# TWs for mental illnesses, suicide, inpatient care, pet death, and brief mentions of the COVID-19 situation. 

Don't know if it's required for this sub but I figure over-cautiousness is probably better than carelessness. I also still fully know about or understand everything to do about BPD, so I may unintentionally say ignorant things in the body of the post. If you identify something I've written that falls under this, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix/remove it. I'm not here to upset anyone, and I'm constantly trying to develop my understanding of this condition.  


**TL;DR AT THE END**  


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Okay so I'm going to try to go over this in a way that gives sufficient context in a somewhat linear-ish timeline. I've tried telling this story a number of times irl and no one really gets it, I guess BPD isn't super well understood by most people (which did and still kind of does include me).

I started seeing a psychologist for undiagnosed and untreated Bipolar II and ADHD about 3ish years ago. At the end of our first session my therapist was confident in telling me that she thought I have ADHD, I show strong signs of Bipolar II, and she also believed I showed many characteristics of BPD. At the time, I accepted the ADHD and Bipolar II diagnoses (they made sense to me), but rejected the idea of BPD, as the only understanding/knowledge I had of it at the time was the severe, explosive, outwards kinds of BPD. In my mind, I'd always had stable, long-term relationships that never suffered from periods of explosive anger etc., so there was **no way** it could be BPD! (I'll come back to this in a bit)

Anyway, about a year of therapy and I finally agree to try to start on medication for the ADHD and the Bipolar II, so I have to go see a psychiatrist in order to sort that. First session with him goes well, we talk over the issues, etc. etc. Anyway, in my next session with my psychologist, she mentions that he's written a report about the session we had for her. In this report, he \*also\* mentions that he believes I show strong signs of BPD. Again, this is very confusing to me as to me the diagnosis feels very off-base, so I reject it again.

So I'm going on with my therapy, taking my medication (seemed to have gotten the right combination/levels first shot, luckily), many of the things in my life are feeling a lot better! ADHD is kind of manageable now, I can focus on my work and get things done, I'm less impulsive and self-destructive with my bipolar II managed (actually building up savings because I'm not having a massive manic shopping spree every other week) and I'm building a good group of friends (I got involved with the local music scene and developed a bunch of friends around that, very cool and good people).   


So here we introduce the meat of the issue: the friends and the situations that resulted from these friendships. The people:  
N -- Man, friend.  
F -- Woman, friend, N's then-girlfriend. (then-undiagnosed BPD)

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So the main issues started with the beginning of 'Rona. Obviously when lockdowns hit, couples couldn't see each other if they didn't live together. For F this was particularly difficult. She's always been kind of insecure and, I suppose, **needy** (just realistically, it's not necessarily a negative thing) in regards to friendships and especially relationships. So being separated from N for so long, not being able to see him at all, hit her very very hard. Iirc, they'd also had minor relationship problems immediately before Rona, and so it was a bit of a double-whammy. Anyway, as a good friend to both of them, I'm hearing about these issues from both sides. N's messaging me about how he feels about this, what he wants to say, etc. etc, and F's doing much the same. **(Side note, does anyone find themselves being consistently sucked into everyone else's relationships/drama or is it just me? This isn't the first time it's happened.)** My approach throughout this whole thing is to just provide a "Oh, that does sound hard!", "Oh, that really sucks :(" kind of approach to supporting them, and I consistently tell them to talk to EACH OTHER about the ways they're feeling, what they need/want from each other. "Oh, I understand feeling that way. Have you told them that you feel that way/that you need that?" "Have you told them that when they say that it makes you feel that way?" etc. Somehow over the course of Rona lockdowns, this promoted me to Official N&amp;F Relationship Advisor™ and I was privy to A LOT more of their relationship over the next few months. 

Anyway, after lockdowns ended (I live in Australia, we only had a few months of lockdown initially) things seemed to calm down and being able to be physically together seemed to help everything equalise and settle down. A few more months go by, and they go on a trip for their anniversary. I house-sit for her for about a week. After they get back (the trip went really well as far as I could tell). 

