when did your symptoms start?

It seems that for me, it's been forever...
As far as i remember, i ###$ all my relationships with other because of my temper...
I was a sad child, i was lonely and craving for affection, i was a liar, a thief, i would throw myself from my bunk bed to try and break my legs, i started taking pills to kill myself in secondary school, i would swallow them till i puked than swallow them again, i would drink bleach, then take pills for the fun of it cause my mum sleep medecine would make me high... It definitely went worse in highschool when i started drugs and alcohol and straving myself and cutting myself everywhere, then bleeding myself, having sex every night with random guys...
I kind of stopped those behaviours now, though i still drink and take drugs but more "responsibly", and cut my wrist too but only when in total despair...
but now my temper is making it impossible for me cause people don't tolerate anymore what they could tolerate from a kid or a teenager...
Thing is apparently (?) BPD doesnt affect children but it seems to me i had those symptoms forever...
I have no ideas wether i do have BPD or not but i think i can find good answers on this forum anyway because even if my problem is smthg else, im having the same troubles as people here so feel kind of understood... I've been going through many posts, it feels so weird to read what you guys write, i thought i was the only one to be ###$ up this way, i thought i was a wrong thing, a mean person, a bad person, i don't even know how to describe myself, but having people running away from me all the time made me so cynical that i sometimes find myself evil...

I think I was in my early 20s (I'm 31 now)

I think the obvious symptoms really started at about 12. I felt like an adult then.
But, I'm pretty sure i dissociated a lot from the age of four, and depersonalization.
I was diagnosed earlier this year, shortly before turning 21 - it's hard becoming an adult when you've never had a childhood.

No idea but it didn't significantly cause a problem until I was 15. Before that I met criteria for other PD though so it's hard to tell.

I remember knowing I was different ever since I can remember. Even at primary school I knew I cared more about things than most people. I used to wonder why other people didn't seem to care like I did. According to my parents and teachers I was a 'difficult' child and was repeatedly labelled (and screamed at for being) hyperactive, a drama queen, emotionally unstable and an attention seeker. For me things started to go wrong when my parents split and I was 9. I was a highly emotional teenager and engaged in risk-taking behaviours although I didn't start to realise the extent of my relational issues until I was around 20 and a particular relationship came to an end. The guy thought I was 'psycho' and 'high maintenance' for being too intensely emotional and hard work. I had a long ten years to get through before finding out my 'label' and being lucky enough to receive good treatment. I do believe that I was incompatible with my mother (much as I love her dearly and I feel guilty for saying that). She simply couldn't cope with my emotionality and rather than nurturing that side and teaching me how to channel it she tried to squash it out of me by telling me it was bad to be like that. I don't think it was her fault though because she had similar problems from her own mother who still to this day exerts an unhealthy amount of vindictive and emotional control over her.

Ah, I think I have the same mum...
She would always yell at me for "pretending to be unhappy" when she found i was crying... And of course everything wrong in my life was my fault, if a "friend" ran away from me it was "what have you done again?", she would always side with other people, she was a teacher and i was really sad to see she would care differently for her pupils, like that girl who had depression, my mum arranged for her to take some time out from school for a little while, which i once asked for myself and she catagorically refused so i tried to make myself sick drinking cleaning liquids and taking pills... Once I passed out in the stair in the morning because of too many pills i had taken the night before, she didnt know about the pills but saw me passing out and still sent me to school... Probably thinking I was faking :/
Just like you, I know it's not her fault, she was "trying her best" and was so scared that i would fail at school that she would do anything but letting me take some time out :/ she thought i was just lazy and didnt care about my future, which is true somehow, but for different reasons...
I still don't know if she realizes she's done wrong...

It seems like forever.

lollipop11 wrote:I remember knowing I was different ever since I can remember. Even at primary school I knew I cared more about things than most people. I used to wonder why other people didn't seem to care like I did. According to my parents and teachers I was a 'difficult' child and was repeatedly labelled (and screamed at for being) hyperactive, a drama queen, emotionally unstable and an attention seeker.

This seems to sum me up to a T. At some point I lost the ability to outwardly express anger except for in the most extreme of cases. My mother also refuse to accept that something was wrong and still does. I'm her golden child, so I can do no wrong and therefore I can't be "wrong". Even when I told her flat out. My entire family blatantly ignored the self-injurious behavior and just attributed all the cuts and scratches to me being clumsy. I was unofficially diagnosed a few years ago and officially diagnosed just a few weeks ago when I couldn't deal with trying to be "okay" by myself anymore.

I hate that people around us would always deny everything, it's such a hard step for someone to admit there is something wrong with themselves, and when family doesnt want to admit it when we have the courage to tell them, it hurts so much...
i'm hating everybody right now...

lollipop11 wrote:I remember knowing I was different ever since I can remember. Even at primary school I knew I cared more about things than most people. I used to wonder why other people didn't seem to care like I did.

I remember feeling different, too. I felt like I couldn't relate to anyone. I felt like school wasn't the place for me. I think that I care about things more than most people as well.

I had hallucinations as a small child: the whole splitting thing was set-up for me prior to the gut-wrenching emotions coming into play.