#self harm-tw

[unstablescribbles]

All I want to do is hit myself. With a book, against a wall, specifically my head. It's this deep urge and it feels almost painful to resist it. But I'm in public. So I suppose I shouldn't. It's a mix of exhaustion and anxiety and just uggh. Also I'm like 99% convinced everyone secretly hates so that's not helping

[redflagarchives]

I'm having problems with a friendship that I want to end. Basically this person is someone that I had no idea what they were like until months into the friendship. When I first met them they were always sweet and kind and supportive and were never mean to me. I came to rely on them a lot because I'm isolated and dangerously poor. Then they started to show that they were unpredictable, and prone to snapping and taking everything the wrong way. They blame it on their BPD but it's not like (c)

(continued) they do anything substantial to make sure they don’t snap at me again later. And they often accuse me of saying or doing things that I didn’t do, and the only way to work through the situation is to accept that I did say or do those things and apologize and accept that they’ll never trust me again etc etc. And I get the feeling that they try to make me feel like an awful, shitty friend so that they don’t have to feel like it’s mostly them and they’re the one who has to (c)

(continued) do any significant changing, they can reframe it as “we all have shit to work on." I don’t want to say they’re using mental illness as an excuse but it feels like they’re just telling me, “I have BPD, so you can expect to deal with me lashing out at you frequently and at any given moment and blaming you for it, but it’s okay because it’s just my BPD acting up." What do you think? (done)

Hi. I don’t have BPD so I really can’t speak on that or what it entails. But I can tell you that you don’t have to stay in a friendship with someone for any reason. You have every right to keep yourself safe in any way you see fit.

And I can also tell you about my experiences with having a mental illness and how that’s affected my relationships. I have Complex PTSD which has a lot of similarities with BPD but is still very different. I feel like I have many mild symptoms of BPD.

I had a PTSD episode in which I snapped at people and took things very personally, took things the wrong way, completely misinterpreted words and did not have a great grasp on reality. I went into full on melt down, alone in my room. I was screaming, throwing things, self harming, sobbing etc. I sent some rude emails out. I deleted half of my friends list on fb. I kicked someone out of my online feminist group.

It actually took me like a week to sort out what had happened and I’m still somewhat upset with a few of the people I was mad at that night. But I realized I did react in a way that hurt people I didn’t mean to hurt. I was accountable for my actions, explained what happened to everyone involved including my entire feminist group. I apologized, and allowed people to make their own decisions about whether they wanted to continue associating with me. And I told them I couldn’t promise it would never happen again but if it did it wouldn’t be any time soon.

Having a mental illness never means you don’t have to hold yourself accountable for how you treat other people.

Good luck!