High-Functioning BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) Interview | Tiffany

okay so I I guess where we should start is um you reached out to me yeah and I was like intrigued why don't you talk about how we we connected and why we decided to reach out well first of all I'm Tiffany and um when I reached out I believe I was an addiction Psychiatry fellow but now I'm a public Psychiatry fellow so essentially I'm in mental health and um and that is kind of relevant just because mental health is like my passion not only do I have my own mental health issues in my personal life but just in my work life it's something that I I feel is still stigmatized in this country still not you know treated the way that it should be treated I went to residency in Louisiana and for my fellowships I moved to California there was a lot of like loneliness and the pandemic and just a lot lot of factors that went into my mental health declining I always knew that I had depression and anxiety for which I was treated and put on medication I was using all of these skills in regards to like cognitive behavioral therapy and trying to reframe things and despite the fact that I was taking my medication and despite the fact that you know this is just my life in dealing with other people's mental health and trying to incorporate basically I'm giving a really really long story to say that I was not doing well and um so I stumbled upon uh borderliner notes and I saw Charlotte and that was like one of the things that really really changed my life um and I know that sounds dramatic but it's not because when Charlotte was talking it was like one of the first times where I was just like that's me that's me like she gets it she understands it she gets it and um can I ask you one oh yeah sure what was it about like what part of it felt to you like that's me and she gets it or she's helping me feel gotten she was really really likable and not to say like oh I think I'm so likable it's just to say that for me it made me realize that borderline truly truly is um heterogeneous and has different presentations so this whole time it was like oh I I can't I never even consider considered having that because I'm so high functioning the people who were teaching me my fellow classmates like we just didn't understand it and and so a part of the reason why I reached out to you is because I started upset like watching Charlotte's videos like I watched them like three or four times and then I watched pretty much all your other videos and then I went on other YouTube channels and as much as it like satiated me in a certain way it was like you kind of very easily go through everything that's out there because it's different than other forms of mental health where like depression anxiety you can that can go on for days but with like personality disorders I feel like reputable sources of information are few and far between and so I reached out to you just because I was hoping that through telling my story every maybe somebody who didn't as much so relate to Charlotte maybe they relate more to me you know and that's just how life works and so I was just hoping that maybe I could help somebody the way that you helped me so long long answer yeah no that's in a that's a cool impetus and I also you know it's like interesting to see how when people have that impetus how they apply it and it's also interesting because it seems like your motivation to be in like the mental health field is so driven by the desire to help people and I think that can sometimes get forgotten you know as like a consumer of it I sometimes actually don't really think about that when I'm seeing a therapist even though of course I'm going for them to help me but it doesn't necessarily occur to be that they're in this to help people I think they're in this they're in this I think for a number of people are in this for a number of reasons of which that might be one or maybe primary do you think that most of the people that you work with who are treating people for mental health are in it to help people is that do you notice like a varied set of of motivations with people so like not to sound overly idealistic but yes I really do I really have seen so many people who genuinely genuinely care but with that being said I've also seen the opposite um and so like I kind of feel like The Wizard of Oz and like I've kind of seen the man behind the curtain in that regard and it's good though because I know how much I care and I know how much um colleagues of mine care so I'm a huge believer that like finding a therapist or finding a provider is like dating you know and because we're all human beings like we are literally all human beings we all make mistakes we all have um just you know different personalities and so in that sense I think it's like the news is good the news is good that there are good people out there but at the same time as we'll get into like I have had like chronic suicidal thoughts and I have suffered with like depression and anxiety and so I know whenever I'm at like a really low low there are times where it just feels like nobody can help and not like you know and so while I said like you know finding a providers like dating it's also like if you're feeling really really shitty and just like bad you're probably not going to go out on a date right and so you kind of you you don't just start exercising and eating right and doing all those things whenever you're sick so it's like if you're just in a really really bad place and you interact with a provider especially I know for me with how much I can twist thoughts and stuff a person may be a really decent provider but just because I'm in a really bad place my interpretation of it may make the experience seem bad and so once again that's why I think it's really important to like give people more than one shot because