planting seeds: taking actions towards hope & healing from borderline personality disorder
iv. a hope to heal
I currently hold various seeds of hope gently within my palm.
However, one of the most prominent be to progress further down the line of healing from bpd.
Within this hope, I merely wish to live out the rest of my life amidst a daydream turned reality…to know contentment, safety, and stability intertwined with love and lightheartedness…for mostly, I’ve merely known nightmare weaved with chaos.
A couple side notes to consider:
- Borderline personality disorder varies from person to person, and what has and continues to help me may not be stable for everyone struggling with this disorder; what I share with you today is merely a guideline.
- We must be cautious with hope…though enlightening and motivating, it can so easily become detrimental and harmful, causing us to possibly lose hope altogether, especially if the tools to make our hopes a reality is out of our hands or too grand to take on.
Though detrimental hopes oft take on our subconscious minds, sometimes hearts, there is a way in which we can manifest their existence by aiming for them indirectly, which is firstly done by stripping down our distinct hopes into something vague and something that is achievable by our own hand.
More on choosing conscious, vague, and achievable hopes: attending my garden ii.: picking out the right seeds — hope
With any flower seed we wish to plant, we must understand what keeps it grounded in the first place — knowing the depth at which to plant alongside the maintenance of soil for roots to take hold.
For metaphorical flowers, this means finding what keeps our hopes alive through goals, which are maintained by a set of habits.
To implement a constant flux of healing and growth with ease and grace, my current goals remain the following:
- exercise better communication
- manage my emotions in a healthy, gentle manner
- find stability, comfort, and belief in myself (flaws and all) and my choices
- be more compassionate towards myself
and
- set reasonable boundaries with myself and others
Personally, I find it most helpful if my goals are vague as well, so I can take all as it comes, in lieu of attempting to force something [inauthentically] to be an opportunity to achieve such goals.
For example, I feel more achieved in being compassionate towards myself when I catch myself tearing myself down and replacing it with more grace and kinder words in lieu of affirming to myself, “I deserve good things, I deserve love…” twenty times a day.
Frankly, I feel as though the latter yields opposing results.
Unfortunately, acquiring our hopes and wildest dreams aren’t easily obtained as making a goals list and sleeping on it, we must put it all into action, which is where I feel it’s crucial to be more precise.
In alignment with my goals, my current habit alterations are the following:
- start small with communication
This means asking for help when in need, speaking up when something is bothering me, and inviting others into my world.
With inviting others into my world, I don’t have much trust when it comes to vulnerable topics with those I am surrounded by, so I’ve been trying to find topics I’m comfortable sharing with them and sharing more often; it’s actually helped my relationships greatly and has given me more comfort and confidence in myself!
- take time to feel profound emotions thoroughly and ask self what they may be telling me and/or needing
Every emotion, as John Green states, demands to be felt, though, it is up to us to decipher what it may be signaling to us.
For a majority of my life, I used to just dwell in the presence of uncomfortable emotions (making them greater and unmanageable) and dwell in the reasons they were provoked — finding a target for blame was all I was ever taught about such sentiments.
In all honesty, it’s still a work in progress, but I’m trying more to take responsibility for my emotions by seeking what they may be telling me; perhaps I’m irritated because my boundaries have been crossed or I’m sad about something still because my heart is still in that place and time…
Understanding what emotions are saying shifts the focus from “what or who is the problem” to “what’s the solution to the problem”.
It’s definitely easier said than done…however, with practice, the better we can become at self-soothing and remaining motivated during trying times…once we’ve allowed ourselves to feel our emotions, of course!
- compartmentalize my emotions
As someone with a history of having bpd, handling, understanding, and recognizing emotions is fairly foreign to me.
One emotion in particular has always been a foggy concept to grasp: anger.
I understand that everyone gets angry once in a while (we all have our limits), though, what I never could comprehend was that anger is a mask to another primary emotion, such as sadness, embarrassment, shame…
The way anger was always showcased to me growing up was the ugliest way possible: ravenous, uncontrolled, and uncontained.
It makes me really sad, so that’s all I have to say about that…moving on.
By giving myself the time and space to feel my emotions and seek their needs, I’ve been able to get the root of my anger and its attached emotion with more ease.
However, even so, sometimes the feeling of anger may remain.
And with that, I use this adrenaline as motivation for exercise.
With other emotions, such as sadness, I use it as inspiration or motivation for my writing.
I feel so crazy sometimes because I’ll be crying, then suddenly get inspired by my pain, and immediately, I’ll be running to get my journal.
In all honesty, I think the price of being a writer is to be a little bit insane, but as Alice in Alice in Wonderland put it,
…All the best people are.
- acknowledge and thank detrimental thoughts for their input, and carry on
Taking my thoughts, especially the automatic ones, with a grain of salt has helped me in various ways in which I can’t be grateful for enough.
It’s also helped me to think to myself, This is just a thought, when I have a thought that I wish I didn’t have or begin to fear that is true.
- round out detrimental thoughts
Sometimes (mostly when I don’t get a good night’s rest), it can be difficult to simply acknowledge a thought and wait for it to dissipate, and I become trapped into the mental rabbit hole that is rumination.
What’s helped keep these weighted moments at bay is simply waiting for them to quiet down, and then actively rounding them out as to make them lighter.
For example, if I’m worried about something in the near future, I can round it out by asking myself, Why is everything still okay now?
Or, if I’m feeling distant towards someone because of something they did to upset me, I can close the gap between us a little more by remembering they are human, make mistakes, and also possess good qualities just as anyone else.
- be conscious of when I begin to question myself
This has been such an uncomfortable task for me…I doubt myself endlessly, and it feels right, like I should always be thinking of what others want from me, but unfortunately, this is where borderline personality disorder, personally, has kept a hold on me the longest…
Having those two contradicting voices in my head of what I want vs. what I think others would want is so exhausting.
Granted, I don’t think empathy is a weakness, but to have it so deeply rooted in yourself where you aren’t on your own side anymore or ever, it a subconscious assurance to yourself that what you desire holds no value.
When I start to question myself with things I truly desire, I acknowledge that I’m questioning myself, seek where this badgering may be stemming from, and where I can find a happy-medium where I’m not intentionally hurting anyone while also giving my own voice a chance to be heard.
It’s difficult for a few reasons, one being that I don’t have anyone in my life that holds much of similar values or desires alongside my own, so support is merely just a seven-letter word.
Secondly, I’ve always given to what others wanted from me my entire life…listening to myself, even if people get upset has bred so much guilt and shame, which is also still a work in progress to deviate from.
- write with vulnerability
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking
— Joan Didion
With a constant of contradicting thoughts and entangled emotions running through my mind and heart with a lack of support, it’s difficult to quiet the noise to truly know the woman in the mirror, let alone what she feels and thinks.
Recently I’ve been writing in my journal less hindered, if you will, where I simply just write whatever pours out: what I’m feeling, thinking, seeing, hearing…simply my own voice and nothing else.
Not only as Joan Didion do I write to know what I think, but it helps me ground myself within myself — a coming back to earth — so in a sense, I write solely to feel human.
With planting any seed, there comes the maintenance thereafter — what supports and sustains its life entirely.
With our metaphorical seed of creating reality out of our hopes, this involves maintaining a stable system of encouragement and motivation, engaging with congruent inspiration, and utilizing supportive input while acknowledging and discarding detrimental input.
All of which I will dive deeper into detail soon!
For now, thank you for reading, I appreciate you, and hope you have an amazing day❤
attending my garden, a series
