Cycle 8 - Video 1 - Smarter Than BPD Quiz

The Dangers of Believing Our Own Stories: My Experience with BPD Symptoms

• The speaker wants to share her experience to help others avoid unnecessary pain and suffering.
• The speaker had two strong symptoms of BPD in her early twenties: paranoid ideation and fear of abandonment.
• The speaker would make up stories in her mind about relationships and people based on her own thoughts and feelings, often with no evidence.
• The speaker would act on these thoughts and feelings as if they were facts, causing problems in her relationships.
• The speaker started to become aware of this behavior in a massage therapy school class when a teacher talked about the stories we tell ourselves.
• The speaker realized that living our lives based on stories we tell ourselves can create pain and suffering unnecessarily.
• The speaker suggests challenging our thoughts and finding the intersection in the middle between emotion mind and rational mind, called Wise Mind.
• The speaker encourages people to question the stories they tell themselves in relationships and different situations.
• The speaker believes emotionally sensitive people or those with a trauma history are more prone to believing their own stories.
• The speaker encourages people to look for evidence before believing their thoughts and to challenge them to reduce suffering.
• The speaker hopes her experience can help others avoid making their lives difficult and causing unnecessary pain and suffering.
• The speaker encourages people to work with their therapist to address these behaviors and save themselves years of unnecessary suffering.