Life Beyond the Borderline: Coping with BPD

Portrait de Julia Solimine

Having BPD has been a journey of learning and unlearning parts of myself (even the most difficult and complex ones), making peace with my past, and recognizing that having this diagnosis doesn’t mean I am a bad person. If there is one thing I want you to take away from my story, it’s to ask what it’s like to live with BPD rather than assume things.

I never had a ‘breakthrough’ in therapy like so many people talk about. For years, I floated around the mental health system, being referred to one program after another, misdiagnosed  with depression, and eventually told that medication may not work for me but I should try reading The Power of Now and see how it lands. I was finally diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) at 23 years old. I like to think of that day as my first breakthrough, both in the best ways and the worst.

Getting a diagnosis was helpful, because I finally had an explanation for why I had been struggling so much. Navigating through my early twenties felt like an emotional rollercoaster that I was sitting on alone while everyone around me watched from the gates. My emotions were deep and my impulsivity was intense, making relationships, jobs, and school nearly impossible to maintain. I was constantly reminded that these parts of myself were too much to handle, so I learned to flee situations before having a chance to fight. When I figured out I had been living with an undiagnosed personality disorder, it helped me understand why I felt so disconnected and misunderstood by the world around me.

On the other hand, being diagnosed with BPD was extremely challenging. Not because of how I perceived BPD - in all honesty, I had never met anyone else with it - but because I was afraid. Following my diagnosis, my psychiatrist cautioned me. 

“Just don’t Google it. The internet has horrible things to say about those with BPD.”

Whether it was my impulsive nature or genuine curiosity for what the internet had to say about me, I immediately Googled it. For hours I scrolled through articles that labeled people with BPD as manipulative, dangerous, and unpredictable. This made me really nervous about confronting the people in my life about my BPD. What if they think I’m just manipulative instead of recognizing how deeply I struggle with abandonment? What if they view me as unpredictable because of how strong my emotions are? Will they listen to my narrative of what it’s like to live with BPD, or will they believe the ones that have spread like wildfire on the internet instead?

Three months into therapy, I finally came to terms with my diagnosis. Group therapy really helped me do this because I was able to connect with people who understood what I was going through. Individual Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) taught me skills that made me feel confident in myself and more in control of my emotions. Using visual art in therapy gave me a new way to communicate my feelings and experiences when I didn’t have the words to describe them.

For the first time in almost a decade, I actually felt in control. My emotions washed in like waves rather than tsunamis, I no longer had to fear the aftermath. Relationships weren’t as exhausting because I no longer relied on them for validation or a sense of identity - I had finally found those things within myself. Maintaining a regular job didn’t seem as scary because stress didn’t lead to spiraling out of control.

After 5 months, I was kicked off my psychiatrist’s roster of patients. She told me I was officially ‘cured’ from BPD, but I should still look into ongoing support to make sure I stayed that way. I’m still not entirely sure what being ‘cured’ from BPD means, but at that moment, I figured I only felt better because I had been coddled by therapists for the past 5 months. Stepping back into the real world scared me - what if I couldn’t maintain control and stay ‘cured’ (for lack of a better term) while balancing all of the moving parts of my life?

As I was searching for a new therapist, I found myself feeling exactly how I did at the start - misunderstood and disconnected. One therapist told me people with BPD are flaky, and if I wanted to work with her I had to promise to actually show up to the session. Another refused to treat me altogether, arguing that patients with BPD are difficult to work with because of our “natural tendency to lie and manipulate situations” (her words, not mine). It felt impossible to find someone who would look at me deeper than my diagnosis and work with me on the complex parts of myself. I eventually started seeing a therapist who also had BPD, which reassured me she wouldn’t carry her biases into our sessions and make me feel ashamed for my own emotions. 

I’m not saying that now every day is perfect. I still struggle, and given that BPD can’t be ‘fixed’ by simply balancing chemicals in my brain, I know that bad days will sometimes come. The difference is that now I have the tools and support to treat myself with compassion in those times rather than punishment. 

Having BPD has been a journey of learning and unlearning parts of myself (even the most difficult and complex ones), making peace with my past, and recognizing that having this diagnosis doesn’t mean I am a bad person. If there is one thing I want you to take away from my story, it’s to ask what it’s like to live with BPD rather than assume things. Include BPD in conversations about mental health, so that more people can become educated on it. Considering the high risk of suicidality with BPD and the harmful narratives flooding social media right now, we need adequate and authentic representation more than ever.

Gabor Mate, a physician and author I deeply appreciate for his work on BPD put my journey into words perfectly when he said “knowing oneself comes from attending with compassionate curiosity to what is happening within.”

I would not be where I am today if it had not been for the self compassion I had to learn to give myself.

Portrait de Julia Solimine
About the author

Julia (she/her) is Frayme’s Communication and Policy Specialist. Born and raised in Toronto, Julia has 5 years of experience in freelance writing, web development, internal communications and project management. Her lived experiences and deep compassion fuel her devotion to work in the field of mental health and human rights.
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