😭This is going to be difficult.

I’m not sure how to start this.

I’ve sometimes said that the abuse I received last year felt karmic. Emotions flipping on a dime leading me to feel like I was walking on eggshells, punishing me by ignoring me (sometimes for weeks) and not telling me what I did wrong, yelling at me, emotional manipulation, getting angry at me for not knowing things that were never said to me, putting words in my mouth and then getting angry at me for that fabrication, having things (even small things) be used against me constantly after I thought we had worked through them, using feelings for me as a weapon to hurt me, sending emails to keep the toxic cycle alive, and others I don’t want to or can’t remember right now. Some of these are things I used to do too in older relationships. There are things not mentioned here that I did as well. Through most of my twenties I had a poor grasp on my own emotions and an exceedingly poor grasp on how to communicate with my partners. I had unresolved trauma and I made it my partners’ problems instead of taking care of myself. There are multiple people who will never talk to me again and there a couple people with whom I’ll never have more than a light friendship, in part because of the pain I caused them. This hurts a lot.. and I think it is fair.

I did some major work in my late twenties and early thirties and have made a lot of progress. Unsurprisingly, as I start pushing forty, there is still progress to be made.

So what the hell am I talking about and why am I talking about it?

I’m talking about Borderline Personality Disorder, which sometimes goes by the far more descriptive name Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. This is a difficult topic to talk about because most people’s experience with BPD/EUPD (hereafter just BPD) is on the receiving end of the harm that may be caused by someone with it. The pain is sometimes so bad that we are called monsters. As a quick example, I had one ex of a couple months break up with me because her brother had a horrible experience with someone with BPD. Nothing had gone wrong between me and her, in fact I had been very open about my struggles and what I was doing to manage them which is how he found out. And he pushed her to leave me. Because people with BPD are monsters, right? All we do is hurt people and keep them trapped in painful cycles until they’re burned out, right?

Now, I don’t blame the brother for his initial reaction; he had been through a lot of pain. But I am not the person who caused him that pain and I wish my ex and her brother could have seen that, seen through the stigma. Alas. This was six years ago and it still makes me sad. We sometimes pop up together in the same circles and I struggle to interact with her because of this. It hurts to be blamed and punished for what someone else did.

But listen to me: We are not monsters. We are 100% responsible for our words, our actions, and the pain we cause, and we are not monsters. You are not a monster. And not everyone will treat us that way.

My wife and I had a short-notice follow-up with our family therapist in October after we received a particularly upsetting email and in that session I brought up my BPD because it was relevant to the way I was reacting to the email. The therapist immediately responded “yeah, that usually comes from childhood trauma or neglect, right?” and we continued. She made no judgement at all and it was one of the best responses I’ve received. She had an understanding of what BPD is and how it manifests and affects the person who suffers from it. My personal therapist has also responded well, but given that environment and our dynamic she defers to me and my experience and lets me talk about it rather than offer things up on her own. – Then again, both of these people are professionals, and I would expect them to handle it professionally for their clients. However, I have heard of some really shitty therapists.. – In fact one of my exes approached it like my personal therapist does. The one who had hurt me a ton a few years ago was actually quite good about this… …what an odd realization… And my wife has actually spent time looking into other people’s experiences with BPD to better understand me. That’s the best response I’ve received, and I understand myself to be very lucky. And this is not impossible for others to find too. People with empathy and hearts exist and they can be part of our healing. But we must not make them be responsible for our healing. We cannot abuse them and then expect them to stay to help us.

Most of the work I had done was in fact during the bad times with that particular ex. I knew how I could be and I needed needed needed to find a way to manage myself so that I didn’t make things worse. I tried to do a lot of the work on my own, without a therapist, and that’s not really how it’s designed to go. Having a therapist work with you really is the ideal way to do it and it’s so much more helpful. However, a phrase I’ve been using a lot lately regarding household chores applies here too: “Some is better than none.” That is to say, any work, even on your own, can be beneficial. The current pre-eminent treatment is Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Dialectics being a method by which to rationalize and find the truth out of two different viewpoints. This is extremely helpful when dealing with intense emotions like those experienced in BPD, and also the all-or-nothing thinking that those with BPD often suffer from.

I need leave it there for now, I’m unable to wrangle my brain into gear for the rest of this yet. Join me in Part 2 when I talk about the common symptoms of BPD, my personal experience with these symptoms, the pain that people with BPD are in, DBT treatment, and perhaps I’ll even answer the second question I posed above: “why am I talking about it?”.

Thank you for reading Part 1 :)