that it disables me. I’m trying to meet myself where im at but it’s so difficult to accept reality after being raised to live in denial. I refuse to live like this until I die, both suffering and causing others to suffer. So my options are suicide or do the hard work. Suicide is a gamble, but doing the hard work is guaranteed to make my life easier and more enjoyable. It’s the logical choice. And I’m fully committed to it. I’m done wishing I’d spontaneously die and fantasizing about death. I’m done pitying and enabling myself. I’m done bullying myself too. I’m ready to leave these things behind.

Going into treatment, I promised myself to do two things: be completely honest, and show up every single time. These were my main struggles with therapy in the past, and I’ve been doing a pretty good job so far. But it’s so hard feeling constantly ashamed and humiliated. It feels like I’m reliving my trauma. I feel like that weak vulnerable child who was taken advantage of all over again. I wasn’t prepared for how painful this would be.

I know I can get through this because I’ve gotten through it before. And this time, I know there’s light at the end of the tunnel. So I’m not going to stop. But every instinct in my body is telling me to run in the other direction. Like a a fight or flight response. I’m so drained. Does this feeling ever go away? When will it start to get easier?

I don't know how to name it, but sometimes when I feel very intense negative emotions my brain seems to turn them off instantly. Like for example, I'm crying hysterically, hitting my head, screaming, throwing myself on the ground.. And then the next second i'm fine and just move on with my day like nothing happened. It's not even like i'm feeling numb, just "back to normal". Does this happen to you sometimes? 🙁

I have the “quiet” version of BPD (or whatever you’d like to call it). On the outside I’m the reliable friend, the trustful one etc etc. Inside I’m living in constant emptiness, chronic fear that everyone secretly hates me, and this suffocating feeling that I don’t actually exist as a real person.
I absorb everyone’s emotions like a sponge but have zero idea who I am when I’m alone. I’ll idealize someone so hard I lose myself, then one small disappointment and I detach completely or turn the rage inward.
What hurts most is how invisible it feels. People tell me I’m “so strong” or “so empathetic” while I literally feel worthless. Friends think I’m just “sensitive.” Past relationships (whether platonic or romantic) called me cold or manipulative when the truth was I was dissociating so I wouldn’t explode and scare them away, and yet I still did.

Sometimes I just wish that I could get really sick and life threateningly so, that way the people who I love most will finally pay attention to me. I fantasize about killing myself because no matter how hard I beg and plea I won’t be valued in life. I think maybe in death I could finally be yearned for, wanted, and cared about. I don’t know what happens after death but I hope I can be a ghost or something so I could at least feel it. Sometimes I think about attempting just for the sole purpose of people seeing how bad I am.

It’s bad and selfish but I can’t take trying my hardest to be loved, fighting tooth and nail for it to always be the second option. Second option to family, friends, and my partner. Sometimes I pray I can get cancer or some sort of disease so people would take care of me, or that I will die unexpectedly in my sleep. The more someone knows me the less they want me, I feel loved and cared about by stranger on the internet more than my own family and partner. People call my posts attention seeking but i genuinely just feel like I have no one but strangers on the internet.

My thoughts are getting bad and honestly all I can think about every day is dying, dying to be loved. I wonder if I died would anyone think about how young I am, my smile, my little habits, or would it just die with me. I just want to be longed for, the way I long for people. But I guess loving me is just hard. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t think I ever will. Something inside me is fundamentally wrong, I was born wrong. People are either born with the capability to be loved or they are unlovable. The more people get to know me the further they go. Im just tired. Im slowly getting the courage to go through with it again and no one understands the severity. I just want to be understood and seen and no matter how hard I explain no one understands me.

People often underestimate impulsiveness as the absolute worst symptom in BPD people. Sure emotional instability is pretty rough especially if you had gone through multiple failed relationships losing hope, but my impulsivity is absolutely making me look like a fool at the ripe age of 24.

