Jake Asher
Quotes about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) can provide validation to the feelings we experience as sufferers of the disorder. They can also offer us an insight to how other people view BPD and their experiences with Borderline Personality Disorder.
That’s why we’ve curated a selection of some of our favorite quotes about BPD from a wide variety of sources. Some of these quotes come from people with BPD, others from therapists who have experience treating the disorder. Some are published authors, others are people on social media who’ve openly shared their experiences.
We hope you enjoy this selection of quotes about BPD. If you have any you’d like to suggest we add, please leave a comment at the end of the article.
“My skin is so thin that the innocent words of others burn holes right through me.” – Unknown
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“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 I had become quiet and withdrawn in social settings, no longer the life of the party.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.” – Rachel Reiland, Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
“You know you’re borderline when you fluctuate between fearing abandonment and encouraging it.” – Jaen Wirefly
“Yet I also recognize this: Even if everyone in the world were to accept me and my illness and validate my pain, unless I can abide myself and be compassionate toward my own distress, I will probably always feel alone and neglected by others.” – Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline
“The role of the therapist is to reflect the being/accepting self that was never allowed to be in the borderline.” – Michael Adzema
“People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.” – Marsha Linehan
“To stave off the panic associated with the absence of a primary object, borderline patients frequently will impulsively engage in behaviors that numb the panic and establish contact with and control over some new object.” – Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother
“It never stops. I am a black hole. Nothing’s ever good enough and I can’t be happy with less because everyone else is someone’s favorite, everyone else can be someone’s number one. Why don’t I get that? Why not me?” – Satsujins
“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.” – Rachel Reiland
“I don’t think that the instant desperate attachment Borderlines feel really counts as love, but I had never felt any other kind of love, so I didn’t know.”- Mishell Baker, Borderline
“Borderlines create the vicious circles they fear most. They become angry and drive the relationship to the breaking point, then switch to a posture of helplessness and contrition, beg for reconciliation. If both parties are equally enmeshed, chaos and conflict become the soul of the relationship.” – Theodore Millon
“’I won’t fight for a spot in anyone’s life!’ I say confidently while clawing my way through hell and back for one person.” – Obscurix
“I despise my own hypersensitiveness, which requires so much reassurance. It is certainly abnormal to crave so much to be loved and understood.” – Anaïs Nin
“The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: “The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize—too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries.” – Kate Zambreno
“There are distinct mood changes with borderline individuals that may be experienced as very alien or disconnected to the client. The loss of memory associated with DID, however, does not occur in BPD, and the mood changes do not constitute a change in personality to the extent that a part of the psyche takes control of the body outside the individual’s consciousness.” – Deborah Bray Haddock
“But what if you simply don’t have a solid self to return to—if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can’t conceive of “normal” or “healthy” because pain and loneliness are all you remember?” – Kiera Van Gelder
“Imagine what could have been if I had a loving, supportive childhood. If I didn’t endure so much trauma at such a young age.” – 12thgrave
“I don’t know what living a balanced life feels like. When I am sad I don’t cry, I pour. When I am happy I don’t smile, I glow. When I am angry I don’t yell, I burn. The good thing about feeling in extremes is when I love I give them wings but perhaps that isn’t such a good thing, cause they always tend to leave and you should see me when my heart is broken I don’t grieve, I shatter.” – Rupi Kaur
“I don’t know what it’s like to not have deep emotions, even when I feel nothing, I feel it completely.” – A.R. Asher
“When you have BPD you hyperfocus on that one person, or a few people. And you hinge your whole self on them. And they’re all you want. Even when you know you deserve better. But they’re what you want. You want the thing that’s going to hurt you because it feels so good.” – polyamourspunk
“Certainly, it’s important to acknowledge and identify the effects of BPD on your life. It’s equally important to realize that it neither dictates who you are nor fixes your destiny.” – Kimberlee Roth
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