This is a bit of a rant, and it’s not really “at” anyone in particular so I hope no one takes offense to what I’m about to say.
How many times have you heard someone comment on another person’s emotional struggle along the lines of, “At least he’s staying strong,” or “At least she’s keeping busy,” or “I can’t believe how well he’s doing considering…” etc.
The gist of it is a sentiment that is communicated by virtually everyone you know (unless you’re incredibly lucky): Faking it is strong and praise-worthy. Expressing pain is immature, selfish, embarrassing, weak, and just all around bad.
Are you familiar with that message? If you’re a borderline, chances are you are DEEPLY familiar with it, so much so that you’ve literally separated into the classic BPD “parts” – namely, your fake self (fun, likeable, alluring, capable) and your real self (hateful, miserable, in agony, incapable of living).
Not all borderlines are so “clean cut” (so to speak), of course. There are many types, and it’s worth knowing which you are as it can be helpful to recovery. There are those whom the mental health world flatteringly dubs, “low-functioning borderlines.” These are the folks on a first-name basis with the cops and the ER staff, the ones who end up arrested or in psych wards, the ones self-harming so much that everyone knows about it, the ones too crippled by pain to stick with school or hold down jobs.
Now please understand: I’m not railing on borderlines who happen to have been arrested or visited ER; I’ve done both, incidentally, and would most certainly call myself a “high-functioning” borderline according to the terminology (did everything possible to hide my arrest and ER visits from anyone I knew (successfully, btw)). I am not railing on “low-functioning” borderlines and I do not really agree with the term.
What I AM railing against is the infuriating assumption that hidden pain = lesser pain.
This flies in the face of everything we do as a culture. Who gets the most attention from the teacher at school? The worst-behaved child. For those who, for whatever reason, can’t bring themselves to express their pain in ways that hurt, annoy or disturb other people, there simply isn’t much attention left to go around.
The exact same thing can be seen in the mental healthcare industry. Right now, I know that if I went to ER with slit wrists and a drug addiction, I’d be in an intensive therapy program with round-the-clock care. If I show up the way I did in 2010, terrified, quiet, shaking and feeling like I had no right to be there wasting anyone’s time, I’m going to get breezed over in the frenzy of activity over the patients who actually matter. No, it’s not really fair to put it that way, but it sure as fuck feels like it. The implication is: “Go home, you’re only thinking about suicide, we have people who actually attempted suicide to tend to right now.” Never mind the fact that research has shown those who bottle up their pain within themselves are MORE likely to actually commit suicide rather than attempt it.
I understand the logic of the response: screaming gets attention – silence does not. But that doesn’t make it any less painful or frustrating when I feel like I am constantly being fucking punished or ignored for being strong enough to function, to hold down a job, to maintain my responsibilities to others, to refrain from hurting people or breaking laws – strong enough to TRY, to spend hours each week actively working to build my self-worth so I do not get low enough to consider suicide. To get full-on pity-party here for a minute: I feel like all my hard work, all my pain, all of it goes totally unnoticed until it inconveniences other people.
This is the cycle I get stuck in and I see it in the lives and writings of so many other borderlines:
Self-destruct to get attention/communicate pain >> Get attention >> Get “better” (i.e. seem more functional) >> Get less attention >> Start to feel invalidated and ignored, like everyone’s forgotten your pain >> Invalidation erupts into painful, self-destructive episode all over again, etc. etc.
Eventually, you start to be terrified that deep down, no one actually cares, no one actually understands – they’re just responding to your manipulations and forms of emotional blackmail (“Pay attention or I’ll hurt myself”). And worse, you start to believe that you need your pain because without it, maybe no one will ever notice you again.
That is a scary, horrible, doomed, lonely-as-fuck feeling. I have been there so many times in the past 5-10 years.
