Aretha Brown On Dating With Borderline Personality Disorder — & The Importance Of Decolonising Mental Health

I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) in October of 2022, a month before my 22nd birthday. I found out in the most millennial way possible: I was scrolling on Insta when news broke that Kim Kardashian had just broken up with comedian Pete Davidson. As I started to read the comments about the celebrity couple’s split, I saw that hundreds of people were saying that Pete Davidson had BPD, so what did she expect? So many people spoke about his mental illness in the most damning way, but at the time I didn’t really know what BPD was. 

I ended up going on a deep dive into BPD. With each article, tweet, website, blog, podcast, and YouTube video I saw, the more I felt like the experiences that people were sharing was exactly how I felt. People were describing situations I had been in, in perfect clarity, and I completely understood the drives and motivations that they had. 

Soon after, I called my sister. She understood and supported me in booking a session with my new psych. I was grateful to be able to speak to her without judgement, while simultaneously struggling not to judge myself. I had to do a few sessions and a bunch of testing, but ultimately the results showed that I had pretty clear symptoms of BPD, as well as your stock-standard anxiety and depression. 

For years, I'd thought that I might have bipolar disorder, but after sharing this with multiple psychologists, they were adamant I didn't. So getting my BPD diagnosis was somewhat of a relief, because now I had the language to be able to describe how I was feeling for the first time. But overall, it was a mix of different emotions. However cathartic the diagnosis was, BPD is hard, and it's not something I wanted to have. It sucks 98% of the time. I didn't want my BPD to be added to my list of prefixes or qualifiers; like how being queer, Aboriginal, or a woman always are for me. I try to not let any one thing define me — especially my mental health. These days, it has just become a part of my life. It changes everything and it changes nothing at the same time. I’m still me.

The symptoms of BPD that affect me the most include workaholism, obsessive tendencies, hypersexuality, self-sabotaging of relationships, fear of abandonment, mood changes, unstable self-image, emotional impermanence and suicidal thoughts. I recognise that BPD affects people in different ways and that BPD symptoms are not limited to the ones I've mentioned. I’m going to talk briefly about how each of these symptoms affect me. 

This is really embarrassing, but before my diagnosis, I remember I would often work so much that I would get constant bladder infections because I would hold my pee in. It’s crazy to write that openly for the first time. I would get into these moods of hyper-fixation and obsessiveness, which is often romanticised when you're an artist, especially a painter. But the reality of constantly having UTIs was not. I would get so obsessed with finishing a painting or a mural or whatever I was doing that nothing could disrupt my “flow”. It was weird.

I wasn’t even able to get up to change a song that I hated, as it would be an interruption or distraction to my work. Most people would just change the song. This also resulted in me constantly having low blood pressure and iron deficiency because I wouldn't eat or sleep enough. Don’t get me wrong — I live to eat and nap. But my physical needs and priorities would become secondary to work, without me really being aware of it. If it meant stopping work, I would put it off. 

Because of BPD, I have a really unstable self-image. BPD negatively affects and distorts how you see yourself and relate to your environment. Because of this, I would always (and partly still do) cope with it through my work, i.e. “they can't not like me because look at my work”, “they can't judge me because I have made all this”. My self-worth is inexplicably tied to my work. There are layers upon layers of capitalistic and colonial ideals tied to this, which I’m still unlearning today.

I often overwork myself to the point of burnout. This would make me feel like shit because I feel like if I'm not working, I have no value in society, and the cycle would continue. I think all artists struggle with that tether of work and self-worth. Still, I am told that workaholism is a good thing. “You’ve done so much at 22!” is something I hear most days. Knowing that this is a symptom of BPD has changed my relationship with that comment. And to the work itself.

Umm, I think you get the picture here. 

