Possible BPD? Trigger Warning, I think.

I seriously think I have BPD. I'm not self diagnosing myself, nor am I expecting a diagnosis from you guys. I'm merely looking for help because this is interfering with school and work, and I'm starting to fail my English class and I don't know what to do, and I also want to see what you guys think, and looking for support if it's not too much to ask because this is really distressing.

Some background information about me, I was a very sensitive kid, I cried a lot, and I felt depressed and lonely sometimes. My parents would fight a lot, and when my mom would cry afterwards, I'd get so upset and cry and try to comfort her. She always talked about killing herself because of my dad, and that always scared me as a kid. I frantically tried to cheer her up at that point. When my dad would see me cry he would tell me to stop crying and that I'm being a baby for crying. He always tried to suppress any sign of sorrow in me. Sometimes I acted out in anger, and that always ended badly with my dad yelling at me at the top of his lungs and making me go to my room and then he'll proceed to yell at my mom more. My dad has always been very controlling and paranoid and angry. He rarely lets me go out, he used to yell at me a lot and he criticized me a lot. Nothing was ever good enough for him, basically.

Anyways, I identify with ALL of the signs and symptoms of BPD. I'm impulsive to a fault, especially with anger and anxiety. So many times I've misunderstood people, read too much into something, and snapped and yelled at them, saying cruel things such as 'you don't care about me', or calling them heartless, only to feel horrible and extremely guilty for it only moments later. I go from calling them a horrible person to apologizing profusely and calling myself a horrible person. I tend to over explain myself and try to justify myself in every way. I have constant mood swings, I can go from crushing depression and extreme loneliness and emptiness that makes it so hard to get out of bed and go to school every morning, to extreme anger towards myself for feeling the way I do, for all the things I've done, and for the way I think, to feeling angry at everyone else, thinking that they don't understand, that they're out to get me, that they don't care about me, and I try to avoid them sometimes. I've yelled at my parents, even in front of my therapist, yelled and cussed at other people, guilt tripped them and called them horrible things. It was to the point where an ex's (Let's call her Ex A) mom had to talk to me and ask me to stop stressing her daughter out with all my paranoia and guilt tripping, with another ex, (Ex B), her friend, who is also my friend, talked to me and told me to apologize to her because I cussed her out and impulsively tried to end the friendship and it really upset her, my therapist had to calm me down so I would stop talking back to my mom, my brother asked me why I'm always in a bad mood and my co-workers and friends worry about me constantly.

When I thought my friends were talking bad about me, I got so anxious and I started to panic. My brothers got so worried when they saw me. They described me as 'looking like I just saw a ghost' because I was walking like a board, looking pale with my shoulders hunched and on the verge of tears. I felt so horrible at the thought of them treating me like that, and it turns out it was a big misunderstanding, and I felt so stupid and my brother told me to stop letting people get to me so much, and that made me feel even worse.

I always accuse my significant others of infidelity with no logical basis, I always think that all my friends hate me and are talking about me behind my back. I build up possible partners so much, make them perfect in my mind, and yet one small thing can change my opinion of them so quickly. I start to get so angry at them, thinking that they're absolutely horrible people. This causes me to snap and say horrible things to them. Recently I impulsively ended a friendship with an ex, (Ex C), because I felt like she wasn't treating me good and I took everything personally. The night that I ended things with her, I felt like I wasn't good enough for anybody, that nobody appreciated my effort, and that nobody cared about me or understood. I broke down crying and shaking so much, my parents came in and saw me and tried to bring me water and food to calm me down. I couldn't even drink because I was shaking and crying so much, and my mom even said she was going to call an ambulance because I was freaking out so much. I tried to explain to her the problem and she didn't understand and told me to stop crying and be happy the next day and that she'll check on me to make sure I'm not crying, and left my room. I spent the rest of the night convulsing feeling completely worthless and horrible and depressed just wishing I could die right there. I started talking to myself saying nobody cared, repeating over and over to myself: 'I did my best', until I fell asleep.

Then I felt extremely empty and depressed the next day, then I started to feel better, then suddenly felt a crushing guilt for snapping at Ex C and wrote a long apology that night to which she didn't respond. Despite that, right after that I felt completely better, like I didn't even have a problem, and I stopped caring about her. Then I felt depressed and empty and guilty again the next morning. Then she finally responded that night and said some things that really upset me and I responded harshly and hated her again and ignored her that week. That week I fluctuated between feelings of guilt, anxiety, emptiness, anger, and depression, and sometimes I felt completely fine, like nothing was wrong. I get so scared at the thought of others leaving me.