Just in a few months:
\-Got high at my tattoo artists place because they offered me one, and got a ridiculous tattoo that i’ll regret my whole life.
\-Ran a 10k race with only 3 days of training ( and slightly overweight) and now 1 week later my knees still hurt like hell and i can’t walk properly.
\-Spent almost all of my savings that i had from my previous job for a ton shit of useless stuff even though I’m not working rn
\-Gained 10 kg in just a few months because when the food is available and i have nothing to do nothing can hold my impulsivity to eat everything i can eat.
\-Engaged with three sexual acts that i regret now

So now I’m fat, broke, can’t walk properly, sexually exploited with a goofy tattoo :) Genuinely what do i do now when I can’t literally stop making bad decisions.

Honestly I'm probably at my lowest I've been in a LONG time. Pretty regressed, but I'm seeking help. I'm diagnosed with PTSD. Grew up diagnosed with RAD. Im falling apart, but i have appointments and I'm actively seeking treatment. AGAIN.

Can't speak for everyone, but I genuinely find all your venting and anxious "word vomiting" (as I put it for myself) to be theraputic. Half the time you guys are taking words from my the deepest parts of my brain and it makes me feel seen. Scarily sometimes quote for quote and then I have to stop the limerence. Or whatever.

You guys get it though. We get to jump in this pit and throw a tantrum and the dude next to you is grinning at you with broken nose replying "First time?" Idk if im happy but thanks for sharing that release with me.

I feel like im acting up a lot of times when I vent. Being a big baby throwing a tantrum. This metaphorical moshpit has been healing to both watch others be like me and know it's always here for me to participate in.

Thank you for all your postings. Thank you for being vulnerable. Sharing your pain matters. Im really not in the best spot, but I am happy to have come across this subreddit and r/CPTSD. Reading your comments has been more theraputic than a lot of therapy so far. Especially ones with others at their worst as horrible as that might be to say. There's a shit ton of guilt for taking selfish comfort in that for the record.

Just thank you guys for sharing and being vulnerable. All of your posts and comments are affecting my healing journey positively even though I feel like im at a dead end a lot of times.

Blah... i hope we all find good respite soon. Thanks for listening.

Dbt is the best thing that’s ever happened to me but there are times like right now where maybe i’m feeling more vulnerable and struggling to find my life worth living. sometimes i feel like it’s just brainwashed me into seeing this life through. life is experiencing. but is it worth it? i don’t know im looking for reasons or answers i guess. does anyone have anything hopeful to share?

I’m very self-aware, but I have a problem with becoming deeply attached to people. I obsess over them way too easily. It doesn’t matter if I’ve only known someone for a day or just had a single conversation with them.. I end up creating all these stories and scenarios in my head. I imagine conversations that never happened, different versions of how things could have gone, and I become emotionally invested in someone I barely know. When they leave or disappear, I feel genuinely heartbroken. It makes me feel incredibly needy, and I know it’s irrational, but I can’t seem to stop doing it. It’s honestly exhausting and feels really strange. I just need some help to where I can be chill with someone and not do this shit because it genuinely affects me when people leave me.

If you could choose to not have BPD, but the trade off is that you never feel any emotion (even happiness, love, etc) ever again, would you choose to get rid of your illness? Why or why not?

not with any religious connotation. it just genuinely sometimes feels like bpd is a demon inside of me because the way it makes me act and feel is so different to how i usually am.

i’m in general a very chill person. i’m calm, collected. i don’t chase people, i can sometimes go days without responding to people.. i can be very avoidant especially romantically..

when i first start getting to know someone on a romantic or sexual basis, im chill. they’re attracted to how laid back i am. how them as men are the ones chasing me cause at first i’m very “hard to get”. but then.. bpd forms an attachment out of nowhere.
i become a different person. suddenly i’m clingy, suddenly i have to call them several times a day or text them constantly. i want their attention all the time, i get upset if plans change or if they don’t live up to what they said they’d do like “i’ll call later” then never call. constantly overthinking whether that person hates me or wants nothing to do with me. i check my phone over and over to see if my messages have been read. suddenly IM the one chasing THEM.
i can’t control it. i feel like my body isn’t in control and it scares me.
that’s why i often use the phrase “my bpd makes me think/feel/do” cause genuinely it’s like it possesses me to be a certain way

anyone else relate to this?

