What It Feels Like to Spiral Into Self-Hatred Because of Borderline Personality Disorder

Like with a lot of other illnesses both mental and physical, I go through ups and downs with my borderline personality disorder (BPD).

A couple of months ago, I had several weeks of feeling pretty good. I didn’t want to feel good, though. I worried that I was cured, and I didn’t want to be cured. People kept telling me that having those thoughts and feelings meant I wasn’t in fact cured. But despite that, I felt mostly fine. When I’m feeling good, I am friendly and chatty. I want to help other people and I am efficient at my job. I have a good relationship with my wife and friends. I get enthusiastic about things. I probably appear pretty “normal” to most people. My life is as good as it can be at this stage in my recovery. I may not love myself, but I don’t hate myself either.

A week or so ago, I crashed. As I write this, I am going through a bad patch. When I am feeling bad, I hate myself. I can tell it’s happening as I start writing diaries. I only write them when I am feeling bad, and they are full of self-hatred. I don’t know how this particular bad period started, but once I am on that slope down, it starts a spiral and I get worse and worse. I decide I am terrible person and that everyone hates me and no one cares about me. I write that I deserve to die and that I want to hurt myself. At times I do hurt myself. I self-harm mentally as well, basically bullying myself and doing things I know will make me feel worse because I think I deserve to feel worse.

When I’m like this, every little negative thing makes me feel worse. Maybe my wife is in a bad mood. I assume it’s my fault and she hates me and we’ll have to break up and I’ll have to kill myself. Maybe something happens at work and I assume I’m terrible at my job and I’m about to get fired or that my manager is sick of me. Maybe I send a friend a message and they don’t reply because they’re busy. I assume that they don’t care about me and that I don’t deserve any help and that I’m worthless. I often try and get attention from other people to validate myself, but when things get really bad, I cut myself off from people. I delete their numbers from my phone so I’m not tempted to text them because I feel they will hate me even more than I think they hate me now. I’m scared to ask for help in case someone ignores me or thinks I am doing it for attention. I tell myself over and over again how worthless I am. I need someone to show that they care. But as soon as someone gives me sympathy, I cry because I feel like I don’t deserve it. And as soon as they stop giving sympathy, I feel like they don’t care again. I’m also consumed with guilt for having taken up their time.

I’m on the waiting list for intensive therapy for personality disorders. I hope that in time, the good days will get more frequent and the bad days less frequent, and that I will enjoy the good days instead of being scared to get better.