Venting I think I have bpd but no one takes me seriously

[Synfrome]

The possibility of me having BPD is something I've been mulling over in my head for 6 years now. However, everytime I've brought it up with people I've either been met with dismissal or my symptoms have been chalked up to my autism and anxiety (both of which I am formally diagnosed with.) The issue is I've never heard how I feel towards things expressed by another person unless they themselves have BPD.

I've always struggled with relationships. (TW: CSA mention) A combination of my mum's anxious-avoidant attachment style and poor choice of partners, moving house/school quite a few times and being a victim of CoCSA at the age of 6 have created this constant anxiety within me surrounding the impermanence of things. Most of the people in my life don't stay more than a few years. Changing schools got me used to the pattern of making friends then leaving them behind after a few years, regardless of our closeness. Even when I stayed in one environment for a long time, it felt like I could only be really close to someone for a few months at most before they'd go and find someone else to be closer friends with. I'm constantly terrified everyone in my life will leave me, because it's been proven they will again and again.

My romantic relationships are even worse. I go through weeks of being completely infatuated by the person only to start despising them once my fear of abandonment takes over. My brain obsessively nitpicks the small things, finds every single sign that they're going to leave me and shapes it into some neurotic proof that they want to make me suffer and that I should make them suffer or leave before they hurt me. It doesn't matter if they've been good or bad to me, this happens regardless. However, if at one point I genuinely do accept that they will stay, another anxiety kicks in: the avoidance. I feel trapped by our relationship, suffocated by the expectation to commit and the responsibility of another human being. So then I become distant and avoid them as much as possible until the relationship breaks down and we seperate. Only then does the pendulum swing the other way and suddenly I have a complete meltdown because my fears of abandonment have now been confirmed "true." This causes me to act erraticly and recklessly which only makes the situation worse. I don't think I've ever felt genuinely comfortable in a romantic relationship. It's either I panic and fawn over someone so they don't leave me, letting them manipulate and hurt me or I avoid them entirely either to make them suffer or to prevent me melting down on them until our relationship becomes unsalvagable. Doesn't matter either way, because in the end it always ends up as a cut contact scorched earth situation.

For the cases where I formed an attachment to someone that was never reciprocated it feels like I'm slowly dying. My previous best friend and I were really close - so close in fact he described us as soulmates, and I believed him. We had no romantic or sexual interest in each other but our connection was deeper than anything I'd experienced up until that point from anyone. But then he got a boyfriend. It felt like my world fell apart. Everytime I'd see them together this neurotic concoction of fear, rage, jealousy, paranoia and anxiety would hit me and it took everything I had not to lash out at them both. It got to the point where I'd only be able to be in their presence for 5 minutes at a time before leaving to prevent myself from having an outburst. Even though we were never in a relationship it felt like watching my partner cheat on me with someone else. For an entire year. Every. Single. Day.

A more recent example has been my flatmate. I've only been at university for a month but I've already managed to go through a complete emotional attachment cycle with him. Due to breaking up with my long term partner recently, my vulnerable state has made me desperate for something to fill the void so I rebounded for him hard. After only knowing him for a week he was in my every thought. Thinking about him felt like I was high. However, when he stopped giving me the attention and physical affection he had been (he realised he was also rebounding) it was like a switch flipped inside me and I hated him. As it is now I dread coming back to accomodation because my anxiety spikes knowing that his room is just across from mine. I genuinely cannot rest knowing he's a door knock away, it makes me so paranoid. I've sent him paragraphs trying to "resolve" the situation when I'm realising he probably never even saw it as deep as I did. It feel like I'm fucking crazy and that I look it too. Who the fuck cares this much about a guy they rebounded for for 2 weeks only having known him a month?

All my emotional reactions feel overblown and it makes me feel so unreasonable. One of my exes pointed out how emotionally volatile I am, switching from hyperactive elation at her coming round my house to complete emotional shutdown just half an hour later. I feel like I'm constantly having to run to keep up with my emotions and keep them under control. No one seems to have this issue as bad as I do and the worst part is everyone thinks I'm fine because I've had to learn to mask it so I don't lose the handful of connections I still have and to not come across as mental to everyone I meet. The best word I have to describe my general emotional state is highly neurotic. It feels like my brain constantly makes paranoid connections between things that don't link in reality, if that makes sense.

Another thing about me is I've never had a good sense of self. This may be linked to my transness, but I can't remember the last time I looked in the mirror and recognised the person staring back at me. I put on different characters depending on my mood but none of them feel like me. On the contrary, some of them make me feel MORE anxious and unsafe, especially if what I'm doing opens me up in anyway that I'm vulnerable. I'm nothing without my interests; my ability to sustain interests has decreased since I was younger, likely due to life, school and living with my mental illness and disability bullshit burning me out completely. But I genuinely don't feel like a person outside of the things I'm "into." Half the time I don't even care about the thing that much, I just pretend I like it so I feel like I have something to hold on to as an identity to avoid the emptiness claiming me again. In reality having to keep up with most of my "interests" is just anxiety inducing; without them I am nothing.

