Thoughts Between Reality and Psychosis

I find the term “borderline” ironic. It describes an in-between state of mind. When the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder was first developed, it was thought that people with BPD stood on a thin line between reality and psychosis. The reason that I find “borderline” such an ironic term is people suffering from BPD think in black-and-white. Things are either all good or all bad. Examples from my personal life:
-In school, I saw it as I failed everything, and therefore can’t do anything right. (In
reality, if I failed everything, I wouldn’t have graduated.)
-If I upset someone, everyone musts hate me. (The fact is people get upset, but hopefully,
everyone doesn’t hate me.)
-If one therapist couldn’t help me, then no one can. (I’m still figuring out whether this is
reality or delusion.)
The idea is everything is one extreme or another. The middle ground can’t be seen.
This next thought pattern is one of my biggest struggles. It’s engraved into my mind that I am an awful worthless piece of shit that doesn’t deserve to be loved. Everyone, at some point, struggles with self-image to an extent. A person who struggles with BPD hates himself/herself so much that they depend on others to define who he/she is. I often say that my intelligence is all I have, but as soon as someone else questions my intelligence, or makes the slightest implication that I’m stupid, I become terrified that they’re right. My sense of self has been deteriorated and I need reassurance to get it back. I usually wait for someone else to reassure me, or discourage me. Other’s opinions matter more than my own at times. I become codependent on whoever I’m closest to (my adoptive mom, my therapist, and once, I no longer had them, Ana).

I feel like poor sense of self plays into the difficulty in problem-solving and making decisions. I dunno about other borderlines, but when I face a problem that requires me to make a decision, I freeze up. Like right now, I have a huge financial decision to make, but I can’t. If I don’t make this decision soon… I’m getting so nervous, thinking about it. Instead of actually doing something about the problem that has come up, I am avoiding it as much as possible. If I avoid it long enough, I know that it will no longer be my decision.

I’m gonna move on, because I wanna continue blogging about BPD thought patterns and not get torn up over finances. The next thought pattern is dissociation, which can range from being unaware of the environment to being completely detached from reality. I’m almost never paying attention; I’ve always been like that. I fear the reality of situations, so if I go elsewhere, I’ll never have to face it. The thinking isn’t necessarily logical, but it’s actually the brain’s way of trying to survive stress, or trauma. I’ve gotten so good at detaching myself from life, there’s been times that I have actually convinced myself that none of this is real. It works for a little while, but then I snap out of my mind’s world and it feels like everything crashes down on me. I lose control, and wanna find another escape, even if it’s more harmful than the actual conflicts.

The final thought pattern that I’m going to discuss in this blog: psychosis. Psychosis is an extremely interesting topic in itself, but I am going to try to stick to the basics, right now. Dissociation is a form of psychosis. Psychosis in the simplest definition is a loss of contact with reality. It can come in the form of delusional thinking/paranoia, hallucinations, and out of body experiences. Hallucinations are fascinating. The most common forms are visual and auditory hallucinations, but a hallucination can affect any of the senses. You can feel bugs crawling in your skin, smell gas leaking in your home, or taste sugar while eating dirt. None of it actually real, but you think it is. It’s so cool how the mind can play tricks on us. Before I go too far, I’m gonna switch over to psychosis in BPD. People with BPD may never have a psychotic episode. Like any illness, a person isn’t always gonna show every symptom in the text book. That being said, I’ve been diagnosed as having a psychotic episode once in the form of paranoia. I’m not gonna go into it, because I don’t think I can without the experience re-surfacing.

That’s all I can do, right now. This blog was a lot more “intense” for me than it probably will be for others. Tomorrow, I will go into the behavioral symptoms of BPD- the symptoms that others pick up on.