that's actually kind of what happened with me and my current uh provider uh I was a little bit like oh man like what if she doesn't get me like it was really really scary because it was like I just wanted her I just wanted her to get me and like and but I went back and I'm still with her and she she has also in addition to your videos really really really helped me so much wow that's I keep wondering like for for you um you know someone like you who's sort of managed to get yourself through all of these very you know through medical school um you have a boyfriend I mean you have like the Trap the external trappings of like functionality right or success so that isn't like that isn't normally I guess a um sort of profile a bpd-ish profile right so I'm just curious you know you talk about like having suicidal ideation and I guess I'm like wondering a what are your BPD symptoms got you yeah so that's one question okay and maybe we should start with that and like what were your what have been your target behaviors or your you know your avoidance behaviors yeah yeah oh and how did you survive them to get through med school then yeah there was always kind of like that impulsivity like I remember I would like spend money that like I didn't have like I worked in this the biology department and like rather than like try to save that money I would be like oh well I want to buy clothes because it makes me feel pretty and if I feel pretty I feel worthy and and you know like with with like my boyfriend or with whatever I was in a relationship like a romantic relationship um and it was like very very not good like um toxic um abuse all this stuff and so like there was definitely like impulsivity there was definitely heavy heavy like alcohol use to kind of like numb things out there was definitely like um The Chronic emptiness The Chronic Suicidal Thoughts like also the the mood thing like um so like so easily I one thing could happen like a person could look at me a certain way and I'd be like they hate me they hate me I'm a loser I'm a freak and that would just cause me to spiral so like one thing one little incident could cause my mood to change in such a way that my entire day is ruined um and and then also like that caused me to feel like there was so much sense of like low self worth because like it's for two reasons number one was that I thought that everybody had kind of the same emotional tumultuousness that I did so I was like wow like clearly I can't get a handle of myself and then whenever I found out that people didn't have those like ups and downs it allowed for me to have more compassion like okay like no that's everybody is not holding down their emotions and then and then also I just had like whenever you hear like borderline rage like I always kind of had this like simmering anger because like whenever you have that constant feeling of like worrying about if people like you or don't like you then it inevitably causes you to alter your behavior because you want people to like you but then you have this sense of resentment because you feel like you're not being authentic the one thing that's good about like BPD is that you have an ability to empathize with other people but that can be a bad thing when you overly empathize so for instance in that situation with like the toxic relationship for me I was like okay well I've done bad stuff too so like clearly like we deserve each other like he doesn't deserve me to abandon him because clearly I'm bad too so it's like if other people would do like really like shitty things I would never perceive it from the angle of me having to like take care of myself and protect myself it would more so be like how could I help this person to feel better I would always take on so much responsibility for other people's feelings like you know my mom is like a really really anxious person and I think that that may be where I get some of my anxiety but like if she was upset or anxious then I would feel like like how can I make how can I make people happy so like those are just like a lot of instances of where like my emotional instability my lack of self-worth my chronic sense of like you know just um because in terms of like suicidal gestures like I wasn't ever really much of a cutter which is one of the other biggest messages that I want to send out to people is just because you don't cut doesn't mean you're not like self-harming you know right well and cutting isn't necessary least suicidality right right right suicidal um gesture it's just it's like a well some people would I guess say it's an emotion regulation maneuver you know but anyway go on yeah sorry I know also Ruby like I just wanted to say like um sincerely like I'm gonna probably say this a million times but like I just appreciate you so so so much because because it's just like you know it's obviously not like I'm not like oh wow I feel so great telling people that like I you know have all these negative qualities but like you and Charlotte make me feel Brave so that's my little side note but um but yeah so just those those were kind of like really really key features for me um and then that's the thing also is that like for me a lot of my behaviors would be very much so internalized and so if you kind of like if for other people who are familiar with your work and they can kind of like look at maybe like Regina for instance Regina was very much so open about how her her issues were more externalized and so I feel like when people have more externalized behavior that is it allows for like other people to observe it whereas for me I feel like I was able to go under the radar um but that doesn't mean that I'm not I didn't have pathology you know

Channel: BorderlinerNotes

Views: 8,231

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Id: H-drQzE5iAE

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023