[This1]

There's an abbreviated version at the bottom. Feel free to skip to it. Feeling a little foolish for not thinking of putting it at the top. Or maybe just posting it. Oh well. Sorry. Oops.

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Hi.

I’m sorry that this is going to be pretty long. If you pop onto this page, see the length, and think that you really aren’t up to reading all this, no worries. It’s cool.

Just to get it out of the way, I know this is probably the sort of thing I should be bringing to a therapist. That’s not feasible right now, for several reasons. But I do already know that I really should be talking to a professional about this.

I seem to have some symptoms, behaviors, thoughts, whatever, that are associated with BPD. This is based on reading a few books, articles, etc. on BPD, and comparing myself to symptoms lists and criteria I’ve found.

To be clear, I’m not looking for any sort of diagnosis. I know that no one here can provide that. What I’m looking for is someone who has more experience with this than I do to tell me if they think I’m kind of on the right track, or if there’s some important thing that I’m missing. Also, if any other disorders come to mind that would explain the problem behaviors I’ve listed, I would be excited to hear about that. I figure, the more I know, the more I can learn to do to get this under control.

DSM IV criteria:

1. I have on many occasions frantically attempted to avoid being abandoned. On many, many more occasions, I have barely managed to keep myself from frantic attempts to avoid abandonment, because I know they’re often more likely to make it happen than to stop it. Not sure if this counts, though, because it mostly applies to my relationship with my now-wife. I think this is because I don’t form many personal relationships, because they are too difficult, and present too much of a risk of emotional pain. I did exhibit the abandonment-related behavior with the one other girl I tried to date in the last few years, though.

2. This one’s murky. On an emotional level, I tend to view people as either all-good or all-bad at any given time, to a pretty extreme extent. However, I think I remain intellectually aware that they probably aren’t that way, at least quite a bit of the time. So I’m often able to keep the feelings to myself when they are about someone I care about. So, not sure it counts.

3. I feel like I have a very poorly established identity. Morality, goals, and ideals all seem very relative to me. Presumably as a result, I seek frequent confirmation from others that any given feeling or thought is okay, or even good, to have, and have a long history of latching on to the goals, accomplishments, ideals, interests, and habits of others and adopting them (or a desire for them) because they are safely established as “good” in my mind. When they are not feasible to pursue/attain, I generally feel very bad about myself, until something else takes their place.

4. I don’t think I suffer much impulsivity. Possibly due to counter mechanisms (need for my decisions to be backed up by outside confirmation or extensive fact-checking and backup plans.)

5. Barring a week or two here and there, for at least the last three or four years I have seriously considered suicide several times a week, often daily. I have developed detailed plans and explorations into what would be the most acceptable form of suicide (this has varied over the years as my situation changed). For at least three years before that , I felt similarly but less regularly. Happily, I managed to almost completely banish thoughts of suicide a while ago, after having concluded that not telling my wife about it constituted lying to her about something important. Since I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about it, I had to stop thinking about it, and now every time the thought comes up, I’ve been able to force it away.

6. My mood is extremely unstable. I almost daily swing from happy and optimistic about everything in my life to furious about the state of my life and my helplessness to change it, to so sad about the same that I can barely keep myself from just curling up into a ball and crying (and do if I’m alone). However, during these times I am able to keep in mind that my feelings are probably completely unreasonable and are not a rational reflection of reality, which keeps me from taking all but the most immediate and least far-reaching actions based on them. I actually have a rule related to that: No matter how bad you feel, maintain the status quo. Basically, take no action that seems desperate or detrimental unless you are calm, both when you decide to take the action, and when you actually do it.

7. I very frequently feel empty and meaningless. Pretty simple.

8. I very frequently suffer unreasonably intense bursts of anger, often as a result of seemingly very minor events. I am usually pretty good at minimizing my displays of this anger, especially since my wife and I have a talk about it (not that it just magically got better, but she wanted me to calmly convey my feelings instead of shouting obscenities, and I’ve discovered that, while less satisfying in the short term, calmly explaining that I am (mostly) irrationally very angry still helps and is much better in the long term).

9. I do not think i have any paranoid ideation or dissociation.

So, as far as the DSM-IV criteria go, I think that’s definitely 3, 6, 7, and 8; 5 until relatively recently; and maybe 1 and 2.

In more summarized form, I feel like I definitely have a largely undefined sense of identity, very unstable and intense moods, a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness, an intense fear of abandonment (by the few people I feel capable of abandoning me in any meaningful way), and difficulty seeing situations and people in other than black/white terms. Also, I think I am somewhat successful (definitely not completely) at keeping these feelings from controlling my actions, largely because I know they aren’t rational, and because I have a lot of experience dealing with them.

I do not have a long string of short, unstable relationships. Largely, I think this is because I am somewhat antisocial and likely have some social anxiety. While I can stomach people in groups and non-personal settings like work (still much more uncomfortable with one-on-one work, though), being one-on-one or in a small group with people, in a personal setting, scares me quite a bit. Coupled with great fear of the emotional impact of...pretty much everything, actually, I’m not very social. Also being the sort of person whom other people find unapproachable and intimidating (so I’ve been told), I don’t tend to have many relationships, at all.

So, that’s everything I can think of right now that seems relevant. Feel free to ask questions, if you want.

Thanks. Sorry for the long post.

These are some notes I jotted down while reading your thread.

#2 Would count. We know that black and white shouldn't exist most of the time but that doesn't mean we don't feel that way. We love someone wholeheartedly. They break a date, lie to us, cross us, we hate them. And the black and white feeling stretches to morals and other things as well.

