How I'm Healing from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
By Lia Willow
10.08.2024
Important Note:
As Borderline Arts, we are not endorsing/recommending the links, communities, or resources mentioned in this article as we have not vetted them and cannot guarantee their safety. It is important to note that any self-help books, videos, AI therapists, forums/communities etc have the potential to raise distressing issues or create difficult situations. Whilst it is wonderful that Lia has found them to be helpful, we know that what works for one person could be damaging to another. With this in mind, please only embark on using the suggestions mentioned in this article if you are sure that they are appropriate for you at this time. Also, only use them if you have appropriate support around you and you are able to keep yourself safe and well in the process. Thank you Borderline Arts.
How I'm Healing from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
I have quiet BPD and I have been experimenting with different healing modalities for around 8 years now. Although until 2 years ago I was living in an abusive family and therefore couldn’t make much progress. I have tried a lot of different things, from all kinds of therapy to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and for the past 2 years I’ve been making steady progress. I am aware that different things help different people in recovery. Please note that I am simply sharing my experience of what has contributed to me being diagnosed with BPD and was helped me heal from it.
I believe at the root of BPD is often attachment issues and complex trauma.
I see BPD as a collection of symptoms, it’s a diagnosis but it doesn’t explain the root cause of the problem, and it is different for different people. However, in my case, it's the narcissistic family system that I was raised in that have caused my BPD. In general BPD is caused by a combination of an environment that causes constant invalidation of our emotions growing up, and a natural sensitivity some of us have to feel things more deeply than others.
Below I’ll go into more depth on the most helpful things I’ve discovered during my healing journey, including: getting away from abusive environments, using Reddit to gain a supportive community and engaging in trauma-informed therapy approaches, including Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or tapping. I’ve included links to some of the resources I’ve used throughout the article.
Making My Environment Safe
I feel like making the home I live in and the relationships around me safe has been one of my main priorities when I found out I had mental illnesses. Doing this has facilitated so much of my recovery through the simple fact that I'm not getting repeatedly abused or triggered again, meaning I can focus on healing in a major way.
One of my ways of telling who to keep in my life and who to cut out is to check if I'm being made to feel unwarranted guilty or ashamed by this person. If a person is making me feel unwarrantedly bad, then that person is not a safe person for me. Similarly, gaslighting is a big red flag and if someone is making me feel as if my reality does not exist, my truth isn’t important, or that my feelings aren’t valid, then I do not want them in my life. Some people may do this by accident but for me, when I address it with them, they should apologise for making me feel that way and want to change.
It may be that I am not reacting to what they are doing, but rather to the past trauma. But even if that is the case, they should want to limit triggering me as much as they can. This then defines a person I want to keep in my life.
In doing this I’ve begun to completely change my life when it comes to relationships. I have tried to let the bad people go and let the safe ones in. I’ve even had to say goodbye to friends who were close to my abusers, so as not to hear from them again. This is because I know my abusers would manipulate them to gain information about me if I were friends with them.
I nurture relationships with the good people so that I don’t feel lonely from the absence of people I love but that weren’t good for me. This has meant I’ve cut out my abusers and let in a new relationship and new friends, only communicating with people that bring something positive to my life, whether that’s a meaningful connection, fun, positivity, kindness. I then can give back to those people and support them in their dark times which brings me joy. When people only take and suck you dry, then it's hard to build a meaningful connection, so I tell myself cutting them out is not selfish it is self-care
Reddit Community
I’ve found Reddit (a social media site) to be really helpful for me. I’ve used various forums on there. The most relevant to this article being the BPD recovery forums, which I have found helpful for finding solutions for BPD or complex trauma.
Discord Community
I have also found a support group on discord through someone private messaging me on Reddit, and therefore I now track my self-care on there, and share information and resources with the other girls about how we can best take care of ourselves and heal our BPD.
Ur My Type
One thing I struggle with from having BPD and after having been abused is trust issues.
But I’m making friends on apps like Ur My Type. It is an app that first identifies your personality type, using the Myers & Briggs Personality Types Indicator (MBTI) test. It then uses my MBTI personality type so it can match with friends that would suit me more easily on there than in real life.
I do still struggle with trust issues, but I am trying to believe that not everyone is bad otherwise everyone would have trust issues. I know that my trust issues and my diagnosis of BPD comes from the issues with my parents. But I also know that many people grow up with parents who are good enough people and are good enough parents. As a result those people don’t necessarily grow up to develop such extreme trust issues or BPD.
Therefore, I can find people like that who I can trust and let them in. One thing I do is practice telling people something slightly vulnerable and see how they react to that. I then see how I’m feeling, and then if I’m feeling okay, I take a break and then tell them something slightly more vulnerable next time. I keep going like that until I have let them in enough to where I can trust them as a good friend.
