I see so many people here constantly going "I split" "I dissociated" "my BPD made me this way." And yeah, it's true that those are the appropriate words to use, and that BPD may have a massive impact on your behavior most of the time. But not always.

Sometimes, you're just being an asshole because *you* are being an asshole.

A big problem with illnesses like this, that have no cure and that greatly affect your personality, is that we slowly get used to always blaming it for our bad behavior. That takes the power to do something about it away from us, leaving us completely helpless.

But that doesn't apply every time. If the only people that went from nice to a dick in a split second were the people with BPD, then *only* the people in the world that have BPD would be dicks. Obviously that's not the case. Same for depressed people being the only lazy people, or manic people being the only highly motivated people, etc.

Make a habit of looking at the situations you were in, even if it's after the fact, and thinking "ok, did my illness get the best of me, or was I just being a shithead?" Do that instead of defaulting to blaming it on your illness.

Why is this important? Because yeah, sometimes your illness is the root cause of your reactions. But not everyone who is sad has depression. Not everyone that has a short temper. That's good because it means that you *can* do something about it!

So if you're being a cunt, don't assume you're always going to be a cunt because you're sick. If you think about it and see that your illness doesn't have anything to do with it *this time*, then that means it's not hopeless. You can do something about it this time. And maybe the next. And maybe the next after that.

Always keep that in mind. That this time, you're not splitting. You're just reasonably upset. You're not dissociating, just spacing out or daydreaming. You are not being controlled by your BPD or any other illness. You're just being an asshole.

And that's ok. Because *that* is something you can work on.