If not food, sex, spending...

what DO you fill the "emptiness" with??? It seems I have only cycled these things. Needless to say, all have gotten me into trouble (save some of the sex).

I know it is said that people with BPD need to "fill" themselves-- but with what???

Alcohol, cigarettes, bad food, benadryl.

Sucks because I actually quit smoking years ago but I have been running to them lately. I hate that one the most.

Nothing fills the void like three glasses of wine and a benadryl.

food, dangerous driving, smoking. Solitaire. Also if i can concentrate programming or just surfing. Trying to get exercise into my life. That should help.

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones...I have longer and longer periods of time when I feel either 1) a sense of purpose for my existence, or 2) the simple right to exist, just like any other member of any other species.

Whenever I feel empty, I usually fill with other people's thoughts: music, information, art. I try to keep it dark enough so that I can accept it but positive enough so that it helps pick me up. And I try to make sure that these thoughts reinforce my "personality inventory" that I made a while ago. In other words, I seek out reinforcement of who I want to be (consistently so).

Pretty much any type of puzzle. I enjoy solving problems. I have to be careful that I don't accidentally fill myself with other people's problems. I usually succeed.

--Frayed

For me it's spending & food. Eg, I'm probably about to move & just blew ALL my savings on something I didn't really need. Nothing new there

Currently I fill it with Food, buying books, reading books, being "useful" to other people, homework, actual work, weed, free soda from the Conoco... Teh Interwebz: PsychForums, LiveJournal, Blogger, OpenDiary, Advicenators... cuddling with the boyfriend on the sofa, chocolate, bad horror movies, kids movies, stuffed animals and an ever-growing and ever-changing music collection... vinyls records and ducks... my dogs and cat... cleaning house... hopes that friends will come and stay... things like that.

I used to fill it with coffee, cigarettes, guys I met off CraigsList that my friend and I would take to coffee and scare off... clubs and drugs and alcohol and permiscuous sex... gifts from strange men that I just met, barely escaping dark alleys with predators in them, walking around downtown alone at night on purpose to attract trouble, spending the night under some bridge in the city with druggies and the homeless insane... I intentionally starved myself to emphasize the emptiness and make it seem stupid... which worked until I got a boyfriend that insisted on feeding me...

For a while I filled it with the prescription drugs that my shrinks gave me... all kinds and shapes and colors...

Of all the phases here I think I'm currently on the healthiest thus far.