This one is one of the hardest to talk about, but one of the most common symptoms of BPD is unstable relationships. BPD is tied to mood swings and splitting. Splitting is a term to describe the idealisation and then quick depersonalisation of a person. I would often experience this in relationships, in varying degrees of intensity. One minute my partner (or even just crush) were the love of my life, and I wanted to get married and have their babies, make hundreds of paintings for them or poems or murals or playlists. My partner would become my untouchable god-like muse for my art and a single text from them could have the power to completely make or break my day. And then the next, I wanted nothing to do with them; they made me uncomfortable and I would find them cringey and rude and I hated them. It's a protection mechanism; a 'you can’t leave me if I leave you first’ kind of thing. Fear of abandonment is real with BPD, as is the idea that if I ruin this relationship first, you can't catch me off guard and do the same to me. 

This is the one I struggle with the most, to this day. I have sabotaged so many relationships that were, from the outside looking in, usually pretty calm and on nice trajectories. But BPD makes things intense…quickly. And despite knowing this and this pattern, I still can’t help but have the inevitable roadblock in every relationship of “they hate me”... “they think I’m weird”... or “they think I’m crazy”... “best to leave them first”. I'm embarrassed at how many people I have blocked. I am a blocking goblin. Because of BPD’s ties to self-esteem, it's this thing of “god I'm so annoying, why would they want to talk to me anyway, why would they care if I blocked them, in fact, I'm so freakish that I'm probably doing them a favour, in fact, they probably wouldn't even notice”. It's a constant embarrassment and I'm painfully aware of it all and how childish it is, but I mean it when I say I really can't help it. That's Borderline for you folks — and it sucks.

Believing that everyone hates you, literally all the time — even friends, family and partners (who, rest assured, don't) also sucks. This is something I struggle with daily. People with BPD find it extremely difficult to register emotional permanence. It's kind of like object permanence, where once something leaves a child's sight, in their mind, it has vanished from existence completely. Emotional permanence means that you can understand people still love you even when they aren't around to always “show” it. For someone with BPD, however, it can feel more like “If this person isn't actively showing me love and affection through gifts, sex, compliments or 1000 texts every day, then they must hate me, and if they hate me, I must block them because they are going to leave me”.

Because if it's not love, it can only be hate. It's very black-and-white thinking, I know. It's less about my partner's perceived effort and more about me laking the ability to regulate my inner emotional states. It's not sustainable for anyone involved. Constant reassurance is tiring for partners and it's a cup I have to learn to fill myself emotionally. Asking my partner if they hate me or if they are mad at me every day is hard. So finding patient people is key. 

Dating someone with BPD isn’t easy, and comes with its own set of pros and cons, just like any relationship. But it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever find love or have really solid friendships! It just means that you need to find people whose values of being patient, non-judgmental, and understanding are at the top of the list.

After my diagnosis, I was hurt that there were some people who found my BPD bothersome or inconvenient. I felt like an absolute freak of nature at the time. That was one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with. Considering that fear of abandonment is the highest qualifier with BPD, it was almost like the prophecy had been fulfilled, and my biggest fear had come true. I was in a really bad place for a long time after that.

But for all the bad, I had just as many mates reaching out and wanting to understand, and for me that's what support is. It's having a really genuine willingness and eagerness to understand. And ironically, it brought me a lot closer to them; our friendships have been strengthened by me going deeper for the first time about how I'm really going, what growing up was like, and about navigating living in this colony called Australia. I owe a lot to my friends. 

But one of the things that helped me most has been therapy and taking away as many practical exercises away as I can from those sessions. Therapy means nothing unless you can apply what you learn. For me, those include breathing exercises, meditation, and self-care. 

Now I HATE saying self-care because it's become such a buzzword that kind of means nothing nowadays. I prefer the term self-pampering, which for me are things like warm baths, walks with music, crafts, cleaning the house, visiting Bunnings, curating and making playlists, getting my nails done, or spending ages doing my hair and makeup. It's whatever you like to do to make you feel like your sexiest, most glamorous self again.

I also follow lots of BPD support groups on Reddit that have helped me a lot (the memes are great), as well as surrounding myself with as many emotionally intelligent and understanding people as I can. I have a great support network now and people who understand and love me regardless of my emotional state at the time, because they know (like I now do) that it comes in waves.