Constantly I'll spend time in my room hitting things and throwing things in anger at the thought of someone leaving me, or just wanting to break down and cry about it. I don't self harm or wish to commit suicide, but sometimes I wish I would get a fatal illness or have a heart attack or get hit by a car or something and die because I get so stressed by all this, and those thoughts bring me comfort sometimes, as morbid as that sounds. I drive recklessly, I binge eat, and I love to spend money and get new things.

Constantly I'll have moments where it feels like I'm watching my life on a TV screen, and that I'm not actually there during certain times or that I'm watching someone else interact with other people. I switch frequently between different hobbies, life goals, and career choices. My perception of who I am or want to be is always changing. I have different ways of thinking and differently personalities and likes and dislikes. Like one moment I'll be confident, positive, happy, and funny, and I'll feel like that's who I am sometimes then the next moment I'll be depressed, empty, irritable, negative, and insecure, and feel like that's who I am sometimes, but most of the time I'm honestly unsure of who I am. I'll make decisions and go back on them the next day, I can hardly ever make up my mind. I feel like a different person every day or even every couple of hours sometimes.

Sometimes my different mental positions seem to clash on a decision, like I'll be fighting with myself in my head as to what I should do or what I want to do. This often results in me starting to panic and feel extremely anxious and confused, and I get up and walk around silently repeating 'Nonononononono' to myself at the thought of doing anything and finally I don't do anything because of all the anxiety surrounding the problem. I get so anxious sitting around doing nothing that I constantly have to get up and walk around my house just to ease some tension.

My mind goes all over the place, and stories that I tell are often disjointed and don't follow a logical order, which is why my description so far is unorganized and incoherent. I feel stupid and guilty for almost every decision that I make, almost every word I say, and ways that I act. I ask a lot of questions just to make sure I'm not wrong, I can't still still, I get bored really easily, I constantly seek others' approval, I try to make others happy and fear punishment and other people's anger. I always expect a strong reaction to what I say or do. Either I want people to react extremely positive or extremely negative. If it's in the middle, I get confused as to whether the person hated it or liked what I said or did. For example, if I say kissed someone or asked them out and they just smiled or said they liked it then I worry myself sick that they actually hated and they're just trying to be nice. I either care too much or don't care at all, there's no middle ground.

I often feel like others are either all good or all bad or that I'm all good or all bad. I expect others to be perfect, I constantly fantasize about being in a situation where I'm the 'hero', or I become well respected or loved by many. I unconsciously manipulate others for social standing or to get what I desire. I expect recognition for things I've done and often dwell on past achievements or creations or ideas. I'm very spiteful, I often act passive aggressively, I am dismissive towards rules and regulations if I don't like them. I read hidden meanings and attempts to upset me in normal comments. I share intimate details very quickly after getting close to someone, but then get scared that I'm annoying the other person or pushing them away or that they'll tell their friends all my personal information to shame me. Whenever someone continuously hurts me or I start to feel great distress from a person I frantically try to erase them from my life by cutting all contact to them and deleting any evidence of ever having known them and ignoring them.

I always feel like people are looking at me and talking about me and laughing at me. If I hurt someone a lot by accident, continued interaction with that person will cause me great distress from constant, plaguing guilt, and I will often wish the person would stop talking to me and forget about me, even if it meant hurting me even more. I'm suspicious of the motives of others, I'm an extreme hypocrite, often criticizing others for my own faults.

I'm judgmental and label others a lot and I can be dismissive towards other people's problems if I feel I can't get what I want from that other person, or if they hurt me. I can stop caring about others easily, but memories with them will sometimes still hurt. I constantly and most of the time unconsciously try to get sympathy and attention from others. I hold grudges like crazy and I remember every little detail of all the times someone hurt me. It's very hard for me to concentrate and my memory is getting worse. I don't care about school anymore, even though I'm a senior, this is really upsetting to me sometimes, but most of the time it isn't. I get so frustrated with school work, and it feels so pointless and stupid and I space out or disassociate constantly and constantly fiddle with random objects to occupy my mind. I'm very lethargic and reluctant to do anything most of the time which my mom attributes to laziness.