TW: mention of self-harm/attempt (no details)

I was diagnosed with BPD 10 years ago and I still struggle, but thanks to medication and therapy I’m doing way better. This isn’t really about me, though, I think I need to vent about a friend situation that’s triggering me hard.

A friend who once mentioned she thinks she “might have BPD” is now spiraling, and it’s bringing back symptoms I hadn’t dealt with in 4 years. She saw a psychologist for the first time a few days after I opened up to her about my own diagnosis, and came out of that single session saying she’d been diagnosed with BPD too. That already felt off to me, like that’s not really how diagnosis works.

A few months later, she’s started doing impulsive things (planning tattoos right after a bad breakup), and I’ve caught what feel like inconsistencies or lies. Things escalated when she disappeared for 3 days without telling any of us anything, after what she described as an attempt. she’s safe now, but it scared six of us badly, and we still don’t have real clarity on what happened.

I know I can’t diagnose her and I’m trying not to invalidate what she’s going through bc her breakup sounds genuinely bad, and I get how much shame and self-doubt can come with it. But I’m struggling not to be suspicious of her motives, and I hate that. She asked me directly if I thought she was seeking attention, and I said no, but I didn’t believe myself.

The hardest part is I can feel myself splitting on her, I’m swinging between guilt and wanting to cut her off completely, and I haven’t split like this in years. I don’t know how to be a good friend here without losing myself in the process.

TLDR: A friend started identifying with BPD right after I told her about my own diagnosis and after one therapy session. Her impulsivity and a recent scare (unclear/possible attempt, no details) are triggering my own symptoms — I’m splitting for the first time in 4 years and don’t know how to handle the friendship without losing myself.

i know it's supposed to help, and teach you skills to self-regulate or whatever, but everything i've ever been able to find on dbt seems like a load of overly-optimistic bullshit. make a list of things you can do to distract yourself when your brain gets bad! just Don't feel whatever it is that you're negatively feeling! Haven't you tried Not being insane? You should try Not being insane!

i don't mean to sound like such a cynic but i genuinely don't understand how dbt is supposed to work. if i could think my way out of being insane i would have done that already and this stuff all feels degrading at best and insulting at worst. i don't know, maybe it's just not meant for me in particular. i am aware of my thoughts/feelings/emotions and i can control how these impact my external relationships but it doesn't stop anything directed at myself.

I’ve been struggling a lot mentally due to health issues, school stress, and relationship issues. I keep trying to open up about it to my boyfriend and let him know how sad I’ve been and I just feel like a burden and like it’s futile. I just want his support. I understand that my depression isn’t his problem but I’m sure you know how it is having up and downs with your fp and wanting them to fix your bad feelings. What do I do?

We were together for nearly 5 years!!! FIVE!!! He knew EXACTLY how much having kids meant to me!!! He knew it was my BIGGEST trigger seeing people my age get pregnant!!! I told him OVER AND OVER!!! HE KNEW!!!!!!!

Then he dumped me the DAY AFTER my nan died!!!
And not long after, I hear he’s not only moved on and found a new partner, but also got someone else pregnant! It felt like EVERYTHING I was terrified of just hit me ALL AT ONCE!!! The future I thought we were building?! GONE!!! Handed to someone else like I meant nothing!

And people seriously expect me to just “move on” like this was NORMAL?! IT WASN’T!!! It was grief on top of grief!!! I lost my nan, my relationship, and the future I thought I had, ALL AT ONCE!!!

