Quiet BPD

retro_chic · Feb 06, 2021, 05:03 AM

I really think I have the "quiet" presentation of BPD and I asked my T about it yesterday and she doesn't think I have it. She said people with BPD are really volatile and have trouble holding down a job and can't even have relationships with family members (which isn't me).

I think I did a bad job explaining why I think I have it because I was nervous and I wasn't able to articulate myself properly. I found this article (linked below) that literally describes me perfectly so I'm still not convinced I don't have BPD. I have every symptom listed in it.

Do You Have "Quiet BPD"? | Psychology Today Australia

I don't want to keep bringing it up but I'm wondering if I should read this article to T next session as I don't think I was able to explain myself very well last time. This is something that has bothered me for a while and I only have three sessions left before T goes on maternity leave. I would really like to get to the bottom of this before she goes.

jeremiahgirl · Feb 06, 2021, 07:26 AM

retro_chic, ty for the article link it was very interesting, I see myself in a few ways. Though I have been dx with BPD I’ve rarely broken it into types; though I’m aware there’s types I’ve never thought seriously if I fit in a type, besides the impulsive type. I say that loosely because I don’t fit all aspects of impulsiveness.

When looking at the “quiet bpd” I also see glimpses of myself. I’m not sure if I should address this with my T because he doesn’t like using dx’s as a crutch. On the other hand I do see myself in the quiet bpd with other aspects of the original understanding of BPD. It’s a mixed bag it’s has many facets and it’s a difficult condition to grasp.

Deilla · Apr 19, 2021, 11:18 AM

I recently came across the types of BPD. I think I fall into the "Quiet BPD" category. I'm not really volatile with others. Mainly I act inward. I'm very self-critical when things go wrong. I always blame myself. My therapist says I have some traits but she thinks I am MDD with attachment disorder. I am constantly thinking of harming myself, so I don't think I should ignore a BPD diagnosis. I can't function. I'm not able to work and I go from one thing to the next all the time. I don't know what my purpose is and I'm always losing people. I'm about to run out of people to lose.

MsLady · Apr 26, 2021, 12:55 AM

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She said people with BPD are really volatile and have trouble holding down a job and can't even have relationships with family members

It sounds like your therapist doesn't understand what QBPD is. I'd bring in the article and explain further.

Interesting read. I saw a lot of myself in some of this, too.

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Symptoms of Quiet BPD

People with Quiet BPD drive blame onto themselves. If your friends get angry, you immediately feel you have done something wrong, even when there is no apparent connection.

You may have symptoms of social anxiety, harshly scrutinizing everything you say or do, then criticizing yourself for it.

You hide how you truly feel. All your life, you have learned how to hide your true feelings. This may be because you grew up in a household where the expression of your needs and emotions was not allowed. Through social conditioning, you were led to believe that only the "happy, calm, and normal" version of you would be accepted. So no matter how much you are suffering on the inside, you hide it.

You appear high functioning. Many people with Quiet BPD appear independent, successful, and high functioning.

When it comes to your close relationships, you do not feel connected.

You might have adopted the pleaser role in your family of origin, at a time when you had no choice but to be a compliant helper to survive. It is not a conscious desire, but you continue to prioritize being liked over being respected, and panic when others seem to be angry at you or disagree with you.

You isolate yourself to cope with social anxiety. Being in a social situation evokes enormous anxiety for you. Since it is easy for your buttons to get pushed, you know you are prone to feeling hurt, humiliated, or ashamed. Compared to others who seem thick-skinned, you walk around with a third-degree burn and no protection. Eventually, it seems easier to withdraw.

When you have Quiet BPD, you would not directly confront people or fight for your relationships. Instead, you withdraw and cut yourself off from them. You discard relationships easily, leaving the other person in confusion.

You are afraid to be alone, but you push people away. In Quiet BPD you believe you deserve to be abandoned. The self-loathing can drive you to isolate yourself for days and weeks.

Deep down, you doubt your worthiness, and you are afraid that when others come close enough, they will "find out" that you are defective.

You tell yourself: "I am independent and I don't need relationships." You may end up shutting the emotions deep within yourself and become chronically empty and numb.

You can be infatuated with a person, a project, or a regime for a period of time, and suddenly, as though a switch has been flipped, you lose interest. Because of this, you are not sure where you belong. Not having a solid foundation to work from also makes it harder to build self-esteem and self-confidence.