I like to blame others a lot , as you can probably tell, but I'm not trying to blame other people or say it's their fault for the way I am. I'm just trying to get every little detail down so that as much of this is as understood as possible. I over think and over analyze things, and I get upset over small things not even pertaining to me in any way. For example, I help out at a local elementary school for a class, and I constantly hear how some of these kids' parents left them, or how their father beats them with a belt if they're in trouble, and that makes me feel really sad, and the school is strict and the teacher I work with can be pretty mean to them sometimes. She doesn't understand them, and often accuses them of being manipulative, which is absurd to me because they're only 1st graders. I know a bunch of those kids will grow up with mental problems and will get into drugs and crime and go to jail when they're older, and that really upsets me. Or sometimes I see people working hard to run shops or businesses that get no business and I get so sad thinking that those people work so hard for nothing.

Anyways, I'm getting off track, I do that a lot too. I care a lot about looks and what others think of me sometimes, but other times I don't at all. I'm very inconsistent in behavior and in what I say, and I'm very biased. Sometimes I feel many emotions at once, sometimes I feel no emotion at all. Sometimes it's impossible for me to cry, even if I want to or it makes sense to, but other times I do cry and it's often violent. I constantly feel like crying, even if I'm in a good mood.
I try to run away from my problems a lot or pretend they're not there.

I panic when I'm suddenly put into a stressful situation or if I make a mistake, especially regarding other people. Even talking or attempting to joke with others can make me silently panic if they give an unexpected negative response. My brain works at a mile a minute, and it's hard to organize things I think. I look for constant reassurance from others, and I try to get other people's help for decision making. I wanna make sure I'm right if I'm anxious. Yet I always think I'm right if I'm angry, and I always think I'm wrong if I'm depressed. I guess the best way to describe this is, I feel like I have Borderline Personality Disorder, and those different personalities have their own mental illnesses that go with them, and how I feel and think and react to certain situations depends on how I feel at that moment, and mood swings change me almost entirely, and sometimes I feel the effects of all of them at once which causes me to panic.

Oof, that's a lot... And there's more that I can't remember right now, but I'll add it later. I really sound crazy. Please don't think I am, I'm trying so hard to be normal, I'm trying to shove all these feelings and this distress down, but nothing is working. I'm trying so hard to get better, honest. Or at least most of the time I am, I think, it depends on the mood I'm in because it's so hard to be positive sometimes but I try to be anyway. I feel horrible and guilty for feeling this way, especially since my family wants me to be happy, and my brother gets upset at the thought of me in distress, which makes me feel even worse. I can't talk to my parents about it because they just dismiss me as being too sensitive and that 'they had it a lot worse as teens' and sometimes make fun of me for it. I go to therapy once every two weeks, and it's only for paranoia, and I don't take any medication.

One time my mom said that she's wasting her time taking me to therapy because I'm not getting better and threatened to stop taking me. She even said that I'm not anxious, I'm just excited and that all my problems are caused by girls that I like and that it's all in my head. She hasn't said these kinds of things in recent weeks, but now I refuse to tell her anything because she doesn't seem to understand. Even the therapist seems to not take me seriously anymore. I don't know, maybe I'm just being paranoid, it's hard to tell anymore. Don't get me wrong, I really love my parents a lot, they've done so much and they care about me a lot, I just wish they at least tried to understand instead of attributing this to other things. Maybe they're trying to understand and I just don't see it, I don't really know anymore. I can't tell how much of my reality is distorted now because of how I feel and think and how much is real.

Ugh, I feel like I'm complaining and overreacting about all this and that this isn't even a big deal. I don't even know why I feel this way, I was never abused as a kid. I was bullied, but never physically, I don't think. So what is going on here? I only feel short momentary solace from this constant distress from time to time, and in that period of time it feels like nothing is wrong, but also in that period of time I regret feeling like I ever did have a problem and that I'm just overreacting. It's so hard to let myself be. Also, reading other BPD threads, I understand and identify with many of the stories, and I'll feel closure for a moment, and like I'm not completely insane but then suddenly after reading the stories I just want to break down and cry and it makes my head start to throb. I don't know why this is.

Anyways, if I'm overreacting here then I apologize to anyone who has a serious condition if I'm coming off as a usual whiny teenager, and sorry for the long thread. I also say sorry a lot, as you can tell. I was in a good mood, but writing all of this gave me a migraine and really makes me want to cry for some reason. Okay, that's all for now. Thank you for reading and please help me if you can, I'm desperate and scared and I don't know what to do anymore and I'm getting worse and worse and I'm falling apart and it's taking every ounce of self control to keep it all together.

