When I started this blog 6 months ago I was exhausted and terrified. Exhausted from months of sleeplessness, exhausted from the effort of appearing normal, exhausted from the unbearable pain and confusion of broken relationships and rejection I was experiencing. I was dancing on the edge of a precipice, ready to give up.
Those who had told me they loved and cared for me couldn't seem to understand what was happening to me, they were confused and upset. They couldn't relate the silent, quivering wreck with the person they had known before. I couldn't see myself, couldn't step outside the mountainous load of pain and fear I was carrying. I felt their anger, their frustration, their hurt, confusion and fear but I couldn't understand it at all.
I try not to think back too much on that time, or the times like it that have come before. It still hurts, still has the power to terrify me. I'm nervous of the approach of Easter, the temporal landmarks, Lent, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, returning to school after the Easter holiday, each event tied into memories of spiralling anguish, confusion and despair. Waiting in the cold for ambulances with weird and freaky hallucinations dancing in front of my eyes, baffling meetings, inexplicable conversations, fleeing into the night to sleep in my car, the only place left I felt safe.
These are the bad times, its rarely like that, not now, praise the Lord. I still can't reflect really on what went wrong, or who was to blame, if anyone was. Even in my current state of well-ness thinking back into that time has the power to paralyse, to drag me down back into the mire.
But one consequence of this latest dive into the dark depths was 3 words that dropped into my life out of the storm. 3 words that others have found so painful to be given, but for me have been the beginning of healing. Borderline Personality Disorder. I'm not claiming I am better, I am neither so foolish nor so bold, but I have seen that through the gospel applied to the insight that diagnosis gave the mountain of emotion has begun to move.
My friend who helps me think through things told me today that she always knew this was possible, that although there might always be a vulnerability here, there could through Christ and the gospel be change and healing for me. I used to argue. I don't anymore. I used to think my emotions would always be a stick of dynamite hanging by a thread, a battleground where I was fated to lose and lose and lose again, and could only win periods of peace by constant vigilance, discipline and self-control. But in the last 6 months I can't deny that I have experienced change I would not have believed.
When we first started working together, specifically using the BPD characteristics I firmly told my friend that I didn't believe that they could change. They were too deeply rooted, too firmly embedded in my defences. But I wanted them to change. And when I was diagnosed with BPD we learned two things which seem to have made a tremendous difference and have held the seeds of the change I have experienced.
Firstly we learned, that unusual as my behaviour was for a depressed person, it was classic for someone with BPD. The sudden, violent mood swings, the blinding intensity of emotion, the anger, the terror of rejection and abandonment, the numb emptiness and obsessive thoughts of self-harm, these were characteristics straight from the BPD playbook. So we treated it like a shopping list. The gospel speaks to all of those, my friend said, pick one and we'll start there.
Secondly and probably more profoundly we did some reading and spotted a trap we had been falling into for years. Tell someone with BPD that they need to change and they will feel judged, tell them that they are OK and they will feel unloved and misunderstood. The former means you haven't understood how impossible change feels, how overwhelming and hopeless the emotions are. The latter means you don't care how much pain they are in. You don't realise how not OK it is.
We both saw it, it was a lightbulb moment. As was the solution recommended by the specialist writing. First, they said, you have to show you have heard and understood the person's feelings. How overwhelmed and trapped they feel, how impossible they feel change is. But then you have to tell them that although it feels impossible, change is possible if you work for it.
And there it was. The gospel tearing down resistance to change. Jesus sees and accepts you just the way you are. Your feelings are real, they are understandable and they are OK. But he loves you way too much to leave you there, there will be change. The relationship between my friend and I had to be modelled on the relationship between Jesus and us. We both started talking differently to one another. I would express my feelings, openly, honestly, excruciatingly and she would hear, acknowledge, validate and affirm them. She would acknowledge their justice where just, and my frustration where they were irrational. From that day I felt heard. I felt understood and I was able to trust much better.
Then we would lay out a plan for where we wanted to get to. No matter that it felt impossible. We would shoot the moon and agree a plan for where I wanted to be. And then we would find a way to work for it. Look at God's character, his stories, his people, many of the places we went are laid out in this blog. We would pray honestly, confessing sin, unbelief, hurt, fear, seeking healing and change. And I would take the verses away to meditate on, to reflect on, to write about. I did this not because I believed I could change but as an act of faith that the one who could move mountains, could in fact move my mountain.
And against all my expectation, change started to happen. Roots that were dug down deep suddenly began to come loose. I'm not better and I'm still afraid of a return to the darkness but I can't deny that I am facing situations and people in a new, healthier way, that I am richly enjoying God's presence in a way I've not known before, that I am finding depths of comfort and strength in my relationship to Christ that were previously unfathomed.
We have setbacks. Days were struggle to hear each other, days we need to re-tread old ground, remember old truths. Its hard work, but rewarding, in the same way that digging up the dandelions from your lawn is more satisfying that chopping off the tops. Back-breaking, but this way we know they won't be growing back.
I may never be free from the emotional volcano beneath my feet, but I now believe, some days at least, that I can live free of the fear of it, free of the harmful defence mechanisms that have served their turn and gone past their usefulness, free of enslaving lies that tell me change is impossible, that the mountain is too big and your faith too small.