# Another TW for talk of suicidal ideation before I proceed.

There's about a week or two, and I get a call from her, panicked and crying, saying that N has broken up with her and she doesn't know what she'll do. I ask her where she is, I can hear she's in her car, she says she doesn't want to tell me. I ask why, and she says because I'll stop her. This ofc is setting off every single red flag and alarm in my head, and idk adrenaline or something just kicks in. Very calmly, I ask her what I would stop her doing, and she just starts crying and says she doesn't know. I tell her that everything is going to be okay, if she heads home right now, I'll be there as soon as I can, that I'm leaving right now, and I'll stay on the phone with her for the whole time if she needs, that I'm not leaving her.  Thankfully, she listened to me, and we spoke on the phone as we both drove to her place. (Sorry about the briefness of this description, I actually have very fuzzy, vague memories of a lot of this, most of my memory of what happened is from re-reading text messages I sent to other people at the time, and the recollections from my Mum.) 

When I got to her place, I consoled her, and I basically set up camp in her living room for 3 or 4 days. I just wanted to be there to make sure she was okay, help her get through it. Most of the time, she just cried or slept. I should have taken her phone, though, she basically had a full episode. She was sending out numerous long texts to N, and to people associated with N. She was making "I'm going to kill myself and it's N's fault" posts on various social medias, and other really scary and self-destructive cries for help and threats that I wasn't even aware of at the time. 

I don't fully remember the sequence of events, but sometime during this time, her pet died. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible. It felt to **me** like the universe was kicking her while she was down, I can't even imagine how it must have felt to her. I did what I could, but I'm a fucking mess of a person as it is, I didn't know what to do or how to handle the situation, or how to help. 

Anyway, eventually she had family come to stay with her. I went home, completely emotionally drained. Again, many of my memories are really fuzzy, so I don't really remember the progression of events, but we'd discussed getting her into inpatient care because there was a significant risk of her doing something. There were issues with getting her in right away, but eventually she did get in. When I knew that she'd gotten in, that she had a place and that she was effectively safe for the moment, I broke down crying. Like DEEP crying, sobbing. Everything I'd been holding back during this whole time (like between 1-3 weeks, idk) just burst forth, and I slept for like 3 days straight following that. 

She was diagnosed with BPD and has been getting therapy for it.

Following this, my mental health took an incredibly bad backslide for... at least 6 months, I think more. I don't remember much from that period, it felt like I was in a dream the whole time, everything's fuzzy. I started frequently dissociating and experiencing derealisation, many of my worst mental health symptoms reached their worst during this period of time. It was during this period I accepted the diagnosis of BPD as I saw a lot of parallels between my thought processes and those of F, even if the way the behaviour manifested was extremely different. (Her: Outward, Me: Inward)

During and after all of this, many of the people I thought were friends of mine (and hers) were saying horrible things about her. Like, I get it, a lot of what she did was objectively fucked up, but she was also clearly having a fucking mental breakdown. Friends try to support each other through that, even if they do or say objectively fucked up things during that breakdown. But yeah, it kind of really broke any level of trust I had with most of them. As someone prone to severe mental health dips, I'd like to know I'm surrounded by people who won't just be nasty about it. 

So while there was no giant blow-out or anything with any of the people I considered friends (some of them I still do), I found myself pulling away from them and eventually just stopped speaking to them entirely. I don't hate or hold anger or resentment for any of them, I just don't trust them. The thing is, I've found it's kind of extended to 99% of my friends; I haven't really spoken more than a few sentences to N since all of this started, after I knew that F was in a better place I haven't really spoken to her either, and I've also kind of lost interest in other friends who were unrelated to this group of people entirely. 

The weird thing is, most of these people I considered incredibly important to me. They were a very very big part of my life, and I loved them so much that even thinking of them sometimes made my heart ache. And now it's like someone's just hit a switch in my head that turned off all of those feelings. I don't feel bad about stopping speaking with them, but recognizing the disconnect and the inconsistency is... concerning. It's weird, it's not how "normal" people operate. It's been over a year since all of this happened, and I just... don't really care about them anymore. 

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**TL;DR: Friend had BPD breakdown, went into inpatient care. People I thought were friends were less than understanding about it and it rubbed me the wrong way. I haven't really spoken to anyone since all of this happened more than a year ago.**

&amp;#x200B;

I guess I'm looking for vindication and answers to a few questions.

\- Do you get over-involved in other peoples' emotions/relationships/problems and destroy your own mental health over them? This isn't the first time I've destroyed my mental health looking after someone else's (gonna try to make it the last, though!).

\- Do you ever experience that intense-emotion-to-no-emotion on-off switch?

\- Have you ever just quietly disconnected from almost everyone you know, or realised that it wouldn't be emotionally difficult for you to do so?

&amp;#x200B;

Thanks