With Borderline Personality Disorder, Sometimes One Comment Is All It Takes

One comment can ruin my day and set off a mental process that’s self-destructive.

I am a reactive person, it doesn’t take much to do.

How can I go from sitting in class or in an office, content, productive, feeling well, to the next moment feeling deeply offended, feeling horribly insecure and feeling compelled to act in an unskilled way?

With borderline personality disorder (BPD), my internal sense of security is easily threatened. This comes from years of self-invalidation, social invalidation and being wired in a way where I don’t feel secure in my relationships with people to begin with. When someone says something offensive, I’m hard wired to react negatively and feel threatened.

When someone does say something negative and I feel threatened, I begin to act unskilled and the process of burning bridges and offending people begins. Why would I offend someone? Because they made me mad, and I feel like I’m evening things out.

This is a quick and easy way to ruin relationships, create a tense group dynamic and makes my life more stressful than it needs to be.

One comment, one slight, can cause my BPD to go into overdrive. It’s exhausting. I wish I wasn’t wired this way, its not a great way to live. No one wants to go through life ruining relationships and feeling insecure.

But this is what BPD does. And living with BPD isn’t easy because this can happen any day, and I know for me it can happen whenever I’m around people I don’t completely trust. I have no idea when this is going to happen but when it does, I have a hard time acting skillfully and not acting in a self-sabotaging way.

BPD is difficult. It’s unpredictable and I never know when I’ll feel like I’m in a crisis.

I just know it’ll happen again and that’s kind of frightening.

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Thinkstock photo via Grandfailure