I (25F) have BPD and for the past two weeks I’ve been having episodes/meltdowns daily because of major recent events that triggered my BPD intensely. It’s one of those things where only time will heal but I wanted to talk about the physical fatigue we experience after the meltdowns.

I don’t think I ever recognised it until now because I often put my fatigue down to a general depressive state but now that I’ve been having episodes more frequently and more intensely than ever, I’ve realised how much they take it out of me physically. When I’m exploding emotionally, my body becomes so tense without me realising - and it’s my whole body from my legs and arms to my neck, chest, back and face that I subconsciously tense up. I think the adrenaline of the moment stops me from noticing the physical exertion as it is happening but now that I recognised what was happening, I can forgive my fatigue after an episode and go easier on myself. Last week during an episode I had somehow managed to ball my body up while balancing my butt on top of a tree trunk for a couple of hours. The craziness of this is that I’m 130kg and super stiff and not flexible so I can barely ball myself up to be really small on a good day after yoga let alone do it while balancing my butt on a small space and then stay positioned like that for hours. My body was unbelievably sore once it relaxed as if like I had done the hardest workout of my life.

On top of the muscle tension and adrenaline numbing is the rapid heartrate and panicked breathing that can occur during the worst of my episodes (which lately have been most of them). I feel like my heart undergoes a lot of physical stress during these moments and it all adds to that severe fatigue. I’m still new to BPD and yet to have my first DBT session therefore my coping skills and BPD knowledge are very novice, so I’m sorry if this is an obvious thing that I never noticed until now. I just wanted to acknowledge some of the more hidden struggles we experience internally that can often go unnoticed, even by us. I had one of my biggest explosions lastnight and I’m really feeling it in my body today :(