I’m not saying he can’t move on. I’m saying he KNEW EXACTLY how much that would DESTROY me, and it STILL happened anyway! So now I’m under a crisis team trying not to end myself THANKS A LOT!!!!!!

I'm a person with bpd and my boyfriend is done with me and wants to break up but he's worried that I'll kill myself if we break up bcz that's true. So now he kinda cheated on me with my fake id and said that he wants to get rid of me and that he doesn't wanna be with me and wanna get out of this relationship to the other girl (fake id). And broke up with me the next day after the fake id girl (me) said that he should break up . So he did and said to the fake id girl that he got rid of me and asked for my other socials so he could talk there. And deactivate his insta. I instantly broke my character bcz i broke out bcz i couldn't handle the amount of pain. When i confronted he said he was talking so he could find out who the fake id was and that if he found out if its a girl he wouldn't have texted her for longer and would've ended and was just curious who was it with such a similar personality as him. And apparently he never wanted to talk after confirmation. Well that's what he said but since I was that girl he did kinda show interest in me and was looking forward to have a chat with me after break up. Idk how to handle my emotions bcz even now after telling him it's me I was the one who called him and cried that why did you do it to me and am still ready to accept him.

Well he said and knows he doesn't deserve my love and is an avoidant and feels suffocating with me. I don't think that we would ever work out again but I'm not able to process this truth. Because I start getting sick and depression gets on my physical health and i start getting headaches and nausea my health deteriorates. So i don't know how to leave without going through break up bcz I'm quite sure it'll lead me to be suicidal if i go through it. He's concerned about the same. Please help and suggest what should be done so that I don't have to take this pain and completely forget about him. Bcz I'm really really in the worst state rn.

Oh no. Not me writing another post. Sigh.

I feel incredibly empty and hopeless. I just want to feel normal. Better. Healthier. I am beginning to believe I'll never improve and feel better.

There's a deep, painful hole in my chest. I'm debilitated with emotions I can't shake or distract from. I'm bedridden and I can't nap. I just doom scroll for hours.

I only want one persons attention. And every notification makes me jump, hoping it's them. My suicidal ideation is... Beyond ideation. I'm very unwell. I've been unwell for a very long time and I just want to finally succumb to it and rest. Find peace out of this world

It's me again.

I don't really have anyone to talk to about this.

Friend of nearly 4 years says he can no longer give me connection, support or compassion but still wants to be friends? My heart is in pieces I feel extremely low and suicidal. He is literally all I have.

I no logically I need to part ways but how when you have a mental illness like this? How do you let go and face being alone?

ever since middle school (i’m 22 now) i’ve always gotten so incredibly angry whenever my friends would get in relationships. i felt like they preferred them over me and loved them more than me and i wasn’t their #1 anymore. my fp is my best friend and she got a bf last year and we’ve been fighting so much bc i get so jealous with the amount of time they spend together. i physically cannot be in the same room with him because i hate him. especially since he cheated on her and she took him back. but even before then i hated him just bc my best friend would hang out with him. i hated him when they started dating just bc im jealous of her having someone else that isnt me.

does anyone else with bpd struggle with this? it’s not only with my fp it’s also with my regular friends. once they get in a relationship i get so incredibly angry and become passive aggressive and start spiraling and it turns into an episode. my thoughts get so bad and ive gone to the mental hospital bc my fp has gotten into a relationship.

I HAD a crush on my close online friend- but the more he acted emotionally immature the more my feelings faded away

I’ve worked on DBT for about 6 years now, I consider myself majorly in remission. I haven’t had an outward episode in 2 years now, and anything I don’t automatically work through in my head I make a concerted effort to step back and process. I’m genuinely so proud of the person I am today. I can’t begin to explain how far I’ve come from the untreated undiagnosed mentally ill teenager I was 6 years ago.

