{"quotes":[{"text":"I couldn’t trust my own emotions. Which emotional reactions were justified, if any? And which ones were tainted by the mental illness of BPD? I found myself fiercely guarding and limiting my emotional reactions, chastising myself for possible distortions and motivations. People who had known me years ago would barely recognize me now. I had become quiet and withdrawn in social settings, no longer the life of the party. After all, how could I know if my boisterous humor were spontaneous or just a borderline desire to be the center of attention? I could no longer trust any of my heart felt beliefs and opinions on politics, religion, or life. The debate queen had withered. I found myself looking at every single side of an issue unable to come to any conclusions for fear they might be tainted. My lifelong ability to be assertive had turned into a constant state of passivity.","author":"Rachel Reiland","tags":["borderline","borderline-personality-disorder","bpd","diagnosis","emotional-pain","mental-disorder","mental-illness","self-blame","self-doubt"],"id":11583,"author_id":"Rachel+Reiland"},{"text":"You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by.","author":"Rachel Reiland","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","bpd","childhood-trauma","inspirational","love","mental-illness"],"id":91630,"author_id":"Rachel+Reiland"},{"text":"You are a warrior in a dark forest, with no compass and are unable to tell who the actual enemy is, So you never feel safe ..","author":"Anonymous","tags":["battling","borderline-personality-disorder","bpd","depressed","depression","fighters","insecurity","mental-illness","recovery","warriors"],"id":147802,"author_id":"Anonymous"},{"text":"My skin is so thin that the innocent words of others burn holes right through me.","author":"BPD Pieces of Me Community","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","bpd","mental-health","mental-illness"],"id":154775,"author_id":"BPD+Pieces+of+Me+Community"},{"text":"It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.","author":"Sylvia Plath","tags":["bpd","mental-health","mood-instability"],"id":168582,"author_id":"Sylvia+Plath"},{"text":"How can I put this? There's a king of gap between what I think is real and what's really real. I get this feeling like some kind of little something-or-other is there, somewhere inside me... Like a burglar is in the house, hiding in a wardrobe... And it comes out every once in a while and messes up whatever order or logic I've established for myself. The way a magnet can make a machine go crazy.","author":"Haruki Murakami","tags":["anxiety","borderline-personality-disorder","bpd","depression","dissociation","dissociative-identity-disorder"],"id":196423,"author_id":"Haruki+Murakami"},{"text":"DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["balance","borderline","bpd","dbt","dialectical-behavioral-therapy","failure","life","life-lessons","mistakes","survival","surviving"],"id":238944,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"Parentified children learn to take responsibility for themselves and others early on. They tend to fade into the woodwork and let others take center stage. This extends into adulthood - adult children may put others' needs before their own. They may have difficulty accepting care and attention.","author":"Kimberlee Roth","tags":["adult-children","borderline-personality-disorder","bpd","hypervigilance","responsibility"],"id":344284,"author_id":"Kimberlee+Roth"},{"text":"Tempting as it may be to draw one conclusion or another from my story and universalize it to apply to another's experience, it is not my intention for my book to be seen as some sort of cookie-cutter approach and explanation of mental illness, It is not ab advocacy of any particular form of therapy over another. Nor is it meant to take sides in the legitimate and necessary debate within the mental health profession if which treatments are most effective for this or any other mental illness.            What it is, I hope, is a way for readers to get a true feel for what it's like to be in the grips of mental illness and what it's like to strive for recovery.","author":"Rachel Reiland","tags":["borderline","bpd","memoir","mental-illness","psychotherapy"],"id":363324,"author_id":"Rachel+Reiland"},{"text":"Owing to a poorly defined sense of self, people with BPD rely on others for their feelings of worth and emotional caretaking. So fearful are they of feeling alone that they may act in desperate ways that quite frequently bring about the very abandonment and rejection they're trying to avoid.","author":"Kimberlee Roth","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","bpd","mental-illness","personality-disorders","psychology"],"id":365150,"author_id":"Kimberlee+Roth"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":13,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}