I was suffering for years. I acknowledged it at 18, and I started working through it at 19 through psychotherapy and medication.

I was medically diagnosed with CPTSD due to my prolonged exposure to sexual abuse and emotional hostility.

I have been told I display symptoms of BPD and Bipolar Disorder on several occasions, through several people. I have read up on it and felt it resonated with me somewhat as well.

The highs are unnatural, and the lows are unbearable, but underneath it all I'm always anxious and empty.

When I'm on a high it feels as though I overcompensate? But never in the moment. I feel invincible. I am super loud and energetic and fast, I make all these plans, and it gets to a point where the people around me start to feel discomfort and terror. Because the low always hits.

It always reaches a point where I tire out and shut down completely. When I'm on a low, it feels like the usual rational side of my brain, the hopeful side of my brain, shuts down completely.  I feel like nothing at all. And when I'm in that dark space, I do one of two things - I avoid, or sabotage.

It always feels like I'm on a pendulum falling from black to white. I can never find a middle ground.

I don't identify as someone with anything other than what I have been medically diagnosed with. I don't believe in self diagnosing. But I did discuss what people had said to me, and what I head read about, regarding BPD with my doctor. She told me  she agreed as well, but that she was reluctant to label me due to the fact that I am 19 and your personality fully develops at 25?

I never really brought Bipolar Disorder up. I feel like it will come across as though I am trying to deliberately make things worse for myself? Or that I am so invested in self sabotage that I am nitpicking more faults in myself?  Sometimes I feel like it's all just a big lie and I'm just fake and empty and trying to feel something?

I read about Histrionic Personality Disorder as well, which is something characterized by a pattern of excessive attention-seeking emotions, and an excessive need for approval. So then I start to think that maybe that's how they will view me, or that's who I am?

I've been to a couple of doctors before finding this one, and I feel comfortable with this one, but I don't know.

I know this is in the advice column but honestly, I don't even know what I need. I don't know what I am. I don't know what's true. 

And I'm fucking terrified, because I tip so violently and impulsively, and I'm scared of what I could do to myself.