Let me start out by saying I’m (26f) not diagnosed with BPD, I was diagnosed with childhood depression, anxiety and adhd in my early 20s but based on past experiences and this I feel like I have a lot of symptoms of bpd and am looking for advice about to handle these symptoms. My biggest one is being obsessed with my boyfriend’s ex because I have a huge fear of abandonment and want to be perfect for him. I am constantly looking at her socials online as often as I can to compare myself to her and see what she is up to. I’ve come to the conclusion that I do it because if I can figure out what he liked about her I can be better than her so that he’ll stay with me and not leave me like he left her because he’s said he’s leaving after he graduates next year and doesn’t want to do long distance which I can’t change his mind about. I’ve downloaded all the apps to block and have had others set passwords but my compulsion to look is just too strong and I always find a way around it. I don’t know if she is my fp or what but so much of my identity has been tied in to who she is that I unconsciously copy her style and everything. I did this same thing in a previous relationship to the girl my boyfriend was actively cheating on me with for several years. How do you handle this level of obsession and fear of abandonment besides the obvious of therapy and meds?

at random times, especially when arguing/disagreeing with my girlfriend, a completely different person keeps taking control of me. i dont know who she is but shes horrible to my girlfriend and she IS NOT ME at all i know it. i dont feel like myself physically. im telling her to stop it in my head but i have no control over her. phsyically, i feel like im dying whenever she takes over. like SHES slowly decaying. maybe shes already dead sometimes. i hate her so much i hate how horrible she is to my girlfriend.

shes only been taking control of me for a few weeks but its getting worse each time. ive shown BPD traits for 6 years in comparison. ive went emotionally numb before but she lacks empathy and is a horrible person. she is different.

yes im unmedicated because my parents are extremely restrictive and are insane 'helicopter parents' or whatever and dont allow me to make doctor appointments myself. my parents would ridicule me if i even brought up the concept that i NEED a bpd diagnosis.

it isnt even a self diagnosis at this point, its YEARS of research that has lead to this conclusion.

someone please help. i dont even know if this is bpd anymore or if this is some kinda fucking co condition lol

I’ve always been an angry and argumentative person (thanks dad) and I’ve had problems yelling and treating people like shit in the past. I was casually seeing this guy but we’re just friends now and we’d argue a lot. He said he’s never argued with people or raised his voice/yelled in the past. I know I need more treatment and I’m not easy to deal with. But he keeps saying he’ll stop and he’s “trying” to stop “but it won’t happen overnight” but this time he screamed at me and said he didn’t care that he did. I get triggered when men yell because of my ptsd from my father and he knows this. He blamed it on me since he doesn’t do this with anyone else. I’m not saying none of this is my fault but I and everyone I speak to tells me to leave because he doesn’t have an excuse to yell since he can control his own actions. I’ve told him throughout our friendship that if he does it again I’ll leave but I don’t. just want any feedback and opinions on it.

Everything is too fucking hard. It hurts too much and it all feels like too much.
I was on my way home from work when my partner came downstairs (we work in the same building) and asked if we should go vote early, get some lunch, etc. I’d had a shitty morning, a shitty night yesterday, and the two weeks before that have been absolutely fucking awful too.
So I was already in a really bad state. I hit myself because I couldn’t get my hair into a ponytail, and I threw things around in the garage when I realized my shoes weren’t there but were by the front door.
So I didn’t really think about what I was doing. I just followed him out from work like a zombie.
As we got closer to the library, I started getting stressed. I suddenly remembered where we were going and realized that I couldn’t remember how any of this worked.
You have to go behind a screen by yourself… but what the hell are you supposed to do back there again?
And you’re not allowed to help each other or talk to each other.
We get into the library and I’m trying to hear and understand what my partner is saying while also trying to read some instructions as we stand in line.
I panic.
Everything is happening too fast. I don’t understand anything. How the hell did I even end up here?
Panic. Panic. Panic.
There are people moving around us, but everyone is completely silent because, well… library.
I tell my partner that I can’t do this, that I’m panicking and I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do. I leave the line and sit down on a chair near the exit.
I look over at him, thinking he’s right behind me.
Nope.
He’s standing there talking to some fucking woman, some old acquaintance who came up to him.
How nice for him.
He’s completely ignoring me and standing there like nothing else is happening.
That’s what I’m thinking as I walk outside and back to the car.
I’m shaking and hyperventilating in the car. He comes back.
I start driving, but then realize I haven’t put my seatbelt on. I start pulling on it too hard and it locks. I keep trying. It locks again.
I slam on the brakes and the car stops suddenly (we were only going about 10 km/h) and I just scream, “Take over.”
I move into the passenger seat and have a full-blown panic attack.
My partner drives us back to work.
He tries to tell me that everything is okay. That he’ll come with me another day. That it’s not a big deal.
I get out of the car and all I can say is:
“Thanks for helping me. Thanks for ignoring me. Thanks for making me feel like I was the priority.”
Then I get behind the wheel and drive home.
I fucking hate everything.

