Are you a chameleon? If you have Borderline Personality Disorder chances are you might be. At the very least, this spirit animal has given you the superpower of blending-in.

Individuals with BPD have no inherent sense of self: Washed away somewhere in childhood, peek inside the heart of a person with BPD, you’ll find nothing but emptiness. However, in this void, there’s enough space to fill the whole room. In fact, we’re so well-versed in this clever display of hollowed-out performance art we can fit into any environment. That is until the disguise just slips away.

Life is like a jungle

Pioneer female psychoanalyst Helene…

Let me start with a confession: I enjoy being a recluse. It’s probably because for most of my life, every experience I’ve ever had, has evoked a feeling of utter dread. It’s not just social situations — in fact like a chameleon I can blend quite easily, but not enjoy it— it’s all situations. This apparent lack of adaptability is at the heart of my personality. For years I fought against it. I’d peruse the world of more ordinary folk, and feel a degree of envy and confusion, “what’s wrong with me?” I’d ask. …

Depression was studied in 1621, OCD in the 1830s, Schizophrenia in the late 19th century, and trauma after the First World War. And yet the infamous Personality Disorder is a mere infant in terms of diagnosis. This is especially true of the ‘Borderline’ type. First identified in 1980, the condition has actually been lurking around for quite some time.

But what is Borderline Personality Disorder? Briefly put BPD, is a severe mental illness marked by emotional, behavioural and cognitive instability, relationship chaos, and chronic self-harm. The statistics are shocking: 10% of those with the condition commit suicide, 70% have attempted…

I read Life and Fate, Vassily Grossman’s epic novel in 2010 with tears in my eyes: I was twenty-fives year old, fresh out of university, and buzzing with ideas. I had wanted to change the world, but found the world would not bend to my will —I suddenly found myself lost and despair. I turned to reading to escape the moral maze, and that’s when I stumbled onto a one of the greatest unknown writers who ever lived.

There are some books which change you. Ideas fall raindrops into the wishing well of your own heart eventually yielding treasure, and…

Borderline Personality Disorder emerged like a primordial monster out of the swamp of my own adolescence. By the time I hit puberty, I found myself lost in a frightening world of contradictions: Terrified of abandonment, stuck in relationship chaos, emotionally unstable, impulsive, and actively suicidal, I was, in fact, ticking every box of the Borderline checklist.

However, what I felt inside was uniquely unaccounted for.

What does BPD actually feel like? As if I was stuck in a nightmare world of paranoia, rage, guilt, shame, and terror. An internal landscape of angels and demons, who’d just as soon drag me…

If you have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, you first question might be why me? Stuck in an unrelenting crisis of emotional instability, you may feel like you’re in a nightmare you can’t wake up from. But this illness does in fact have a cause. While the condition begins in adolescence, the roots stretch back into childhood. Just knowing them, means you can begin a process of disentanglement. Here are ten risk factors for acquiring BPD.

1. Genetics — Contrary to popular belief it’s in the genes; perhaps even the serotonin transporter gene 5HTT, thought to have a role in…

It took just six months. Six months for the world order to collapse. Rising from the ashes, apocalyptic scenes of overpacked hospitals, mass graves and rioting: Exhausted nurses working wards in bin-liner scrubs, gravediggers in hazmat suits, protestors fighting street battles against armed mercenaries in the shells of a burnout municipalities. All this, is taking place, on a wider tapestry of global unrest. It’s forecast in the next two years, 35 countries will experience armed conflict — an increase of 56%. Meanwhile, 71 million people will be pushed into poverty.

We are now entering a new Dark Age, complete with…

One day in 2007, at a clinic in north London I was diagnosed with BPD.

My first feeling was gratitude: Finally, finally, after all this time, I had a name for this soul-devouring sickness which had eaten away the last decade of my life.

Thirteen years later, I have regrets.

Psychiatrists are doing all of us a disservice, providing a label without an explanation. We don’t just want a name, we also need a cause. What went wrong? How did your personality get so damaged?

The answer of course lies in childhood.

You are the rose

People with BPD are biologically vulnerable strong emotions…