Why is it all coming to a bit of a head for me now? Because I did the stupid, typical, “high-functioning,” goddamned passive-aggressive thing I always do: my parents (who only very recently found out about the BPD I’ve been hiding for 20 years) are leaving on a cruise tomorrow. They’re leaving on a cruise. I just “came out” to them with all of these mental health problems, with the revelation, in fact, that I’m feeling increasingly suicidal, and they are still going on the cruise they planned months ago. I feel ripped apart by pain and anger that they don’t have to see, don’t even notice.
And here’s where I hate myself because there is NO ONE to blame but me: Did they offer to cancel it? Yes. Did they say, “Tell us the truth – are you okay with us going?” Yes. Did they say, “We won’t enjoy this trip if you’re not alright”? Yes. Could I bring myself to tell the fucking truth? NO. God, I literally sat there lying my face off. I always, always do this. “Haha everything is fine! Don’t worry about me!” …. And then I sit and secretly stew and hate people and feel fake and alone because I’ve lied my way into isolation. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I honestly don’t what the answer is. I’m just fucking tired of the external pressure to “act okay” no matter how much pain I’m in, and even more so, I’m tired of how deeply I’ve internalized that pressure into an inner critical voice that will not let me tell others the truth or trust them enough to take care of me if I fall apart the way I want to when I hurt this much. But then, do I really believe anyone deserves that trust?
Wow. Note that this started out as a rant against other things/people (still definitely angry about them, don’t get me wrong), and ended up as a rant against myself. And that’s why writing stuff down helps to clarify things…
Cat xxxx
Half of a Soul - Life with BPD 
I feel you so much right now. My sister left to go live with her husband again, she splits the time between me and him, and I really tried to convey that I needed her to stay. But of course I couldn’t be honest enough to tell her the truth, to tell her that I was afraid of relapsing. She doesn’t even know what I’m going through, and I just wanted to be like “I need you, don’t go damn it!” Yeah, so I’m feeling pretty abandoned too. Let’s commiserate sometime.
“I need you, don’t go damn it!” should be written on a t-shirt that we can wear when, as borderlines, we just can’t get the words out of our mouths (i.e. when we most need to say them)!! My therapist constantly says that this aspect of BPD is due to the abandonment process inside ourselves – we feel abandoned/lonely/rejected so often and easily because we are not “there” for ourselves. Of course this makes total sense, but I get frustrated because saying or knowing something does NOT = putting it into action! I really struggle to take the actual step of “being there” for myself and I’m not entirely sure I even know what that means yet. I hate that people give you an answer (‘answer’) and then when you say, “Yes, but how do I ACTUALLY DO IT?” they just repeat said answer a billion times. I might as well say, “Oh you just travel back in time and fix the past. Wait you don’t actually know how that’s even doable or possible? Oh well, that’s your problem! Anyway, just travel back in time, okay?” So yep… I’m all over commiserating, clearly… haha
Hi Cat,
Know _exactly_ where you’re coming from – different situations, but same feelings…..I _know_ that I come across all passive aggressive when I’m aching for someone to ‘see’ and understand the pain I’m in, but they just don’t get it, or they say something ‘stupid’ or uncomprehending and I react badly or sulkily or annoyed, because I’m so angry and upset they’re not seeing it. And yet I also know that I haven’t _told_ them, but still – WHY can’t they see? It feels like it should be so obvious. So the lie can be an actual lie, or a lie by omission – not saying how I feel and just ‘hoping’ it will come across somehow, even though I’m clearly very good at hiding it…….I simply CANNOT come out with it – even to my therapist, it was so incredibly hard to verbalise. I feel so often like I’m skirting around the truth, being vague, but on the other hand I also feel like the cues should be picked up. My therapist _has_ failed to pick up my ‘I was feeling suicidal’ cues, because I felt simply incapable of verbalising it in a straightforward way, yet had she asked a direct question, I would have felt validated, ‘seen’ and I think, been able to answer it. There are two or three close friends who know what’s going on, and I equally cannot put it into words for them, and feel so hurt and angry when they don’t realise quite how bad things are. I haven’t been in the exact situation you have been in with your parents, but I know exactly how I would have felt – of course I would have lied too. How could I possibly be responsible for preventing them doing something; how could I possibly admit I might need them when I simultaneously don’t think it’s right to need people and also desperately want to cling to certain individuals; how could I possibly take on the responsibility for making that decision when on the one hand I hate the idea of being controlled but on the other hand just want someone to take control and look after me and be responsible and make it all okay. So often there are things I think are a huge huge huge deal for me,but it seems, at least to me, that others don’t see the significance – and that’s really hurtful…..and after that, why _would_ you trust anyone and tell them how you really feel? It’s such a difficult wall to knock down, such a huge risk to take…..
