I spent a day with BORDERLINE PERSONALITIES (BPD / Emotion Regulation Disorder)

borderline personality disorder or bpd is a disorder marked by ongoing instability in moods behaviors relationships and overall sense of self creating a tumultuous internal environment accompanied with a chronic fear of abandonment those with this disorder often experience a tidal wave of emotions that may feel like overreactions to the outside world in 1938 american psychoanalyst adolf stern first used the term borderline to describe patients whose conditions didn't quite fit into a standard group and instead bordered on other conditions although appearing rare to the general public an estimated one to two percent of people have this disorder worldwide with some estimations reaching as high as six percent my name's anthony padilla and today i'm going to be sitting down with people who have borderline personality disorder to learn the truth about this heavily misunderstood disorder have those with borderline personality disorder found a way to live in harmony with their unique perception of the world or do they find themselves suffocated by the fear of how their disorder may affect everyone else in their lives is living with bpd a completely manageable hurdle that goes almost unnoticed in most cases or are the effects this disorder has on every facet of daily life monumental and outright psychologically [Music] paralyzing hello stacy hello greg hey anthony sarah hi how are you thank you so much for coming on and teaching me about the world of borderline personality disorder well thank you for having me it is a wild one so what do you consider yourself a borderline personality disorder survivor simply just borderline that's what i say i'm borderline to someone with bpd if you say borderline and use it as an adjective i will accept that can you explain what having borderline personality is like like sort of you're standing in an empty swimming pool and then all of a sudden it just fills with water and you have you're anchored to the ground and you have no warning and that's pretty much how my emotions hit me all at once it's like everything's turned up to a thousand but you have no opportunity to opt out so it's kind of like suddenly you'll have this overwhelming feeling of whatever emotion it is just like amped up to infinity it's like going over the top of a roller coaster suddenly and your whole heart just like drops and you have no control so it's just this extreme reactivity where your moods are very dependent on not only what's happening around you and what other people think of you but what you think other people think of you like you can be in a perfectly fine mood and then the person you're dating breaks up with you and instantly you're but like that morning you were fine so they're feelings that a lot of people feel but they're they're exaggerated so much that it feels like a huge shift it's shame it's constant constant shame and the more of these experiences of losing control you have the more it compounds the shame like you're the flaw you are walking guilt you're so infected by these things you can't keep from getting in i frequently go through bouts of depression for what i feel like is no reason and i tell myself you know that logical side of my brain is like you have no reason to feel this way this isn't justified like all you have to do is have a better perspective and all these things that i know that i would say to someone if they came to me with the same problem i could say to myself but then i feel shame because i can't stop feeling whatever that feeling might be that sadness and i can't make it go away so then i i'm just internally beating myself up and that makes it that that just that just exaggerates that feeling of guilt and sadness even more yeah absolutely that's exactly what it's like can you recall any big moments in your life that were clearly shaped by bpd i was dating this guy who was also an author and he had a book coming out and he broke up with me and these tumultuous romantic relationships are a big part of of bpd so i went to barnes and noble one night absolutely not with the intention of doing this i just went to barnes noble to go book shopping and there on the shelf was his book and it was like some just this fire of rage lit inside me and this is really funny and ridiculous in retrospect okay i started ripping the covers off of his book and then someone working there saw you doing this or security cameras like hello i didn't go to an independent bookstore you know i went to barnes and noble as i was walking out the door security guard grabbed the strap of my bag and pulled me back in so i ended up getting arrested for defacing property and you literally ripped off the faces of the books that's just too much i can't handle it yeah no i know i'm very literal and i had to do a lot of community service and so i cleaned up new york city park for a week wow how kind of you right when i was younger it was hard to form relationships not necessarily friendships it really manifested itself in romantic relationships uh sort of an inability to pull back a real penchant for attaching yourself to somebody i remember my very first girlfriend in high school we would be a part that all i would want to do is text and text and text and talk and call and what's she doing she was somebody else and texting and there was a day where she just stopped texting and that is where you just lose it because again that's abandonment in a nutshell i was going to a private school at the time and i went to campus and you know found her and you know threatened myself if we weren't together and it i had no desire to myself but i had a desire to manipulate someone into being with me and it took a long time i think was probably about a year or two ago where i finally admitted that that situation and it was a big weight because it was something that it i thought about it every day before we learn more about the world of borderline personality disorder he told me that if i didn't promise right then and there he was going to call the mental hospital and have me put away i can tell you i was at the bottom i was at the bottom i just want to take a quick moment to point out that these videos aren't intended to diagnose any condition or disorder and anyone who feels that they may relate to any medical diagnosis of the guests in these videos would likely benefit from doing ample additional research on the side and potentially receiving a diagnosis from a licensed professional before going too deep into any rabbit holes if you find yourself wanting to learn more about bpd i'll go ahead include some links down in the description and if you want to see me cover another highly misunderstood disorder i'll include a link up in this corner where i spend a day with dissociative identity disorder and i wanted to mention again how thankful i am that all of you have been continuously keeping the comments on these videos so empathetic as i cover topics that are sensitive like this one now back to the world of borderline personality disorder are there any dangerous aspects to having bpd oh yeah self-harm is prevalent in our community um i myself have a long history of self-harm i have all of these feelings i need to do something about it i can't smash anything i can't break anything because i'm too small and if i think about it all of my emotions are because there's something wrong with me so i'm just gonna take it out on myself and that was like how i would react those were like my big outbursts at the time and if i felt that sort of pain on myself then it was like okay these emotions are real so it would kind of help you feel the feelings physically that you felt emotionally and also just have a way to react to in a big way that felt big and dramatic to me in that moment um without having to involve other people well we are much more likely to die by than than people with other mental illnesses do you feel like part of that's because your emotions are so dialed up that the sadness is really really strong and debilitating yeah