I've talked to my counsellor about me having RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria) as part of my autism/ADHD diagnosis and she shot it down immediately despite literally most of my issues stemming from my fear of rejection/abandonment. I've been in counselling for over 3 years now and I've seen very little improvement with how I handle relationships, let alone feeling happy and secure within them. I still feel lost and like I have no idea who I am, which causes me to act irrationally and recklessly just to feel like I am something. I could understand when I'd tell people this and they'd tell me it's just puberty but I'm not a teenager anymore and I'm still experiencing the same issues. I feel like a monster who can't love or be loved and it feels like I'll never change. This might be autism but I don't feel like a human being. I'm truly convinced that I'm doomed to die alone.

Does anyone else feel like this? Apart from my mum and my online best friend, no one else has ever been able to understand my feelings. I've had people who claimed they could but then turned round and did something which clearly expressed they didn't understand at all, otherwise they would have known what they did would hurt me.

 

[heisenberg]

i understand how you feel, i'm not diagnosed either but i also feel strongly about the fact i have bpd. for the past 5 years, i've felt this way. i've spent so much time researching this disorder and even bought my own copy of the DSM and read it all in an attempt to understand myself. i feel chronically empty and lonely even though the reason for my loneliness is me ghosting people after i make myself hate them enough. i grew up with my sister and stepbrother in a hostile environment. my stepbrother eventually got diagnosed with schizophrenia, adhd, and a couple other things i can't remember. but he was incredibly abusive to my mom. he would "joke" about choking her, reported her to cps multiple for no good reason, constantly fought and argued, and was aggressive towards my little sister when she born. i never wanted to go home afterschool, especially after he assaulted me twice. there was constantly so much tension and fighting because of him that it led to my needs not being met. my parents would always say "don't say anything, go to your room" when he started something. i have no idea how to properly communicate anything since i was always told to go to my room. as i got older, the few times i did go to my mom about how i was feeling depressed, she called me stupid and joked that she could "slap it out of me." my stepdad was understanding and supportive but worked all the time. i never had any to talk to, let alone i wouldn't even know how to talk to them. all of my relationships have been trying to fill a void that's been there since i was a kid. i never felt like i had someone that cared about me since my needs were never met.

 

[Synfrome]

i understand how you feel, i'm not diagnosed either but i also feel strongly about the fact i have bpd. for the past 5 years, i've felt this way. i've spent so much time researching this disorder and even bought my own copy of the DSM and read it all in an attempt to understand myself. i feel chronically empty and lonely even though the reason for my loneliness is me ghosting people after i make myself hate them enough. i grew up with my sister and stepbrother in a hostile environment. my stepbrother eventually got diagnosed with schizophrenia, adhd, and a couple other things i can't remember. but he was incredibly abusive to my mom. he would "joke" about choking her, reported her to cps multiple for no good reason, constantly fought and argued, and was aggressive towards my little sister when she born. i never wanted to go home afterschool, especially after he assaulted me twice. there was constantly so much tension and fighting because of him that it led to my needs not being met. my parents would always say "don't say anything, go to your room" when he started something. i have no idea how to properly communicate anything since i was always told to go to my room. as i got older, the few times i did go to my mom about how i was feeling depressed, she called me stupid and joked that she could "slap it out of me." my stepdad was understanding and supportive but worked all the time. i never had any to talk to, let alone i wouldn't even know how to talk to them. all of my relationships have been trying to fill a void that's been there since i was a kid. i never felt like i had someone that cared about me since my needs were never met.

I'm so sorry you've had to go through that, that sounds really rough. I understand the feeling of not having your needs met. Apart from a time where my uncle and my mum lived together I've grown up in a largely single parent household (as for the time my uncle lived with us he basically functioned as my dad.) My mother was a full time teacher for most of my childhood so she wasn't frequently available, very often the burden of care would fall on my grandparents or my childminder. I barely knew/know my biological father - I'd see him 3 times a year at most up until my preteen years when he stopped bothering. I know he was extremely abusive towards my mother and that's why she left him and took me; I was too young to remember any of it (we left when I was 6 months old) and she doesn't like talking about it so I don't know details.

