Borderlines and their Favourite People
They're not your best friend. They're not your partner. An FP is someone you idolize, someone whose validation you crave, and someone without whom it feels as though you cannot exist. It is someone who wields such absolute control over your emotions that the slightest action on their part could send your emotions careening all over the map.
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| Photo by Joseph Pearson on Unsplash |
It's been a long, painful break from blogging.
There's been grief, and loss, and pain, and depression, and insomnia, and if you asked me how I'm feeling, I'd tell you I'm just mildly depressed.
Because on the scale of depression I have experienced over the course of twelve long years, the past few months are a blip. They're a sign of "things going well." They're "a good phase."
And I want to talk about all of that, and so much more, but for right now, I'm gonna stick with my thoughts on a random topic that just came up - the concept of a "Favourite Person".
This is a phenomenon commonly observed among sufferers of borderline personality disorder. I haven't interacted as much with other mental health support communities, so I can't speak for them. This article here gives a wider perspective and definition on what "favourite person", or FP, means to borderline sufferers. It's not a big article, but I am not looking to information dump all over this post either.
Two of my best friends commented on a Facebook memory I'd shared, where I'd called one of them the "Demigod in my life." The other friend remarked that the position of FP was still up for grabs, so it's alright.
Except it isn't still up for grabs. Somewhere along the line, I very definitively retired the position of FP in my life, permanently. I don't know how I managed to do that - in fact, I would have thought it next to impossible to do, but here we are.
How can I describe the experience of having a "Favourite person?" To a borderline sufferer, they're not your best friend. They're not your partner. I mean, they could be, but those roles alone do not automatically make someone an FP. An FP is someone you idolize, someone whose validation you crave, and someone without whom it feels as though you cannot exist. It is someone who wields such absolute control over your emotions - emotions that are already wildly unstable - that the slightest action on their part could send your emotions careening all over the map. The slightest hint of rejection from them could trigger an avalanche of abandonment issues.
Be it a downward spiral or a meteoric, euphoric rush upwards, mood instability plays a very crucial role in borderline personality disorder. Being unable to control one's moods - being unable to even recognize that one's moods are ping-ponging off the walls - contributes in a very real way to the decline of a borderline sufferer's quality of life.
One of the first things I learned in therapy after receiving my diagnosis was that discipline is central, discipline is key, discipline is mandatory. I wish I could say that I was instantly able to turn my brain into a military-style beacon of restraint. I was not. But the first step to it was simply being able to recognize mood shifts. To remember to keep checking in with myself.
Step by step, things began to fall into place. Today, a year and a half later, I am able to recognize as my emotions shift, maintain neutrality for long periods of time, delay knee jerk outbursts of anger or sadness until I've had time to think further. It's also given me the boon of avoiding sharp depressive spirals or blunting their intensity. Sometimes all this helps. Sometimes, the pressure is still too great, and explosions happen.
And somewhere, in the course of all this word, the concept of an FP simply shriveled away.
My FPs typically were emotionally unavailable, neglectful men that I was romantically or physically interested in. And after all the destruction that holding onto such people caused, one of the things I worked on was to shift my perceptions of men I liked, to hold them to higher standards, and to practice disengaging and walking away when they failed to meet the higher standard.
Initially, I made do with a placeholder - someone who was emotionally unavailable and explicit about it, but who drew the line at emotional abuse. I practiced rejection therapy and accepting someone's words at face value. When he said he didn't ever want a relationship, I accepted that and reminded myself of it whenever I... forgot. And that indeed is what happens - you forget because you want to forget. You want this impossible relationship to materialize. You search for hints that it is indeed progressing, rather than stagnating. You negotiate with them to keep it going, on their terms, because their mere existence in your life is more balm to your soul than a hundred real relationships. Because the FP is your whole world, and their leaving you would destroy you.
Can you blame someone for acting out of a sense of self-preservation?
(Don't answer that. It's more complicated than that.)
But then this year, as the placeholder continued to do the things he'd been doing for a year and a half, I realized that I somehow no longer needed him to be there. I had no further use for the placeholder FP, and while he wasn't emotionally abusive, he was still being pretty disrespectful and unavailable. It made no sense for me to keep investing time and space on him.
So I called him out on his bullshit, and he ghosted me. Two days before we had that conversation, I had a good cry about how I was going to have to get rid of him, and I was moody the entire day after the "break up."
And then I... was just... over it?
This was unprecedented, and I take it as a huge win for all the work and time I put into therapy. And much to my surprise, the position did not naturally pass to anyone else, as it usually did. It's just gone. I replaced it with a healthier support system, filled with people who are actually available. People who seek to prop me up and help me build on myself, rather than tear me down. And more importantly, my moods are not inextricably tied to their actions. They stabilize me, and all this in the absence of an unhealthy power dynamic.
