Introduction to quiet BPD
Quiet BPD, also known as high-functioning BPD, refers to a presentation of borderline personality disorder characterized primarily by the inward expression of emotions. People with quiet BPD tend to internalize their emotions rather than expressing them outwardly through dramatic behavior. This results in a presentation that can often fly under the radar and evade diagnosis. However, quiet BPD is equally serious and distressing as other presentations of BPD.
People with quiet BPD struggle with many of the same symptoms as those with more classic or outwardly-expressed BPD, including:
- Unstable relationships
- Impulsivity
- Risky or self-destructive behaviors
- Unstable sense of self
- Chronic feelings of emptiness
- Explosive anger
- Paranoia
The main difference is that in quiet BPD, these symptoms are turned inward rather than outward. This can make the condition harder to recognize. However, living with quiet BPD is extremely painful and isolating. Understanding what it feels like can help people identify whether they may have quiet BPD and get the help they need.
Core feelings in quiet BPD
People with quiet BPD tend to experience certain core feelings that stem from the primary symptoms of the disorder:
Emptiness
A chronic sense of hollowness or loneliness is one of the most central aspects of quiet BPD. Sufferers often describe feeling like a bottomless pit of need that can never be filled, or being fundamentally disconnected from themselves and others. This contributes to many of the interpersonal struggles in quiet BPD.
Self-loathing
With unstable self-image comes an extreme self-hatred in many people with quiet BPD. They are highly self-critical and often convinced of their worthlessness, defectiveness, or undesirability. This ties into feelings of guilt, shame, and self-disgust.
Fear of abandonment
People with quiet BPD have an intense terror of rejection or abandonment. Their relationships are often unstable and intense. The fear of being unwanted can lead to dramatic attempts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
Depersonalization
Sufferers often feel disconnected from themselves, as if they are going through the motions of life without really living. They may feel foggy, numb, unreal, or as if they are outside their body observing it from a distance. Depersonalization tends to get worse during times of stress.
Self-consciousness
Many people with quiet BPD experience hypersensitivity to the way others perceive them. They often feel insecure, ashamed, and extremely self-conscious in social situations and relationships. They may replay past conversations repeatedly in their head.
Uncontrollable emotions
Quiet BPD sufferers struggle with overwhelming and unpredictable emotions that feel out of their control. These emotions – sadness, anger, shame, excitement – often spike from baseline to extreme very rapidly over minor triggers. Sufferers feel powerless against these emotional tsunamis.
Impulsiveness
People with quiet BPD often act very impulsively when their emotions are running high or they feel rejected or abandoned. This can include self-harm, substance abuse, binge eating, reckless sex, spending, etc. These impulses provide temporary relief but lead to regret, self-loathing, and a feeling of lack of agency.
How quiet BPD impacts relationships
Interpersonal relationships are often fraught for people with quiet BPD. Common relationship patterns include:
- Intense, unstable relationships that run hot and cold
- Terrified of rejection and abandonment
- Difficulty trusting others
- Withdrawal and isolation from others
- Passive-aggressive behavior
- Very self-conscious and insecure
- Seeing things in black-and-white terms
Sufferers often swing rapidly between putting people on a pedestal when feeling dependent on them and seeing them as terrible and unreliable when feeling rejected. These unstable relationships reinforce the core feelings of emptiness and worthlessness.
Romantic relationships
Romantic relationships are often volatile. Sufferers crave intimacy and validation from partners but get overwhelmed by needing the other person so much. Partners may struggle with the person’s hot-and-cold behavior, unpredictable emotions, and sudden swings between idealizing and devaluing them.
Friendships
Friendships can be anxiety-provoking for people with quiet BPD, triggering fears of rejection if plans change or friends show interest in other people. Sufferers may withdraw from friends as a protective mechanism without communicating their feelings. They often yearn for close friendships but have trouble believing others genuinely want to be friends with them long-term.
Family relationships
Relationships with family members are frequently strained, distant, or even estranged. Sufferers often report a sense of never feeling understood by or connected to their families, contributing to the core feeling of loneliness. The expectations or criticism of family members may also contribute to their feelings of worthlessness.
Professional relationships
Workplace relationships can also be challenging. Quiet BPD sufferers often feel insecure about their job performance and highly sensitive to criticism from bosses or colleagues. They may compulsively overwork in an attempt to prove their worth. Interpersonal tensions or perceived slights may lead them to quit jobs suddenly.
Daily life with quiet BPD
Living day-to-day with quiet BPD can be an agonizing struggle. Some of the main ways the disorder impacts daily life include:
Learning and concentration difficulties
Problems with memory, concentration, organization, and other cognitive skills are common in BPD. This can make academic achievement, job performance, and completing tasks of daily life challenging.
Mood swings
Frequent mood swings between depression, emptiness, agitation, and anxiety are draining and make it difficult to function consistently. Sufferers describe feeling like their emotions are constantly cycling wildly out of their control.
Sleep disturbances
Distressing dreams or nightmares, insomnia, and sleeping excessively are common. Disrupted sleep exacerbates emotional volatility, concentration struggles, and low mood.
Impulsivity and self-destructiveness
Impulsive and risky behaviors like substance abuse, binge eating, unsafe sex, reckless spending, and self-harm frequently disrupt functioning. Sufferers often later feel shame, hopelessness, and that life is out of control.
Self-isolation
Social withdrawal and isolation are typical, both because of interpersonal struggles and as a way to conceal inner turmoil. But being alone frequently worsens feelings of loneliness and disconnection.