I'm an anxiety ridden mess. Yes I'm in therapy and medicated, I have been for years before anyone decides to recommend. One small thing can happen and I turn it into a bigger thing than it needs to be. I'm just waiting for him to inevitably get tired of me. I know one day it might happen. I'm so annoying, I'm not that attractive, I don't have much to offer. I feel like he's going to get tired of me. I feel like he's regretting getting with me. He always says he loves me but that's what they've all said. I don't believe him just yet. I've been hurt too many times to fall for that. I just am waiting for the second shoe to drop at all times.

i’ve had a crush on this guy for almost a year. he’s switched on and off from being my fp just depending on if i found a different guy to fantasize about. the problem is that the other night we had sex for the first time and i feel like im going insane.
i unfortunately have a lot of attachment issues due to past trauma so i don’t hook up with people. we both agreed afterwards that it wouldn’t happen again but i hope it does. i think i want a relationship more but id be willing to accept whatever he offered me. i’m just afraid he won’t offer again.
i feel so insecure about sex and im working through it in therapy but i just really want him to desire me. i could tell he was very attracted to me but i dont know how to distinguish him being attracted to me as a person or attracted to my body.
how do i let go of this guy? i know a relationship is not the best thing for me right now but i crave it so badly. i kind of want to just confess my feelings and blow everything up so that way i dont have to deal with these emotions anymore. i will say my bpd is pretty internalized so i don’t appear to be splitting to others but on the inside i know im going insane. what should i do?

"But I can sit here and genuinely say that having a terrible time can actually become one of the easiest things to do. Because when u have been struggling for long enough eventually it becomes familiar, almost predictable..

you know the pain, u recognize it and u know what to expect from it. And in a strange way there's comfort in that familiarity? That doesn't mean I like it or want to feel that way, I've just been there enough times to know how it goes"

What u just read is pretty much how I felt for most of my life. My childhood, teenage years and beginning of my adult life had so much pain and chaos that eventually misery was juust a normal day lol. And when something has been familiar for basically as long as u can remember I guess it can start to feel weirdly safe.

Being happy tho? Scared the shit out of me. Bc if I actually built a life I loved then suddenly I had something to lose. And like who tf was I without the chaos and instability?? Yeahhh idk that's wayy outside my comfort zone :')

Somehow it felt safer to keep living a life I hated than risk building one I loved and maybe losing it. U can't exactly lose something u never had🤷🏽‍♀️

But eventually I was just fucking done. Living with bpd meant years of intense emotions, instability and sooo much self sabotage. I watched myself fuck up basically every part of my life and I couldn't keep destroying the exact life I desperately wanted.

Something HAD to change and not changing wasn't an option anymore. So after years of therapy, fucking up, trying again, learning, unlearning and slowly changing patterns that had been there most of my life I finallyyy have a life that feels calm and peaceful.

And somewhere along the way I realized that's actually what I wanted all along. Not to be "happy" 24/7 bc that's literally impossible but to be at peace. To experience love, joy, sadness, fear, disappointment and all the other shit that comes with being human without everything turning into chaos. Peace doesn't mean nothing bad will ever happen. It just means I'm not choosing misery anymore bc it feels familiar.