it's like you can be a marathon runner you can be so good at running marathons you start running ultra marathons but if you don't put any self-care behind that at some point you're gonna get to mile 50 and drop dead before you were diagnosed did you feel like there was something about the way that you experienced the world that was just different yes absolutely i wondered why i was such a weirdo i wondered why nobody felt things as intensely as i did um that that intensity of feeling was a lot of what drew bullies to me i think that's how bullies work in many ways the more you show them you're a target you know the more likely you are to burst into tears when they say something awful to you it's almost rewarding them it's giving the bullies what they want they want a reaction yeah but you can't help but react because your natural response to everything is to have these big huge emotional reactions that scary scare other people away people find people with borderline personality disorder very upsetting and very difficult to deal with and we lose a lot of friends and the loss of friends just reinforces this idea that we're terrible and again like constant loop and that loop becomes your life how old were you when you were diagnosed and how has your life changed since then i was diagnosed in october of last year my life has changed for the better it really took hitting the bottom to really work your way back up and the big thing about a diagnosis is that i know a lot of people can get lost in the fact that they're diagnosed they view it as this big label that's sort of oppressive and really oh my god i'm borderline yeah but for me it gave me an ability to explain my actions i think i was like 20 or 21 it was fairly recently i related to all of the depression symptoms um but there were a few things missing that i just thought were just me and with bpd it was like i check every single box so now i have a way to deal with it i have the word for it i can explain it and look it up if things aren't making sense my life was kind of a revolving door of mental health hospitalizations and i have not been hospitalized since 2005 when i finally got the right therapy do you know if bpd is something that you develop or if it's something that you're born with people tend to develop later in life usually as an adult or a teen sometimes as a child it usually comes from like trauma it can also just be an emotional like it could be hinged on other mental health issues so like depression anxiety can eventually kind of culminate into bpd when you're looking at the nature versus nurture argument it's a nurture very much so um and and being a personality disorder it's something that i find that you know it's it explains it well being that it's your personality has been shaped by something or multiple things over the years do you feel like it's more common to feel one emotion over the others or is it kind of more of a grab bag i feel like if i had to condense it down to two nouns it would be rage and shame i also think that the ability to feel a lot is a positive thing if you channel it that way those of us who have bpd contrary to what it may look like to the people around us who don't i think we all tend to have this just intense love for the people we love sometimes that can become destructive but over it's really overwhelmingly positive right who doesn't need more intense love in their lives i've heard the term splitting being used in reference to borderline can you explain what that means splitting is this like instant ability to think the exact opposite of what you thought five minutes ago based on change in situation it's all about absolutes either you are or you aren't and that's when i refer to that cutting off or that shutting down right they're either in your life and extremely important or they're just not in your life at all when you know if you could be really good friends and they and they say one thing to piss you off and it's boom done has having bpd affected any of your jobs i used to work at mcdonald's and um i hated it if i woke up in a really bad mood i would just not go i mean i had 14 jobs in the same mall you were just going from one store to the next just like i hate it here i hate my co-workers i hate this i hate that i don't want to be here i'm sad yeah it's just and were you switching because you kind of felt like the other spots would be the answer would be the way for you to like find yourself out of this hole that you're feeling yeah because i mean part of the heightened emotion is like if i find something that i'm interested in i'll become like super invested in it all at once and throw myself into it so i like worked at a coffee shop i like learned everything at the time i was doing latte art and by the end of working there i was like i hate this place why am i here so you'll find yourself adopting these these things into your life that you're just so obsessed with and then all of a sudden you'll be like actually i i don't really like that maybe i never liked it yeah why do you think the diagnosis of bpd seems to have a gender bias with about three-fourths of diagnoses weighted toward women a lot of that can go back to like toxic masculinity and all that men are known to be more fiery more emotional in terms of anger um and for women we were stereotypically women tend to be more emotional in terms of sadness um like a longing that sort of stuff it's less outright so when a woman with bpd is acting like that it's a little bit more obvious i think for a lot of health mental health professionals as opposed to with men a lot of their emotions just get ignored or just sort of like oh well you're a guy you'll get over it i feel like men are told that they should suppress their emotions if they have them and if they have them certainly don't talk about them and you know if if a guy is getting upset revving his engine punching a hole in his wall and starting physical altercations with people you know that's just part of being a man that's just the kind of macho mentality you know the toxic mentality that that we commonly have with masculinity exactly and then like when you get the other emotions that are heightened in bpd like sadness they they're told not to talk about it no they're just told to go be alone and suppress it exactly men don't cry no i've never cried before not once ever never and with bpd generally stemming in many cases from childhood trauma i i find that you know unfortunately i find the numbers skewed generally more towards women that aspect because a lot of that trauma can be skewed towards the female side they're the ones that you know are diagnosed the most and with men that are abused as kids um they're generally tend to repress it more or not want to come to face face to face with it more um and that's why you see those numbers the way they are have there been any sort of mechanisms that you've adopted that have helped you learn to cope with borderline personality disorder dialectical behavior therapy basically starts from the point of okay we have to interrupt self-taught self-harming behaviors what are the first steps we can teach you to help you stop trying to kill yourself so that we can do therapy so dbt breaks it down into four modules and the four modules are mindfulness which is like when i first walked in i was like mindful what is this i don't know how to hear that word thrown around all the time you're like right like what is this and then the next module is distress tolerance so which is basically how to get through a bad situation without making it worse the third is emotion regulation so how to stop your emotions from restarting themselves and then the fourth module is interpersonal effectiveness which is just how to show respect for other people and take no for an answer basically you have homework to go out and practice that skill and come back and you go through your homework step by step but then you become so acclimated to thinking that way over the six month period that you can apply it to your everyday life it just takes practice you know it's