However, my abandonment issues really started coming about when my (now) stepdad entered our lives. Before then my mum had gone through a couple of boyfriends when I was around 5 - 7 years old; however, in the end she finally settled on him. I'm not sure why but my mother having a partner actually broke my brain as a child. It felt like she had abandoned me for this man, whether that was real or imagined. Everytime they'd engage in any kind of affection in front of me (verbal, physical, etc) no matter how small I'd scream, cry and physically attempt to seperate them. My mum didn't understand my behaviour and neither did I at the time so she would just get angry at me which made the feelings of abandonment/rejection even worse. I remember semi-frequently asking her if I was more important to her than him/if she loved me more than him. The answer would always be she valued me more but it never did anything to quiet my anxiety. This might also be because I'm an only child, so the little attention I did get I didn't have to share with any siblings. My family is also just not very physically affectionate in general, we don't do hugs barely ever, etc. Probably a product of my grandparent's upbringing during and after WW2 in a war-torn Britain being passed down to my mum and affecting the way she operates, but that's just me theorising.

These are the pieces I've managed to put together to explain the way I am so far, but honestly my BPD like symptoms could probably be traced back to my very early childhood, although I can't remember much of it. My mum has expressed experiencing basically the exact same symptoms that I do consistently throughout her life which leads me to believe it's either genetic or due to socialisation.

 

[alltoomuch2]

The possibility of me having BPD is something I've been mulling over in my head for 6 years now. However, everytime I've brought it up with people I've either been met with dismissal or my symptoms have been chalked up to my autism and anxiety (both of which I am formally diagnosed with.) The issue is I've never heard how I feel towards things expressed by another person unless they themselves have BPD.

I've always struggled with relationships. (TW: CSA mention) A combination of my mum's anxious-avoidant attachment style and poor choice of partners, moving house/school quite a few times and being a victim of CoCSA at the age of 6 have created this constant anxiety within me surrounding the impermanence of things. Most of the people in my life don't stay more than a few years. Changing schools got me used to the pattern of making friends then leaving them behind after a few years, regardless of our closeness. Even when I stayed in one environment for a long time, it felt like I could only be really close to someone for a few months at most before they'd go and find someone else to be closer friends with. I'm constantly terrified everyone in my life will leave me, because it's been proven they will again and again.

My romantic relationships are even worse. I go through weeks of being completely infatuated by the person only to start despising them once my fear of abandonment takes over. My brain obsessively nitpicks the small things, finds every single sign that they're going to leave me and shapes it into some neurotic proof that they want to make me suffer and that I should make them suffer or leave before they hurt me. It doesn't matter if they've been good or bad to me, this happens regardless. However, if at one point I genuinely do accept that they will stay, another anxiety kicks in: the avoidance. I feel trapped by our relationship, suffocated by the expectation to commit and the responsibility of another human being. So then I become distant and avoid them as much as possible until the relationship breaks down and we seperate. Only then does the pendulum swing the other way and suddenly I have a complete meltdown because my fears of abandonment have now been confirmed "true." This causes me to act erraticly and recklessly which only makes the situation worse. I don't think I've ever felt genuinely comfortable in a romantic relationship. It's either I panic and fawn over someone so they don't leave me, letting them manipulate and hurt me or I avoid them entirely either to make them suffer or to prevent me melting down on them until our relationship becomes unsalvagable. Doesn't matter either way, because in the end it always ends up as a cut contact scorched earth situation.

For the cases where I formed an attachment to someone that was never reciprocated it feels like I'm slowly dying. My previous best friend and I were really close - so close in fact he described us as soulmates, and I believed him. We had no romantic or sexual interest in each other but our connection was deeper than anything I'd experienced up until that point from anyone. But then he got a boyfriend. It felt like my world fell apart. Everytime I'd see them together this neurotic concoction of fear, rage, jealousy, paranoia and anxiety would hit me and it took everything I had not to lash out at them both. It got to the point where I'd only be able to be in their presence for 5 minutes at a time before leaving to prevent myself from having an outburst. Even though we were never in a relationship it felt like watching my partner cheat on me with someone else. For an entire year. Every. Single. Day.

A more recent example has been my flatmate. I've only been at university for a month but I've already managed to go through a complete emotional attachment cycle with him. Due to breaking up with my long term partner recently, my vulnerable state has made me desperate for something to fill the void so I rebounded for him hard. After only knowing him for a week he was in my every thought. Thinking about him felt like I was high. However, when he stopped giving me the attention and physical affection he had been (he realised he was also rebounding) it was like a switch flipped inside me and I hated him. As it is now I dread coming back to accomodation because my anxiety spikes knowing that his room is just across from mine. I genuinely cannot rest knowing he's a door knock away, it makes me so paranoid. I've sent him paragraphs trying to "resolve" the situation when I'm realising he probably never even saw it as deep as I did. It feel like I'm fucking crazy and that I look it too. Who the fuck cares this much about a guy they rebounded for for 2 weeks only having known him a month?

