I first realized that something was wrong with me when I was in the second grade – I didn’t understand why I was always so sad. I remember standing outside the school everyday and telling my self “I’m going to have a good day today.”. I never did. It was not until adulthood that I realized how strange those thoughts were for a seven-year-old child.
But it wasn’t until the next year – when I started lighting fires and fighting in school – that my parents sent me to a psychologist. I was diagnosed with depression and spent the next several years in therapy. It was nice to be able to talk to people, but I never really felt as if I obtained tools or advice to help me make my life better.
When I became a teenager, I self-medicated with alcohol until I was hospitalized due to a suicide attempt. I was diagnosed with clinical depression, and spent three weeks in-patient and three weeks out-patient treatment. This is the first time I was put on medication for my condition. Although the medication did help some with the depression, I still could not identify or understand what I now know were manic episodes, as well as a complete lack of emotion regulation due to Borderline Personality Disorder.
As I lost faith in these efforts to get help, I returned to self-medicating with alcohol throughout the rest of my teenage years. It was about this time that I stared to self-harm (banging my head on walls, pulling out my hair).
By the time I started college in the fall of 1992, I knew there was no way I could handle a full load of classes because my behavior was so unpredictable. Hence I took reduced load of courses and did the best I could to attend and keep up. As for my symptoms – and the shame it caused – became worse, so did my substance abuse. My emotions were an up and down roller coaster ride that I didn’t understand or knew how to control. It was during this time that I began to suffer from auditory hallucinations and developed a pattern of violent behaviors.
After my father’s death, my depression, outbursts, self-hatred, and self-medication habits only got worse. I was destructive, not only to myself, but to my physical environment and my close relationships. I knew I needed to get some kind of help, but I had no health insurance, so a doctor was out of the question. My increasingly strange and violent behavior began to alienate friends and family members. I knew at that point that I was out of control.
Once I had graduated, I enrolled myself in a series of graduate programs – all of which I had drop out from due to the unpredictability of my behavior, and my deepening depression.
I worked various odd jobs over the next several years – all of which ended because my inability to control my condition. One of my employers actually sent me to a therapist after a breakdown at work, but that was only temporary. Left untreated, my condition worsened. At this time I cut off relations with my family.
I spent several years hiding, self-medicating, self-harming, self-hating, and alternating between depression and mania. I had no idea what was wrong with me so I just tried to ignore my symptoms and tried to convince myself that I was fine. Up until that point, I had never received any treatment that was effective, so I just classified myself as untreatable.
In January of 2013, I suffered a complete nervous breakdown and turned to a friend who was a psychiatrist for assistance. After a lengthy discussion, he told me I had bipolar disorder. I was shocked. I didn’t believe him. But as I started to reevaluate my life, the dots started to connect and a pattern emerged: I realized that my entire life had been colored by illnesses I never knew I had because no one had ever properly diagnosed me.
Six months later, I began to actively seek help for bipolar disorder. I went to a community clinic and they helped to get me into a program. This was the first time I had an official diagnosis that I had bipolar disorder as well as depression and PTSD. I made a commitment to myself to adhere to my treatment program, so I ceased all self-medication in favor of a medicinal regimen. I struggled with the medications and at one point had to go to the emergency room.
In September of 2014, I was hospitalized again due to uncontrollable rapid-cycling, hallucinations, self-harming and side effects from unstable medications. My in-patient hospitalization lasted approximately nine days. Upon returning home, I went into a downward spiral self-harm, self-medication and starvation. It was during this time that I started cutting my skin as a coping mechanism.
Around January 2015, I was told by both my therapist and my nurse practitioner that I suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I was completely shocked – I had never heard of such a thing. As it turns out, there are nine criteria used to determine a diagnosis of BPD – I hit eight of them.
As soon as I stated to research BPD, the puzzle pieces of my life fell into place and, for the first time, I understood the pathology of my thoughts and behaviors. I realized the devastation this disorder had on my life. For the first time, I saw the whole and complete picture. Borderline is a condition that does have a genetic predisposition, however, it is mainly caused by environmental factors – especially in early childhood. Due to the physical, emotional, sexual abuse, and neglect that made up my first twenty years – I realized I never had a chance for a healthy, non-pathological life. The BPD diagnosis also explained why all previous efforts to get help were never fully successful.
Many doctors and therapists will not see patients diagnosed with BPD, because it is nearly impossible to treat. The only therapeutic program that has proven to improve the quality of life for BPD patients is called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). As soon as I was diagnosed, I enrolled in a weekly DBT group.
During the next six to eight months, my behavior was at an all-time low: I was overly-emotional, easily overwhelmed, enraged, and horribly sad. I attempted suicide twice during this period, and the self-harm cutting/scratching was getting out of control, as I was engaging in the behavior on a regular basis. My therapist enrolled me in a partial-hospitalization program that specializes in DBT.
It was only during the course of the program did I realize how different my life, especially my childhood, was different from that of others. I grew up in an environment of physical, emotional, sexual abuse and neglect – and it was not until recently that I realized that was abnormal and pathological. When that is all you know, you do not realize how messed up it is. It is eye-opening and devastating to look back on my life with this new perspective.
Considering the number and severity of my disorders, I am unique in that I survived this long without full knowledge and proper treatment of my illnesses. Everything I thought, everything I believed, everything I perceived, everything I had experienced, and every way I have behaved have been tainted and distorted by these illnesses. These disorders have left me with no clear identity, no ability to regulate my emotions (and sometimes my behaviors), no self-esteem, and a deeply-seeded hatred of myself.
My goal is to get through each day with minimal hurt or harm, while attempting make progress. I study the DBT program everyday in the hopes of improving my behaviors and my quality of life. However, there are some days when just thinking about my disorders, and the disaster they have made my life, is too overwhelming for me to process. I have learned a few coping skills from my DBT classes that help me deal with emotional meltdowns, however, that has not stopped me from frequent self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
I will always have scars on my arms and legs. And I will never forget the trauma I experienced during the first half of my life. I can only hope that one day, with a lot of work, I will be able to find peace.
Read my experience in a psychiatric hospital.
Stigma*Smash 