What if every day felt like a turbulent storm you couldn’t escape, with your emotions rising like sudden floods? Living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) can truly feel like driving on the N1 during a Highveld thunderstorm; visibility shifts unexpectedly, the road ahead seems uncertain, and you’re holding the wheel so tightly that your knuckles turn white. Your emotions aren’t just feelings; they appear as flash floods in the Karoo—sudden and overwhelming, rushing through dry riverbeds that were calm just moments earlier. This unpredictable journey can leave you feeling lost and vulnerable, seeking a sense of stability amid the chaos.
But here’s the truth that needs to be said clearly: You are not broken. You are not too much. You are deeply feeling, and you deserve care.
What Is BPD? Understanding the Storm
Borderline Personality Disorder is a mental health condition characterised by intense emotional experiences, unstable relationships, and a shifting sense of self. Think of it like having an emotional volume dial that’s constantly set to maximum, where others might feel a breeze, you experience gale-force winds.
Imagine your nervous system is like a vuvuzela at a football match. While others have instruments that play at varied, controlled volumes, yours seems stuck on full blast. It’s not because you seek attention or drama; it’s because your brain processes emotional information differently, reacting with the urgency of a car alarm going off when someone merely brushes past the vehicle.
People with BPD often experience:
- Intense emotional swings: Your mood can shift like Cape Town weather, sunny and warm one moment, then suddenly cold and stormy the next, sometimes without an apparent reason.
- Fear of abandonment: The thought of being left behind feels like standing alone at Park Station late at night, vulnerable and terrified, even when the people you love have only gone to the shop.
- Unstable relationships: You might put someone on a pedestal like they’re Nelson Mandela himself, only to feel betrayed days later, as if they’ve become the villain in your story. This isn’t manipulation; it’s your brain trying desperately to make sense of a connection while protecting you from hurt.
- Shifting identity: Your sense of self can feel as changeable as Johannesburg’s skyline — constantly under construction, never quite finished, always transforming.
- Impulsive behaviours: During emotional pain, you might make sudden decisions: maxing out your credit card at Canal Walk, driving recklessly on the freeway, or turning to substances for relief.
- Feelings of emptiness: There’s a hollowness inside, like a house after the power’s been cut during load shedding: dark, quiet, and disconnected.
- Intense anger: Your temper can flare like a wildfire, spreading quickly and consuming everything in its path before you’ve even registered the spark.
Why Does This Happen? The Roots of Sensitivity
BPD doesn’t develop because you’re weak or flawed. It typically emerges from a combination of factors: genetic vulnerability, brain chemistry differences, and often, early experiences of trauma, invalidation, or inconsistent care.
Think of it like this: if your emotional system is a garden, BPD develops when that garden experiences harsh conditions during its growing season. Perhaps the soil was rocky (genetic factors), the rain came in unpredictable patterns (inconsistent caregiving), or there were unexpected frosts (trauma). The garden still grows, but it becomes hypersensitive to changes in weather, requiring more careful tending.
Your intensity isn’t a character flaw; it’s an adaptation. Like the Quiver Tree that survives the Northern Cape’s harsh conditions by storing every drop of water it receives, your emotional system learned to hold onto and amplify every feeling as a survival mechanism. You’re not overreacting; you’re responding with a system that’s been calibrated differently.
How to Navigate: Finding Your Path Through
Healing from BPD is possible. It’s not about becoming someone else or suppressing who you are; it’s about learning to work with your sensitivity rather than against it.
Build Your Support Team
Just as you wouldn’t climb Table Mountain alone without preparation, don’t navigate BPD without support. Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is designed explicitly for BPD and teaches concrete skills for managing emotions. Find a therapist who specialises in this approach, they’re like experienced hiking guides who know the terrain and can help you navigate safely.
Connect with support groups where others understand the journey. There’s profound healing in hearing someone say, “I feel that too,” like finding your people in a crowded taxi rank — suddenly, you’re not alone.
Practice Radical Self-Compassion
When your emotions feel overwhelming, speak to yourself as you would to a friend stuck in traffic on the N1 to Cape Town in the morning, with patience and understanding, not criticism. You wouldn’t lean into their window and shout, “Why are you so stuck? Just move!” You’d recognise they’re caught in circumstances beyond their immediate control.
Try this: Place your hand on your heart during difficult moments and say, “This is really hard right now, and I’m doing my best.” This simple gesture activates your body’s soothing system, like a warm rooibos tea for your nervous system.
Learn to Ride the Waves
Emotions, no matter how intense, are temporary; they rise and fall like the Indian Ocean’s tides at Durban’s beachfront. When an immense feeling hits, practice “riding the wave” rather than fighting it or being swept away:
- Name it: “I’m feeling abandoned right now” (like pointing out a specific pothole on a road you know well)
- Feel it in your body: Where do you notice it? Your chest? Your stomach?
- Breathe through it: Deep, slow breaths, like blowing on hot pap to cool it down.
- Wait: Give it 20 minutes. Most emotional peaks pass within this time
Create Your Safety Plan
When you’re feeling stable, prepare for difficult moments like keeping a spare tyre in your car’s boot. Write a list of:
- Warning signs you’re struggling (like noticing your fuel light is on)
- People you can call (your emotional roadside assistance)
- Grounding techniques that work for you (holding ice, describing objects around you, listening to specific music)
- Reasons to stay safe (even small ones: your dog needs you, you’re curious about next season’s show, your friend’s wedding is coming)
Build Identity Through Small Consistencies
If your sense of self feels unstable, create anchors through small, repeated actions. Like the daily rhythm of the hadedas’ morning call, these patterns help ground you:
- A morning routine, however simple
- A hobby you return to regularly
- Values you choose to stand by (kindness, honesty, creativity)
- Small promises you keep to yourself
You’re not discovering who you are as much as you’re deciding and creating it, one small choice at a time.
Challenge All-or-Nothing Thinking
BPD often comes with black-and-white thinking — people are either perfect or terrible, you’re either succeeding or failing. Reality, like a South African sunset, exists in gradients and nuances.
Practice finding the middle ground: “My friend forgot to call me back. This doesn’t mean they don’t care; they might be busy. One missed call doesn’t define our entire relationship.”
You Are Not Your Diagnosis
Living with BPD is like driving a high-performance vehicle that requires more skill to handle; however, it doesn’t mean you can’t reach your destination, but you need to learn specialised techniques and be more mindful on the journey.
Your emotional intensity, when understood and channelled, can become a strength. The same depth that brings pain also allows for profound joy, creativity, empathy, and connection. Many people with BPD are deeply compassionate, fiercely loyal, and remarkably perceptive, qualities born from their sensitivity.
Recovery isn’t linear. There will be good days that feel like cruising down Chapman’s Peak with the windows down, and hard days that feel like being stuck in Cape Town’s morning traffic during a thunderstorm. Both are part of the journey.
You deserve care, not because you’ve earned it through suffering, but simply because you exist. You deserve support, understanding, and the chance to build a life that feels worth living. Your feelings are valid, your pain is real, and your capacity for healing is greater than you might believe.
Take the first step today. Reach out to a mental health professional, share this with someone you trust, or acknowledge to yourself: “I’m struggling, and that’s okay. I’m going to find help.”
You’re not too much. You’re feeling deeply in a world that often asks us to feel less. And there is nothing wrong with you for wanting the care and connection that every human being deserves.
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