Being more independent has really helped with my self-esteem, and has made me feel a lot better about how I see myself. Living with BPD can sometimes mean that I have a real fear of abandonment. Learning to love being alone is awesome, and I now really enjoy my own company.  Also, reminding myself that I still have value outside of the work I do for other people is important. I also recently bought a new phone — which is my burner. I have my dad and my closest friends on it, and nothing else. It's great. Breaks from social media and setting up boundaries are vital when you have shifting opinions of yourself. 

However with all this in mind, I'm aware of the privilege of seeing a therapist. No one I knew growing up went to therapy. I'm not even sure if there was a psychologist in the small regional town I grew up in. As an Aboriginal person, therapy for me always felt like a privilege that white people would have. The mob I knew were often just trying to make ends meet at the end of the week; to pay rent, to get their weekly shopping at IGA, to have enough petrol in the car, and get kids off to school with some kind of lunch. 

In fact, the only time I knew of someone going to therapy was when one of my cousins was killed in our neighbourhood one night. (I have decided not to mention my cousin's name out of respect.) The Nambucca Heads police offered counselling services to some of the kids who were around, days later.

He had been walking with his cousins one night when one local said that he heard a commotion in the street and saw “youths damaging a public telephone box” outside shops. Friends of his, aged between 13 and 18, said a man jumped out of the car and confronted and violently stabbed my cousin. He was only 19. 

The man was acquitted of murder, but convicted of manslaughter after being found guilty of causing the death. He only had to go to jail for 10 years.  And still, to this day, the tragedy hasn't even been identified in the few media articles on it, as what it was — a major injustice. Unfortunately, my cousin's death wasn't even the only egregious case of injustice in my community, as The Bowravlle Murders also took place on my Gumbaynggirr country. 

I would have been 11 at the time of my cousin's death. And so for me, after that, psychologists or counsellors (for me there was no difference) were synonymous with the police. Or worse — with death. They were only offered to us after the fact, after something tragic had happened. Therapy was an afterthought. I didn't trust them.  

Even more so, therapy was not on the top of anyone's list of weekly commodities. It’s expensive. It was hard enough finding a doctor who could treat you for your diabetes, or any of the countless health problems my community has faced as a result of colonisation — let alone find a psychologist to listen to you. Growing up, I felt that therapy was an overly indulgent practice and that I wouldn’t benefit from it anyway. It was for white kids, and us Aboriginal kids had to just handle stuff on our own. We had the beach, and the bush, and cousins, and elders. I was often told that was our “free therapy”. 

To some extent I think this is true, but it also came with its own set of dangers. When this is how I was taught we had to process grief, I became really desensitised to trauma, and desensitised to myself. I understand how hard it is to gain access to therapy, but I think it's important to talk about as young people. It makes me think about how most of the people in my life who have BPD or at least BPD symptoms are Aboriginal women. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence. If anything, I think it shows how BPD can be passed down through historical injustice and oppression. And with our mob's collective history of the Stolen Generations and forced removals, as well as countless cultural traumas that have been placed onto Aboriginal women, BPD feels to me like a mere symptom of continued British colonialism in this country. 

In Year 8, I moved to the 'big smoke' of Melbourne to live with my Dad, who is white. It was an exciting time, coming from such a small town to the jostling happenings of Melbourne. Despite this ideal city I had moved to, it amazed me how many white kids I knew went to therapy at 15 and 16. I hated it. It made me resentful. It didn't feel “earned”. I saw kids who lived in huge houses, went to private schools, had loving parents and an abundance of healthy meals every night, and I couldn’t comprehend how they could possibly have any problems.

Deep down, the feeling I had was envy. I wanted that. I desperately needed to be listened to and understood. I needed someone to guide me through the waves of emotions I would often feel after remembering some of the traumas I had growing up, or some of the situations I was forced into unwillingly. 

I didn't have the vocabulary at the time to try and express why I needed to see a counsellor. My Dad — bless him, also of a particular generation of Australian men, didn’t see why I would need that either. But now he tells me how many times I would have night terrors as a teenager. I would wake up in the middle of the night crying in my sleep with intense anxiety. It was trauma passed down, a charged energy that had nowhere to go. Mixed with the run-of-the-mill racism I would experience but now in Melbourne, I was overdue to talk to someone. 