So, many empathetic/sympathetic thoughts coming your way…..xxxx
Thank you for commenting, StillHiding, and for the thoughts, as always. 🙂 God, I am just so glad the internet exists… how much more insane/alone/awful would we all feel thinking that no one else in the world understands this or feels this way? Well actually I know exactly how we would feel because I think we’ve all been there before discovering the diagnosis/community/etc. I do think it is sometimes (ok often) the BPD that is to blame in our interpersonal difficulties (like when we really do need to tell our feelings to people who actually care and want to help, but can’t bring ourselves to do so) and sometimes it is NOT us or our BPD but the other person’s genuine insensitivity. I mean the more I think about it, yes I should have said something to my parents (“No, I’m not okay” would have been a simple option), BUT it was not fair of them to ask how I am in the context of, “If you’re not okay then our vacation will be cancelled and we will lose the deposit on our cruise.” I actually think that was quite a manipulative and self-serving way to assure themselves everything was fine. Not that I’m at all surprised about that. But it’s good to feel a fair portion of anger at them, rather than just guilt/self-loathing at myself and my BPD/lack of communication…. more shortly, you have made me think a lot about triggers, cues, and the subtle ‘language’ that only borderlines speak… Take care and keep in touch, please! xxxxx
oh sorry, one more thing: I was going to say that I think you are COMPLETELY valid in holding your therapist to a higher standard than most people when it comes to reading certain cues! From what I understand, it’s SO hard to find a BPD-specific therapist willing to deal with the amount of risk, trust, and difficulty that a borderline patient brings. My question is: WHY? The amount of fucking time, training and money these people put into being professional listeners, and they can’t even understand how to “hear” and speak to those that have trouble voicing unsafe feelings or thoughts??? Something certainly needs to change when the profession doesn’t even remotely meet the needs it was designed to treat… xxxx
Thank you for replying, Cat! Ditto on thankfulness for the internet (even though it means I get far less sleep than I should!). I know there’s a lot of rubbish and misinformation and hysteria out there, but there’s also so much valuable information as well, and more than that, there’s the community and bloggers like you, people who put things into words that you may not ever have articulated to yourself, or fully realised, people who make you go ‘wow’ when they seem to know how it feels to be you and have thoughts and feelings that are eerily, heart-warmingly, achingly, reassuringly, so _thankfully_ similar. As for anger at parents…..I agree it’s a good thing, in the sense that it’s good to allow yourself to feel it and not to direct it all inwards and to blame yourself. I was never ‘allowed’ to be angry, particularly not at my parents, and in fact until the last couple of years, firmly believed that I was _not_ an angry person, and never really got angry. HHmm……well, it was either extraordinarily well buried, or I was extraordinarily deluded, or both. Both, I think…..I’m sometimes disturbed by how _easy_ I find it to be angry at my parents, and wonder whether I’m blaming them _too_ much, and myself not enough, But now I see and feel the anger often, both at them, and at others who are close to me, and although I wish I could ‘release’ it in some way (scream, shout, throw things, swear etc), at least I feel and acknowledge it, even if it is only internal and the swearing occurs only in my head! Can I say something that I _really_ REALLY hope you don’t take the wrong way, and also that is risky for me as it makes me feel truly pathetic and invalidated? I know trashing one’s house isn’t generally considered to be a ‘good thing’, but I kind of admired (though not sure if that’s the right word exactly) your ability to express the emotions you felt before the New Year, in relation to your house-mate, in an external way. Sometimes I feel so stifled and restricted by an upbringing I can’t