Dissociation and Psychosis

Stress. Everyone has it, but not everyone processes it the same. For someone like me, with BPD, stress can be so devastating that it will cause dissociation and possibly psychosis.

Dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from one's thoughts, feelings, memories or sense of identity. 

Have you ever pulled into your driveway and realized you don't remember the drive home? Like you were zoned out the entire time? That is dissociation. About 75-80% of people who suffer from BPD experience dissociation. Most commonly during times of stress. 

For me, dissociation represents a disconnect between my thoughts, emotions, behaviors, perceptions, memories, and identity. This website helps explain dissociation during stress. To sum it up, things begin to feel unreal to me. Even my memories become unclear, and I am not sure if they are truly my memories or just a dream. This causes my stress to increase dramatically. It's actually quite scary to go through. I being to distrust my own mind and memories, and if I cannot trust my own memories, what can I trust? There are times when I even distrust something I have witnessed with my own two eyes. Because I can no longer tell what is real and what is not.

Then there is psychosis. Psychosis is present in about 20-50% of people with BPD. It has been so bad for me that I have even had auditory and visual hallucinations. It's terrifying because like dissociation, I am unable to tell the difference between what is real and what is not. 

The DSM-5 criteria for BPD states that “during periods of extreme stress, transient paranoid ideation or dissociative symptoms may occur.” The term “borderline” originated from the idea that symptoms bordered on the intersection of neurosis and psychosis. However, psychotic symptoms in BPD are more varied and frequent than what DSM-5 criteria suggests. To read more about psychosis in people with BPD, visit this website. 

There have been times where I am so stressed out that the entire world seems different to me. I become a raging lunatic, confused and scared. I hear and see things that aren't there, then believe that these things are real. This only happens for me in times of stress. I have been driving and freaked out because I thought a car was following me. I had to call someone and cried my eyes out because I was terrified. I literally couldn't drive for a month. I would hear voices in my apartment. Like someone was whispering in my ear. Once, it was so bad I left the house in my PJs, screaming and crying as I ran to my car. Then there was a time that a car I had never seen before parked in front of my house for several nights and I was convinced that they were there to hurt me. 

That's probably the scariest part of BPD, the paranoia. Because I believe that others are out to hurt me. In my mind, there is no such thing as someone wanting to do something nice for me. They are just trying to get close to me so they can hurt me. This goes right along with my trust issues-which I suffer from even without stress. As a child, I suffered from child abuse and neglect. With my step mother, nothing ever came for free. If she did something nice for me, there was a price to pay. Even if that 'nice' thing was not requested. I learned early on not to ask for things or to 'bother' her or my father. I was a burden.

 I played softball for about 15 years and I loved it. On game days or even practice, that was the only thing on my father's mind. He missed his chance for baseball and he was living vicariously through me. My step mother absolutely hated the fact that my father was so involved with softball, that she took her jealous rage out on me constantly. At the same time, if I did not preform as expected in games, my father took out his rage on me. There was always something I should have done better or a mistake I should have never made. I was so tired of being beat on both sides. I played for an ASA team and for my high school freshman year. But after that I simply quit. Literally just stopped playing. Something I had loved so much and gave me so much joy, had now only brought me pain and heartache. By the end I had given up, there were times when I would play my games and not even remember what happened during the game. I came to hate softball and associated it with my pain. 

There were so many times in my childhood where I would pretend to be anywhere else than where I was and be anyone else in the world. In the shower, I would even pretend to be a maid and wash the walls of the shower, and it was still better than the life I had. I think this is one of the reason I struggle with identity issues so much. I was never given the chance to find out who I was. I was not allowed to 'be myself' so instead I mimicked others and took on other peoples personality traits. Unfortunately, the only thing that actually stuck to me, was anger and hatred.