I wasn't diagnosed with BPD. In my earlier years, in my younger 20s, I experienced what was labeled as depression, anxiety, any number of particular labels, and I was never told that I had BPD.
And it wasn't until my late 40s, which is a lot of years later that finally a doctor said, You have BPD. And the sad part of it is, is I went back to get my medical records from of years before that, and BPD was written all over them. But no doctor ever told me, that's what I had. And so I never got the right treatment until until much later till 25 years later, I didn't get the proper treatment to get help. '
I wish that I had known sooner. I remember sitting in a doctor's office, and a doctor asking me several questions. And each one of them I answered yes to. And as he asked more questions, I started to feel very understood.
And when he said at the end of these questions that he asked, he said, I think that you might have BPD and told me a little bit about what that was about.
And I was so relieved, because I finally found out that someone is saying, you know, you're not crazy, there is something going on, and there is a treatment for it, and we can get you help.
And so it was this amazing feeling of relief, that I now knew what was going on, it didn't feel like just depression didn't feel like just anxiety, it felt like something more was going on. So I was so pleased to find them. You know, finally someone told me there was a few things that stuck out for me it was things like he asked, so do you feel like sensitive to sounds, so hwhen it when something drops on the floor, there's a noise and, and or not being able to get back to sleep when someone shuts the door.
And so that was one of the things that that stuck out for me this the sensitivity, because it extends emotional sensitivity, also physical sensitivity. And also some of the other things, we're having a hard time with self identity. So really, not sure who I am, and sort of being who I need to be in any given moment, depending on the situation. And never really truly knowing who I am Exactly. And what I stand for was another thing that really stood out for me.
Also, what stood out, for me was the self harm. I spent a lot of time especially in my early years of overdose after overdose, cutting, I spent over a year in different lengthy time periods and in a hospital in my teen years. And so self harm was a big, big thing. I haven't been much into sort of out outward anger and displays I'm more of an inward type where a lot of anger and emotions go inward. And so I experienced depression and and the self harm being I think, part of of experiencing that kind of thing. I think you know, the pain is so great that you want to do anything to make it go away, make it less substances, cutting all of the self harm overdosing, even for a brief moment, if you can feel better, just a little bit. It's, it's, it's worth it in the moment.
And so self harm is a desperate way of making the pain stop. And often we cut ourselves because, you know, feeling a pain on the outside of our body is easier to deal with and the pain that's inside our body. And it just it feels it feels better to engage in those behaviors. I'm really passionate about helping to create awareness and reduce stigma because the media and other sources of other things that we watch and hear about is it's really damaging to people who have BPD. And I want to speak up and I want to speak out, because I don't want to be part of the the stigma. I know that for myself.
And I work with people and I help people with BPD. And I don't want to be the person who doesn't stand up. And so I'm doing this video to hopefully help others. If we don't stand up and speak up about this, then we feed the stigma and it'll continue to be so I hope that I can inspire people to stand up and speak out.
I want to tell others that it's okay to come forward. And it's okay to talk about it. And, and that to know that, that there are so many beautiful, beautiful qualities about people with BPD. I know many people who are beautiful people and the qualities, some of them are very charismatic, we, you know, also high stress adaptive, we learn how to deal with stress.
And so we tend to actually do better in some cases and the average person dealing with stress. And we're also very resourceful and empathic, we tend to be in the caregiving fields, many people that I know and myself included, are working in a caregiving capacity, we tend to be very empathic. And I think I mentioned creative.
There's just so many positive positive qualities of people with BPD. And I want to let people know that they're very beautiful, and, and they have a lot of positive things about them.
I've learned that I have so much to offer, that the experience and this disorder, if you call it has, has been a gift for me, and helping others is so rewarding.
And learning the skills, learning the DBT skills, and knowing how great they've worked in my life and seeing them work in other people's lives is just a wonderful, wonderful achievement.
I'm so happy that I have this offer other people I saw on television show once that got something right, that I thought was something positive. And it was two people who were who were chatting with each other, and one of them had said something. And the other one said to them, I have BPD and I know you're lying. And of course this is how we know that people with BPD they they can sense things. So they're very good at sensing emotion and others like anger, sadness, lying, all of this stuff. And so he had sense by having BPD that this person was lying. And so I thought that was a really interesting piece about how BPD has some positive qualities about it.
