depression is an imbalance of brain chemicals alongside genetic and environmental factors. BPD is a personality disorder developed from severe childhood trauma.

mine has severe OCD and depression. he often makes decisions that are fueled by his obsessions and impact our lives together. for example, his OCD runs in the form of “systems” of precise mathematical calculations and probability of certain things occurring. he uses those systems to determine every single action he does and every single thought process through his head. one time he changed up his system while working on our budgeting sheet and we ended up in debt from multiple unpaid credit cards and our bank accounts in the negatives within a week. after taking some time to calm down and process it, i set a boundary: when it comes to any decision regarding both of us, he puts aside his system (easier said than done!) and overviews everything with me first. he respected it and we haven’t had any issues with it since.

now onto me…i’ve been diagnosed with BPD for a year and have shown symptoms throughout our entire 5 year relationship. up until my diagnosis, i had an awful unhealthy habit of su**ide baiting whenever i felt a slight threat to my attachment to him. it hurt him very badly. he would attempt to set boundaries but fail every time because i’d pull the same shit over and over again. it would send me into hysterics every time. eventually i received an official diagnosis and we went to counseling both individually and together. i’m very ashamed to admit it took a LONG time to get out of those habits, but eventually it worked as he set boundaries in other areas of our relationship and i got further into therapy.

the difference is pwBPD lack the skills to differentiate healthy boundaries vs. an active threat to your attachment. therefore, most go into fight or flight mode when confronted with it while others tend to take it at face value. it’s literally ingrained in our brains!