Other than BPD, I was diagnosed with severe depression, crippling anxiety. I had voices in my head throughout my childhood, so many of my doctors thought that I also had schizophrenia, but I was never diagnosed with it.
I always wanted to be diagnosed with something so that I could finally label everything that was going on in my life. But I never, never did. I felt like when the doctors told me, I was diagnosed with those things, I didn't believe them.
At first, I felt crazy. But I didn't feel fulfilled. I thought that there was something missing. I thought that the different things I was diagnosed with only covered parts of the ways that I was feeling and acting and that there was something more that I should have been diagnosed with something else. And I always felt that there was a little part of me missing, because I would never really understood and still don't really understand everything that I went through.
When I read about the symptoms and traits of borderline personality disorder, it's a little bit alarming at first, just because I never really thought that I would find comfort in a Wikipedia page, just reading about different symptoms, because that was me, or that was a part of me, and that made me feel a lot better about myself.
But at the same time, I felt horrible. I also felt crazy. I felt as though I shouldn't be this way, and that I should be normal. And that showing symptoms or signs of BPD was abnormal, and that I was sick to the point where I needed to get better. And it was a bit discomforting, but also very comforting at the same time.
So it's difficult. I went to Broadview psychology. And that was where I started my journey with DBT. And I met my psychologist in her name was Michelle. And she became my best friend, she would tell me every day that I was GA, and it was perfectly okay to be GA. And that maybe I was a little bit different. Maybe I thought a little bit different. But I should have pride in being different because I am different. And there's nothing I can do about it.
She used to make me feel so warm inside, I would leave her office with a smile on my face, she was the only one who would tell me that this is okay. There's nothing wrong with you. There's something wrong with everybody else. It felt amazing. When I was younger, a bad day, felt like it was a lifetime. I felt as though time could not go any slower. I would wake up in the morning and my eyes would still be shut. I did not want to wake up. In fact, I wanted to go back to sleep and never wake up again. I would wake up and have this weight on my shoulders that I would never really be able to take off. And I would wake up in the morning and I would look at myself in the mirror. And I'd give myself a pep talk every day saying you have to smile today, Georgia. You have to smile. You have to go to school. And you have to pretend that everything's okay.
That was probably the most difficult thing I've ever had to tell myself because I was the opposite of okay. I would think about ending my life multiple times throughout the day. And it was excruciating pain that Words cannot describe. I didn't really feel as though I could reach out to anybody. So I was alone most of the time. I often would cry when I went to bed. Just because that was the only way I'd ever be able to go to sleep.
I lost my appetite and food. I didn't mean anything throughout the day. I didn't feel as though I deserve to eat, or I just didn't have the hunger for food anymore. All I wanted to do was lie in my bed and never wake up. And I felt all these things and yet, drag mass out of my bed every day. And I'd wake up in the morning and I go to school, and I do everything I was supposed to do, I would do the extracurricular activities that my parents made me do. And I would pretend that everything was okay. And nobody knew any different until I came home, close the door to my room, sat down in my bed, and then everything just came up. And I would cry, and scream and ridicule until I fell asleep.
That was a normal day. Wasn't too nice.
I had so much pain bottled up inside of me that I had no idea how to lead out. So I would let it out on myself physically, emotionally.
And if anybody was caught in my path, I would let it out on them, too. I heard a lot of people, my mother, my father and my siblings. But most of all hurt myself. Because I would beat myself up, literally and figuratively.
I put myself through the most pain. And I didn't really come to terms with that until a lot later in life. But yeah, that was a bad day.
Throughout my life, I was always misunderstood. And even the feeling of being misunderstood was something I always had trouble explaining. But I used to, or still do get very mad. When people didn't understand me, I would get so angry. Because I thought that I was giving them the answer right there. And then they still weren't getting it. So I didn't understand. So I would get so mad, I could feel the anger in my chest in my stomach, I would get very aggressive to the point where it was not okay.
Just because I wanted somebody to understand. That was all I wanted. But it was never given to me. And it was very difficult. I mean, that's sort of a given. But I thought that by getting angry, it would show how real everything I was going through was or how serious I was being about everything I was trying to explain. didn't really do that, though. Just made things a lot worse. I think over the years, I've realized that.
