I don’t know how many people this will help but I figured I make this post regardless because I can see how much others are in pain and maybe hopefully I can help in some sort of way because I want to. Let’s get into it now. So for context I’ve been diagnosed with BPD over 2 years ago and my goal was to reduce my suffering as much as possible because we all know how damn painful this illness is. 

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Okay so basically, first thing first, accept that you have BPD. I personally like to call it Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, EUPD for short. Even though it sounds harsh its way better than Borderline, and its straight forward. Next, know that you are not your BPD. Just like people who have bipolar for example. They are not “bipolar of the family”. They are someone living with bipolar disorder. Just like BPD. You simply experience a set of symptoms, feelings, emotions, and thoughts that impact your day-to-day life. But, that can be managed thankfully (I will get into that later on in this post). Next, realize that things take time, effort, and work. This may be obvious for some, but not everyone. If you want positive results, if you want to feel good about yourself, do the work that needs to be done to succeed in your life. Next, realize that your parents failed you. The ones that were supposed to be there for you when you were hurt, felt scared, lost, and or confused. No one was there to comfort you, to tell you things will be okay, there was no one to help you process the trauma. The inner child in all of us has been a prisoner, and still is one, and they’re located inside of you right now. They want to be heard. They still have a voice. Don’t shut it out. Ever. Our parents were emotionally unavailable, immature, disconnected, and or simply couldn’t do a good job at raising you for whatever reason it may be. And because of that, you subconsciously learned certain behaviours, thought patterns, and traits that caused you to develop this illness. I have a strong feeling that the reason people living with BPD exhibit these symptoms like fear of abandonment, lack of identity, and extreme emotional swings, to name a few, is because the inner child was not fully developed, and because of that, you have resentment, resentment for how you were raised. You were so pure, and still are, but trauma, neglect and or abuse happened to you and that made you disconnected from everything.  Disconnected from your true-self. You lost touch with who you once were as a child. You needed to defend yourself in the environment that was supposed to nurture, provide safety and reassurance to you. You’ve abandoned yourself. You had no choice. But let me tell you, you can get that back. Maybe not fully, but lots of healing can happen to be yourself again that you can reach a point where you feel content. Remember that nothing is permanent. You may feel like things will never get better. But, change happens all around us, it happens consciously and subconsciously. Take life one day at a time. You make small steps everyday to get to where you need to be later in life. This one quote by M.L.K. really motivates me in times where I feel hopeless, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”  Remember that you are fucking resilient. Remind yourself you got to this very point in life because of the effort you did in the past to grow. So don’t give up. Remind yourself growth is not a perfectly linear process. This illness may likely convince if you fail once that all of your past progress is ruined, it’s far from the truth. Remind yourself you are a work in progress. 

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Okay so, some things that have helped me on my healing journey from this illness may seem like obvious things you do to get better but I feel like if you make a conscious effort everyday to improve yourself with the combination of positive things, eventually you will be glad that you did it all now instead of later. This is in no specified order so just realize that.

