Do you need a trigger to react?

Hi

I'm starting to wonder if I have traits of BPD. I don't think I fit the diagnosis completely. I certainly need validation and am scared of being abandoned. I definitely have unstable emotions and my family think that I react quickly and am over emotional, irrational and quick tempered.

However, I have always felt quite justified for any outburst. I felt provoked and triggered.

BPDs are said to act out. But surely you feel that your justified? Or is it just the outburst is out of proportion to the trigger? I always feel that because I've been hurt and ignored repeatedly that I have to over react and be melodramatic to even be noticed, let alone understood or ignored.

snookiebookie wrote:Hi

I'm starting to wonder if I have traits of BPD. I don't think I fit the diagnosis completely. I certainly need validation and am scared of being abandoned. I definitely have unstable emotions and my family think that I react quickly and am over emotional, irrational and quick tempered.

However, I have always felt quite justified for any outburst. I felt provoked and triggered.

BPDs are said to act out. But surely you feel that your justified? Or is it just the outburst is out of proportion to the trigger? I always feel that because I've been hurt and ignored repeatedly that I have to over react and be melodramatic to even be noticed, let alone understood or ignored.

Do you feel like you don't have a real self/personality or that your concept of self changes frequently?
Do you experience intense emotions frequently?
Are you terrified by shame? Would you do anything to avoid it?
Do you feel you're a bad/evil person?
Do you experience intense psychological pain and engage in self destructive behavior to take your mind off it/drown out the pain?
Do you have control over your emotions, or do they control you?
Are you paranoid?
Do other people accuse you of being too dramatic/being an attention whore?
Do you find yourself changing your mind about things frequently, unable to hold to an opinion for any length of time?
Do you ever mimic or copy other people without wholly realizing you're doing it?
Have you ever obsessed over a person? Have you ever allowed someone to have what seemed to be an unhealthy degree of influence over you?
Do you have impulse control problems?
Do you tend to lose your sense of self when in proximity with others (a chameleon-like quality)?

I would have said yes, there's usually a trigger that provokes an intense emotional storm. An intense storm can be provoked by something very small, but then it doesn't feel "small" to the borderline. It can even be provoked by a train of thought, something from within a person's own mind. But for me, yes. These storms are usually traceable to something. They usually don't appear from out of nowhere.

From what you've said, I rather doubt you have BPD though you might have traits. You don't seem dramatic enough or needy enough to have full blown BPD, in my opinion, and judging only by what you've just sai.

Do you often feel you have a number of different "selves" rather than one whole self?

Is your life a series of intense storms punctuated by moments of extreme, almost bliss-like calm?

Do people tell you you need to "toughen up" or "grow a backbone"?

Is your emotional state fairly stable or do you move quickly back and forth between emotions? I don't mean being triggered and then reacting. I mean how likely you are to change emotions throughout the day.

If you come back tomorrow or next week and answer these same questions, how likely is it that your answers will change?

snookiebookie wrote:However, I have always felt quite justified for any outburst. I felt provoked and triggered.

BPDs are said to act out. But surely you feel that your justified?

It feels completely justified at the time but, when it's over, you look back and see the distorted thinking/overreaction.

Thanks for your replies.

To answer your questions perejil:


Do you feel like you don't have a real self/personality or that your concept of self changes frequently?
Yes. I don't know who I am. I'm brittle and fragile and scared of being me. I have no sense of who I am and even if I did it would alter/feel different depending on who I'm with.

Do you experience intense emotions frequently?
Yes. It's like a roller coaster. It varies as to what happen through the day. Good and bad emotions can change quickly.

Are you terrified by shame? Would you do anything to avoid it?
Absolutely! Shame is one of my most intense and prevalent emotions.

Do you feel you're a bad/evil person?
Totally. Full stop.

Do you experience intense psychological pain and engage in self destructive behavior to take your mind off it/drown out the pain?
Yes, intense emotional/psychological pain. Very little self destructive behaviour, I'm usually to numb and terrified.

Do you have control over your emotions, or do they control you?
Usually the emotions control me when I triggered - which is misty of the time.

Are you paranoid?
Yes I can be. I can totally accept that everyone wants to hurt me.

Do other people accuse you of being too dramatic/being an attention whore? Yes, I've been accused of being dramatic. Never been accused of being attention seeking.

Do you find yourself changing your mind about things frequently, unable to hold to an opinion for any length of time?
My opinions are black and white, full stop. But I can flip those opinions - usually after being hurt and abandoned.

Do you ever mimic or copy other people without wholly realizing you're doing it?
No

Have you ever obsessed over a person? Have you ever allowed someone to have what seemed to be an unhealthy degree of influence over you? Kind of.
Do you have impulse control problems?
Don't think so.

Do you tend to lose your sense of self when in proximity with others (a chameleon-like quality)?
Yes.

So, it appears that I have some traits of BPD. I do identify with the quiet Borderline though as the anger is internalised.

perejil wrote:From what you've said, I rather doubt you have BPD though you might have traits. You don't seem dramatic enough or needy enough to have full blown BPD, in my opinion, and judging only by what you've just sai.

You just can't say that, nobody can tell if someone has a PD with such few informations. You know BPD can take many different forms right?

I do need a trigger. It's never just a random outburst. Something had to have been done for me to react poorly. Is my outburst an overreaction most of the time? Probably from a non's perspective, but it isn't my fault I feel like everything is "life or death".
As an example yesterday I left for about 5 minutes, forgot something, and headed back upstairs. I noticed that my dog had an accident on the floor in the kitchen despite just being outside 15-20 minutes prior. I freaked the ###$ out. Saying I hated him, that I never wanted him, and then I began crying.

Overreaction? Yes, 100% was. There was a trigger though, and he has been having accidents more frequently lately so I've been really irritated by it. Yesterday was particularly bad because my boyfriend and I were literally gone 5 minutes and he was just outside right before then.