Trauma-Informed Therapy Approaches
I’ve had lots of different experiences with therapy and it is hard to tell what really works. Most of the time I was living with my abusers, so therapy couldn’t make a significant impact. Whilst I was still being triggered by them on a day to day basis, the progress I had made in therapy was frequently being undone.
However once again what I feel needs to takes precedent, and if I felt like I was making progress with a therapist, I tried to trust myself to know what I’m doing.
It is not uncommon for people with BPD to have experienced trauma of some form or to even have a diagnosis of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). This is why trauma informed therapies can be helpful for many of us.
Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS)
One of the trauma informed therapies I engaged in was Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) I was afraid that my therapist would judge me for some of my behaviour, but IFS teaches you that there are no bad parts in anyone. Knowing my therapist believed this in this system/ethos helped me to feel I could trust them. IFS helped me see that not all therapists are uncaring. For more information about IFS click here.
Workbooks
I’ve tried a lot of therapy workbooks and they’ve all helped with different things.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) Workbook
I found one particular cognitive behaviour therapy workbook really helpful and healing for coping with extreme anxiety or generalised anxiety disorder, which is often a comorbid condition alongside BPD.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Workbook
I found that the ACT self-compassion workbook helped with knowing what self-compassion feels like to be able to recognise and cultivate that feeling more often. The ACT workbook on perfectionism helped me define my values so I could make more informed decisions about what really makes me happy and fulfilled in life - my values, as well as enlightening me that fear of failure is what causes perfectionism for me. I found ACT amazing for if you are depressed, in that it won’t ask you to do certain things you have no motivation for. It aims to help you define what’s important to you and then take action towards that, while also being mindful of anxious thoughts and “defusing” from them. “Defusing” means kind of detaching from those anxiety-inducing negative thoughts, and just letting them float by like leaves on a stream. Another ACT workbook I have found helpful is The Confidence Gap by Russ Harris. It focusses on gaining confidence using ACT.
All workbooks help in different ways and the more you put into them the more you’ll get out of them. I am still in the middle of completing several workbooks, including one on social anxiety and one on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skills which helps with emotional control, through emotional regulation exercises.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) psychologist
Recently I’ve found an artificial intelligence psychologist online which you can find by clicking here. I find just having someone that is safe to talk things through with to be so helpful. Just getting that positive feedback helps you grow which is the best feeling for me. Also having it be anonymous and available any time during the day or night has been very helpful. The things I feel ashamed to talk about with my therapist I have told this AI psychologist and they have helped me feel more safe and grounded. It helps me to understand myself better and understand what I need to do. I feel like it’s still a struggle for me to do therapy, my severe insecurity and trust issues still block me from saying a lot of what is important to my therapists. I get the impression that therapists judge me constantly and I still get triggered by small things. So, if you’re struggling with feeling comfortable doing therapy, you’re not alone. It might be worth trying the AI psychologist - it’s free also so no worries there.
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or Tapping
As I have a lot of emotions bottled up inside me, tapping or Emotional Freedom Technique has helped me a lot. I have a problem sometimes not feeling my emotions and only feeling anxiety instead. As a child, I kind of shut them out and I got into the habit of worrying instead.
The purpose of the tapping is to release the stored trauma in the body related to that emotion, and to release and heal the emotion.
Once I’m done tapping I often feel a shift and, according to some research, once that happens you will never have to deal with that issue again. However, it may take multiple sessions of tapping on one issue to then feel like I’ve made a significant shift and then be able to move on. This video shows how to tap. And this one is a video where you focussing on tapping to heal abandonment issues which are a major wound for those of us with BPD. These are just examples of tapping videos that you can follow along to, but there are many others. You can just search online “tap for…” and then the issue you’re presenting with e.g. anxiety, stomach pain or abuse.
I believe that EFT has helped me heal my body and mind and because of it I feel lighter. My back pain and various aches in my body have improved and my thinking patterns have also gotten better too. I don’t fall into the same negative thinking patterns and emotions I used to. My outlook on life is much more positive. I really believe that it is because of tapping, as I know it will always be there for me whenever I am feeling really bad. It’s definitely become my key method of healing.
The explanation of how it works is as follows:
- Trauma is stored in the body
- The tapping goes directly to the body to release the trauma.
- The tapping brings up the root cause of the issue in the form of a memory that is linked to that trauma.
- Once you tap through that and process that, the issue will go away.
There is a lot of research being done on this and, to me, it is undeniable that it helps most people. I mainly tap while watching TV. I personally don’t say the words out loud, but I would say that can be just as effective, seeing as I am feeling about 30-35% better than I was one year ago!
I hope I have made it clear what has helped me, and that some of the things I mentioned may help you, or may offer avenues for you to explore on your healing journey. Please feel free to leave comments below, I would love to know if any of this was useful, or if there’s anything else that I haven’t mentioned that you think might be helpful to others.