Eventually, by Year 12, I convinced my dad to let me go to therapy. He paid for my first few sessions. After years of wanting to see a psychologist, I finally saw a white woman at a local clinic. Unfortunately, one of my early experiences with therapy was also a letdown and an exploitation. She was young, really kind, and fresh out of uni. She carried an aura of eager hopefulness. The first few sessions were great and I really felt myself opening up and being able to describe some of the intense feelings I carried, in words for the first time. I felt listened to and cared for. 

The romance of therapy all came to a screeching halt when one session I walked in and she told me she needed to speak to me first before we began. Unsure, I told her “no worries”. She said something along the lines of, “I just really want to apologise”. Confused, I asked her if I had done something wrong (I was always in trouble so was this was my natural instinct). She said no, and then went on to explain that she had taken parts of what I had said from a previous session and published it in a psychologists' digest-type magazine. It was for an article on Indigenous mental health. She tried to reassure me that she had changed my name and that the article would help other clinicians to help Aboriginal patients. She had betrayed me. 

Even at 18, I knew that what she had done was definitely inappropriate, if not illegal. After that, I turned my back on therapy for many years. Why would I open up to white people who were just going to exploit my trauma? It was bullshit. The system had failed young Aboriginal people again. After that, the same psychologist started coming in frequently to the Indigenous cafe I worked at. I used to hate serving her chai as she guiltily tried to keep face and be an “ally”.

At the end of the day, even if every Aboriginal person in the country could get access to a psychologist, it means nothing if they aren't culturally aware or trained. It's not as simple as just getting access to care, but also for counsellors and psychologists to decolonise their understanding of therapy. Learning this country's Blak history will help in the treatment of BPD and the people who suffer from this disorder; a disorder that I believe has direct roots in colonisation. 

I think if people took the time to really try and understand people with BPD or any kind of personality disorder and how they grew up, what has affected them, their trauma (which is never their fault), and really listened with a willingness to understand, BPD and other mental illness would not be as stigmatised. Not just offering unsolicited advice, and just listening is a start. 

But I also just think remembering what in this world makes you happy. Soon after my diagnosis, I had one one of my lowest depressive episodes. I think for me, when I was in that place, people like my friends and family telling you they love you doesn’t actually really help. Because when my self-worth was that low, I felt like such a burden that I felt like the “love” they were giving me wasn't deserved. So what actually helped me, more than anything, and it sounds so cliche, was art. 

I remember thinking if I were to disappear, imagine all the great art that hasn't even been made yet, the paintings and albums and songs and poems and films I would miss out on. How much great art I would never get to experience and enjoy. I remember that week when I had well and truly given up on myself and my BPD was too much, Beyonce released Renaissance. I remember thinking, what if I missed out on this album? And when I'm in that place, love feels unjustly earned, but art doesn't. And so I always remind myself of that when I'm really low. 

I still have my bad days — like anyone with mental health problems can attest to — but I'm working on it. The cool thing about BPD is that symptoms can significantly decrease over time. That is my goal, and I'm on that path. That's why I wanted to write this piece. Through self-reflection and awareness, understanding how my cultural background has informed my diagnosis and talking about it more openly, and also acknowledging that there are heaps of positive traits that people with BPD have due to our heightened emotional states. These include loyalty, empathy, resilience, courage, creativity, and intense intuition. It's always important to remind myself of these things.

It's not all doom and gloom. And being able to feel things so intensely is definitely something I can recalibrate as an artist. I'm learning to reclaim my status as a sensitive little soul and pour that into the art I create, which hopefully will help others feel understood without judgment. That's my goal as an artist, as a friend and partner, and as someone with BPD. 

If you or anyone you know is experiencing depression or anxiety, please contact Lifeline (131 114) or Beyond Blue (1300 22 4636). Support is available 24/7. 13YARN provides 24/7 crisis support for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people.