Tag: self-harm

Thoughts too close to the edge

I really don’t know if carrying on with therapy is a good thing or not at the moment. I am more broken now than before I started this route and know more certainly that I’m on my own in it. I can’t keep trying to fight through day to day, to go to work and to keep going to therapy. I’m starting to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just push everything back down again and live in my imaginary world. I functioned better day to day when I was anorexic and numb to everything. There isn’t enough support outside therapy to keep it going.

I keep on hanging on to things desperately, for them to be snatched away. The only times I’m not alone are when I’m faking it, even if I’m doing a bad job of that. When I can’t do it, when I am on the point of taking my life, when I am cutting, when I am terrified by the flashbacks, I’m on my own every time. Apparently I’m not allowed anyone there. Apparently I “wouldn’t qualify” for any social care support, and no family or friend wants to be a carer for me. I know they have no responsibility for me but that still really hurts.

I am thankful for my friends. I am not trying to be ungrateful. They do much more than I could ever ask. I know they can’t be there. I know often they are there when I can’t possibly believe they would still want to know me, after I’ve lost it and screamed and snapped.

Trying to keep going used to help. But now I get closer and closer to complete breaking point every day.

I’m going for another appointment at the hospital tomorrow for my 1:1 and I think I’ll tell her I’m thinking about not carrying on therapy. Things feel very very dangerous and close to the edge right now.

Victim roles – holding on tight and falling faster

Victim roles – holding on tight and falling faster

A couple of posts ago I said it is very hard not to be bitter. This week it continued to feel like a twisted game someone is playing. God, perhaps, and I have to keep looking back at the Cross to remember my God is not vengeful, twisted, scornful or delighting in our hurt.

This last week, things continued to snowball and I clung harder and harder to the smallest things. I felt completely alone and the importance of every tiny possible bit of help or hope increased.  The pattern repeated relentlessly that every time I counted on something, inside I built up to, “if I can just hang on to xyz, maybe then I can just manage, maybe then there will be help, maybe then I won’t die” and just as that had started to give me some security, whatever xyz was would be snatched away.

Whatever xyz was didn’t matter so much. I went to the Housing Benefit office to try to get some questions answered. I got some answers but also found out my Benefit will be suspended for weeks because of a 2-hours-per-week change in my working hours, likely putting me further in debt with my rent. I got another 3 page long form to fill out and supplementary statements to write. The time I’d counted on to rest to be able to work the next day was then filled with more anxiety over debt and more form-filling. In pieces losing it I phoned the hospital. We agreed that I could cope with telephone support until my care coordination appointment on Friday. 30 minutes later someone else from the hospital phoned to say that my appointment was cancelled (second month running) because my CPN is on training. I insisted I needed to see someone else.  My friend cancelled our meet-up for the second time within a week (not really for any fault of hers). But I snapped at this point.  The last thing I was hanging on to had been snatched away from me and I couldn’t take any more. Then Friday came and the day of the “replacement” appointment to try to talk about support I needed to cope with finances, Benefits, the threats from my landlord, the mountainous paperwork that needed to be completed and numerous telephone calls, and the effect all the confusion, delays, stress was causing to me, to the point that I was overdosing and cutting several times per week. I admitted that I’m not safe on my own, especially at night, and can’t manage simple things like cooking or keeping my flat in order, because the strain of trying to keep working, therapy, then all the financial problems, combine to be too much and leave me with nothing to go on with. The first person I was speaking to appeared to understand and suggested that there would be help available to me and that we could look at whether more social care support could be available. She asked one of the hospital social workers to see me straight away. The social worker came in and said I wouldn’t qualify for any help, that nobody gets anyone to intervene on their behalf or do forms etc for them, that I wouldn’t qualify for personal independence payment as they don’t recognise BPD and I’m working, and that I’m just “in a bit of a pickle” and that everyone has to deal with problems with benefits, tax and so on. She had no conception whatsoever of the extent of my distress, my self-harm, the danger I am in. I lost it totally and walked out.

