BPD Relapse and Recovery

I had always been very quiet about my diagnosis and my past. In fact, there were many years that I even tried to pretend that my illness did not exist. I could count on one hand the people in my life who knew about my struggles but nobody that really knew the depth of them. I recently went through a life-changing event that changed all of this. As part of my recovery I have had to fully embrace my diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD), but this has also been a very difficult road. I have found that BPD is one of the few remaining mental illnesses that still has a very high stigma attached to it. It seems that people have become comfortable with the terms depression, anxiety and bipolar; however, many people have never even heard of BPD or know much about it. Internet sources seem to give very clinical explanations about the disorder, and it is hard to find people with this diagnosis that are open to speaking about it. I feel like I am finally strong enough to do that, so I want to speak openly about my illness and recovery. I want to educate people and give hope to those still suffering. Here is my story (trigger warnings: suicide and self-harm).

The Early Years:

Looking back I would say my severe symptoms started at the age of 12 when I started struggling with mood swings, self-injury, suicidal ideation and self-medicating. These symptoms continued and worsened through middle school and high school. After high school I finally saw a psychiatrist who unfortunately misdiagnosed me as having bipolar disorder. I was put on medication, but shortly after, I had a very serious suicide attempt. While in the hospital, I was assigned a different psychiatrist who changed my diagnosis to Bipolar II Disorder – another misdiagnosis. I was treated by this doctor for about a year, but my symptoms continued to get worse. After some time, I changed doctors again and finally received my diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and the puzzle pieces fell into place. Unfortunately, this doctor chose to treat my illness with medication and never stressed the importance of therapy. I was treated with many different anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medications, but nothing seemed to work. I reached a point of complete despair and decided I was going to come off of all medication and deny the diagnosis completely.

The “Happy Years”:

I had met my now husband toward the end of my treatment at that time. He stayed by my side through the ups and down and yet still decided he loved me enough to want to marry me. My family semi-jokingly warned him what he was in for, but he had always been a patient person and somehow truly loved me unconditionally. We married after four years of dating. Over the next five years, we bought a home, traveled, experienced heartache through the loss of a pregnancy and finally became first time parents. As any parent will tell you, this truly changed our lives forever! Although the first year was extremely difficult, we made it through. However, looking back, there should have been signs that things were not ok. My moods started to get increasingly unstable. We fought all the time. I struggled with being a mom and having to work and we made many major life adjustments to accommodate and balance this. When our son was 18 months old, we became pregnant again. Six months later, our son was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder that plagued us for two years. At the time, I was working three days a week and traveling two hours each way to work. Wanting desperately to find another job and get something closer to home, I started working a second job the other two days a week and then a third job to get my foot in the door where the opportunity presented itself. During this time, I was in therapy for normal life stress. Initially I told my therapist about my diagnosis of BPD, but told her I didn’t agree with it. I also hid a lot of things from her. After finally settling into one steady job, we purchased our second home and moved with our four-year-old and two-year-old boys.

The Breakdown:

Five months after we bought our new home, life seemed to be settling around me. Unfortunately the turmoil inside of my mind was quietly growing and creeping up on me. For the first time in over 10 years I began to self-injure again. I was having panic attacks, psychotic episodes where I found myself disconnected from my body, my moods and rage were out of control. I had a full relapse of symptoms, the worst I have ever experienced in my entire life. I was in so much pain, I had no choice to start opening up in therapy – I finally admitted to everything. For the first time since having children, I started convincing myself that my family, especially my children, would be better off without me. In therapy my diagnosis of borderline personality disorder was reconfirmed and that felt like a kick in the stomach. I couldn’t be this person, this “monster” that I had no control over. In the days following this particular session, I literally felt my mind shatter into 1,000 pieces. I had a full blown nervous breakdown. I remember standing outside my house screaming “please God, make it stop!”

My Recovery:

At the time of my breakdown, I actually had to handwrite a contract to my therapist that promised I would at least go speak to a psychiatrist about medication or my path would most likely lead to impatient treatment. As a mom of two children, working a full time job and being a major contributor to my family’s financial stability, I knew that wasn’t an option. After having such a bad experience with being overmedicated in the past, it was the one thing I was vehemently opposed to, but I knew I had no choice. I found a psychiatrist that was very reasonable and went very slowly with introducing the medications. Through this process I found that I am hypersensitive to medication and can only take about ½ the dose they normally prescribe to geriatric patients. Because of my sensitivity to the side effects, I had to go through several different medications and it took about six months until I was considered stable. I have been in therapy every week for the last year and a half and have painfully worked hard to get to where I am today. Although sometimes it feels like two steps forward and one step back, I know I am far from those very dark times.

Today:

The biggest turning point for me was learning the importance of taking care of myself. I realized that if I don’t put myself first, I am useless to everyone else around me. I am learning my limits of what I can handle and slowing myself down to a pace that is manageable for me. I have a beautiful tattoo of lotus flowers to cover up some of the scars of self-injury as a reminder that something beautiful can grow from murky waters. Most importantly, I need to believe that there was a purpose for everything that I went through. It’s a very scary thing to speak openly about an illness that is extremely misunderstood and oftentimes judged harshly. I want my experience to give at least one person with BPD hope that their diagnosis is not a prison sentence, that recovery is possible and one day people will understand this illness and speak openly about it. I am an open book – just ask! I hope that people can view me as that career-driven, suburban soccer mom that is totally normal and just happens to have BPD.