For most of my life chaos was my comfort zone and now peace is starting to feel like home.

Idk what the point of this post even is tbh, just felt like putting my thoughts into words in case someone can relate:)<3

sorry if it feels like i'm spamming this subreddit 😅

i've been thinking about my (ex) fp a lot. tl;dr i split on them and it was messy and bad, but i've managed to climb out of the spiral (at least for now) and i'm actually feeling a lot better about being no contact with them for the next few weeks.

i'm 26 and i'm pretty sure this was my first fp ever, as i don't recall ever feeling this crazy about another person before. but i was wondering what causes it?? there's nothing i can think of that particularly sets them apart from any of my other friends personality-wise. we talked about dating in the past and firmly decided we weren't going to, so it's not romantic, and i never even latched into romantic partners like this.

do your fp's have certain traits in common? is it just random?? what is it about our brain chemistry that tells us THIS PERSON has to become my emotional support?

-Get extremely depressed

-Existing is torture

-Overreact

-Isolate so I don’t lose my shit more

-Relationship suffers

-Isolate more

-Apologize, eat harsh criticism, try to change

-Same shit 2 days later

Not sure what the fuck else to do, already in therapy. Just waiting for people to leave. Same cycle. Find someone struggling like me, we bond, eventually they get their shit together and turn to me like Your Turn, and I try until everyone remembers who I am. There‘s no fixing it. Eventually the leave as a better person, starting to think I’m just a good person to meet if you’re suicidal so you can get your life together, then you can leave for a better partner. The problem is actually when they don’t leave and you continue to torture them with your insanity and they just start to hate you.

Do you have any relationships at all to humans? Do you isolate? Are you constantly analyzing situations and people? Are you bombarded with info, flooded with energies when you do venture out? Can you interact with people, even the checkout person at the supermarket without feeling dissed and argumentative?

People repeatedly show me how much I do not want to even be around them I try to be positive and a nice person to be around but what’s the point of improving and medicating myself when no one else wants to actually do any work atall? I have deleted every single person I know and I wouldn’t blink an eye if I never spoke to anyone ever again.

Does anyone here oscillate between a hyper religious identity and more opposed identity?

I find myself doing this with Christianity and a more “hippie“ that I have made kind of opposed to it in my mind and radically altering my life back and forth to these extremes to try to “get it right“ and it’s killing me.

I’m a lesbian in my 20s and dating an awesome woman. I thought I was doing really well after our first two dates (which both lasted all night and ended in sleepovers lol), I was calm and excited to see what happens, I felt secure in her liking me. However, I now feel like I’ve fucked it all up and I’m crashing out.

I jokingly said to her yesterday that she might not fancy me anymore now I’ve had my hair cut as I look like a different person (it was sarcasm as we were talking about how I just had a fringe trim) and I’m worried she’s taken that as me being desperate for validation or something. I might be going crazy but it feels like her tone has slightly changed. We have a date arranged for this weekend and she’s still up for it but I went on a 4th date with a girl earlier this year who’d already decided to end things but didn’t until the end of the date lol.

I’m so worried and convinced she hates me now and is only seeing me out of pity or something. I need reassurance from her so badly but I know I can’t ask for it and risk scaring her off. I know DBT would help with this but I can’t afford it rn so I’m wondering what I can do.

I know it’s unhealthy but relationships mean sooo much to me as 1. I live alone and get quite lonely but 2. I have so many goals for the future and they almost all involve my future partner and dating is so hard as a lesbian and even harder to find someone I actually like and click with, so I’m so terrified I’ve fucked things up and I’m gonna be inconsolable for months :/

I really want to work on this so that if things do progress I can be a good partner to her but also so that if they don’t it doesn’t feel like my whole life is shattered.

i left my job of seven years about four months ago, and i’ve been consistently working at my new job for about 3 months straight now, but i’m really really struggling with splitting and anxiety while at work!!! my last job of seven years was easier to maintain because my friends were my bosses and had a great understanding of my mental health issues - i had my own problems working in that environment so i made a switch to a new job and at first everything felt better but it’s gotten to a bad point again where i feel like the odd one out amongst my coworkers, and i feel like everyone hates me. and just…i feel so bitter and angry all the time and want to know if there’s anything i can do to work past those feelings while at work.