#4 Are you impulsive in your attempts to keep from being abandoned? Do you do things that would be considered rash and possiblity stuff that could get you arrested? Those things would apply. These overlap.

#9 A lot of people don't completely get what it is so I'll tell you. Have you ever gotten really angry, anxious, upset about something and suddenly you feel calm and it's as though you are looking at yourself from a distance. You become numb. You can still function but it's like you're detached from what's going on? That's disassociation. "Regular" people experience it as well; no one is immune, but we get that way much more often. It is a defense mechanism that our bodies have when our emotions go in to overload.

I cannot diagnose you but I will tell you this. More than half the people who come through here are self-diagnosed. After all, a therapist/psychiatrist diagnosis is based strictly on observation, and we should be able to observe ourselves. I learned about BPD last February and instantly knew I had it, but I was in denial until I joined this forum.

My suggestion is this: continue your research and talk to us. Post threads and contribute when you think you can. If you feel comfortable and things seem to click, you're probably right. That doesn't mean you shouldn't eventually be officially diagnosed, but if you believe you are you can start some of the interventions to help yourself way before you see a therapist, and coming here is a good start.

Welcome to PC. I hope we are able to help you in your search for self-discovery.

[AngelWolf3]

Welcome to PC, This1... definitely keep posting. (sorry I don't have advice...)

[Ultra Darkness]

Well, that sounds like bpd to me.
Welcome, This1!

[greentires4me]

well with everything you described small instances I could consider it to be BPD but I am no expert.

but an overall picture whats it like in your day to day life?

[This1]

Maranara:

Thank you for your fairly in-depth response.
#4: Yeah, I guess I do act impulsively to avoid perceived abandonment, although I do manage to keep it in check most of the time recently. I don't usually do things that could get me in legal trouble, though, at least not without a lot of caution. Too scared of legal trouble. Partly because my dad instilled an intense fear and distrust of the legal system in me, and partly because I've seen to often what can happen when the legal system gets involved in someone's life.
#9: I'm really not sure. I guess I've had some things that are a little like that. When I get really upset sometimes (actually, frequently, to an extent), I just kind of step back, and the emotion is still there, but I feel like I'm a different person controlling the person who is emotional. A lot of the time I'll just hold my self still, and not let myself do or say anything, because I know that it's just going to make things worse, and possibly snap me back out of being "in control." Maybe that's dissociation? Really not sure, still don't know if I get it.

Again, thank all of you for your responses.

[This1]

I'm not sure how well I can do a good picture of what it's like in my day to day life, but I can try.

I go from happy to rage-filled to sad over tiny things. Like, a customer comes into the store I work at a couple minutes before we close, when I'm counting the till and getting the computer ready to shut down. It costs me an extra five minutes before I can leave for the night. Some days, it's fine. Some days, I have to fight down the urge to give my two-weeks, even though I need the job and really like my coworkers, who would be in a tight spot if I quit now. Lots of stuff like that. I consider quitting both of my two jobs multiple times most weeks, just because something has happened to make me unreasonably angry.

Another ex.: Recently, my wife went to hang out with some friends of ours at a weekly activity we do. I was tired from work and having a rough couple weeks, and had other stuff I had to get done. She offered to stay, but went at my urging, saying she'd come back anytime I asked. I called a couple times through the evening, but was unwilling to ask her to come back because she was having fun. After a few hours (still well within normal meeting hours), I had gone from pretty sure that I wasn't very important to her, to absolutely convinced that I was unimportant to her and that the only reason she ever spent time with me was because I was the only one who was available, and was very distraught, wondering if it would in some way be possible for me to still support her and our daughter without having to take up any of her time at all, because if she really didn't want to spend time with me, I didn't want her to, ever. Then, she came home, and I was immediately jealous of the male friend who gave her a ride home (kept it to myself, though, along with all of these feelings). Then, she said she was sorry she was so late, had been wanting to leave for an hour but couldn't get a ride, and didn't want to have me wake up our daughter so I could come get her; also, she wasn't sure if I was still enjoying having some alone time. I laughed at myself and felt ridiculous for the way I'd felt, while knowing that I'd feel and think exactly the same things the next time any similar situation came up. (Note that during this time, I really want to do something to get her to come home, but I "know" that asking her to come home is just going to make her upset with me and want to be around me even less. Ironically, she's waiting for a sign that I'm ready for her to come home.)

Another: I generally want to go back to college, finish getting my degree. One day, I read some story about new developments in a field that interests me, or I hear about someone who is working in that industry, and I am filled with a powerful urge to immediately arrange to go back to school, right this minute. That lasts until the next day, when I hear about how some friend of a friend is making awesome money working at an oil rig, and then I think it's ridiculous for me to be trying to go get a degree that will cost time and thousands of more dollars and likely won't even get me a job. I should figure out how to get an oil rig job, instead. Sure, it'll be tough, but then I can set aside some money, and then go back to school. Which lasts until the next day, when I'm reminded about how a spec-ops-type army friend of my wife's family once made her feel really protected, and then I realize the rest of it is stupid and pointless. The most important thing I can possibly do is find a way to make sure my wife always feels safe, and I know I can't ever do that unless I get lots of special training, which I'll never be able to get. So I'm upset about that, until I hear something that reminds me that everything except helping people with medical conditions is petty, and I really need to go back to school, only as pre-med now....

I also adopt the views of other people a lot, on an intellectual level at least. Makes me a really intense yes-man a lot of the time. Because I find it very difficult to see any viewpoint as unreasonable, unless it is opposite to the viewpoint that someone is currently expressing to me.

Some examples from my day-to-day life.