At that point, yes it was a twisted game. In my mind, someone was delighting in my hurt, laughing at me, seeing just how far they could push me before I broke totally. And they were going to win that day. I was going to take an overdose or maybe I’d walk onto the train line because that was it and they had finally won. They’d had everything they wanted of me and there was nothing left. Everything had gone beyond possible to absolute desperation and this was the end. Everyone who was “supposed” to help me or whom I tried to rely on, was doing me the most harm when I had most hoped and could least take more hurt.

Obviously, I didn’t go and end it,  because I’m here writing this blog post. I can’t really remember exactly how I didn’t, though I’ll write another post about that later.

Something hit me today.

Vengeful. Ridiculing. Laughing at me. Hurting. Snatching from me. Hitting me when I’m most vulnerable. Rejection when I most need help, by those I most trusted. Scornful. Delighting in hurt. Delighting in making everything my fault and taking no responsibility. That’s what I find I meet with when I most need help and they push me to self-harm and suicide.

My abuser was all those things. Now the world takes that role to me and I am in the same position of being hurt. I’ve got away from my abuser, physically (though not in my head), but now the world takes that role to me and I am trapped and still its (her?) victim, not allowed to be saved. I got away (bodily) from her when I walked out, shut the door, got on the train, hung up the phone. That was hard enough and took over 20 years. Getting away from this abuser’s force in the world is going to be much much harder and the leaving I must do this time is going to take much much longer, I think. I don’t think it’s leaving, exactly, but changing something in me so as to receive something other than abuse.

Ginny xxx (Very confused)

I can’t. ..

I’m going to be disloyal, or hypocritical, I don’t know which the word is, to my last post. But I’m crashing tonight. I can’t do it. I’m done and I haven’t got anything to be able to go on. I know it’s stupid and they say it’s not worth getting worked up over, it can be fixed; but it’s done and I ran out a long time ago. Why can’t anyone hear me? Why do they tell me it’s okay? It’s not anxiety it’s desperation and just needing one tiny thing to hold onto – no I’m not strong enough without anything to cling to and I know it’s stupid it’s so small but it really, really matters when everything else is too much and spiraling apart.

So it’s taken away as well and I’m done. Nobody will come and nobody can hear me screaming (stupid nasty spoiled child inside me and stupid ugly needing. ..) Even now I’ve told them the very worst and how much I can’t do it and nobody will come. And I won’t go to the hospital and I don’t deserve it and I don’t want them to stop me because I don’t want to go on and it’s nobody’s fault or responsibility but mine. I should have been able to do it.

I don’t think I can do any good…

I cut and cut but it wasn’t enough. I don’t think I can feel anything but this spent, hurting, screaming silently, needing it over.

I don’t think I can go to work tomorrow or anymore. Not even go out. I don’t know how to get to tomorrow. I’ll lose my job again. Well it’s clear enough I’m rubbish anyway. They’ll want me out of my house. I’ve wasted so much again. I should have done good. But I’m so so … just had it…

And everything I say I’m scared and whoever I tell I might manipulate or they think it’s to threaten or think it’s just stupid and not worth it and just get over it. ..and I’m scared of my anger. I’m sliding in and out of dissociative states right now.

To me it can be all I am holding to and I’m on the edge of ending it all, but to someone else it’s nothing, not worth it, and just fine that more and more is taken that I was clinging to and more and more heaped on that I cannot cope with. I can’t cope with this detachment itself either and knowing every worst feeling is invalid.

What do you do “out of hours”?

I really needed crisis support on Friday but didn’t get it. After therapy group I was spiraling down and out of control, then a number of bad events came snowballing, knocking me further down. I had a brief conversation with the duty line at the hospital and was supposed to get to speak to them again later in the afternoon but they didn’t have time. I was in pieces, cut and was on the edge of the very dangerous place I cannot take a single step more and decide to end it. Thanks be to God I didn’t but I took a higher dose of my tablets than I should to knock me out and stop the hurt (not really an overdose as it wasn’t over the maximum dose of anything, but I took more than I’m prescribed and everything together).