RoxanneToto · Apr 26, 2021, 01:10 AM

I see so much of myself here. The only thing that doesn’t apply for me is being afraid to be alone. Everything else is accurate though. I did broach this with T in the beginning as a possible issue, but she kind of dropped it and said later on I have PTSD. I might try and bring it up again tomorrow.
What is there we can do?

RoxanneToto · Apr 27, 2021, 01:18 AM

I found this, not sure if it could be useful for anyone else. It makes me feel a little more optimistic, even if it does say it can’t be cured (I think there are differing opinions on that):
Coping with Quiet BPD comes down to understanding it | by E.B. Johnson | LV Development | Medium

MsLady · Apr 27, 2021, 07:02 PM

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1. Get active

Forging new connections and establishing new relationships can be one of the best ways to boost our confidence and further define our sense of self. Our relationships are an important mirror by which to gauge ourselves within the world, and a release by which we can find both support and grace when we need it. Behavorial activation, or using new behaviors and activities to activate new skills and abilities, is a great way to battle our Quiet BPD but it takes a leap of faith and a leap into new and uncomfortable things.

Reach out to friends, and don’t shy away from new skills and activities that could connect you with new people. Relationships are a great way to get re-familiar with your strengths, and a great way to build up the support systems you need to battle your shame.

Surrounding yourself with others who can take a compassionate, yet detached look at what you’re going through can be extremely helpful in assisting you to shape your own perspective. They can highlight issues you might have missed, or opportunities that you couldn’t see through the stress of the entire situation. By forging new relationships and reaching out to better the ones you already have, you’re actually boosting your ability to deal with low self-opinion and overcoming the darkness that’s plaguing your life.

2. Engage in shadow work

We all have shadow aspects, or less desirable sides of ourselves that we try to keep hidden away from the light of day. When we keep these aspects repressed, they create negative beliefs, emotions and patterns that turn into self-directed hostility and aggression. It takes a lot of energy to suppress yourself, but that’s just what Quiet BPD sufferers do, and only by engaging in shadow work is it something that can be overcome.

Begin your shadow work by learning how to spot your shadows, or what others trigger within you. Look for specific traits or qualities that stir-up out-of-character responses in you, and question where those responses come from. Consider too the people you admire, and consider what aspects of them you consider to be the most admirable. Is it something negative or postive that draws you in? There’s a lot hidden in that honest answer.

Learning how to accept yourself takes accepting all those little pieces of yourself, the good, the bad and the ugly. True happiness can only come when we start to cultivate the capacity for self-love and start to integrate our shadows into our healing. You might feel the need to be angry, needy or self-preserving, but those are just pieces of the puzzle — not the total picture. Accept that, and you’re one step closer to coping with your Quiet BPD.

3. Learn how to be mindful

When we think of being mindful, we often assume it means simply being nice (to ourselves and others) — but it’s much, much more than that. Mindfulness is a powerful tool and a powerful state of being which can help us to unlock our true potential and create more loving, compassionate and fulfilling environments and experiences for ourselves. It’s being present in the moment, and it’s being aware of both where we’re at and how we’re feeling.

Learning how to be more mindful actually unlocks powerful avenues of emotional intelligence, which in turn allows us to better deal with the toxic self-confidence issues that permeate our lives. Cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and major clinical depression are just a few of the side-effects of living in a life that’s stressed to the max and focused on everything but the here and now. Learning how to be more mindful can transform our our perceptions and our health — but it has a number of other surprising benefits too.

Take at least 10–15 minutes to think about the things in your life that your thankful for. Set a timer and — at the end of the process — take another 5 minutes or so to journal about the experience and how these things in your life make you feel. Whenever you’re struggling to be present in the moment, or deal with some new obstacle, refer back to the journal. Are you still thankful for those things? Are they worth overcoming these challenges for? Let them be the inspiration that navigates you through the tough times.

4. Get grounded

Many of our insecurities come from dwelling too much in the future and the anxiety that lives there around our goals and desires. We are a society obsessed with the end result, but too frequently we forget to focus on the journey rather than the destination. The process is the most beautiful part of the transformation, because it’s the part that contains all the growth and learning. Start living in the present if you want a better future, and if you want to increase your confidence.

