I'm new and probably HPD...

Hi all,

Just wanted to introduce myself here. I've been struggling with life over the past few months, and I've not been able to work for about 6/7 weeks as I've been struggling with my thoughts.

When i was first referred to the mental health team (uk) i was living with my parents in a different area and was worried i may be bipolar like my mum. They said it wasn't that but i did have cyclothymia. However, I do love to do my research, and various searches made me wonder if i had bpd instead. The more i looked into it, the more i thought "nah, it doesn't sound like me", mainly because i have a fear of conflict and avoid it like the plague (cue unhealthy lengthy silences in my relationship). Now I'm back home and in a different nhs catchment area, my gp is referring me to mental health here. PDs had caught my attention by then, and that was when i came across HPD...

I was very much weirded out. Someone I know recently told me a story about how one day she was wearing her fluffy pj's, tog rated socks, with a hot water bottle when out of the blue she received a text saying "stay warm hahahaha", much like someone was spying on her (turns out it was her mum who was on holiday at the time when uk snow storms were on the news, but she didn't have her mum's holiday number saved). Reason i told you that is because I thought it a good metaphor for how i felt - it was like someone had been spying on me, taking note of my behaviors and actions, and had written them down somewhere for me to find.

I came down to earth with a bit of a bump. I told a good friend who knows the ins and outs of my story, she looked it up and said it really did sound like me.

If i do have it, i have been high functioning for most of my life, with the events over the past year dragging me to seek help recently.

Even reading over what I've just written it almost screams some of the symptoms.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying "hello" to what i think is the most relevant topic to what I'm experiencing at the moment.

I'll leave you with a question - what helped you the most when you discovered your diagnosis?

I want to want to be the nice person i know i can be.

Hey LilOwl,

Just a 2 cents opinion -

LilOwl wrote:I want to want to be the nice person i know i can be.

Ironically, for those with HPD, the want to be 'liked' is often the cause of much of their relationship strife. When taken to extremes, the person with HPD ends up avoiding having their own boundaries, their own sense of who they are, what they believe; instead tends to morph into what others want, to be agreeable, to be 'liked'.

Problem is, in trying to please everyone, nobody ends up being pleased. We are fortunate in life if we can build a few close, stable relationships. Valuing those may mean there are times when we must choose between those we value over others, and for some with HPD, that's where things often go wrong. In trying to please all the people all of the time, nobody ends up pleased for long.

Ultimately it comes down to figuring out what makes you happy, what you believe, what you want, and so on. Some may like you, some may not, but those that do will really like you vs liking a false image.