Hi everyone. I’m not diagnosed with BPD, but I’ve been researching it because I relate to a lot of the symptoms and I’m trying to understand myself better. I always thought what I was experiencing was just anxiety. My anxiety has become pretty severe and has caused me physical symptoms like tremors and hypertension.

I struggle with very intense attachment in relationships. When I’m afraid someone is pulling away, I can become extremely anxious and feel like I need to fix things immediately. I sometimes repeatedly call/message during conflicts because I can’t calm down until things are resolved.

I also struggle with self-harm when my emotions become overwhelming. For me, it has usually been more about releasing emotional pain than wanting to die. I had suicide attempts when I was younger as well, although I don’t currently want to die or have suicidal intent.

Lately, I’ve been realizing that I may be pushing people away or losing people without even noticing it at the time, and that really scares me. I want to understand what I’m doing wrong and learn how to manage it.

For those of you with BPD, do these experiences sound familiar? What does self harm and intense attachment feel like for you, and did treatment help you manage these patterns?

i'm extremely self-aware and have never acted on anything i state here but (especially with my favorite person) i cannot stop having certain urges to break trust by going through dms of theirs or to potentially seek answers that feed my brain's perceived idea of potential abandonment/preference over me. and i feel horrible for it.

we are just friends. we are not in a relationship. we have been friends for well over a year now, we are very transparent with each other and communicate very well. we are generally inseparable and all of our mutual friends can vouch for this. any time we can spend together where i am not working or one of us isn't asleep, we're doing something together.

we aren't in a relationship because mentally it isn't something they can handle with family issues and their own unresolved mental health issues. we've talked about it enough times where i don't feel like it would be productive to revisit it and they are also unsure of their own feelings.

and yet there is this gaping hole in me. i introduced them to a group of people and we're all pretty tight knit. and there is someone who both of us are close with and i can't help but feel like they'll pick this person over me. i know they won't; that person has zero interest in relationships to begin with and is very much aromantic. i know it's ridiculous for me to feel this way about someone i'm not even in an actual relationship with. yet my brain wants to seek any validation that it is right or proof that this imaginary scenario won't happen. and i feel terrible each time. i try shutting it down. i try remembering logical fact and rationalizing. i write about it in a journal. how do i redirect it? how do i repackage this?

(yes, i have a therapist. i will probably bring this up to her wednesday when i see her again, but i wanted to hear from other pwBPD what works for them as well)

why is it so hard to talk to people you care about? why is it so hard to talk to them about things that confuse you or bother you. why is it is just hard to regulate anything. i try so fucking hard and i don’t even noticed until half way so that i was doing THE SAME FUCKING thing of breaking down instead of sitting down and talking. and i had planned the entire day to do so, just sit and ASK not fucking break down and just start spiraling it’s so fucking exhausting. i just want to be not be like this for once

I don’t split a lot, but when I do it can get bad. I recently found a boyfriend who’s an amazing partner. We haven’t been dating long but I’ve noticed I split really hard especially with him when I notice him keeping up with other girls on social media. And I really feel like I wouldn’t have such an issue with it if he had their numbers, but for whatever reason, seeing snap and insta notifications of other women on his phone really triggers me and my splitting. It gets yo the point where I can’t sleep. And I’ve gotten better at dealing and communicating. But this is something I just can’t bring myself to talk to him about because it feels so unfair for him I guess. Like I don’t wanna be that person who makes the other think they can’t have opposite sex friends. So I’ve just been taking really long showered late at night when I see a notification on his phone. It also bothers me the times in the day he gets these notifications but I think I’m just reading into that? How can I be not so scared to address this with him, and how should I go about addressing it with him?