I’ve been fighting through this weekend as I’m working. What I want is numb, stay at home, stay under a blanket, no more feeling, no more thinking, no more hallucinations, no more noise in my head, never have to speak again, never do more harm, someone to hold me, to go to the dissociated place, forget everything I have to fight through and just stop and be allowed to need it to be no more, stop, sleep.

What do you do when you feel this and you can’t get help? It’s the weekend and/or evening. I couldn’t get help from the hospital on Friday. There will be nobody available until Monday and who knows if they will have time then to see or call me.

I could go to A&E but I wasn’t sure what they’d do, and it’s not really an emergency and there isn’t an instant solution. I need more help day to day. I could call 111 the NHS out of hours line, but they tend to tell you to go to A&E if you admit to self harming or being suicidal. They’d probably take my tablets away too. When I’ve been put in touch with a community crisis team before I’ve actually found it really unhelpful. They did not (in my uneducated opinion) understand BPD. What they said piled on the guilt and made me closer to ending my life and they were determined to show me I didn’t need (or deserve,  I feel) any help and Iwasn’t genuine. If i got that right now I would go through with ending it.

Part of the problem needing help out of hours is having to try to explain your whole story – trauma, abuse,  flashbacks, hallucinations, voices, BPD, hurt, fear, desperation and needing to end it – to someone who doesn’t know you or the therapy you’re having. It’s too frightening to do and the cost of being misunderstood too great.

I promised a friend that if it got to the worst I’d go to A&E before I did anything. I would,  I’d keep that promise.  I made it only because she would be more worried about me and stressed if she thought I wouldn’t. I would go at that point, out of honesty to her. Even though having reached that point I’d not want to be stopped.

What do you do when you need support out of hours and can’t see your GP or your usual clinic / hospital team? I’d be interested to know what others do.

I know a lot of it may involve other coping strategies not going to someone else for help. But what about when it’s bad enough they don’t work?

Ginny xx

Hitting when you’re already down…

I really don’t want to talk as if I think the state or the world owes me something. It owes me nothing. However it does hurt when it seems that the systems that are supposed to help you actually hit you down hardest when you most need help.  On its own it shouldn’t be a big thing but when it seems to be the norm it gets too much on top of being ill already.

Recently I claimed for tax credits (for readers from abroad or who otherwise don’t know, this is a small benefit paid to those who are working but on a low income, have children, or have disabilities).

I had first claimed in Spring last year and my claim was rejected before they had even gathered all the information needed. I was so ill at the time I just let it go. I claimed again since starting my new job in November, because I am working part time on a very low salary. The first step is to fill out a form online to request a claim form, then to wait up to 2 weeks to receive the actual claim form.

Monday, I received an email saying that I am already in receipt of tax credits and if I believe this is not true, call this (expensive) number. I called this number and asked to be called back as the call was so expensive for me since I had no landline (can’t afford more bills) so had to call from a mobile. They refused and said they have no facility in the building to make outgoing calls, which I found very hard to believe.

I explained that I am not in receipt of tax credits. I was told that I do have a tax credits award and the award is nil. Right, so I’m not in receipt of tax credits. Yes, you have a tax credits award and the award is nil. Sigh….this could go on for a while. .. eventually I persuaded them to take the details of my change in circumstances. Then the operator’s computer froze so he transferred me to another operator without explaining any of the background and I had to repeat the entire process again. By this time I’d been on the call for about 30 minutes.  They repeatedly asked the same questions and did not listen to my answers. I repeatedly told them I couldn’t afford this call and needed to be called back. I have a few pounds a day to live on and the call had taken just about all my food money for the week. The operator actually told me that because my phone bill does not arrive for a week or two they hadn’t cost me anything! At this point even I could not quite believe their determination to prove they had no responsibility for anything.

