Blowing up- It’s Not the Catastrophe You Think It Is

One of the most aggressive ways that my BPD has expressed itself in the past is that I’d blow up over very little.

Whatever little thing that was happening, it wasn’t about that, but about how it made me feel. Often I'd feel criticised and attacked.

Disappointment, fear of a feeling that things shouldn’t be that way, sadness, abandonment, self- justification and rumination all played their part. I couldn’t stand feeling the way I was feeling. I didn’t think I could cope and the anxiety of having the emotion would become more and more intense, till the only way I knew how to relieve it was to lash out.

In the early days, when I got like that, my ex would diffuse the situation. He tried to do all he could to smooth it over, to calm me and comfort me. If the person who you are aggressive towards knows that its no reflection on them and are willing to take what you might say with a pinch of salt, this can be one way to deal with it, but it’s mostly a short-term solution.

As the years went on my ex refused to back down. He’d be uncompassionate to my distress, which only made things harder for me. This would push my emotional distress even further. It was exhausting yo-yoing between crying, being stuck in intense unbearable emotions and my state of total detachment to my body and my surroundings.

Its not good for your relationships or yourself and if this has been happening to you, hopefully this is something I can help you with. I recognised though it wasn’t a self-harming urge in the usual sense, (it wasn’t drugs or anything immediately dangerous) it was still an urge to both lash out and to sabotage my relationships.

It wasn’t until I stumbled across an audio, actually about PTSD, but it so clearly described the state I got into, I just had to listen. It suggested that whatever actions you take in that volatile state, no matter how urgent they feel, the actions are never going to come from a good place. It suggested to just feel it, know that it will pass and that you can get through it.

Each time you get through it, it makes you stronger and you’ll know that its possible because you did it before. This doesn’t mean that you can’t also use relaxation or other coping techniques to lessen the emotions effects, but I would suggest that you learn how to do this on your own. If you rely heavily on the calming influence of another when they give hugs and this is your main calming technique, its not going to work anytime they’re not available.

You need to learn that you are stronger than you think. To believe the certainty that because you have lived through that emotion before, you will again.