like anything you just have to keep practicing do you feel like borderline personality disorder is properly named no i don't there was actually a push to rename bpd emotion regulation disorder oh emotion that to me is like yeah that's what it's all about that's a much more accurate name i saw someone throw out emotionally unstable personality personality disorder yeah which i think is a little uh negative yeah yeah right you know someone wants to be told that they're emotionally unstable right even though you are right oh god if anyone was like you're emotionally unstable like get out of my face and like i know that it's true no that would set me off it gets confused at least with people who are completely unaware of what it is a lot of the times it's either confused for bipolar or just based on the name they're like oh no it's i think it's called bipolar i've gotten that response which is like i know what it's called yeah bipolar disorder you have bipolar disorder and also like if you say i'm borderline people are like on the borderline of what what do you say to that everything the big difference between bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder is the situationality of the mood swings so if you have bipolar disorder you might very well wake up one day feeling manic like you can do anything and that might last for several weeks before you crash into depression with bpd that mood cycle can happen multiple times a day depending on what's going on around you scooping poop wants to know if if doctors and professionals have ever made you feel uh evil or demonized you oh yeah their therapists who still did this day just won't treat people with bpd because they don't want to take on that kind of suit i i can't tell you how many i mean having bpd is just like a long series of destroyed relationships in many ways and there are therapists who just don't want to deal with us people with bpd already have that fear of abandonment and then to throw on top the person that you trust and not abandon you a therapist to get abandoned by them it's that's gotta be horrifying it's gonna be terrible it is i had a therapist who i loved one day i opened up about the fact that i had been myself and i was reaching out sort of like i wanna know how to cope with this better since i know that i need to cope with this he told me that if i didn't promise right then and there that i would never do it again he was gonna call the mental hospital and have me put away he's betraying your trust i don't know if this is the worst it's ever gonna be and i can't promise that i'm not gonna turn to that later on because that's been my coping mechanism for so long he was steadfast and nope you're gonna go away if you ever do this again so i went to my parents and thank god they sided with me and were like okay we'll get you a new therapist that's fine but it like completely traumatized me and i a large part of why i was out of therapy for so long and didn't get a diagnosis for so long was because of that interaction it made me terrified even if that therapist did have good intentions and you know maybe they were like i'm just gonna say this thing because then she'll promise that she'll never do it again and all is better like that's not an actual way to help someone especially someone who is experiencing the world in the way that you are yeah it really it really messed with me it still messes with me to this day julia says how they keep their relationships because i can't i have the same question [Laughter] uh my longest relationship was a very abusive one and um that was horrible so for me i have not figured out the relationships part um so julia if you do please let me know we got an open forum here okay you have figured it out let us know in the comments below i am an expert in destroying relationships so let me tell you especially coming from someone who had to end an engagement last year um you know it's something that the biggest mistake that most people make having bpd in a relationship is that you feel like that other person is your end-all be-all relationships are a partnership and if you come in as one-third of a puzzle piece and you think they're the two-thirds you are going to do incredible damage because you cannot use them as a crutch like that so the first thing i would say is get comfortable with yourself come to terms with yourself build your social network just because you're learning the skills doesn't mean everybody else is yeah so sometimes the reason you can't maintain relationships with people is because you pick the wrong people like you know that's always a problem with you needing to change sometimes right i mean there always was a problem right with me needing to change myself but also when you don't think you're worth anything you kind of tend to gravitate toward people who will treat you badly if there's anyone watching who has borderline personality disorder but maybe feels isolated because of the stigmas surrounding it is there anything that you'd want to say to them i can tell you i was at the bottom i was at the bottom and it's taken me you know almost a year but every day is is you know a new day and you can always get better you're not incurable you're not untreatable you have a disorder that is difficult to treat but there are many people who have come before you who have been successful at it and you can too what is it about having bpd that brings you the most joy is that i feel like i beat it you understand it now yeah and when i say beat it i don't mean beat it as in it's gone i learned to manage it and it feels so good to have been diagnosed and come out of it for the better that it allows me to help keep other people from themselves now they help me keep other people alive and to me that's the most valuable important thing i've ever done i actually have a parting gift for you a best interviewer shirt which you could get at dildoshop.com but for you sarah i will ship this to you awesome are you sure i'm the best i'm not just saying that i'm totally i'm totally not just saying totally 100 validated you are the best you're good at this thanks all right you got five seconds to shout out or promote anything you want directly in a camera go i'm i'm gonna go with the brain and behavior research foundation they do a lot of really great work with personality disorders and can really use your journey follow me on instagram at sarah mcgonagall follow me on twitter gothspiderbitch and i also would love if everyone donated to the coalition to stop violence against native women activeminds.org we are changing the conversation about mental health on college and high school campuses across north america please subscribe to anthony's channel or i will probably lose my mind um and break something you don't want that you don't want her to break something but not really it's dangerous thank you so much stacy i feel like i understand the world of borderline personality disorder just a little bit more thank you very much for coming to this interview with no judgment thank you after spending the day with these people who have bpd i've come to understand just how nuanced the discussion of this disorder is and how important it is to be accepting and supportive of people because you never truly know what may be occurring behind the scenes see you later bye guys press a like well everyone feels things everyone's insecure and it's like yeah everyone is but turn that up a notch and and make it go up and down turn it up and then turn it down and then turn it up and then turn it down and then turn exactly and sometimes if you're feeling fancy you can turn it down and then even further down and then all the way up and then all the way up and then all the way down exactly and then you put it on remix and you let it and then you click on random mode it's like a dance dance revolution your emotions are a dance dance revolution game that's a really great way to describe it oh my god the wikipedia page is going to be changed after this you know what and my job here is done goodbye there we go he's figured it out

