Borderline Personality Disorder: One Person’s Journey

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AMANDA WANG: I was downstairs in our computer room trying to do a paper. And it started to get late. And I wouldn't be able to finish it.

And at the same time, my father was away. And we heard that something was wrong with him. And my mother had to go to the Philippines to be with him. And I was kind of left alone in the house trying to finish a paper with all this news about my family.

And with all the pressure, I just—I started to cry. And it was an uncontrollable cry. And it was—I noticed that I couldn't stop. And it probably lasted for like an hour or two hours. And then I felt like that was my first kind of breakdown.

I felt like something was wrong with me. And it would start out with something small. And then it would kind of escalate, thinking that I was probably the worst person in the world and that I wasn't good enough.

While I was going through it, I didn't know what was wrong with me. I didn't think I had a mental disorder. And I didn't think that I had something that could have been depression or that could have been another mental illness. I just knew that I didn't like being in the body that I was in.

I remember one time I was at a dinner party. And I just started kind of losing myself in the mix. There was a lot of talking and the more and more I thought that I just wanted to go away. And before I knew it, the conversation was so distant from me.

And then my friend, she told me, we've helped you. We've tried to help you as much as we could. And she said, well, you really need to check yourself into the hospital.

And so I did some research. And I looked at a couple of different options. And I contacted a hospital. And I was admitted into their partial hospitalization program. And that's where they told me about borderline personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder is an intense amount of emotions packed inside of yourself. And it's so difficult to control it. You use all your energy to either release these emotions or make them go away that what ends up happening is you do other things that might not be the best and most healthy things.

So the hospital helped get me into a treatment called dialectical behavior therapy. And so I began to do that treatment, which consists of a private session with your therapist as well as a group therapy session. And what it consists of is a portion that helps you with your skills, learning how to cope with high emotions, how to tolerate those high emotions.

I still struggle with trying to figure out who I am. I think I feel so empty inside often that whatever people bounce back or whatever they reflect or however they react to whatever I'm doing, I feel that that is who I am, because I can't tell for myself, where's my core. And I think that probably has a lot to do with why I'm constantly trying to find something meaningful in my life, because I know if I can do something meaningful in my life, then that means that there's something about me, there's a sense of me, there's a reality to who I am.

I find meaning in helping other people, in telling my story, because I notice a lot of times when I tell my story, other people will be open and tell their story. There's so many times I bring up that I have BPD and someone will say, oh I'd love to hear more about it, because my brother has schizophrenia or my mother had borderline personality disorder. And I didn't know that there were other people out there going through the same thing.

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My name is Amanda Wang. I never heard about BPD until I was deep in a crisis in a hospital. And if only—maybe for other people, they don't have to be in a crisis to realize that they might have symptoms of borderline personality disorder.

I wanted it to make rethinkBPD as a social movement and really just open up a conversation to say, this is borderline personality disorder. This is what we're dealing with. This is what we're struggling with. And we can talk about it.

I'm training in the hopes of being in the Golden Gloves. I'm very scared to fight. It hurts.

And I would be in the ring and midway, I can't breathe. I want to give up. It just really physically hurts. And with borderline personality disorder—

MAN: Catch your breath.

AMANDA WANG: —it's almost the same.

MAN: Again. One more. All right.

AMANDA WANG: It's almost the same intense amount of pain, only it's internalized. And so that to me is the basic parallel between boxing and living with borderline personality disorder.

I think I'm done.

Borderline personality disorder to me is an intense amount of emotions packed inside my body, trying to get out.

This is Monday, February 18, 2008. "Almost took the knife out of the kitchen drawer. I was standing right next to it while I was about to take my meds. It crossed my mind to take all of them. And I said to myself, I'm not angry at me. I'm angry at you. And that was how I was able to talk myself out of it."

And it might not come out the best way or the most appropriate way, or it might even not come out at all. And what ends up happening is I start displaying these kind of symptoms of, for me, aggressive or very damaging behavior towards myself.

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One of the issues still is my lack of self-worth. I didn't really know who I was, so I didn't have a sense of identity. And I would take on someone else's persona or I'd feed off of other people's energy. I had a lot of suicidal thoughts, a lot of self-injury. Most of the time I'm scared of losing control.

One time, I was in a movie theater. And we were watching this movie. And there were people in the back talking throughout the movie. And I kept on trying to hint to them that they were being loud. And it increasingly got worse. And I was very irritated by the end of the movie.

I walked to them. And I say, excuse me. Did you enjoy that movie? And they're like, well yeah, I liked that movie.

And I interrupt them. I say, you know, I didn't really enjoy that movie. I was like, you want to know why I didn't enjoy that movie? It was because you were talking throughout the whole entire movie. And I couldn't even listen to anything.

And the husband says, excuse me. I said, do you really want to mess with me? Like, do you really want to mess with me? Because I am to a point where I don't know what I'm going to do. And I don't know. maybe he was scared or he backed away. And then I ran just crying hysterically.

That to me is anger that I had no control over.

THERAPIST: Diary card? OK, thank you. You OK today? So let's see how the week's been. So good and happy, threes, twos, some negative emotions and some urges Saturday and Sunday. Do you remember when you first noticed the urges?

AMANDA WANG: In the morning, I just felt generally depressed and sad. It's like it's almost like I feel more at home feeling bad about myself than feeling good about myself.

THERAPIST: Remember we talk about self validation gone awry? Sometimes when the feeling is so strong, it sort of tricks you to believe that it's true. It makes you think that it's true. Well, if I feel this way, then it must be a fact. And my guess is that's probably what's happening.

AMANDA WANG: It's hard to think about it on that level when you feel it so strongly. And I think something inherently inside me that doesn't think I'll ever be good enough.

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The skill in therapy that helps me most with my feelings of self-worth is they teach you this idea of radical acceptance. For me, that means accepting who I am even when I don't feel good. And so if I can give value to other people's lives through this project, then I'll have more meaning.

And then maybe those thoughts and doubts about who I am—maybe they'll go away a little bit. And I'll start believing that I can contribute something worthwhile. Also, I really have to work on my left jab. There's a lot to work on.