0 
0 By Jody Elford
In a move to explore my recent diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD or EUPD), I decided to begin a series of babbles about how the diagnostic criteria have manifested in my experiences. My hope is to plant seeds of introspection that will facilitate reflection on my experiences, so that I can begin compartmentalising my symptoms and start to understand myself more fully for who I am.
The introductory babble is here, and I’ll write a babble about each of the diagnostic criteria. Number one is ‘Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.’
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
One of the huge pointers to Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is the sufferer’s preoccupation with rejection and abandonment.
Because Borderline people* are so very sensitive and often deeply intuitive, we notice the smallest changes in our interpersonal relationships. This can make us sensitive, attentive and emotionally intelligent. But it can also make us obsessive, jealous, paranoid, fearful and intense. Noticing changes in relationships and attitudes is healthy and helpful. Perceiving those changes as personal rejections or abandonment isn’t. That’s how BPD messes with our relationships, putting strain on them.
(*I know some people resent terms like ‘a borderline’, ‘borderline people’, ‘borderline behaviour’, but I don’t so I’ll be using it. If it offends anybody, I’m sorry, but I’m still using it)
If you were to take it upon yourself to leaf through the social history of someone with BPD, you would likely discover numerous interpersonal relationships that were turbulent. Often they were intense, involved and, frequently, short-lived. I have only had one singular adult relationship, and as it has remained strong and (relatively) healthy since 2009, I didn’t really think this applied much to me. What I didn’t consider, however, is the way my sense of clinginess and intensity about friends in the past might be suggestive of this kind of fearful attachment.
Fearful attachment
When I was young, I went through a phase of calling out well into the night. I would call out to my mother, especially, to check that she was still there and seek validation that she loved me in return. I have babbled about this before, also touching on a short phase of purposely bed-wetting so I could legitimately wake my parents. This kind of behaviour isn’t uncommon, but it can suggest an attachment problem. It’s only as an adult looking back that I wonder where it came from. I have my suspicions, but I suppose I’ll never know for certain.
It is simply a core belief I cannot shake – that I am forgettable. Leave-able. Never the most important person. Even when it is quite demonstrably false, this powerful belief at my centre impacts on all my attachments in ways that, until recently, I failed to notice.
I imagine it must be deeply frustrating, even upsetting, for people to hear their loved one claim with no small amount of certainty that nobody cares about them. I would certainly feel pretty hurt if someone I love implied that I didn’t care much and would inevitably forget them. Really, I can see why people find it difficult – maybe even offensive.
What’s important to bear in mind is that part-and-parcel of BPD is a sense of self-loathing and a distinct lack of identity. I feel it goes hand in hand with the sense that I am easily left, forgotten or pushed aside.
Feeling left out
Literally everyone I know has experienced being in a group and ending up walking behind. We are left trying to keep up and remain part of the conversation but finding it hard. I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t experienced being talked over so many times they simply give up talking and feel silently devalued. Assertive people who do not lend themselves to being ignored, perhaps, are one exception I can think of, or people who simply don’t really care enough about the approval of others to even notice. We have all experienced, surely, feeling ‘left out’ or forgotten, right? This is not exclusively a BPD trait, by any means.
Whether a BPD sufferer thrives or starves, however, is dictated heavily by the approval, inclusion and validation they receive from others, particularly people they value highly. I care very deeply – too much – about a person’s perception of me and my importance in their life.
The fear is engulfing
Strangely, I don’t really need everyone to like me. I don’t really care about that much. What I find myself mainly concerned with is what people perceive of me, and whether that is something I want to perpetuate, or not. So they think I’m tough and cold? That’s okay, good. Does someone think I’m wry and funny? Great. Someone thinks I’m a curt but pleasant professional? Brilliant. Quiet? Fine. Bubbly? Okay, if you insist. A party animal? A clown? A flirt? I’ll take all that. If I dislike someone, I even enjoy them disliking me.
But the fear of being thought of as dishonest? Unprofessional? Rude? A liar? Incompetent? Destructive? Boring?