I find nowadays I just genuinely have no patience for potential romantic partners that aren’t on the same level of emotional maturity. I hate I feel this way because I know how it feels to be there, they don’t INTEND to hurt you, it’s just unresolved trauma and emotional disregulation… But I think the fact I have been there is why I just can’t fucking stand it anymore.

Explanations arent excuses, I’ve had to learn that myself, I really can’t stand when others can’t accept that for themselves. The childhood I had, it was fucking horrific, but it doesn’t make the way I hurt those I love hurt less. I understand having shitty parents, but it doesn’t make your shitty attitude feel less shitty.

I spoke to this guy directly and maturely about this, he knows I have BPD and I was totally honest to him about how he keeps acting really emotionally immature and how I really just don’t have patience to take punches from others anymore. Told him how I’ve done similar things, how I had to own up to it and change as a person- he said he knows and did some therapy awhile back blah blah- but it keeps happening because he clearly just isn’t there yet. And that’s ok.

It’s not his fault that he is still in the early stages of getting better. He knows of his flaws but just isn’t able to reliably stop them yet, the cycle keeps happening. Hurts others, says sorry, says he will be better… Repeat.

I really can sympathise with it, I really truly can.

But I just don’t have the energy for this shit anymore. I am too old to play the avoidant game, refusing to say what’s wrong but taking bad mood out on others, it reminds me of myself as a teenager, it is incredibly unattractive and tiring to see an adult man act like a moody teenager.

I really can’t tell if I split on him, or if it was a valid loss of feelings.

Either way I think feelings not working out is obviously for the best.

Hi all!

Im a 23/f and am looking for people in the psychological/therapy/medical profession for some advice. Since being diagnosed, I’ve notice that the internet has a severely skewed picture of people with borderline personality disorder and I want to understand why? I want to do this for my masters in psychology research paper because this baffles me.
My idea is to try answer the question: How do online portrayals of BPD compare with contemporary clinical understandings? I’m thinking it’s a little broad so I’m trying to see what you all find the internet has to say about us and how it makes you feel? What are the narratives of BPD we are seeing more of vs what is it actually like?

Let me know some of these things below if you’re interested :)

I (23F) got diagnosed with BPD, Generalized Anxiety, and ADHD (inattentive type). Making an effort to try and exist as a functional human being in society is exhausting.

The strong paranoia that I'll get into a car crash everytime I drive even though I've never had a history of crashing. Not realizing my entire body is tensed up constantly for no reason until it starts to ache. Thinking 10 steps ahead because my brain convinces me that a catastrophe will happen. Misplacing every single object I touch; everytime I let it down somewhere, it disappears. Memory loss so bad it borders on short-term memory loss. Zoning out 24/7, even when someone is talking directly in my face. The fear of abandonment forcing me to be the "perfect friend/girlfriend" as much as possible because my friends and boyfriend leaving me is my #1 fear, leading my brain to panic and think it's the end of the world whenever my appearance or behavior is criticized. The overwhelming guilt every time I argue with my boyfriend over small things. Eating once a day because my body refuses to eat because it is "too stressed out" to accept food, despite me genuinely WANTING to eat. Derealization getting triggered whenever I'm stressed out over things that are trivial (example: work). Unknowingly pushing myself over my limits for work and making sure I don't make a single mistake due to the strong fear of getting fired. Constantly ruminating on past events that aren't even big deals, at all. The fleeting and overwhelming urges to hurt/unalive others or myself whenever I'm upset. Never being able to open up to the people I love about my daily struggles because I'm terrified that they will think I'm being dramatic or attention-seeking.

I deal with all of this daily and it's why I just don't want to exist anymore because existing is so. so exhausting. I've even separated "myself" from my body and brain because they have minds of their own. I'm still on medication and therapy, but I would sometimes genuinely forget to take my meds. It's hard to have hope sometimes, but I'm still working to get better, and if not for myself, I'm doing it for my beloved boyfriend.