wriggle out of, however much I think I should be able to. I felt the most burning and searing pain and anger and helplessness as a graduate student many years ago, and rather than rip the place apart, which is what I was desperate to do, inside, what was the most I could allow myself to do? PLEASE don’t laugh (okay, maybe just a little bit….) – I threw a pack of maltesers on the floor and stamped them into the carpet. So this is where my brain goes – “you fraud, how dare you let yourself believe there’s anything wrong with you, if you actually had a problem, the fact you were brought up not express anger or damage property wouldn’t have stopped you, you would have lost it, your minor acting out equals minor pain etc etc”. What else did I do, because I simply couldn’t bring myself to say anything to anyone, but I was screaming inside? I wallpapered the walls of my office with printed out pages of a very very very very long poem by James Thompson, called ‘The City of Dreadful Night’. THAT is the sort of pathetic and obscure way in which I try to express how I’m feeling and hope that someone will notice. And did anyone notice, or at least say anything? Or course not. They probably thought it was weird, but they certainly didn’t ask me if anything was wrong…..Sigh. Look, I’ve gone and made this about me again. I’m so sorry to go off on one again, and WHY can’t I just be brief and concise? I’m glad my previous comment was helpful in terms of setting off trains of thought (that is one of the things I find SO immensely helpful about your blog posts), and look forward to hearing/reading the ‘more shortly! Take care, xxxx
OK I love everything about this comment – thank you! Must reply in a private msg as my ‘comment’ would take up a whole page otherwise!! xxxx
ps if you’ve never read ‘The City of Dreadful Night’, don’t try reading it all, it’s enormous! The first and last “sections” are the best…..xxxx
It’s interesting to hear what is going on with you in this situation. I hope you don’t mind my asking this, as I don’t have BPD. But when you described how your parents asked several different ways about you needing help and canceling their trip, did you feel appreciation at their attempts? Or were you angry at them afterwards? I know you were angry at yourself for not asking for help. But how did you feel later towards them? Did you accuse them of not offering to help?
I’m trying to understand some of the thinking behind my sister’s behavior, who I suspect has BPD. I often feel like I’d have to be superhuman to even remotely help while my energy is used up fending off constant attacks and blame and accusations, and trying to scramble after constantly new bits of information. For example, she will keep asking for a thank you for something that we’ve thanked her for half a dozen times. She’ll keep demanding thank yous. You keep thanking her. I know that based on how you describe how you feel, it must be terrible to not feel some kind of appreciation you yearn for. But what would your advice be to someone on the receiving end who can’t ever do anything that is enough? And if, on top of this, you might also be dealing with false accusations (things that are provably not true), generalized character assassinations, being ordered around, being threatened, etc?
It’s quite exhausting, depressing and scary to deal not only with your own mental state in the face of all this, but to also feel like you have to be masterful at helping sooth, reassure and validate the person with BPD. Few of us are equipped. We’re picking up our own pieces and feeling like failures at not being able to pick up the BPD’s as well. It’s just endlessly hard to have someone continue to blame you for how they feel.
Hi Jody – thank you so much for reading (and commenting)!
My heart really goes out to you, particularly now that I’m recovering from BPD and am therefore being hit afresh by the realisation of just how badly I’ve hurt those close to me. While I was in the throes of full-on BPDness, I was basically too focused on my own pain to really understand anyone else’s. Now that I can see those memories from a less biased perspective and sympathise with the other people in them… well, it’s pretty awful.
