Mental health stigma – Life with Charli

Living with Borderline Personality Disorder, but not a Monster

Picture taken from Unsplash

I was born with a genetic disorder, and this disorder can lead to learning difficulties. Growing up, my parents worked very hard to make sure I was in a classroom with general education children. They noticed most of the children in special education classrooms in the schools I was attending had behavioral problems, and were very disrespectful to the teachers. My parents were afraid I wouldn’t learn in that kind of environment, and that I would probably even get bullied. It wasn’t until I got older when I realized that the behavior of the other students with disabilities was unacceptable, even if they were special needs students. The same goes for people with mental illness.

I suffered from mental illness for a long time. Since childhood, but it wasn’t until 2019 when I finally decided to see a specialist for my depression. I was diagnosed with depression immediately. A few months later, I was also diagnosed with Borderline Personalty Disorder. I’d never heard of borderline personality disorder until I was diagnosed, so I didn’t waste any time googling it. It didn’t take long for me to find out how stigmatized the condition is.

But what is borderline personality disorder or BPD? According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), BPD is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) “is a condition characterized by difficulties regulating emotion. This means that people who experience BPD feel emotions intensely and for extended periods of time, and it is harder for them to return to a stable baseline after an emotionally triggering event”. Symptoms of BPD, according to NAMI, include “frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment by friends and family; unstable personal relationships that alternate between idealization (“I’m so in love!”) and devaluation (“I hate her”)…sometimes known as ‘splitting’; impulsive behaviors that can have dangerous outcomes, such as excessive spending, unsafe sex, reckless driving, or misuse or overuse of substances; self-harming behavior including suicidal threats or attempts; periods of intense depressed mood, irritability or anxiety lasting a few hours to a few days; and inappropriate, intense or uncontrollable anger—often followed by shame and guilt”.

The symptoms show that forming and maintaining relationships is one of the biggest struggles for people with BPD. This includes relationships in the work place and with the medical team. This has made BPD gain the reputation in the medical field as a very difficult condition to deal with, and even mental health professionals sometimes refuse to work with people who have the condition. All over the Internet, one can find books, blog posts, and videos about surviving an experience with people who have BPD. Whenever someone commits a crime, people would often assume the person has a mental illness. In the films “Fatal Attraction” and “Acrimony”, a in the movies are so bitter and their behaviors so destructive that their stories end tragically. The characters in both movies were considered to have Borderline Personality disorder. People with BPD can not seem to live normal lives according to these movies. The well known court case between American actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, with Heard being diagnosed with BPD, did not help with the stigma on the condition.

It was because of the stigma on mental illness that it took me so long to see a specialist for my own mental illness. In fact, I didn’t want to accept the fact that I had a mental illness in the first place. After all, people with mental illnesses are violent, and I am not a violent person. At least that was my belief. I don’t know for sure whether Amber Heard has BPD or not, but I do know that she was accused by her husband of domestic abuse. Having a mental illness does not make a person violent or abusive, and if a person has a mental illness, it should not be used as an excuse. Evil people are just that, evil people.

Even though I was a student with special needs, I worked very hard to get good grades. I didn’t use my special needs status as an excuse to to do poorly in my classes. I also did not use my status as an excuse to mistreat my teachers. In the same way I, and many other people with mental illnesses, live normal lives and are not using the fact that we are mentally ill to be violent people.

Guest Post – Don’t be Ashamed of your Mental Health Journey

Hello everyone! Last time, I posted a guest post by fellow blogger Rae from Second Chances. I met Rae on Facebook and I loved her inspirational content! I just had to get in touch! She talks about mental illness on her blog like I do, and I was so happy when she agreed to let me share her powerful story on my blog! What an honor! And now she’s sharing my story with mental illness on her blog! To read my story click over to Rae’s blog here. Be sure to also checkout other posts on her blog. There you will find powerful stories on dealing with addiction and domestic violence. Rae shares these stories to encourage those dealing with these issues to seek help.

Guest Post – PTSD: Fighting back against the trauma

Picture taken from Unsplah

TRIGGER WARNING: This Post Contains content that might be hard for some to read. Please take caution and take care of yourselves.

This is a Guest post by fellow blogger Rae over at Rea’s Second Chances . I recently met her through Facebook, and was really moved and inspired by her posts. Rae’s focus on her blog and social media is encouraging people to get help with mental illness. I talk a lot about mental health on my blog, so I thought Rae and I should share our stories with mental illness on each other’s blogs. Read her powerful piece below:

I’ve been dealing with ptsd ever since I was about 7 or 8 years old. Right around the time my mom tried to kill herself I believe it started. But it wasn’t until I was older and she fell and broke her leg that I realized I was utterly afraid of losing her. I worried about it constantly, mostly out of nowhere. I’d be scared I’d come from school and she would be dead. It was very unhealthy and yet I kept it to myself for years. I will never forget the pounding sounds my heart made, how sweaty my hands would feel and the urge to vomit as we opened the door after school. It wasn’t just then,it was when she was at work or honestly anytime we were separated. Now looking back it consumed me a lot more than it should have.

What is PTSD? 

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a traumatic , scary, or dangerous situation. The body and even the brain can change when exposed to any kind of trauma, such as combat, accidents, domestic violence,sexually assault, and even global pandemics. Often we experience something so terrifying or stressful that our brains can’t make sense of what has happened to us. Due to us not being able to move through the second stage of processing, our brain return us to the exact same emotional and physical state as when the traumatic event occurred, especially when we are triggered.