Most of all free in the truth of Colossians 3:12, that I am a dearly loved, chosen child of God, just as I am, utterly accepted. I can stop hating my feelings, stop fighting them, stop struggling to suppress them. They are mine and with all their excess and the ugliness they sometimes possess, Jesus looks at me and says you are OK, you are mine. But then free in also to change, to clothe myself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and love. Because Jesus accepts us as we are, but never leaves us where we are. He loves us too much for that. That is the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Those who had told me they loved and cared for me couldn't seem to understand what was happening to me, they were confused and upset. They couldn't relate the silent, quivering wreck with the person they had known before. I couldn't see myself, couldn't step outside the mountainous load of pain and fear I was carrying. I felt their anger, their frustration, their hurt, confusion and fear but I couldn't understand it at all.
I try not to think back too much on that time, or the times like it that have come before. It still hurts, still has the power to terrify me. I'm nervous of the approach of Easter, the temporal landmarks, Lent, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, returning to school after the Easter holiday, each event tied into memories of spiralling anguish, confusion and despair. Waiting in the cold for ambulances with weird and freaky hallucinations dancing in front of my eyes, baffling meetings, inexplicable conversations, fleeing into the night to sleep in my car, the only place left I felt safe.
These are the bad times, its rarely like that, not now, praise the Lord. I still can't reflect really on what went wrong, or who was to blame, if anyone was. Even in my current state of well-ness thinking back into that time has the power to paralyse, to drag me down back into the mire.
But one consequence of this latest dive into the dark depths was 3 words that dropped into my life out of the storm. 3 words that others have found so painful to be given, but for me have been the beginning of healing. Borderline Personality Disorder. I'm not claiming I am better, I am neither so foolish nor so bold, but I have seen that through the gospel applied to the insight that diagnosis gave the mountain of emotion has begun to move.
My friend who helps me think through things told me today that she always knew this was possible, that although there might always be a vulnerability here, there could through Christ and the gospel be change and healing for me. I used to argue. I don't anymore. I used to think my emotions would always be a stick of dynamite hanging by a thread, a battleground where I was fated to lose and lose and lose again, and could only win periods of peace by constant vigilance, discipline and self-control. But in the last 6 months I can't deny that I have experienced change I would not have believed.
When we first started working together, specifically using the BPD characteristics I firmly told my friend that I didn't believe that they could change. They were too deeply rooted, too firmly embedded in my defences. But I wanted them to change. And when I was diagnosed with BPD we learned two things which seem to have made a tremendous difference and have held the seeds of the change I have experienced.
Firstly we learned, that unusual as my behaviour was for a depressed person, it was classic for someone with BPD. The sudden, violent mood swings, the blinding intensity of emotion, the anger, the terror of rejection and abandonment, the numb emptiness and obsessive thoughts of self-harm, these were characteristics straight from the BPD playbook. So we treated it like a shopping list. The gospel speaks to all of those, my friend said, pick one and we'll start there.
Secondly and probably more profoundly we did some reading and spotted a trap we had been falling into for years. Tell someone with BPD that they need to change and they will feel judged, tell them that they are OK and they will feel unloved and misunderstood. The former means you haven't understood how impossible change feels, how overwhelming and hopeless the emotions are. The latter means you don't care how much pain they are in. You don't realise how not OK it is.
We both saw it, it was a lightbulb moment. As was the solution recommended by the specialist writing. First, they said, you have to show you have heard and understood the person's feelings. How overwhelmed and trapped they feel, how impossible they feel change is. But then you have to tell them that although it feels impossible, change is possible if you work for it.
And there it was. The gospel tearing down resistance to change. Jesus sees and accepts you just the way you are. Your feelings are real, they are understandable and they are OK. But he loves you way too much to leave you there, there will be change. The relationship between my friend and I had to be modelled on the relationship between Jesus and us. We both started talking differently to one another. I would express my feelings, openly, honestly, excruciatingly and she would hear, acknowledge, validate and affirm them. She would acknowledge their justice where just, and my frustration where they were irrational. From that day I felt heard. I felt understood and I was able to trust much better.
Then we would lay out a plan for where we wanted to get to. No matter that it felt impossible. We would shoot the moon and agree a plan for where I wanted to be. And then we would find a way to work for it. Look at God's character, his stories, his people, many of the places we went are laid out in this blog. We would pray honestly, confessing sin, unbelief, hurt, fear, seeking healing and change. And I would take the verses away to meditate on, to reflect on, to write about. I did this not because I believed I could change but as an act of faith that the one who could move mountains, could in fact move my mountain.
And against all my expectation, change started to happen. Roots that were dug down deep suddenly began to come loose. I'm not better and I'm still afraid of a return to the darkness but I can't deny that I am facing situations and people in a new, healthier way, that I am richly enjoying God's presence in a way I've not known before, that I am finding depths of comfort and strength in my relationship to Christ that were previously unfathomed.
We have setbacks. Days were struggle to hear each other, days we need to re-tread old ground, remember old truths. Its hard work, but rewarding, in the same way that digging up the dandelions from your lawn is more satisfying that chopping off the tops. Back-breaking, but this way we know they won't be growing back.
I may never be free from the emotional volcano beneath my feet, but I now believe, some days at least, that I can live free of the fear of it, free of the harmful defence mechanisms that have served their turn and gone past their usefulness, free of enslaving lies that tell me change is impossible, that the mountain is too big and your faith too small.
Most of all free in the truth of Colossians 3:12, that I am a dearly loved, chosen child of God, just as I am, utterly accepted. I can stop hating my feelings, stop fighting them, stop struggling to suppress them. They are mine and with all their excess and the ugliness they sometimes possess, Jesus looks at me and says you are OK, you are mine. But then free in also to change, to clothe myself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and love. Because Jesus accepts us as we are, but never leaves us where we are. He loves us too much for that. That is the truth, and the truth will set you free.