Drop sight of that end-result and start getting present in the right-here and right-now. Look at your overall process and the lessons that it can offer you. By learning how to focus on the spaces between the endpoints, we can become masters of our skills and emotions, rather than just spectators. When you start to consider the journey, rather than just the arrival, your perspective of success and failure changes entirely.

When we’re struggling, we disconnect from ourselves in an attempt to find a way back to the surface. This disconnection can make our souls feel like an echo and when we sink this low we lose our joy along with any sense of who we are or who we could become. Find your anchors and let them bring you back to your true self when it feels like the storm is tossing you beyond your depths. This can take the form of journalling, meditation or event flow activities like cooking.When your life explodes, your anchors are there to guide you back into calmer waters.

5. Take a breath

We can’t control the people around us, but can control how we respond to their behavior from the very first moment we encounter them to the very last. Learning how to cultivate a deep-breathing, zen state can be hard, but it’s worthwhile. When you can learn to separate yourself and give your mind time to consider, you’ll find that not only will your life improve but your relationships will too.

When you feel like the top is about to pop, try taking a step back and breathing rather than clapping back with everything you have (which will only perpetuate the anger and other negative emotions in the long run.) Start with five deep breaths. Breathe from your belly, and let the air fill you up from the bottom to the top. Take the air in through your nose and let it out through your mouth. If you’re especially agitated, let your teeth provide some resistance and press hard and fast on your exhale.

Deep breathing can actually help to relax the fight-or-flight responses our anger elicits, and it allows us to calm any anxiety that might be building up beside your budding anger. Put a little more peace into the world by creating a foundation of peace in your life, no matter what’s going on around you. Make a point to take a few deep breaths any time you’re stressed, or any time you have to make a big decision. It can do wonders for your peace of mind in the moment.

6. Get grateful

Gratitude is one of the fastest and easiest ways to challenge and undo our negative thinking, but it can take a little time to get right and it always takes a bit of creativity. It’s not always easy to spot the things we’re grateful for, but there’s always something we can find through our haze of unhappiness.

Feeling grateful can have a big impact on your happiness and can seriously affect your positivity. Even when things are going horribly, horribly wrong, looking for the silver lining can help you survive by helping you release all the old baggage that kept you feeling stuck and miserable.

Noticing the things are going well makes it possible for you to stay present in the moment and overcome whatever obstacles life has to throw at you. Keeping a gratitude journal is a great way to start and writing just a few things in it each day is an easy way to get back in touch with the things that you’re grateful for.

7. Lean into professional support

Considering the wide array of physical symptoms that come alongside Quiet BPD and the trauma that often accompanies it, it’s crucial that you also find a mental health professional that can help you with your physical healing as well as your mental and emotional healing. While a simple therapist or life coach might be able to send your thoughts in the right direction, a mental health professional will help you get your body going in the right direction too which can make the healing that much easier.

A functional medical provider will be able to evaluate your health as a whole and will work like an investigator to piece together the puzzle and identify the missing pieces that trigger your emotional and physical imbalances. Doctors can help us save time and money when it comes to resolving our childhood traumas by pointing us in an exact direction of healing.

If you don’t know where to begin, then do a little research. a trusted medical professional can give you the right tests and treatment methods you need to get back on top of things. When you feel better physically, you have more strength to engage in the mental and emotional war of healing and resolution. This puts our overall wellness in clearer focus and makes our efforts to heal more effective and less costly in the long run.

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Putting it all together…

Quiet BPD is a corrosive and toxic emotional disorder that causes us to self-destruct in a number of surprising and devastating ways. When we suffer quietly with this complex emotional disorder, we can pull away from the people that matter and isolate ourselves as we detach and struggle to deal with the complex array of emotions that we typically feel. Those who live with Quiet BPD are those who live in an internal world that is completely chaotic and overwhelmed by nuanced emotions they can’t entirely understand. While it may not be possible to entirely cure your Quiet BPD, it is possible to learn how to live with it when you adopt a few healthy coping skills that can help keep things together.