My fears of losing my momma eventually came true in 2008 and that day forever lives in my head. For years I denied that I was still living through that day. I Denied that I could possibly have ptsd and be harming myself more by denying it was happening. I would cry and literally feel like I was drowning in grief over her. I’d cry so hard I’d hyperventilate which then caused a panic attack. The anger,denial and reliving the days leading up were complete torture. The thought of being labeled with a mental illness was frightening. So I did what most people do and I kept it to myself.

There is such a stigma on mental health issues that people don’t feel comfortable coming forward. But you have to be able to notice the symptoms and notice when it’s time to seek help. Symptoms might include feeling numb, experiencing nightmares or flashbacks, and being particularly sensitive to loud noises to name a few. Sudden outburst of Anger,sadness and hopeless are also symptoms. Living in sadness and trauma is never the answer to healing. There are options and you have to find what works best for you. Everyone isn’t the same so rather it’s talking to someone, journaling or taking medication just make sure your doing what will help heal your soul.

About Rae: Rea is a mental health blogger whose focus is on sharing her experiences with addiction and domestic violence. She uses her platform to inspire those with addiction and other mental illnesses on their journey to wellness.. Click here to visit her blog.

Call 988, The National Suicide Prevention Hotline in the United States, if you ever have thoughts of harming yourself or if you know someone who does. Please check for the number of the Crisis Prevention hotline in your country if you don’t live in the United States

Borderline Personality Disorder: It’s ok to be a little different

Borderline personality disorder is one of the most stigmatized mental illnesses. People with the condition are considered manipulative. Getting any diagnosis can be freeing, but when someone receives a diagnosis with a stigma, that diagnosis can feel like more of a harmful label.

The video above, however, shows that sometimes there are benefits to being a little bit different, and that’s what it means to have BPD. People with BPD are not manipulative, but simply people who experience emotions differently than others. And there is nothing wrong with being a little different.

Mental Health: Stigma, Misconceptions, and Research

I started mental health treatment in 2020, and it has been a very interesting journey. I began therapy for my depression and was quickly diagnosed with major depressive disorder, however, I was soon also diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder after spending some time in treatment (I go into a bit more detail about my my experience with receiving the diagnosis and what borderline personality disorder is in a previous post). My first time hearing about BPD was when I joined the blogging community, but when I received my diagnosis, I still didn’t know much about the condition. I decided to do a little research on it and learned a lot. Some of the information was useful and interesting, others not so much.

One interesting fact I learned is that BPD and bipolar disorder are similar in some ways. In fact, sometimes a person with BPD might be misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and vice versa. One similarity between BPD and bipolar disorder is that people with the condition have a lot of mood swings, sometimes severe mood swings. I’m sure a lot of people have heard statements like “she/he is so bipolar today” before. That of course is a huge misconception that many people have of bipolar disorder. I can’t speak for people with the condition, because I don’t have it, but I do know that people with bipolar disorder don’t flip from being happy to being angry or sad in matter of seconds.

Bipolar disorder is characterized by swings between extreme highs and lows. The moments of extreme highs are called manic episodes and the moments of extreme lows are depressive episodes. In order for a person to be diagnosed with with bipolar disorder, they need to have experienced at least one manic episode, and the episode needs to have lasted at least a week. A depressive episode needs to have lasted at least two weeks. There is also bipolar disorder with mixed episodes (when a depressive episode and a manic episode occur at the same time) and bipolar disorder with rapid cycling (when a person has four or more manic episodes in a year), but these forms of bipolar disorder are also very different from how the general public understands the condition. Changes in mood happen much more swiftly with BPD. A person with BPD can switch from being stable to being completely sad to happy within hours. This is due to the fact that BPD mood swings tend to be influenced by events more than bipolar mood swings are. Bipolar mood swings can happen suddenly with seemingly no trigger. With all this in mind, it would probably be more accurate to say “that person is so Borderline right now”, although it would, of course, still be very wrong to say this too. There are a number of symptoms a person has to be showing before a diagnosis of bipolar disorder can be made, and the same goes for borderline personality disorder. Also, throwing the name of a diagnosis around and making statements such as “I’m so bipolar right now” minimizes the experiences of people who really have the condition.

Another important piece of information I found during my research on borderline personality disorder is that the condition is very stigmatized, even amongst mental health professionals. When it comes to BPD, I think many people fit into two categories: they either don’t know about the condition, or they do and have negative views on it. Although, thanks to the recent Johnny Depp v Amber Heard trial, it is very likely that a lot of people who didn’t know about borderline personality disorder know about it now. The mention of BPD during the trial definitely did not help with the stigma associated with the disorder, only seeming to reinforce the idea that people with BPD are manipulative and should be avoided. In the past, even some mental health professionals would try to avoid people with BPD, considering them too difficult to work with. I even came across a recent article warning people about getting into a relationship with someone who has BPD.

The truth is that mental illness and a borderline personality diagnosis does not equal abusive or vice versa. If a person does happen to have BPD or any other mental illness and is also abusive, their mental illness is not an excuse for abusive behavior. An abusive person is just that: an abusive person. Also, a person with BPD is not a hopeless case. There is a particular type of therapy treatment just for people with the disorder called Dialectal Behavioral Therapy. With treatment and support, a person with BPD can develop the skills they need to live productive lives.

All in all, one big take away from my research on borderline personality disorder is that views on mental illness are still pretty warped. We’re much more open to discussing mental illness now, however, there is still a lot of misconceptions and stigma around.