Channel: AnthonyPadilla

Views: 1,391,315

Rating: 4.9781637 out of 5

Keywords: anthony padilla, padilla, anthony, smosh anthony, anthony padilla smosh, i spent a day with, interview, borderline personality disorder, bpd, borderline, emotion regulation disorder, emotionally unstable personality disorder, Sarah McGonagall, Stacy Pershall

Id: MkY7P5gtGww

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/alexis21893]

He literally even self diagnosed himself with it years ago to try and excuse his awful treatment of Adrienne. He sees it as nothing but an "asshole" diagnosis for exploitation and of course barely researched it before getting his conclusion on it and now only uses confirmation bias to search more truefaxx™ on BPD

[u/ButtercupPowerpuff86]

Our feelings are amplified by 1000. If you’re our friend, we care about you a ton. If we love you, we love you intensely. If we hate you.... We hate you with the fire of a thousand suns. People that have been abused as kids are often diagnosed with it and I am one of those cases. We can live successful and fulfilling lives with proper treatment and medications. I’m medicated and have adopted coping mechanisms so I’m almost normal, but even with my mood stabilizers, I still have a problem with regulating sadness. As I said before, our emotions are dialed up to level 10 basically. Relationships haven’t really been an issue for me, personally. I’ve just found that most of the partners I’ve ended up with have belonged heavily to the asshole category. I tend to gravitate to broken people in hopes of helping them in some way. BPD is different for everyone. No two people experience it the exact same way. There are actually 2 types of BPD and they’re categorized using the names Subtype 1 and 2. I have Subtype 1.

If anyone has any questions regarding BPD, I’m an open book and will answer your question to the best of my ability.

[u/TheChgz]

After watching this I am 100% positive I'm BPD. I've speculated but I relate ridiculously to these people