Get active, and disrupt your worst emotive patterns or reactions by using behavioral activation to distract yourself. Engage in shadow work, and use that work to help you accept those parts of yourself you try to keep hidden or estranged. Only when we learn how to accept ourselves as we are can be start to overcome the hurdles quiet BPD throws our way. Learn how to be mindful and learn how to get grounded and present in the right here and now. Mindful breathing practices are great for those moments when we find ourselves overwhelmed in the throes of a manic emotional attack. Focus on the things you want, and focus on the things you’re grateful for. For everything else, lean into the help of a mental health professional and trust in the process that is healing from and overcoming quiet BPD.

I've never heard of this before but knowing now, it's enough to remind ourselves (if QBPD) that when responding in a QBPD way towards a person and/or situation, that we can remind ourselves about QBPD to help curb a negative course of action.

May 15, 2021, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by retro_chic

I really think I have the "quiet" presentation of BPD and I asked my T about it yesterday and she doesn't think I have it. She said people with BPD are really volatile and have trouble holding down a job and can't even have relationships with family members (which isn't me).

I think I did a bad job explaining why I think I have it because I was nervous and I wasn't able to articulate myself properly. I found this article (linked below) that literally describes me perfectly so I'm still not convinced I don't have BPD. I have every symptom listed in it.

Do You Have "Quiet BPD"? | Psychology Today Australia

I don't want to keep bringing it up but I'm wondering if I should read this article to T next session as I don't think I was able to explain myself very well last time. This is something that has bothered me for a while and I only have three sessions left before T goes on maternity leave. I would really like to get to the bottom of this before she goes.

Your T appears to be of the group of misinformed therapists who think BPD is "only for really messed up, volatile people who don't work or have relationships." Fortunately, this is untrue.

Maybe when she is on maternity leave, you can try out a therapist with training and experience treating people with BPD and who also is trained in DBT.

May 15, 2021, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RoxanneToto

I found this, not sure if it could be useful for anyone else. It makes me feel a little more optimistic, even if it does say it can’t be cured (I think there are differing opinions on that):
Coping with Quiet BPD comes down to understanding it | by E.B. Johnson | LV Development | Medium

I have read that BPD can be cured. Or that you can at least recover from it.

The fact that there is so much...dissonance...so much...opposing thought and ideas on what BPD is, really makes me think that psychology / psychiatry / and the world at large as a result, has more steps to go in its progress. Its so backward. Lol.

Fuzzybear · Jul 22, 2021, 10:59 AM

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Originally Posted by WovenGalaxy

Your T appears to be of the group of misinformed therapists who think BPD is "only for really messed up, volatile people who don't work or have relationships." Fortunately, this is untrue.

Maybe when she is on maternity leave, you can try out a therapist with training and experience treating people with BPD and who also is trained in DBT.

I also think that not everyone with BPD fits that stereotype. Sadly, some therapists are misinformed (about many things, in my experience)

Cassoway · Aug 19, 2021, 05:32 PM

Thanks RC for posting this. I spent a long time being treated for a range of symptoms including addiction, depression and mood swings before getting a bpd diagnosis. I see a lot of the things in this artical that could ne applied to me but also many aspects of my behaviour and ideation that are definitely not "quiet". I feel I oscillate between internalised and externalised reactions which is in itself part of my issue.

That sense of dissociation that is mentioned in the article is really significant as I have had some experiences of this. I worked in Oxford for a while and found it impossible to recognise it as a real place but rather felt it was like some sort of film set or theatre stage that I was walking through.

Cassoway

MissIncognito · Mar 16, 2022, 02:20 AM

I'm pretty much positive that I have quiet-BPD. I brought up the possibility with my therapist (she's a licensed master social worker LMSW) and she said she had never heard of it before. She said she didn't think I had BPD at all though, and then listed a lot of symptoms of the regular type of borderline personality disorder. I explained that I understand that I don't meet that criteria, but that it's BPD that manifests in a quiet way that happens more in the mind of a person suffering from BPD. It expresses itself in an inward way. Similar in some ways, yet it's a type that is hard to know is there unless the person lets you know what their inner life is like.

I was kind of disappointed that she wasn't at all familiar with it, and that I had to explain what I had read about the subject. I guess I was just surprised that quiet BPD isn't being taught to all therapists when they learn about Borderline.

Hopefully in the future the quiet form of BPD will get more attention. I think there are probably a lot of shy and quiet people out there suffering with something they don't even realize has a name.

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