Taming the Dragon

Living with Borderline Personality Disorder felt like being chained to fire. Writing publicly about it became a way of taming that dragon — of turning intensity into clarity, and shame into voice.

“When it's time to feed
To fulfill the need
To consume a breath
Some will rise, standing tall
Breathing out all the breath
from the voice of a soul”
-Chuck Schuldiner, Spirit Crusher

Living with borderline personality disorder is like trying to hold on during a hurricane inside your own skin. The highs are ecstatic, the lows are crushing, people are frightening and the fear of being left alone feels like death. Healing has been a bit like taming the dragon.

If you’ve been reading this Substack, you’ve probably picked up on what’s going on.
But let me spell it out: I have severe complex trauma from childhood abuse. It has devastated my life and my career. I’ve spent years healing. I’m in the final stages now, and I know I will fully recover. This blog is not just a record of that healing, it is the healing itself.

I thought writing this post would be difficult. It wasn’t. That’s how I know the medicine is working.

Writing publicly has been one of my biggest fears. Writing publicly about what I’m most ashamed of is another level entirely. But I don’t want fear running my life anymore. I don’t want shame weighing me down. So here it is. This is liberation. You get to witness it. Everybody wins. Think of it as a reality show.

For the record, I no longer meet criteria for borderline, and it’s been years since I would have qualified. Even when I did, I was highly functional: successful at work, socially active, and very good at hiding what was going on inside.

Intensity

There’s a list of nine symptoms of borderline personality disorder. At one point, I had all of them. But if you asked me what defines BPD, I’d say intensity. You don’t just feel emotions, you get hit by them like a tsunami. Everything is turned up to eleven.

Pair that with hypervigilance and you get a devastating combo: triggers everywhere, especially in social settings. When the feelings hit, they don’t just fade, they can last for hours, even days. The energy that moves through the body is otherworldly, leaving me depleted like a wet rag.

And it’s not just the pain. The highs are intoxicating: extreme joy, love, euphoria, massive productivity. The highs are higher than some of the drugs I’ve tried but they never last long and also leave me depleted. Have no illusions about what kind of a furnace these posts are cooked in.

The Fear of Abandonment

This was my core wound. I felt so ashamed of myself I doubted I even deserved to exist. I thought I had to earn every scrap of attention through people-pleasing, humor, charm, intelligence. Everything was a performance.

I craved appreciation like a drug. I was hyper-attuned to everyone around me: detailed mental models of every person, adjusting every word, every expression, to keep them close. Like a sociopath, except I was trying to survive, not manipulate.

Groups were the worst. Hyper-attuning to multiple people at once was exhausting and impossible. Inevitably, I would collapse and withdraw, which usually triggered the very abandonment I feared.

The alienation was suffocating. It felt like all my worst beliefs about myself were true. No hope. Complete desperation.

This pain wasn’t just emotional, it was physical. It would rise through my chest and throat, suffocating me, making my head feel like it might explode.
It filled every cell of my body, as if it was trying to pour out through my skin.

Horrifying. Paralyzing. Crippling.

Dissociation

I didn’t cry; from childhood until my late 30s, I can count on one hand the times I did.

I didn’t know how to grieve. Sometimes the pain leaked out as anger, I once punched through a wall in college, but mostly it stayed locked inside.

I didn’t have to know how to cope, when things became too much, I would leave. Not the room - my body. Freeze response. Dissociation. Sometimes I’d watch my body go through life from above or from the side.

In high school, I’d watch myself siting zoned out in class until a teacher called on me, then I’d answer perfectly, like nothing was wrong but I wasn’t really there.

Because I defaulted to dissociation I didn’t develop the more advanced coping skills and emotional regulation; all I knew how to do in any emotional situation was to numb out.

Chaotic Relating

Rejection was brutal. I would crave love like it was the cure for everything, but also fear it, feel ashamed of wanting it, and feel sure I didn’t deserve it.

When my love was returned, I would soar into euphoria, idealizing my partner, worshiping them. Of course, that scared people away, or attracted the wrong ones.

Eventually, fear of abandonment would kick in again and I’d crash into despair.
Sometimes I’d flip from total idealization to complete vilification. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for the other person.

The Swings

My moods would swing back and forth with dizzying speed. What someone with bipolar might cycle through in months, I could experience in hours. Sometimes minutes.

And it wasn’t just moods, my whole sense of self would flip. One minute arrogant, grandiose; the next minute worthless and ashamed. Everything was black and white.

It was a painful life. I didn’t want it. I was medium-to-highly suicidal for years. I had plans. I had means. Every day could have been the day.

I am humbled by the miracle that I’m still here. Now I know why.

The Aftermath

I had to go to ridiculous lengths to heal. That’s what this Substack is about.

Today my life is different. Harder in some ways, because my emotions are still cranked up, but I'm not numb and I don’t dissociate anymore. That means I’m here for all of it.

I can hold more, observe more, regulate more. I still get overwhelmed, I still shatter sometimes, but now I know how to put myself back together.

Most of the time, I’m happy. I know who I am. And I love it. The dragon is my friend. I consider it a blessing to be here for you today. I accept my path not because it’s good, but because it’s mine.

Sure, there are silver linings: intelligence, pain tolerance, intensity, relentless learning, emotional depth. And more that came from healing: sensitivity, empathy, courage, truth. But we have the tools now so nobody has to live what I lived. I hope some day no one does.