Then came to trying to claim for the disability element of tax credits.  I was told that I wasn’t entitled unless I was already in receipt of PIP. I knew this was wrong – that is only one of the qualifying conditions. Online and paper documentation I had when I made my claim made this clear. The operator refused to budge. I insisted to speak to a manager. 5 minutes on hold. …

The manager immediately contradicted what the previous operator had said. But still insisted they would not consider the disability element unless I was in receipt of PIP. I pointed out that he, his colleague, the online and paper documentation each said something totally different, so I needed to know which was the case. He threatened to terminate the call and told me I was making things very difficult.

I suspect I was making it very difficult for him to continue reading from his script without listening to what I was actually asking…. :/ 😦

Then I had to insist that he give me a straightforward answer – was it essential to be in receipt of PIP as he was saying, or was the written information around having a disability which puts you at a substantial disadvantage getting work, correct?  He refused to answer and put me on hold. When he came back on the line he read a lengthy script about the qualifying conditions which confirmed that all the information I’d been given up to that point was wrong. Had I not insisted to this point, I would have been assessed incorrectly for the benefit. I still believe I will be assessed incorrectly because when I tried to tell him the reasons I qualified for the disability element and to ask what proof they needed of this, he talked and shouted over me and forbade me to speak otherwise he would terminate the call. 

By the end of this process I had been on the phone 55 minutes to a cost to me of £25. I still had not been able to get an answer as to how to submit the documentation that would support my claim (and that would have supported the claim I had been rejected for last year, had I only been given the opportunity to provide it). I had been given different information about eligibility from each person I spoke to and from all the written information I had.

By the end of the call I was so distressed, panicked, angry, for seeing yet more financial problems …. this was the very last straw this week and I couldn’t cope anymore. I went home, cut and took a handful of pills, not enough to try to end it, though that was what I wanted at that time, but in order to make it stop and knock me out. All through the next day I didn’t leave the sofa and took more pills to sleep.

Stupid and childish not to be able to cope I know but there really comes a point you can’t go anymore and when you meet obstruction even where you should be able to get help you’re entitled to, sometimes you just crumble.

Ginny xx

 

What if I don’t trust them?

I’m still struggling to process what I’m feeling after therapy group on Friday. Tomorrow I have my 1:1 appointment and I know we will be talking about it. It is going to be so hard to go and even harder to go back to group when it comes around this Friday.

Just when I’d dared to start to think it’s okay, it isn’t. Just when I’d started to think group might be a safe place, somewhere that you can dare to speak about things that are otherwise forbidden, it isn’t.

Just when I’d started to let my guard down a little and trust, it turns out I’ve hurt everyone and didn’t even know. How did I not know? Usually I can feel it right away and know it’s my fault and this time I didn’t. I so so needed to trust them there and now I can’t. I couldn’t understand what I was feeling then last night the thought hit me – what if actually I’m angry and hurting because I feel I can’t trust them? I did the wrong and I caused the hurt but what if I’m angry because I feel people didn’t say what was really happening?

What if I’m angry because I feel I can trust or speak anymore?

What if I’m angry because I really needed to trust and yet again it all breaks down, just as usual, every other time? I know and felt so so strongly they hate me, they are angry, they don’t want me there, they hate me, they’re angry, and they’re angry for each other too because I’ve done wrong and got it wrong and they think I’m nasty, a fake, no right to be there, they just want me to go away and just put up with me because they had to. What if that made me angry as well as guilty because I can never know where I am and know I must never ever let anyone close but so desperately need people?

Does anyone else ever just wish they could never have to speak again?

The hallucinations are multiplying as my thoughts spiral through all these things.

Ginny xxx

Saving me

A couple of days before Christmas I hit the lowest point I had been for many weeks.

I had had enough. I couldn’t go forward anymore. I was past hurting into utterly gone and spent and hopeless. I couldn’t see anything past giving up and that there was no good I could do anymore. I was going to end it all. I knew what I’d do and I knew I’d do it then and that I didn’t want help.

