What's It Like Living With BPD?

Living with borderline personality disorder (BPD) like any mental disorder creates challenges in your life and the life of others around you. Living with BPD may cause emotional pain, frustrations, and feelings of hopelessness, emptiness, or loneliness; Symptoms like these affect major areas of your life and it’s very important you learn how to cope with the symptoms.

Related Article: What is Borderline Personality Disorder?

One of the ways to cope is for you to educate yourself about what it’s like living with BPD so that you can expect and help others understand how you’re functioning. Here are some facts what it’s like living with BPD:

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Codependency Is A Tendency

Borderline personality disorder relationships can be frustrating, confusing, or difficult. If you’re diagnosed with BPD, one huge area that will be affected by your disorder is your relationships. Borderline personality disorder relationships usually revolve in arguments, unhealthy attachments, or codependency.

Codependency and BPD are usually two peas in a pod; If you’re an individual diagnosed with BPD, you’re the one being enabled by your partner, and your partner becomes the enabler or the codependent.

Codependency and BPD usually dance around each other because living with BPD commonly results in less prolonged romantic relationships than those who aren’t. If a partner tries to unhealthily do his/her best to make the relationship work, it leads to the enablement of someone diagnosed with BPD.

Related Article: 7 Things You Need To Know About Codependency

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Rejection is Abandonment

One of the descriptive diagnostic criteria of BPD is fear of abandonment. Living with BPD, as you were taken care of by an emotionally unresponsive attachment figure and as you faced early experiences of adversity, it’s common to see how other people are not trustworthy.

If you then try to engage with someone and lower your walls, if that person rejects a call you make, denies your invitation to hang out, or if that person tells you to leave him or her alone, it may cause you to react negatively because you see rejection as another form of abandonment.

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Work or School Life Can Be a Rocky Road

Not only borderline personality disorder relationships are affected, it can also affect your productive pursuits. While work and school activities can give you purpose in life, BPD can interfere with your productivity.

You may find it a struggle to not just only engage with your workmates or schoolmates, it can be intense to carry out school-works or work tasks while dealing with the emotional changes you’re having.

Symptoms of BPD like dissociation, stress-dependent paranoia, and impulsivity can interfere with your productivity. This makes it harder for you to connect with others and your tasks.

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Physical Health Is Affected

Living with BPD, your lifestyle can impact your physical health. BPD is commonly associated with physical conditions such as chronic pain disorders, chronic fatigue, arthritis, obesity, diabetes, and other health problems.

Another symptom of BPD is impulsivity. Becoming aggressively sexually active and indulging in substance use are common when living with BPD. All of these behaviors can lead to debilitating physical health issues like overdose, liver disease, STDs, or other physical health issues.

Related Article: Substance Use Disorder: What Is It?

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Trouble With The Law is Common

Individuals with BPD have symptoms of uncontrolled aggression, impulsivity, and chronic feelings of emptiness so it’s common for them to get in trouble with the law.

Their aggressive behavior can lead to destruction of property or assault which leads to legal problems: Hurting others, throwing objects, acting out, physical abuse, or driving while intoxicated are types of impulsive behavior.

Living with BPD especially when untreated can be a life of emotional pain. Recovery as someone diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder can be attained through therapy and lifestyle changes.

‍Butlr Health offers you teletherapy from mental health professionals of your preference and it is accessible anywhere and anytime. Recovery isn’t instant and it takes active engagement to correct negative behavior.

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