"I felt like I lived in a world where everyone spoke a foreign language"
#Freedom Starts Within
Trigger Warning: Suicidal thoughts, Trauma
I have experienced intrusive suicidal thoughts since I was around seven years old without fully realizing what it was. At 13 I finally told my parents that I thought I had depression. We found medical help but the doctors misdiagnosed it as body and self-esteem issues and referred me to a dietitian. I eventually started receiving counselling both in school and outside of school, I didn’t feel heard in either. I carried on struggling but I stopped talking to people about it because I felt that anytime I did I wasn’t getting the help I needed. I didn’t know what was going on with me and had no one to help me figure it out.
After years of misdiagnosis, misunderstanding, and confusion, I was finally assessed and correctly diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). After leaving an abusive relationship and becoming homeless in 2019, I spent a lot more time alone and was forced to learn about myself and BPD. I started making links between my behaviour in the past and my diagnosis; I understood a lot more about my reactions and feeling towards things that I before couldn’t explain; I started to develop my own healthy coping skills based on a new understanding of myself. A lot of the confusion and frustration I felt came from not having a diagnosis and not understanding my inner workings.
Despite their best efforts, my family struggle to understand my mental health issues. They support me through this journey but there is still a stigma and miseducation about BPD and its complexities and it can make communication quite difficult and sometimes even heated. For a long time this made me isolate myself from people in general as l feared not being understood. It felt like l lived in a world where everyone spoke a foreign language.
I eventually ended up finding support within BPD twitter communities which were full of people who were openly communicating about their experiences with BPD — experiences I related to. I express myself and my emotions on twitter daily now and it is received by hundreds of people who relate to and are understanding of my experience.
Nowadays, you are never alone. There are people and groups that extend far and wide even if it is not in this country. Support is always available.
My name is Ashleigh, and this is my Mental Health Story.