Difficulty regulating emotions
Explosive or uncontrollable emotions make it hard to focus at work or school or maintain stable relationships. Sufferers often feel helpless against their own emotions and vulnerable to anything triggering spirals of sadness, anger, emptiness, etc.
Black-and-white thinking
Seeing things in extremes—all good or all bad—creates frequent upheavals in perspective that undermine stability. What seems wonderful one day may suddenly feel intolerable the next, leading to abrupt decision changes.
Difficulty managing stress
Everyday responsibilities or challenges that most people take in stride often feel intensely overwhelming and stressful to those with quiet BPD, who lack emotional resilience and coping skills. Sufferers may desperately try to avoid any stress.
Feeling out of control
The tumultuous inner experience and sudden mood or perspective shifts convey a terrifying sense of lacking control over emotions, thoughts, impulses, relationships, and life direction. Sufferers long for stability.
Negative impacts of quiet BPD
While quiet BPD may fly under the radar more than outwardly expressed BPD, it has very serious negative impacts on life:
- Damaged relationships
- Social isolation
- School/career instability
- Financial issues
- Suicidal thoughts/attempts
- Self-injury
- Substance abuse
- Unhealthy coping mechanisms
- High self-loathing
- Feeling out of control of life and emotions
- Agoraphobia or anxiety about leaving home
These consequences stem from the excruciating inner experience combined with lack of effective coping skills. Sufferers often feel stuck in a miserable state of simply trying to endure day-to-day.
Positive coping strategies for living with quiet BPD
While quiet BPD presents very real challenges, various coping strategies can help sufferers gain a sense of control and stability over their lives:
Therapy
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is considered one of the most effective therapies for BPD. It helps teach distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness. Finding a therapist experienced in treating BPD is crucial.
Medication
While no medications treat BPD itself, certain types like antidepressants and mood stabilizers can help manage specific symptoms like chronic emptiness, impulsivity, or mood swings. It is important to find a psychiatrist knowledgeable about medication options for personality disorders.
Mindfulness practices
Developing an awareness of the present moment through meditation, breathing exercises, or grounding techniques can reduce distress from intense emotions and thoughts by teaching sufferers to observe them without reacting or identifying with them. Mindfulness also helps combat feelings of dissociation.
Emotion regulation skills
Learning to identify and verbalize feelings, self-soothe through activities like listening to music or taking a bath, using thought records to examine thought patterns, distracting yourself when emotions spiral out of control, and creating a crisis safety plan are all ways to gain footing in responding to emotions more constructively.
Assertiveness training
Assertiveness training helps combat fear of rejection and abandonment by teaching sufferers to express their feelings and needs respectfully but directly in relationships. This reduces suppressed anger and resentment and minimizes miscommunications from passive-aggression or withdrawal.
Self-compassion and validation
Treating yourself with kindness, reminding yourself you are worthy and doing your best, acknowledging your struggles, and forgiving yourself for mistakes counteracts harsh self-criticism. Self-validation reduces self-loathing by emphasizing your humanity versus your flaws.
Support groups
In-person and online support groups connect sufferers with others facing the same challenges. They provide a judgment-free space to share experiences, feel understood, exchange ideas for coping, and combat isolation.
Lifestyle changes
Improving sleep, nutrition, exercise, and minimizing substance use provides a foundation for managing BPD symptoms and cultivating stability day-to-day. Making lifestyle changes gradually is best so they are sustainable.
Tracking mood and behaviors
Using apps, charts, diaries, or calendars to track emotional states, behaviors, triggers, thoughts, and symptoms helps identify patterns. This equips sufferers to anticipate challenges and develop preventive coping strategies tailored to their unique needs.
Safety planning
Proactively making plans for dealing with emotional crises, like listing contacts to call for help or activities to reduce stress, helps sufferers feel prepared versus powerless if emotions escalate or impulses arise. Safety planning is an essential suicide prevention tool as well.
Reaching out for support
Asking trusted loved ones for support during hard times, even if just sending a text saying you are struggling, builds a lifeline versus isolating. Professional help like counselors or crisis lines can also provide objective support.
Cultivating self-awareness
Developing a deeper understanding of your own triggers, thought and behavior patterns, core values, and needs helps you recognize unhealthy dynamics or warning signs early so you can respond in healthy ways aligned with your goals.
Practicing distress tolerance
Learning to endure emotional pain through strategies like radical acceptance, distraction, or self-soothing reduces vulnerability to destabilizing mood swings or impulsive decisions when you feel overwhelmed or hopeless. Distress tolerance helps weather hard times.
Setting healthy boundaries
Setting clear boundaries in relationships helps reduce anxiety about rejection or abandonment. Communicating needs like “I need a few days of space” allows closeness without feeling engulfed. Boundaries help manage interpersonal triggers.
Changing negative thought patterns
Challenging pessimistic thoughts like “no one cares about me” with alternative perspectives like “my friend seemed concerned when I was upset” or “this thought is a symptom of my disorder, not the truth” lessens distortions that exacerbate emotional pain and instability.
Pursuing strengths and values
Connecting to your innate strengths and values, like creativity or kindness, provides meaning and stability. Pursuing small goals aligned with your values gives a sense of purpose and achievement. Your worth is not defined by struggles with BPD.
Seeking treatment is the first step
Living with quiet BPD involves profound suffering and disruption. But the condition is treatable with professional support, lifestyle changes, and purposeful coping strategies. Reaching out for help is the critical first step. With time, commitment, and the right treatment, a meaningful life and stable sense of self is possible. You deserve to be understood and happy.