But being misunderstood is probably one of the worst things anybody could ever feel. Because it's all a human wants is to be accepted, to be understood. And I never really seemed to be able to do that. I think that people with BPD or BPD symptoms, attempt suicide so often because it's difficult to live with something that nobody else can see. And nobody else can understand. You often feel rather alone. As it's not something you can see. It's something that only you can feel. Only you can experience. And even if you try as hard as you can to try and help other people understand or try to explain how you're feeling.
They're never really going to understand So you're rather alone. And that's just the sad truth. So for some people, suicide is a coward's way out of life. But I disagree. I think that it shows that somebody was struggling so much. And nobody bothered to help, that they thought that they would be better off dead rather than alive. Or they were feeling and going through so much pain, that they would rather feel nothing at all than everything they were feeling. And I think that that is absolutely horrible. Because how can we, as a society, allow that to happen, allow young or old people to feel as though they have no other way out, except to end their life.
And I think with people who have BPD, they often feel things very deeply. And sometimes emotions are too much. And there isn't enough help or research around BPD to really understand how people are thinking when they have been diagnosed with it. Because as a society, we need to try and understand these people, right?
Try and understand what they're going through. But we seem to be failing to do that. Which is awfully sad. I think that a lot of people often confuse the word accept and tolerate together, even though they're very different things. Accepting is beautiful. accepting yourself, accepting others, accepting people for who they are, is beautiful. And we need more of that.
And yet, people seem to think that tolerating something is the same thing as accepting it. But it's not tolerating somebody with BPD. Is, is useless. If you aren't ready to fully accept them, then how are you doing? You can't just tolerate somebody with a mental illness, you have to accept them. I never thought that DBT would be life changing.
I thought that it would just be another therapy program that I'd been through before.
But as I really got to get into it, I realized that I was wrong. Not a day goes by in my life where I do not think of my psychologist. Her picture is always in my head. And that's probably what helps me get through the day. Because she was so warm, and inviting. And that was amazing. She taught me so many amazing things about DBT that I never thought I would ever be able to know.
One of the first things I ever learned was mindfulness.
And I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for mindfulness. As a young child, I often had a lot of things going on in my life, a lot of things I was focusing on at the same time. But when I learned about mindfulness, I thought, wow, I can just focus on one thing right now. And that helped clear my mind to the point where I was only thinking about one thing, and that was the present and what was going on right now.
And I still use it to this day. Whenever I'm stressed or angry or sad. I'll just think okay. Take a step back. Just think about right now, everything is going to be okay. I learned so much from DBT that I now teach it to other children who are my age or older than me.
And I do that because it changed my life. I had no hope at all. I thought I had tried everything.
And then I went to DBT. And two years later, I was the happiest I've ever been in my whole entire life. Now, my relationship with my family is amazing. I have never felt more comfortable in my own home. But a few years ago, that was a different situation. I hated my parents so much. My father was a bully in my eyes was never very nice to me. I often came to him for help, but he denied it to me just because he didn't understand which now I get that. I mean, it's difficult to understand.
My mother always tried to be supportive of me. But she too, had her bumpy roads. She wants to ask me why I pulled the depression card on her. And yeah, I was pretty mad.
I really did not like that. My parents caused me a lot of grief. We, we used to go to a family counseling meeting with my whole family. I have two brothers as well. So they came along. And about three minutes into the meeting, I stood up, looked at the therapist who is running the group right in the eyes and said, You're making me feel horrible about myself, I'm leaving, I left I never went back. I think that the biggest misconception of people with BPD symptoms is that they are crazy and abnormal, and should not be led around in public. Because I have heard those things before about myself. And it's a little alarming. But it's often viewed that people with a mental health illness.
No matter if it's anxiety, or BPD, or schizophrenia, for that matter, is that they're crazy. And that they need serious help, which most of them do, which is not. Which is true. Most people do need help when they have a mental illness.
But it's that they are cast away to a different major sort of swept under a rug. Because their illness isn't something that people can understand right away. If you break a leg, you can see that the leg is broken. And you can say, wow, that leg is broken.
But if somebody has BPD and they say I have BPD you can't look at them and say yes, yes, you do. Because it's not something that you can see.
And it's not like that easy either. So I think that people often just misunderstand people with BPD. And think that because they misunderstand it, that it's something bad. And that's not right.
Just because you must understand something doesn't mean it's bad.
