Day 6:

Triggers

People with Borderline Personality Disorder feel emotions more easily, more deeply and for longer than others do. They are also hyper-vigilant. Emotions repeatedly surge and persist for a long time. It takes longer than normal for BPD sufferers to return to a stable emotional baseline following an intense emotional experience. If most people's emotional baseline is 20 on a scale of 0 -100, then people with BPD are continuously at 80. What is sadness in most people would be overwhelming despair in a person with BPD. Anger becomes rage, fear becomes terror etc etc. BPD sufferers describe overwhelming, almost constant emotional pain. Strong emotions are very easily "triggered". Triggers are something that sets off a past traumatic event in our minds or causes us to have distressing thoughts. A sound or a word can bring us back to a place where we didn't feel safe and we may respond in the now with a similar reaction. 

These events can be external, something that happens outside of yourself, or internal, as in something that happens in your mind, like a memory or a thought. You may even have a trigger that sets off another trigger!

BPD individuals often behave in a way that is destructive to themselves and to those around them. This is called "acting-out". Those with, for instance, with Antisocial, Narcissistic and Histrionic personality disorders engage in this behaviour. 

However, I personally engage in something called "acting-in". 

I am more self-destructive than outwardly destructive. This is also known as being a "quiet borderline". All the emotions such as anger, aggression etc are internalised rather than verbalised or used to impact on others. This means that often people are unaware of the extent that I and other quiet borderlines experience pain and despair.

People that act-in often have a sense of isolation and a lack of connection to the outside world. They may spend lots of time rationalizing their emotions or harming themselves out of despair. There are inconsistent feelings, one minute self-hating and the next more confident. This inconsistency is common to all BPD sufferers but those with quiet borderline are more likely to hide this emotional reality from their loved ones in a way that becomes painfully isolating.