- skippable context

my best friend is my fp and my attachment to her is ruining our friendship. i won’t go into a lot of detail but she’s been spending a significant amount of time away from me for work and her other friends, and i’m not coping too well. it’s especially rough given that she’s the first fp i’ve had be patient, stand strong during my episodes and assure me that i can’t scare her off. despite this, she’s grown to fear making me upset and has admitted that she’s scared she may lose me if she isn’t responsive to me. i don’t want to scare her anymore — her happiness is miles more important to me than anything and i want to rid us both of all of this.

- question

the only methods i’ve found that work when getting over an fp is going non-contact for a period of time or a severe split (usually both). but this isn’t possible with my current fp, nor a preferred route. we have a good relationship (when my episodes aren’t getting in the way) and i wouldn’t want to ruin what we have over something that may be fixable with her remaining in my life. any advice?

Hey my girlfriend has been diagnosed with bpd and will be starting anti psychotic soon im about a week and I just want to know what I can do to help and suport her and be more there for her or any genral advice for partners with bpd and is there anytbing i should expect with the medications

i really love my friends. genuinely, i love them a lot.

unfortunately sometimes i find myself upset and resenting them. this is a new development for me, as ive always been a very kind and understanding person. but recently im finding myself extremely volatile and my mood swings are heavily dependent on how they react to things. whether it involves me or not doesnt matter; if they are behaving any way that isnt what im expecting or fully comfortable with then i almost shut down. i am the "centre" of my friend group, this has been something ive been a little uncomfortable with ever since realising it years ago, but its never been anything too pressing. but im growing increasingly more upset when they dont do stuff on their own. they always wait for me to start or initiate anything. its not the same as them waiting for me before we do something, but they expect me to start every plan or wont say anything definitive unless i say it first. it makes me feel like im almost a parent to them or something instead of a friend. ive brought this up to them multiple times but it keeps happening. its really tiring and mentally taxing and exhausting. i just want them to do stuff on their own, to stop waiting for me to say something before they do anything. i feel like im overly relied on. they never hang out without me. i swear if i wasnt apart of the friend group it just wouldnt exist at all. why cant my friends like each other? idk.

i know this isnt inherently a bpd thing but having bpd makes it affect me so much more. my mood swings are bad. i dont really know what to do regarding any of this. i dont want to take it out on them so i always take it out on myself. i cant afford therapy either, so i just... guess id like some advice? or some kind words? im not sure. thank you.

My partner and I have been together for just around a year. A few weeks ago, we had a major rupture in our relationship. We’re ENM and I was chatting with another guy in a way that broke my partners boundaries. I knew I was violating said boundaries. I don’t know if that’s entirely relevant to the current issue, because this has been happening since before that incident.

My boyfriend used to always want to see me and spend time with me and text me a good amount when we weren’t together. He doesn’t send me reels anymore, it feels like he doesn’t make plans with me anymore, he doesn’t invite me to things very often, and I just feel like he got bored of me and isn’t interested anymore.

He says that’s not true, but these things haven’t changed. And besides, I don’t want him to text me often and invite me out and hang out with me just because I asked him to anyways. I just don’t know if it’s just my bpd making me think he’s losing interest and I’m misperceving these things when they could be from other causes, but I just feel so lonely and sad right now.

Last night I bought us concert tickets for a show we both wanted to go to, and he bought a ticket for just himself for tonight. Which whatever, a bunch of his friend group including his ex is gonna
Be there and I don’t want to be around his ex, but I’m just at home alone and sad. I got my ticket yesterday for free, and I’m struggling with money and can’t go. But he is too... He said he couldn’t hang out with me today cause he wanted to be at home to do chores and be with his sick pet, but now he’s at a concert. I’m just sad. I don’t know what to make of this.

i hope someone can relate to this. I hate that there is a constant reminder that there is someone they like and care for more than me. it's a constant reminder that there is someone that will always be picked over me.

They've broken up and gotten back together a couple of times over the years, and anytime they break up I get a taste of being the favourite. Anytime they get back into a relationship, I feel like I have to prepare for some level of emotional abandonment.

it's so painful to see how my FP will treat someone they plan to keep in their life closely super long term compared to someone like me, whose just a best friend