It’s enormous. The fear is engulfing. To my BPD brain these are not opinions, but facts. If someone thinks I’m lovely and clever and wonderful, that’s great. It’s their belief about me. But if someone suggests I am incapable or a liar – those are not things one can simply have an opinion on. They are facts, or they aren’t, and the notion of someone believing those things about me makes me feel ill.
I digress – I’m crossing over slightly into number three: Identity disturbance; markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. I’ll leave that for another day.
Fear of rejection
I guess it’s because the horror of being a lonely, forgotten reject ties in with the Borderline’s identity so much. We require validation and approval from those we love or admire. It’s because we require those things – just to feel like real and worthwhile humans – that the idea of being without them is terrifying.
1in4 UK Book Store:
[amazon_link asins='1977009336' template='ProductGrid' store='iam1in4-20' marketplace='US' link_id='ffcb5f04-1297-11e8-8b2c-c721ea9703cc']
It seems to me that the Borderline’s very sense of self is directly linked – I’d go as far as to say dependent on – the acceptance, love and approval of others. We literally create ourselves on-the-hoof, with the foundations laid by how others perceive us.
Imagine, if you will, planning your birthday party. Not a big affair, just something like a meal or drinks to celebrate your day. You create a Facebook event and invite all your friends. Amongst a handful of positive RSVPs, a couple send you messages stating ‘So sorry! Busy that night already!’ and ‘Am working, sorry – have a great time!’
To a non-BPD person, this is hardly anything to be concerned by. A couple of people can’t come – so what? There are other people coming, and you’ll have a nice time with them anyway, right? Even if your very best friend can’t attend, as gutted as you’ll be, you’ll still go out with everyone else and have a great time without much worry about it.
To a Borderline, things like this are apt to be much more upsetting. Every time someone RSVPs ‘no’ is another confirmation that people simply don’t care, a confirmation of not being important enough, of not truly being liked or of people just pretending they cannot come so they don’t need to.
Personally, if my favourite people, or ‘FPs’ – I’ll get to FPs in another post – can’t come, I get very upset and want the whole event cancelled. I’m not joking. I literally plan my events, however small, around the availability of my FPs, to avoid all the dramatic tantrums and gnashing of teeth. I simply can’t tolerate the perceived rejection of people I idolize.
Wounded and stressed out
Of course, people finding themselves unable to attend your birthday party are not rejecting you. But with BPD no amount of rational thought will help you feel any better. You can, for all intents and purposes, even appear nonplussed and sensible about the whole affair, when actually you feel like you could just as well kill yourself and the people you love most in the whole world would barely notice. It’s all very dramatic.
An important take-home concept here is ‘perceived rejection or abandonment’. A frustrating facet of BPD is that an interpersonal conflict or breakdown doesn’t even need to be real to affect us. A rejection that is totally imaginary can have an equally negative impact as a genuine one. Bearing in mind that the BPD sufferer is someone with astounding sensitivity to the slightest changes of any kind in a relationship, it’s not surprising that we are so wounded and stressed out by what are, rationally speaking, fairly unimportant things or stuff we’re simply reading into and perpetuating our foundless beliefs with.
BPD sufferers aren’t always easy to love
Unsurprisingly, the continuous internal tug-of-war can make us difficult to love. When every perceived disappointment or rejection feels so very personal, and with the expectation of inevitable abandonment, it isn’t difficult to imagine how friends and family of a Borderline person might be tempted to tread on eggshells around them. When we receive the slightest thing – a full stop on a text message, an unanswered call, a failure to greet us quite as warmly as usual – as a personal rejection, it can put understandable strain on the relationship.
I do not feel at all surprised, or even really resentful, about people who have been unable to tolerate my hot-and-cold, yes-and-no, push-and-pull nature. It’s a nightmare and must make relationships with me nightmarish at times. Fear of abandonment, for the BPD sufferer, can be a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, with our intensity and internal conflicts making us frequently unpredictable, prickly or capricious sort of people.
Intensity and grave loyalty
I am someone who develops few truly meaningful relationships, but when I do, I fall cow-jumped-over-the-moon in love with people. I’m mad about my FPs and find it intensely upsetting when my connections with those people alter, cool or deteriorate, whether it’s actually truly happening, or not.
