I have Borderline Personality Disorder, which is characterized, partially, by mood swings and intense emotions — usually anger, sadness, or anxiety. But I think that more of my emotions are affected by my BPD than just the negative (or destructive) ones. I think that the good ones are affected too.
Because I can get just as overwhelmed by my positive emotions as I can by my negative ones. When I get excited about something, and those who know me can support me on this, I am the most excited person you will ever meet. I jump up and down, I lose the little patience I do have, and my whole worldview starts to revolve around whatever made me so excited.
And, honestly, sometimes it’s kind of nice. Sometimes I feel this pure, overwhelming happiness or excitement, and though these moments are few and far between, I try and lean into them. But they’re not always purely good.
Usually, when I get super excited, life just doesn’t live up to the hype. Maybe my over-excitement has nothing to do with my mental illness(es), maybe it’s just naïveté or too much optimism, either way, it’s not helpful.
It can sometimes take a lot of time and effort for me to do anything intense — nights out, vacations away, special events. So when I get myself psyched up about something, I get really psyched up. On one hand, it gives me a great reason to push past the depression and anxiety blocking my way. On the other, it usually leads to a crash when life just doesn’t live up to my unrealistic expectations.
You might think that I could spot these patterns and work on tempering my expectations so that I don’t crash quite as much, right? Wrong. I still do it. (Often.) I think it’s because those ideas just completely overwhelm my system; they’re all I can focus on — screw the consequences! This time, it will be awesome.
It happens almost every time I have a long-awaited event with friends, it happened this year at Pride, and it happened recently when I met a new romantic prospect.
This month, I met someone new. It was a chance encounter, completely unexpected, and satisfied my every rom-com-filled dream. Everything new I learned about this person made me think that we’d get along fabulously. Political beliefs? Core values? Life experiences? It was all coming up good.
Finally, I had feelings for someone and it sure seemed like they had feelings for me. We flirted for a few days, I asked them on a date, and they even said yes. I was on cloud nine. I knew I was building it up too much at the time, but I couldn’t seem to convince myself to stop. The idea that this would work out was intoxicating and it overtook my mind.
Until they backed out. (For a good, understandable, honest reason.) And I was crushed. I had been in the clouds, but suddenly I fell back to earth. And I felt so dumb.
I feel so dumb.
Like is my default when something goes wrong, I got so mad at myself. How stupid must I be?! How many times do I need to fall to earth before I learn to just not fly all that high? I had even felt and acknowledged that I was getting too excited as it was happening, but I didn’t want to tamper it. It felt so good — like pure happiness. But now that I’ve crashed, it’s just pure, tragic sorrow.
I don’t know what to do anymore; should I doubt every single feeling? How do I temper my excitement well also letting myself feel it? It seems like an impossible riddle. I don’t want this constant roller coaster, but I kind of want to keep the highs. I just don’t know if it’s possible to keep the highs without the lows.
It seems like some sick joke that I have to give up the times that I feel the best, just because I’m built to crash harder if, or when, they fall through. I already doubt every thought I have, but now I have to doubt all my emotions too?
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Mira
I can relate to what you’re saying about intense highs, to me they often feel like a great break from emotional pain but sometimes I feel I’m getting swept away by these feelings and then it’s even harder when the crash comes. I guess that sure, setting yourself up for disappointments is not ideal but on the other hand I feel like intense highs are one of the positive of BPD and I’d say it’s better to get disappointed than to not try in the first place or not embrace the positive emotions xx
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