I'm not officially diagnosed with BPD, but have been going to therapy for many years. It was suspected at one point but dropped just as quickly. I've spent most of my time going in circles around anxiety and depression, oscillating back-and-forth, often times cycling several times a week between feeling good to feeling like I want to die. Sometimes within the space of a day. I just wanted to add this as a disclaimer to try and be respectful to those who have an official diagnosis.  


I've also struggled with a strong sense of self. With self-esteem. Forming an identity has always felt very arbitrary; depending on who I am around. This become apparent when people close to me over the years have expressed surprise at seeing a "different side of me" that they hadn't seen before, but may have come out in a party setting in which they were present, for example.  


Partly I explain it by an obsession I have with being liked. Growing up I'd have lots of fantasies about how conversations would go, or ought to go, and what I would say. Trying to have the perfect answer for everything. Rehearsing for mundane interactions. Coming up with jokes. And also beating myself up over small mistakes where I may have said the wrong thing, done something embarrassing or whatever.  


On the one hand it's helped me network. On the other, it made having lasting, deep, \*real\* friendships with people very difficult. I do have a few, and it's my understanding the BPD is a spectrum, so maybe I am either lucky or just happen to not have as severe of a case. Maybe I'm not fully BPD but just manifest a few of its symptoms. Anyway, I just wanted to share a bit about my efforts to form a stronger self identity in hopes that it might help another person.  


I have found that having a revolving door of interests and obsessions and latching onto them has led me to have a wide variety of interests, and helps me relate to others. It helps me make interesting discussion, at the risk of seeming random or off-topic. But most importantly, I've been trying to extract out the commonalities, comparing and contrasting and synthesizing my eclectic tastes, to try and find more solid ground.

For example. One characteristic I found was pithy. I often enjoy things that are very emotionally evocative, such as music genres like mid-west emo, and specific bands. Through music and other art I can relate to what's being expressed. Sure, maybe I can't relate to it all the time, but I can relate to it now-and-again, and that's enough for me.  


Another thing is that I'm a real aesthete. At the expense of kind of being judgmental about appearances (not dating people who are "ugly"; believe me, I've spent years mentally cutting myself over this), I enjoy beautiful things. It doesn't just have to be beautiful people. It can be music that I think is really beautifully arranged, a work of art, a photograph, real places on our planet, a movie or anime, etc.  


I guess my point I'm trying to make is that \*maybe\* you can try extracting some qualities out of your likes or interests that aren't superficial. That is to say, yeah, "emo music" might just be a phase for you, or a new artist or author or what have you, but that there is something timeless underlying that thing that is intuitive to you.  


In the same sense that your birth-date is an unchanging part of your identity, what helped me is trying to piece together and add more unchanging parts. You have to dig really deep, but it's there. I think this is why Jung's work with the archetypes resonated so well with me. I think this is why I tend to argue from first principles rather than what is expedient. I think this is why I hate hypocrisy, because I've so often felt like a walking contradiction.  


I've noticed that a lot of diagnosed BPD individuals seek consistency. All this turbulence and volatility hurts other people, yes, but we're well aware that it hurts us, too. They might not see it or experience it, so they don't know how much we beat ourselves up, and this feeling of doom that we'll always hurt other people, and that we don't deserve love, and that we'll never be better.  


So I think trying to establish even just some small nuggets of consistency in our identity can go a long way. Feel free to share your thoughts on this, or talk about what has helped you in your journey.