EDIT: I remembered more stuff. Whenever I sense someone trying to secretly get sympathy or something from me I purposely do the opposite just to piss them off. It gives me a sick kind of satisfaction to deny them something they're trying to manipulate out of me, even if they do it only subconsciously, and even though I subconsciously do the exact same thing. A lot of the time my emotions well up so much that I impulsively react violently such as slamming my fist down or hitting something or just spasming in general to dispel some of the anger. I have constant distressing intrusive thoughts. This is starting to sound really bad... :/

hi there the winniken .. welcome to the forums

my goodness, how brave of you to come here and let it all out! i'm still reeling from your experiences and will be back to post more, i just wanted to reach out and say hello and that we're here for you.

e-hugs,

wineaux

Thanks for posting, it means a lot. (: I got worried that nobody was going to post here and that my thread would be lost in the forums. Also, what do you mean by 'reeling'? And thanks for reaching out, it makes me feel welcome. (:

i just want to assure you that you're not alone! others will post...it just takes a some of us some time to peak out.

reeling: to sway about in standing or walking, as from dizziness, intoxication, etc.; stagger. like i'm STAGGERING from the intensity of everything you've had to suffer

Thanks for the reassurance! (: And really? I always thought I was just overreacting about all this. All of this has started over a year ago and ever since then it's just gotten worse and more and more symptoms start to pop up as time goes on and my anxiety, depression, and rage are getting more intense.

I am sorry this is happening to you. I am scared that I do have bpd too and alot of what you said made sense to me. I cannot give alot of help bc I am still waiting to get a diagnosis one way or another, but I am praying it doesnt turn out to be bpd. Maybe by reeling the previous poster meant triggered. All I could suggest is you ask your parents and dr to get you to a psychiatrist and ask them to prove to you the you don't have bpd... maybe this may hinder them from misdiagnosing you and approach from a falsifying if you have bpd perspective. I have neevr posted but I am just writing bc I am in the same situation and I feel so scared so I imagine you are really worried too. I d think the next step is to get some professional info. Good luck.

Honestly, some form of diagnosis would be at least somewhat comforting if it were accurate because then I'd at least be on the right track for getting help instead of just going for paranoia, you know? But I think I'll feel horrible whether I was diagnosed with BPD or not. If I am diagnosed with it then I'll at least be able to get the right treatment, but then I'd feel horrible that I have it and I'd probably worry that I will never get better. If I'm not diagnosed with it, then I'll freak out thinking that I'm just a horrible person. Either way, I'm probably going to panic. Anyways, I hope things get better for you, It's a really rough thing to deal with. :/ And thanks for the support, good luck to you too.

somehow, i dont think youre horrible, maybe you just have traits of bpd or maybe something else you could work on. I can imagine how you feel bc i feel something like that too. Now I am at the point of just watching everyone like they are normal and I know somehting is wrong with me, I just dont know what it is. I am so terrified of finding out it is bpd and may not be able to recover and I am also scared of just not knowing what on earth is wrong with me.. So I can kinda imagine it is something like that you feel. I do not think you are a horrible person though, I have been seeing a trauma specialist and at the very least I think I know I am reacting to some trauma I experienced...so hold on and try to get the ball rolling in the diagnosis road and hold on for some answers.

I really don't know what it is to be honest. I have all the symptoms of BPD, I've had them for a year now, and I'm only 8 months away from turning 18, so I fit pretty much all of the criteria to be diagnosed with BPD. Yet there are other symptoms of other personality/mental disorders that clash with these feelings and cause me to panic, so I'm just extremely confused about all of this, and I still have a week until my next appointment with my therapist. Oh well, I hope things are going well on your end, and I wish you luck on dealing with your trauma and possible BPD, I'm sorry to hear you dealing with all of that. Also, thank you for the reassurance, and I feel the same way about being crazy and everyone else being normal, but I don't think you're crazy, I doubt any of us here are. But I understand how hard it is to feel normal with all of the things going on in your mind, it's a really rough thing to deal with.

I can't seem to edit the main post from my phone, so I'm just going to make another post. More things that I noticed are that I impulsively spend money, as I've said before, but spending money makes me really anxious and having no money at all causes even more anxiety. I constantly worry that someone I'm interested is going to think I'm obsessed with them if I spend time around them a lot, so I'll purposely spend less time with them and distance myself a bit, but then I get worried that they'll think I don't care about them, so then I'll start hanging around them a lot again. It's a continuous mental battle. I don't know if any of this is relevant to my perceived problem, I'm just posting any thing that pertains to anxiety and whatnot here, and to see if anyone can relate and/or help.