
I don’t want to go into my whole story of my battle with BPD and ADHD right now, but I wanted to vent about some parts of it. You can probably tell from the title what part. I was lucky enough to be diagnosed when I was 16~17 years old. It’s very uncommon, but not rare at that age. I was blessed with an amazing groups of doctors after my parent’s divorce and my huge breakdown at age 12. That same year (age 12 still) I was diagnosed with depression and BED. I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 14 officially, though they had suspected it for awhile. Now that you’ve got some context let’s get onto the rant. I have had a history of medical paranoia, it comes with the BPD. Everybody’s got some form of paranoia mine just happens to be medical because my family is “cursed” to have every medical issue under the sun. From a young age I always went into full (internalized) panic whenever I got sick or felt off. Because of this I made an agreement with my doctor that she wouldn’t bring anything up unless is was actually life threatening or I mentioned it first and had evidence. 

I thought everyone heard voices. That’s why I never mentioned it. From a young age I’ve always had this for maybe from age 6~7 onwards. That means it predates most of my trauma. I do note (well now I do) that it increased over the years. People whispering my name from a few feet away, my dad’s voice using my nickname and talking to me (weird because he’s alive and I don’t run into him often), or random scenarios of passing strangers that aren’t actually there. It’s a whole assortment really. They never last for long, but bring on immense discomfort, disorientation, and the like. No matter how many times it happens I will always turn around and enter “customer service mode” and out of habit ask the person to clarify. But there’s no one there. When I’m alone and in private I hear different things. Foot steps on wood or carpet, knocking on my door, sniffling or clearing of throats, or maybe objects being dropped lightly. It’s like my brain is making up every possible scenario that could happen and then playing those sounds every once in awhile. I feckin thought it happened to everyone until age 20. This was a year into my first “real” full time job. The first time I had stayed around long enough for coworkers to know me. I had multiple ask me what I was doing or who I was talking to on the weekly basis. I finally confided in 3 different people I trusted and that’s when I found out. I rang my doctor immediately and she was like “yeah various mild hallucinations can occur with BPD and ADHD, but they’re hard to link or diagnose with certainty. I had a feeling you were experiencing them but with your paranoia it wasn’t important to ask. You showed no signs of distress” I WAS LIVID! But also confused. I felt even more isolated and like I stood out even more. Gaining that layer of self awareness just made everything worse. My doctor was right; now I’m paranoid about them. I’m causing my own distress, and thus the cycle continues. 

This rant is probably sounding more like ramblings so I’ll cut it off there. I just needed it to be out in the open somewhere. Somewhere it didn’t matter if I stuck out or blended in.