My friend realised. She and her husband talked to me and what they said that night saved me. Despite everything being so dark for me they somehow told me I could do good and could be wanted. I didn’t want them to know but my guard was down. And they were there miles beyond what I deserved.

I never tell anyone or let anyone know when I feel like I’m going to end it. I never tell when I’m self harming either. I do tell my doctor / CPN but at the time I’m doing / feeling it,  I’d never tell a friend or family member because I fear if they knew, they would feel responsible for stopping me. I absolutely can’t put that on anyone. It is not for them to stop me when I’m at that point. Ever. If i do it it is my action alone.

But now my friend knows and I’m scared what does that mean now? Does she now feel that responsibility I tried to avoid putting on anyone? They saved me. What do I do now I owe to them the fact I’m still here going on now? Without them I’d have done that. I feel utter gratitude but equally even to tell them, as I have tried to, may put responsibility onto them, to watch me or stop me.

Thanks be to God I am not feeling in that state right now but I do know it may – almost certainly will – happen again.

I so don’t want anyone to feel responsible for me or worry for me.

…..

Ginny xxx

Can’t you see they’re in so much pain?

NB this post refers to the films The Green Mile and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. This post is about BPD and experiences of others’ emotions however:

Slight movie “spoilers” alert if you haven’t seen the films and are planning to 🙂 ! Also, whilst both films were interesting and I definitely identified with characters, the first contains a few highly disturbing scenes and themes and part of the second was triggering to me at the time I watched it, though I think only through similarity with my personal experiences. Therefore to be on the safe side, I’d advise caution if you do decide to watch the films.

 

“Mostly I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. Tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head all the time.” – John Coffey in Stephen King’s The Green Mile

Someone shared this quote with me today. It was years ago I saw the film “The Green Mile”. It is not the kind of film I normally go for;  it was watched as someone else’s choice. It was thought provoking and also deeply disturbing. I would not watch it again now as it’s too harrowing but it has a lot to say about our judgement of good and evil in ourselves and others and how this affects how we treat our peers, those we work for and those in our charge.

“The Green Mile” is set on death row in the USA. John Coffey is a black American prisoner who has been sentenced to death accused of the murder of the two children of the plantation owner for whom he worked. If i remember right he was sentenced because he was found at the scene. In fact he was not the killer; he was trying to save the children. Coffey has a super-normal (supernatural or spiritual?) power to heal people. He touches them and draws the illness out of them through his own body and then “breathes” it out and away. Coffey knew the children had been lured away and attacked and he was at the scene of the crime because he was trying to save them. During the film, Coffey seems unbelievably calmly accepting of the horror that he will be executed and shows astounding compassion to his guards and other prisoners.

In the horror of death row the introduction of this super healing power seems somewhat jarring. Perhaps that’s part of Stephen King’s intention. When we watched it my friend wondered wouldn’t it have been better if it were totally realistic without the introduction of the supernatural realm. I can see her point. Then again I think King integrates it powerfully into the story. In a place of utter despair and darkness on death row, good cannot be extinguished. Compassion and healing still exists through one poor man who continues to do good through being utterly judged, rejected, broken and condemned. No matter how weakened he is, he can still do good and he’s a channel for healing.

He is in the broken and condemned state he’s in precisely because of his desire to help, to heal, to do good even when people judge him wrongly, and because of how much he knows other people’s pain and hurt and needs. Had he not recognised the children were in danger, searched and tried so hard to save them, he would not have been found at the crime scene and would not have been accused…. through the film we see other examples of how Coffee’s compassion and feeling for others overrides his own needs or his own pain.

The quote I started this post with expresses some of the cost to Coffey of feeling so much other people’s pain and needs. I those of us with personality disorders and post traumatic stress disorders, or who have suffered abuse or traumatising relationships,  can struggle just the same.

