[TW this post mentions suicidal thoughts]
Sometimes everything feels too much.
This is because my emotions are always on full volume. I rarely feel a mild sadness, instead I feel crushing devastation. It's the same with happiness; often this for me is euphoria.
Since I started on this combination of medication however, my emotions have been ever so slightly muted. Just a tiny fraction. This is not a loss to me, but a gain. It means that I can cope in my daily life much better.
Instead of swinging from euphoric to suicidal in minutes every day, only every now and again do I have such deep troughs and high peaks of emotion. This usually happens when I am triggered by someone close to me: I swing between feeling abandoned and worthless and so relieved when I realise I'm not actually abandoned that it's an engulfing sense of being able to live once more.
For the last few years, I have had suicidal thoughts every day and sometimes for hours on end. At the moment though, I am having very few days with a lot of suicidal thoughts. This is what progress looks like for me. I used to spend time crying on my bedroom floor for up to hours each day and I do that for less time than ever now.
In spite of these steps, living with BPD is so hard because the emotional intensity is nonetheless relentless. So is the constant feeling of vulnerability: who is going to hurt me? how will I deal with the pain? how am I going to cope?
If I feel safe, it's only for a moment. I am always on the look out for rejection and abandonment. When I think I see the signs, or I think about seeing the signs, it throws me into a vortex of despair. And there I am again, on the bedroom floor crying.
DBT is helping me to manage my emotions. So is medication. And amazing people who are supporting me each day. But I wish I could feel more confident and not constantly fearful that I will be rejected or abandoned every day.
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