Although it might have an impact, a BPD diagnosis doesn’t automatically make you a ‘bad friend’.

For years, I was convinced that I was undeserving of friends. It seemed like the only rational explanation for why I was so unusually adept at losing them. In every situation, I was the common denominator and therefore, I reasoned, I must be the problem. I’ve found it difficult to maintain friendships since I was little.

I’d want to be super close to people straight away and end up scaring them off. I’d want to prove what a good friend I was by putting myself out there to help them, and be considered a pushover or someone who could be taken advantage of. I’d invest too heavily in the wrong people and be heartbroken when the friendship didn’t work out.

I thought I was too weird, too emotional, too erratic, too much. In reality, I was living with borderline personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder (also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder) is characterised by frequent mood swings, an intense fear of being abandoned, and a difficulty forming and keeping stable relationships. People with BPD tend to self-harm, engage in risky behaviour, and consider or attempt suicide.

It can be very difficult for people who don’t know about BPD to make sense of a friend’s behaviour when their illness manifests itself in the friendship. Coming into contact with someone’s mood swings and extreme emotions, for example, can be off-putting. It might look like they’re being difficult or a ‘drama queen’ when in reality, they’re struggling with an integral part of the BPD diagnosis.

Asking repeatedly for reassurance about the friendship might seem needy, but it’s actually just because someone with BPD is intensely afraid of abandonment. Self-harm, suicide attempts and drug and alcohol abuse are often (and completely wrongly) judged harshly, when they are really just part of the risky, self-destructive behaviours that are common for people with BPD.

Unfortunately, personality disorders still have lot of stigma attached to them. More common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression have gained a wider level of acceptance in the eyes of the public, but illnesses like BPD and schizophrenia are still misunderstood and seen as frightening or alien. This stigma makes life much harder for people with the diagnosis because they may be more reluctant to tell others that they have an illness.

If friends don’t know you have BPD and can’t recognise the behaviours and anxieties than come with it, they will struggle to understand what’s going on if you have an episode. By the time I was 18, my BPD was full-blown and I had a serious eating disorder. This combination, mixed with heavy use of alcohol and other drugs (both prescribed and recreational), was utterly catastrophic. I was experiencing the extreme mood swings that come with BPD, and they were being exacerbated massively by substance abuse.

I’d always been a bit of a party girl at university, but when my body started to deteriorate from the eating disorder, I went from being a laugh to being someone who was publicly imploding. I definitely wasn’t an easy person to live with, but I needed support rather than disdain. I remember sitting on my bed and sobbing my heart out after my housemates said that they’d chosen a property together and I was unequivocally not invited to live with them the following year.

I was trying to get used to new medication for BPD, going through an eating disorders recovery programme, trying to cope with all my university work and dealing with an abusive relationship, and yet all my university friends could see was a drama queen and a mess.

The fear of being abandoned is a big part of BPD, and when the abandonment is both real and frequent, it has a devastating impact. Some people will end friendships and relationships because they think the other person is going to leave them. Even years later, this university experience haunts me.

I will never forget feeling unsafe and unwanted in the shared house I lived in, where people would stop talking as soon as I came into a room. If a friend does something to hurt me, I go into an animal self-protect mode. I try to keep myself safe by cutting people out of my life with the speed of Usain Bolt smashing the 100m. A common element of BPD behaviour is called ‘splitting’ or black and white thinking. It means that you tend to see people as either all good or all bad, without room for nuance or shades of grey.

In terms of friendships, you might make a connection very quickly, think someone is amazing and want to be their best friend and know everything about them. It feels as exciting as the first flush of a new romantic relationship to meet another person you think is wonderful and want to spend all your time with. However, these feelings can change as rapidly as they arrived. If the other person does something hurtful or fails to reciprocate in the friendship, it feels like they’ve betrayed you and you might cut them off entirely.

This is a particular risk if you’re asking someone to give more in the relationship than they are willing to. The mental health charity Mind lists having unrealistic expectations of people or contacting them very frequently as a difficult part of BPD. It’s easy to see how this might be overwhelming for someone right at the beginning of a friendship, particularly when they don’t know about the BPD diagnosis.

Jasmine, 23, also has BPD. She notices that she’s very quick to connect with others and can experience a sense of an emotional intimacy with new friends right away. She told ‘I connect, sometimes scarily quickly, but it happens so regularly now that it’s almost lost its value.

If I can connect this intensely and emotionally with most people, who are the special ones? Who are the right ones? It can’t be everyone. ‘I do worry people will get bored of me. I worry when people are too busy to hang out with me, even if they are genuinely busy. I worry that when people must leave for the evening I’ve said something to insult them. ‘I worry that when I have an episode they will not know how to help, and I’ll get angry and think I’ve chosen the wrong friends. I’m worried I’ll blame them. I worry I’m not being the best friend I could possibly be.’ This extreme tendency to worry can be incredibly difficult.

The constant chatter of the BPD brain means that it’s always finding new things to be anxious about and new reasons why your mates don’t actually like you. Paranoia can be a trait of BPD, particularly in times of stress. You might find yourself second guessing every action and interaction, playing conversations back hours, days, or weeks after they’ve happened, or torturing yourself with the idea that you’ve been weird, over-the-top, embarrassing, or inappropriate in social situations .

This is an incredibly exhausting way to live. Every day, I find myself eaten up with fears that my friends secretly hate me or are talking about me behind my back, leaving me emotionally drained, unsettled and tempted to ask (for the millionth time) whether they actually like me or not.

