Feelings Aren’t Facts: Reminders For People With Borderline Personality Disorder
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is an emotional regulation disorder that is estimated to affect 1.4 percent of the U.S. population. BPD is marked by various symptoms including frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, unstable interpersonal relationships, distorted self-image, suicidal behavior, and more.
BPD can be a difficult mental health condition to live with but it is possible to still live a full, fulfilling life. That said, you need to do the work to heal. Attending therapy, taking medication if needed, and practicing solid self-care are great places to start.
Here are important things to remember when you have borderline personality disorder to help you on your journey to healing.
Feelings aren’t facts.
Your feelings are valid, but they aren’t always the most factual of entities. You may feel like a total piece of shit but that doesn’t mean you are a total piece of shit. You may feel like no one loves you but that doesn’t make it true, no matter how convincing that feeling may be.
Feelings are powerful and can also be important signals. A worried feeling, for example, before firing off a pissed-off text in a moment of anger may indicate that sending the pissed-off text may not be the most aligned with your values. But while feelings are important communicators, they can also be incredible distractions.
When you have BPD, your senses are heightened. It’s easy to let your intense experience of emotion overshadow the true reality of the situation at hand. Instead of viewing the world solely through an emotional lens, learn how to take things at face value. Focus on examining the evidence without ascribing judgment.
Everything is as it should be.
Radical acceptance is a skill taught in dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), a type of therapy created by Marsha Linehan specifically to treat patients with BPD (though it can be helpful for other mental health conditions as well).
Radical acceptance is the process of taking everything as is. Radical acceptance is looking out the window and saying “It’s raining outside” not “It’s raining outside and it’s going to be an awful day because of that.”
Practicing radical acceptance is not a means of loving difficult situations or emotions. Instead, it is allowing them to simply exist without resistance. Radical acceptance helps you realize that everything makes sense. Everything is as it should be, based on everything that has led up to this moment. Let this bring you peace.
Everyone is doing their best (including you).
Operate from the assumption that everyone, including yourself, is doing the best they can with the tools, resources, and skills they have. Lean into compassion and stop assuming the worst. It doesn’t protect you. It just makes you miserable.
Relationships are about fit, not worthiness.
You deserve love, compassion, and support. That said, not everyone you will come across in life is going to be able to provide those things for you. There will be people you come across that will not be able to understand you, your emotions, your life. That’s okay. It’s not that you aren’t worth loving because they don’t know how to love you. It’s because they simply aren’t the right fit.
Instead, invest in those who invest in you. Focus on the people who love you, who understand you, and who hold space for you.
Practice your coping skills beyond crisis moments.
It will be easier to retrieve the lifelines when you know how to reach them when your inner world isn’t engulfed in flames. Regularly employing coping skills, even if you’re feeling “good” at the time, keeps things in check and from spiraling out of control.
You’re not a bad person.
Despite what you may feel, you’re not a bad person. You have been through hell and back and then still go back to visit on occasion. You’ve been doing your best to survive. You’re brave. You’re a miracle for being here.
You are loved, you are important, you matter. You deserve to get better. Give yourself the chance to heal. It’s the most important work you’ll ever do.