All my emotional reactions feel overblown and it makes me feel so unreasonable. One of my exes pointed out how emotionally volatile I am, switching from hyperactive elation at her coming round my house to complete emotional shutdown just half an hour later. I feel like I'm constantly having to run to keep up with my emotions and keep them under control. No one seems to have this issue as bad as I do and the worst part is everyone thinks I'm fine because I've had to learn to mask it so I don't lose the handful of connections I still have and to not come across as mental to everyone I meet. The best word I have to describe my general emotional state is highly neurotic. It feels like my brain constantly makes paranoid connections between things that don't link in reality, if that makes sense.

Another thing about me is I've never had a good sense of self. This may be linked to my transness, but I can't remember the last time I looked in the mirror and recognised the person staring back at me. I put on different characters depending on my mood but none of them feel like me. On the contrary, some of them make me feel MORE anxious and unsafe, especially if what I'm doing opens me up in anyway that I'm vulnerable. I'm nothing without my interests; my ability to sustain interests has decreased since I was younger, likely due to life, school and living with my mental illness and disability bullshit burning me out completely. But I genuinely don't feel like a person outside of the things I'm "into." Half the time I don't even care about the thing that much, I just pretend I like it so I feel like I have something to hold on to as an identity to avoid the emptiness claiming me again. In reality having to keep up with most of my "interests" is just anxiety inducing; without them I am nothing.

I've talked to my counsellor about me having RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria) as part of my autism/ADHD diagnosis and she shot it down immediately despite literally most of my issues stemming from my fear of rejection/abandonment. I've been in counselling for over 3 years now and I've seen very little improvement with how I handle relationships, let alone feeling happy and secure within them. I still feel lost and like I have no idea who I am, which causes me to act irrationally and recklessly just to feel like I am something. I could understand when I'd tell people this and they'd tell me it's just puberty but I'm not a teenager anymore and I'm still experiencing the same issues. I feel like a monster who can't love or be loved and it feels like I'll never change. This might be autism but I don't feel like a human being. I'm truly convinced that I'm doomed to die alone.

Does anyone else feel like this? Apart from my mum and my online best friend, no one else has ever been able to understand my feelings. I've had people who claimed they could but then turned round and did something which clearly expressed they didn't understand at all, otherwise they would have known what they did would hurt me.

I'm so sorry you're in such pain. I'm not expert enough to give my opinion even though I have both. I was only diagnosed with both of them this year so I'm only just starting to understand myself, and wouldn't feel qualified to advise you. How many of the criteria did you fufill in the DSM-5? Which country are you in? Do you only have a counsellor? They're not qualified or good enough to diagnose anything. In fact I find them pretty useless. More of a rent-a-friend. If you're in the UK can you go to your NHS worker (GP, counsellor, whatever you have) and say you want a formal assessment for BPD (or EUPD as they call it). There is a crossover with autism as you seem to know, but there are also differences, so you need a psychiatrist to assess you really. I have autism, BPD, GAD and probably C-PTSD (long story on that one lol) so I feel your pain, and for ages every time I asked MH workers they sidestepped the question and it took a lot of pushing to get assessed. So I'd say go to the person who can get you in with a psychiatrist and be ready with a list of things that fulfill the diagnostic criteria.

 

[Synfrome]

I'm so sorry you're in such pain. I'm not expert enough to give my opinion even though I have both. I was only diagnosed with both of them this year so I'm only just starting to understand myself, and wouldn't feel qualified to advise you. How many of the criteria did you fufill in the DSM-5? Which country are you in? Do you only have a counsellor? They're not qualified or good enough to diagnose anything. In fact I find them pretty useless. More of a rent-a-friend. If you're in the UK can you go to your NHS worker (GP, counsellor, whatever you have) and say you want a formal assessment for BPD (or EUPD as they call it). There is a crossover with autism as you seem to know, but there are also differences, so you need a psychiatrist to assess you really. I have autism, BPD, GAD and probably C-PTSD (long story on that one lol) so I feel your pain, and for ages every time I asked MH workers they sidestepped the question and it took a lot of pushing to get assessed. So I'd say go to the person who can get you in with a psychiatrist and be ready with a list of things that fulfill the diagnostic criteria.

Having read through the DSM-5 criteria for BPD it seems I fit basically most of it. The only part I wouldn't meet is the reckless impulsive action part; however, I am constantly battling impulses to do harmful and destructive stuff (whether big or small) but I rarely externalise them in fear of other people's reactions. Ie, the impulses are always there but I've learnt to mostly control them for my own sake and the sake of others. I am in the UK so I could see my GP, although I had to switch surgeries due to going to university and I recall never having proper correspondence back about that so I'd have to chase that up before I can ask about anything which is annoying (doesn't help that my autism makes phone calls hell.) Thank you for your reply though, I appreciate any and all feedback I can get right now