In my social interactions, I feel an overwhelming sense of fatigue because I’m so hyper-concerned about how I’m coming across and whether or not I’m misreading or misinterpreting the situation, or making the other person’s words fit with a narrative I’ve already constructed in my head rather than actually understanding what they’re saying.

If I think someone doesn’t like me, everything they do or say will speak that back to me – even if it’s logically not true at all. If you do a quick Google search, you’ll find articles and discussion forum posts deriding friendships with BPD sufferers. People who have the illness are branded ‘toxic’, ‘intense’, unable to respect boundaries or simply not worth the hassle of having a friendship with. This is both misleading and offensive.

Borderline personality disorder doesn’t mean that someone will necessai be a negative influence in your life or treat your poorly. People with BPD are often very sensitive, empathetic and attuned to the moods of others. We tend to be good listeners and are always willing to put ourselves in other people’s shoes.

Jasmine agrees: ‘I think a thing about BPD is that it opens a whole new realm of empathy. I have a few friends with BPD and they are some of the most patient and insightful people I’ve ever met.’ Having BPD doesn’t make you a bad friend. Negative behaviour in friendships can and does occur every day between people who don’t suffer from any sort of mental illness.

Steve Clarke is a leading psychotherapist and clinical and therapy services manager at the Priory’s Life Works Hospital in Surrey. He believes that people with BPD absolutely can maintain fulfilling and healthy friendships with others.

‘Most people with BPD will know what triggers them, and if they are in acceptance of the condition, will generally understand what sort of situations or conversations might trigger negative thoughts and emotions. ‘If a loved one is diagnosed with BPD, try to be patient. They may struggle to deal with their emotions. Don’t judge them; listen, summarise and repeat what you believe you have heard. ‘Avoid telling them that they’re overreacting. Avoid telling your loved one that they shouldn’t feel the way they do, or that you know how they feel, because you don’t… ‘Be consistent and remain calm.

If your loved one is experiencing a lot of overwhelming emotions, allow them voice them in a non-aggressive way. Relay how you are experiencing them. If you are experiencing anger, tell them. Use non-inflammatory language, such as “when you… I feel…” For example, “When you speak to me like this, I feel scared/hurt/afraid/upset…” Steve addresses the fact that BPD sufferers are often accused of transgressing boundaries in relationships, and says that setting clear boundaries and expectations is a must.’

‘If your loved one is feeling insecure about rejection, or worried about being left alone, you may find it helpful to firstly understand what they can expect from you, and then make it clear what you can offer. If boundaries are consistently broken, there need to be non-punitive consequences, otherwise behaviours will not change.’ More: Mental health Demand for private counselling soars due to long NHS waiting lists Anxious to ultramarathon: How one runner went from anxiety-induced paralysis to 100k How do NHS staff protect their physical and mental health?

One in four children say that how they look is one of their main worries in lifeSteve encourages the ‘broken record’ method, where friends and loved ones will repeat the same phrase calmly, warmly and with empathy, until the message is received and understood. BPD can be well managed with a combination of therapy and medication, and it doesn’t have to get in the way of a fun and mutually supportive social life with friends.

Brendan is 32 and has been diagnosed with BPD for five years, and says he’s only lost acquaintances rather than long-term friends due to his illness. He says: ‘I find it harder to make friends but I tend to not have lost the ones I’ve already got. I’ve always been pretty guarded about showing how bad I can get and I limit the people I’m 100% open with. ‘The thing I struggle most with is the feeling that nobody actually wants to be friends with me.

That means that I get a bit spammy with messages sometimes if I think I’ve upset someone. This is the point where people likely get annoyed and don’t talk to me as much, the friends I’ve known for the longest know this though and they’ll just let me get it out of my system.

‘I had the same housemate for about ten years which helped. He was incredibly supportive, he had a lot to deal with sometimes when he’d wake up and come into the bathroom and I’d be sitting on the floor cutting myself, but he really stuck by me and never judged me for my lowest points which I’ll forever appreciate.’ Self-destructive behaviours like self-harm, unprotected sex or drug abuse can be very upsetting and difficult for others to deal with, but they don’t make the person engaging in them any less deserving of friendship.

Friends don’t have to try to fix things or cure the illness, but they do need to be able to refrain from making you feel like a bad person because you have a particular mental health diagnosis. Just having someone say ‘I understand that you’re hurting right now’ can be so intensely meaningful.

BPD sufferers don’t want to be therapised or treated like an invalid by their mates – they want to feel liked, accepted and supported, just like anyone else. People like Brendan’s housemate, who respond to things like self-harm in a supportive and non-judgemental way, can have an amazingly positive impact on the lives of people with BPD.
Finding people who are willing to learn about BPD and accept you for the person you are, even during your dark moments, is the key. According to Jasmine, forming healthy friendships when you have BPD just take a little more time.

‘It takes time to know who you should surround yourself with because you should surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you, and who bring out the real you. When you have BPD you don’t know those things about yourself.’ Although I still end up constantly crippled with anxiety about how I’m behaving with my friends and whether or not they really like me, I’m learning to get this under control.

I tend to confide in a couple of trustworthy people including my partner about my episodes, and I don’t take any sh*t from anyone who tries to make me feel like I’m not good enough because of my diagnosis. People with BPD don’t make bad friends. We’re just slightly more complex than the average.