My advice to you is completely subjective and based on my situation (since it’s the only one I really know) – so please feel free to disregard it entirely – but I would say:
1) First and most importantly, take care of yourself: you’re right – you are not equipped to heal someone else’s BPD. It’s not your job, it’s literally not possible, and you have ZERO reason to feel guilty about that. Your experience of this is probably just as bad as your sister’s and you deserve some help – please get some counselling if you can.
2) Don’t get pulled in (this pretty much requires superhuman strength, and therefore, a lot of step 1 to be successful). Don’t engage when she’s clearly trying to pick a fight. Don’t only give attention and kind gestures when things are awful (which can be seen as “rewarding” negative actions): rather, show her you care even (especially) when things aren’t desperate or crazy. A little card or gesture just saying “I know this is still tough even when you’re not acting like it is” goes a really long way. But that being said, set boundaries with your sister – and stick to them. The more people catered to my BPD behaviour, the more off the rails I went. I can’t really explain how this works, but basically, borderlines and naughty children seem to have something in common: the fewer rules they have, the less safe they feel, and the more they freak out/behave badly. Tell your sister you love her, you’d do anything to help her, etc. but this is something you can’t fix and she needs to get professional help. She will almost definitely rant and rail and accuse you of not caring enough, but just revert to step 1 (lots of step 1!) and DO NOT take it to heart or give in to the guilt trips. I know what you’re probably thinking: But what if I didn’t give in and then the worst happened? What if she really did hurt herself? Well I’m sorry to talk like this because it’s horrible to think about but you need to know that even if she did – even if she died claiming you were the reason – you’re not. You never were and you never will be. Deep down she knows that; I guarantee it.
I won’t lie, there is a very probable chance that your sister may not respond to your self-care with anything but panic and anger (she might feel “abandoned” by you choosing to save yourself rather than drown in misery beside her). The relationship may be damaged – maybe even severed – in a way that takes years to repair. That’s tragic and terrible. But what’s worse would be pointlessly sacrificing yourself on the altar of a lost cause; because believe me, it is pointless, and it is a lost cause to think BPD can be healed/fixed by anyone other than the person who has it. After years of professional counselling/DBT and medication, I am at a point where I’m finally starting to let go of the resentment I feel towards people who “let me down” by not caring enough. And I’m finally realizing there was no truth at all in the horrible things I said to them. I hope your sister reaches a point where she can thank you for caring as much as you have.
Sorry this is so long and I hope it helps at all. I’ve also attached a few articles that give tips on caring about someone with BPD, which are probably a bit more useful than my own personal advice.
Take care and please keep in touch xxxx
http://psychcentral.com/lib/loving-someone-with-borderline-personality-disorder/00020895
http://psychcentral.com/lib/how-to-help-a-loved-one-with-borderline-personality-disorder-part-1/0008746
http://psychcentral.com/lib/how-to-help-a-loved-one-with-borderline-personality-disorder-part-2/0008764
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. It’s important for me to hear this from someone who can see both sides now. I read what all of you are saying and I have such a mix of emotions. On the one hand, I feel terrible that you have these intense needs and emotions, and I can only imagine how exhausting it must be to try to keep it all under control.
On the other hand, I want to scream. I look back on my life (even up to the present) at all the times my sister lashed out or froze me out, then denied it, for something as simple as eating what I wanted to eat in a restaurant instead of what she wanted me to order. I hear how all of you wish people were more sensitive, that they know what you’re feeling and thinking. And I think, where would I have found the sensitivity to inuit a need, when my whole life, someone was making me feel wrong for exercising completely normal personal preferences?
That’s the tragedy of all this. I grew to believe it wasn’t okay to do normal things without feeling selfish. I even had to relinquish gifts I was given! I downplayed my own successes so as not to call attention to myself. If I couldn’t afford to travel for a visit, I was told it was a bullshit excuse. And on and on. And all it’s gotten me is someone who thinks I don’t do enough, don’t care enough, who thinks I’m evil. It really sucks. And yet I know it sucks for you all, too.