We feel so very much what others feel. It goes beyond empathy. It goes beyond wanting to help. It is a mental and bodily sensation. We actually feel what the other person feels. Sometimes we feel it more suddenly, more clearly or more overwhelmingly than our own emotions and needs. It can be a shocking or crushing wave or grip. We can’t breathe or we tense and jump as though we’ve been hit. We feel something in us twist painfully and connect to the other person’s hurt and we feel more than a need to take it from them – perhaps a longing, draining need to take it, rather as if we could do as Coffey does in the film.

It can be too much to bear. Too much to be around anyone and so very tiring. After social situations we may need time to rest and recover and go away to some quieter, colder, more numb place in our mind. Or we need something desperately to distract us and this may be dangerous impulsivity, self harm, drink, drugs and so on, because we need anything at all to get away from the knowledge of such hurt and pain in the world that we can’t draw out.

For some reason it’s the feelings ofhurt and need or pain or anger that overwhelm us and fill us more powerfully than good feelings in others such as joy or excitement. I don’t entirely know why.

There’s another film that spoke to me about this too, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. The main character has suffered childhood abuse and at the end of the film, he asks the doctor treating him, “can’t you see that they’re in so much pain? ” – can’t you see that everyone around is in so much pain, because he can see it and doesn’t know what to do. I can see it and feel it and take it all on and I don’t know what to do. It can be so impossible to carry on through that feeling and so tiring, that we withdraw totally to protect ourselves. Then we seem cold and that we aren’t making any effort to help anyone and thinking only of ourselves – when actually we ate feeling so very much and so much wishing we could heal others’ pain.

In “The Green Mile”, despite being judged and condemned, Coffey continues to feel everyone’s pain and continues to heal people. He is utterly misunderstood. His power for good is hidden to almost everyone. But even there in death row it can’t be stopped.

Even if we are utterly weakened and broken, even if nobody understands, even if we can’t tell anyone yet what is really happening,  the good we can do will still remain. Even if we feel we’ve totally failed, there is good in us, even if it’s hidden from us too just now. Not seeing it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Paradoxically, though our ability to feel so much has a great cost to us in pain, in being drained and spent and hurting, it may not be a bad thing. It may become something that enables us in the end to help and actually even connect to people.

I think learning to believe good in ourselves lasts even in weakness and apparent failure is a big part of getting there. So is finding a way to stand experiencing what we feel of others’ emotions and our own, so that we can use these feelings beyond empathy to be able to help people rather than having to withdraw because we cannot stand it. So far I really don’t know what the answer to this is, as yet.

Ginny xx

Walking this Borderland #4 : 5 more minutes

 

please read the Introduction to Walking this Borderland before this or any other post in this Series. Thank you.

 

When I feel the compulsion to do something to hurt myself I find it very hard to resist and do something else to cope with the feeling or the desperate need to obey the voices in my head telling me to punish myself.

On the occasions I have a little bit of control, I sometimes say to myself,  “Wait 5 minutes. You can do it, but not yet – just wait 5 minutes. ” If I can force myself to wait 5 minutes then when I do harm myself, then sometimes a little of the initial force of feeling has passed and I do it less viciously.  I’m hoping eventually I’ll be able to wait longer, little by little,  and then eventually sometimes not to self-harm.

I got the idea when I worked with people with eating disorders. One technique that may help people who struggle with purging after eating, is as a first step to delay a few minutes after eating before purging rather than doing it straight away. Then you can try to make the gap longer and longer and in this time, with support of a therapist or carer, try techniques for acknowledging and coping with the awful feelings and thoughts that are contributing to the compulsion to purge.

I’m new to doing this technique to delay self-harming. I think it’s working a little bit.

Ginny xx

 

Goldilocks and the three bears (with a sore head – or three sore heads I guess)

Goldilocks and the three bears (with a sore head – or three sore heads I guess)

[Artwork is not my own.]

Q “Why are you chasing after a giggling fortune teller with a crystal ball?”

A “Well, my therapist told me that I have to try to reach a happy medium…”

Yeah okay sorry about that one…

In therapy recently we’ve talked about different concepts of an emotional thermometer.