Were I on the receiving end of such intensity and grave loyalty, such neediness, so much suffocating adoration, I would take a flying leap off that pedestal before too long. Put simply – I would leave me. This self-loathing, obviously, only serves to compound the problem. We are starkly aware of the irrationality, the all-encompassing obsession and our own cloying, needy behaviour – but find ourselves helpless to stop it.
Efforts to ‘cool off’ such an intense attachment simply result in chilly, distant, prickly exchanges. We end up pushing the people we adore most, further away. Often they let us. Then the relationship is added to the list of disintegrated attachments that serve as proof for us that we are unlovable, disposable and of little value. I babbled about my senseless proclivity for growing spikes and pushing loved ones away a while ago.
It’s enough to make you wish you couldn’t love
BPD means I do not cope well with change, especially dynamic changes amongst my loved ones. I felt a great deal of personal turmoil and rejection when my brother got himself a lovely girlfriend and my parents loved her, for example. I felt replaced, muzzled out and unimportant. Also, I resented my brother and his partner for a while. I was struggling to be a sensible adult about the whole thing. I just had to try my best to work through the total insanity of feeling so threatened. Even now, it is still with insurmountable sadness that I occasionally find myself ruminating on the social changes that have taken place in the last year or so, with the creeping feeling that I am fading from FPs’ lives.
The fact that my relationships remain good, strong ones and the knowledge that the people who are close to me understand my disorder should be of comfort to me. I should feel reassured, for instance, that my best friend knows when I’m being a cactus and will simply wait until I come back to her, that she knows I turn into a cyborg when she talks about moving away with her boyfriend, and that she tells me all the time that she’ll never abandon me.
I should.
If only I did.
It is enough to make someone wish they didn’t give a shit about anybody. It is enough to make you wish you didn’t love anybody. Sometimes, it’s enough to give rise to the impulse to cut everyone off and isolate myself totally.
So why don’t I?
What stops me?
Unsung positive traits
The unsung positive aspects of this personality disorder are numerous. We can offer so much loyalty, care, love and empathy. We will work incredibly hard and exceed all expectations to maintain a relationship we value. Generally speaking, you can always count on us. A mutually beneficial relationship is of incredible value to someone with BPD. The prickly patches can be a worthwhile price to pay for a good, sturdy, communicative and transparent connection. If you are someone with the robust and sensible nature needed to sift through the abundance of bullshit that BPD gives rise to, value the human being in front of you, and be patient with episodic dysfunction without taking on water yourself, you will find a lifelong love with someone with BPD.
My best friend is my best friend because she is possibly the one person in the universe who can tell me when I’m being an arse, without me feeling any less valued. I strive to have faith in our connection and continue to battle my abandonment fears. I begin to imagine a world where she might be anywhere in the world, living her dreams (which I desperately want for her), and remain my beautiful friend. Simultaneously. I strive to perceive the relationships I share with people and those they have with others not as mutually exclusive concepts, but things that can occur at once without impeding on one another.
I’m incredibly lucky, I know. I have a partner who strives to understand my experiences and treasures me in spite of it all. My family account for my ineptitude for adapting to change and are quite simply always there. I have a friend who accepts all the love I feel I must give her and returns it with steadfast but gentle boundary-setting and unmatched loyalty.
Incredibly fortunate.
I wish everyone with BPD were so lucky
I continue to trudge through the acrid sewage of rejection-fear, and challenge my internal world constantly. It’s the only way I know how to do this, and it’s so difficult. Sometimes it proves too difficult and I find myself being an arsehole. But the connections I share with a handful of very incredible people… it’s all worth it. The brief but beautiful periods of having a sense of a tribe and of truly belonging… worth it.
I tell myself I deserve these connections with people. That I am worth overcoming the crappy stuff for. That the people I love deserve a version of me that tries her best for them.
And that is why I must stay.
Reproduced with permission, originally posted on mentalbabble
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
[…] what they represent to professionals that is the most damaging. EUPD, sometimes referred to as BPD, is a diagnosis attached to me in February 2016. This was a year many of us recall for not being […]