And that gives me hope. Not just about general therapy or FPs or any one concept, but about my relationship with borderline personality disorder as a whole. Hope that, while "incurable," this affliction can still be effectively managed, and brought down to a level where it doesn't interfere with my life.
There's been grief, and loss, and pain, and depression, and insomnia, and if you asked me how I'm feeling, I'd tell you I'm just mildly depressed.
Because on the scale of depression I have experienced over the course of twelve long years, the past few months are a blip. They're a sign of "things going well." They're "a good phase."
And I want to talk about all of that, and so much more, but for right now, I'm gonna stick with my thoughts on a random topic that just came up - the concept of a "Favourite Person".
This is a phenomenon commonly observed among sufferers of borderline personality disorder. I haven't interacted as much with other mental health support communities, so I can't speak for them. This article here gives a wider perspective and definition on what "favourite person", or FP, means to borderline sufferers. It's not a big article, but I am not looking to information dump all over this post either.
Two of my best friends commented on a Facebook memory I'd shared, where I'd called one of them the "Demigod in my life." The other friend remarked that the position of FP was still up for grabs, so it's alright.
Except it isn't still up for grabs. Somewhere along the line, I very definitively retired the position of FP in my life, permanently. I don't know how I managed to do that - in fact, I would have thought it next to impossible to do, but here we are.
How can I describe the experience of having a "Favourite person?" To a borderline sufferer, they're not your best friend. They're not your partner. I mean, they could be, but those roles alone do not automatically make someone an FP. An FP is someone you idolize, someone whose validation you crave, and someone without whom it feels as though you cannot exist. It is someone who wields such absolute control over your emotions - emotions that are already wildly unstable - that the slightest action on their part could send your emotions careening all over the map. The slightest hint of rejection from them could trigger an avalanche of abandonment issues.
Be it a downward spiral or a meteoric, euphoric rush upwards, mood instability plays a very crucial role in borderline personality disorder. Being unable to control one's moods - being unable to even recognize that one's moods are ping-ponging off the walls - contributes in a very real way to the decline of a borderline sufferer's quality of life.
One of the first things I learned in therapy after receiving my diagnosis was that discipline is central, discipline is key, discipline is mandatory. I wish I could say that I was instantly able to turn my brain into a military-style beacon of restraint. I was not. But the first step to it was simply being able to recognize mood shifts. To remember to keep checking in with myself.
Step by step, things began to fall into place. Today, a year and a half later, I am able to recognize as my emotions shift, maintain neutrality for long periods of time, delay knee jerk outbursts of anger or sadness until I've had time to think further. It's also given me the boon of avoiding sharp depressive spirals or blunting their intensity. Sometimes all this helps. Sometimes, the pressure is still too great, and explosions happen.
And somewhere, in the course of all this word, the concept of an FP simply shriveled away.
My FPs typically were emotionally unavailable, neglectful men that I was romantically or physically interested in. And after all the destruction that holding onto such people caused, one of the things I worked on was to shift my perceptions of men I liked, to hold them to higher standards, and to practice disengaging and walking away when they failed to meet the higher standard.
Initially, I made do with a placeholder - someone who was emotionally unavailable and explicit about it, but who drew the line at emotional abuse. I practiced rejection therapy and accepting someone's words at face value. When he said he didn't ever want a relationship, I accepted that and reminded myself of it whenever I... forgot. And that indeed is what happens - you forget because you want to forget. You want this impossible relationship to materialize. You search for hints that it is indeed progressing, rather than stagnating. You negotiate with them to keep it going, on their terms, because their mere existence in your life is more balm to your soul than a hundred real relationships. Because the FP is your whole world, and their leaving you would destroy you.
Can you blame someone for acting out of a sense of self-preservation?
(Don't answer that. It's more complicated than that.)
But then this year, as the placeholder continued to do the things he'd been doing for a year and a half, I realized that I somehow no longer needed him to be there. I had no further use for the placeholder FP, and while he wasn't emotionally abusive, he was still being pretty disrespectful and unavailable. It made no sense for me to keep investing time and space on him.
So I called him out on his bullshit, and he ghosted me. Two days before we had that conversation, I had a good cry about how I was going to have to get rid of him, and I was moody the entire day after the "break up."
And then I... was just... over it?
This was unprecedented, and I take it as a huge win for all the work and time I put into therapy. And much to my surprise, the position did not naturally pass to anyone else, as it usually did. It's just gone. I replaced it with a healthier support system, filled with people who are actually available. People who seek to prop me up and help me build on myself, rather than tear me down. And more importantly, my moods are not inextricably tied to their actions. They stabilize me, and all this in the absence of an unhealthy power dynamic.
And that gives me hope. Not just about general therapy or FPs or any one concept, but about my relationship with borderline personality disorder as a whole. Hope that, while "incurable," this affliction can still be effectively managed, and brought down to a level where it doesn't interfere with my life.
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