One view could be a bit like a normal thermometer which can read positive and negative temperatures (ie plus and minus zero, not positive and negative in the sense of value). When we reach a very extreme emotional state either side of the middle, it is a bad time for us and we are not able to use coping techniques or mentalise, because of the extreme we are at.

At the high, hot, “red” extreme, where the thermometer has “shot up”, we are experiencing very intense emotions – extreme anxiety, distress, hurt, anger etc. I guess it could also be an extreme of a positive emotion although I wonder if this would make coping as difficult? I probably should think more about that.

At the low, cold, “blue”, frozen extreme, we also aren’t able to manage because we feel so low, cut off from our emotions, maybe as if we are in a numb state.

It might, perhaps, be more possible for us to function in the low extreme than the high extreme – we might be more able to get through the day better than when we are in an extreme of eg distress and crying – but it is not a place we are calm or happy.

In the middle of the two extremes, so a range around the imaginary zero, is a mid-ground where we can have calm and balance and where we are able to mentalise about our thoughts and emotions and be curious and reflective about what we and others are experiencing. So the zero is not a zero in the sense of zero = no emotion, but it represents the mid-ground.

This happy middle ground is the “Goldilocks state”*- where we are not too hot, not too cold but “just right”. (Sadly the term just works with reference to Goldilocks and the porridge part of the story. It is not the emotional state one frequently reaches when finding someone else sitting in your seat on crowded trains and I’m not even going to touch on what happens when you find an unexplained person sleeping in your bed 😉 [joke!]…)**

In order to be able to employ coping strategies, the aim may be to find ways to bring ourselves away from either of the two extremes to this happy “Goldilocks” middle ground. No end of different factors, including our personality, what we have learned about regulating our emotions as children, the role models that we have had, and so on, can affect our ability to return to the middle ground and the extremes we go to in the first place. I guess this something I’m going to find my way through in therapy. Someone said to me that they find the term “emotionally unstable personality disorder” more accurately descriptive than “borderline personality disorder” because it better represents these extremes of emotion.

I think there are lots of ways the thermometer metaphor could be used. Perhaps instead of imagining a plus and minus end of the thermometer, it is more helpful to imagine a thermometer from 0 – 100 degrees and that the happy medium is around the middle of this range, too much is going towards 100, etc.

Personally I can identify with the metaphor that involves the minus temperatures because I definitely feel I slip into a state that’s like sub-zero, when I am so numb and cut off from my emotions (and others’) and can’t engage with anything. Sometimes I can’t even talk to anyone. It is not the heightened emotional arousal of my extreme distress but it is by no means good either. It may allow me to give the impression of functioning for a while, but I feel I am operating in a dream world, not really present. And it is very dangerous because of where it can quickly lead me to, or switch to.

Which brings me on to the thought that for me, as well as the thermometer there is a cyclical path that does not involve going vertically up and down the thermometer, but oscillates straight from one extreme to the other. My “sub-zero” state can very quickly flip straight to the high, hot, red end. My numbness can flick straight to anger, hurt, agitation, even thoughts of violence or fury which I would never normally experience let alone act on. I can flick straight into the compulsive need to self-harm and self-punish to turn the anger and emotional energy on myself. It feels like a frightening loss of control. I can oscillate in the other direction too. Overwhelming sadness and distress can suddenly plunge into numbness and disconnection and dissociation from the world into what feels like one of my other personalities and my memory of what has happened will go very blank. It feels very out of control afterwards.

I don’t know yet how I will start to learn how to some how get off this dangerous oscillating circle to get back to the happy middle ground or how to get control of the extreme emotions, especially managing anger.

Does anyone else switch or spin through emotions like this? I’d be really curious to hear other people’s experiences.

[Note – *and** : as in the children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, a famous children’s fairytale in the UK / USA. I know some readers are not from the UK so please ask if this reference is puzzling to you!]

Ginny xx