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Okay so something that everyone should do is journaling. It doesn’t have to be complicated. An empty paper book and a pencil. Journal everyday. Journal tasks that you completed that day, things you experienced that day, how did you feel? Did you like it? Did you hate it? Do you want to do it again? Reinforce positive things in your life so that you will continue doing it instead of your maladaptive learning behaviours from the BPD like self-harm, impulsive decisions, drug abuse, etc. Writing your thoughts onto paper puts things way more in perspective on how you want to direct your life and goals for the future. Next, start meditating. This is a must if you want to improve every aspect of your life. BPD has high comorbidity with other illnesses such as CPTSD, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. And so because of that, having a daily meditation routine will help you tremendously at managing your symptoms. Start off with 5 minutes, and increase the time the more times you do it so that way you will get more comfortable with this experience. I suggest 15 minutes of mediation the moment you wake up, and 15 minutes at night right before you’re about to fall asleep. Remember, this takes patience and you don’t see results right away but you will eventually the more it becomes habitual. You may have others notice as well the progress you are making due to meditation and you may not even be aware of it initially, so that’s why you need patience for it to work. Next, diet. Cut the processed junk foods, bad carbs, sugary foods and drinks. Sugar as we all know is bad, but it’s especially bad for mental illness like BPD because it causes inflammation to the body and brain. When inflammation occurs, your symptoms become more intensified. You’ll get irritable, moody, fatigue, anxiety, and overall you’re multiplying your preexisting pain. There’s been multiple studies showing the effects of a low carb/sugar diet on mental illness, and if you’re able to, because it’s initially difficult, is to get on a keto diet. The keto diet decreases emotional instability and intensity by a metric ton I would say. It doesn’t cure it, but it definitely helps in reducing your suffering. Next, cut out the alcohol and recreational drugs. We don’t have the luxury to indulge in substances unfortunately because of our illness and besides, they’re bad for you in almost every aspect depending on what drug it is, so do your best to not do them. Next, DBT. Dialectical Behavioural Therapy is considered the gold standard treatment for BPD. There is a free PDF file with a simple google search. You learn so much about how emotions work, how to feel your emotions more, how to manage negative emotions, and overall how to life your life to the fullest. I’m not fully finished the DBT course but I’ve been doing it for a few months and I already notice so much improvement combined with meditation and journaling to keep me in check of the progress I made. Next thing you want to do is practice gratitude. What are you thankful for? It can be big or small. As long as you are reminding yourself what you are thankful and glad for in your day, you are furthering positivity for yourself which helps you heal and grow. Next, and I know this may seem impossible to do right now, but practicing self-love instead of self-hatred. You can do this by practicing self-care, making yourself a priority first, and I don’t mean this in a narcissistic way, but more-so remembering that you need to get your needs met so that you can feel better about yourself. Treat yourself as you would to a best friend. Be kind to yourself. Speaking of kindness, if you want to be kind to yourself, stay away from sites, videos, and or anything you come across online that subjects yourself to further self-loathing. And that can be things like BPD stigma, discord vent channels (or at least limit yourself to 1 vent a day), and staying off quora, because that site has so much misinformation, stigma, and hatred for people living with BPD because they had a past relationship with someone who has BPD and they generalize and stereotype. Whatever they say, remember that you are not an awful person. I also find that yes, BPD is a horrible illness, but I have found some positives in it. Like for example we are resilient, we are highly emotional intelligent, we love harder than the average person, and I believe once the symptoms get managed, we can continue on with our lives to be in functional, stable relationships, and things will work out in the end. Next, psychedelics. I don’t suggest this for everyone with BPD as it can result in making this and other comorbid illnesses worse. But if you’ve already had experience with psychedelics then I suggest having this as a suggestion. I personally have found major benefit in macro and microdosing psilocybin (a.k.a. magic mushrooms) for my PTSD, BPD, anxiety, depression and more. It allowed me to have more acceptance, self-compassion, and overall more sarisfaction in my life since it lets me see things in the bigger picture since BPD causes us to get engulfed in out intense emotions oh so often that we start to lose sight of everything important in our complex lives.

And finally, I don’t know if I have everything listed here but I’m getting tired writing this post as it’s late but finally I want to say is in order to get better, don’t kill yourself, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how painful it becomes, remember that your pain is valid, your intense negative feelings, emotions, and thoughts are not permanent. Just like a wave, it eventually settles down until eventually it’s just an even level of water. Imagine yourself surfing the wave. The wave is likely really strong, powerful, and it feels like it just keeps gaining momentum and is getting bigger, but with enough practice and patience you will be able to tame the wave until eventually it hits the shore and you have successfully survived. And next time a wave hits you, you’ll be better at managing it. 

 

And yea that’s pretty much it, or at least what I thought of the moment I started writing this post. Remember to tune in to your inner child with meditation. You will heal. We all will with time. Time goes by whether we like it or not, so why not spend our time putting in the work so that later we can reap the benefits of life, forming long lasting and meaningful relationships with the people we love instead of pushing them away all the time due to our illness. This behaviours and patterns of thoughts can be and will be changed with enough willpower and you will be so proud of yourself for the progress you made. Do not let the shadows of your past darken the doorstep of your future. Forgive and forget.

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I hope this helps.