Asking for a friend.
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This is a trusted source about mental health issues comparing the two: https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/June-2017/Borderline-Personality-Disorder-and-Bipolar-Disord
I’m not a professional and self-diagnosis doesn’t help. however I’m bipolar and can tell you it’s like a roller-coaster, some days it feels like everything and everyone is out to get you. Then you have days where you can do everything, you have all these Ideas that is going to get you rich, you make very rash decisions without worrying about the outcome. My SO often walks on egg shells not knowing what mood I’m in because anything can piss me off. And that’s with me on meds. I’ve been on medication for over 25 years, some work for awhile, some make it worse. The medication never stopped the roller-coaster just makes the swings better. The highs aren’t as high and the lows aren’t as low. Just remember, there’s help out there. Seek help and a good support system helps out. Tell your friend never be scared to ask for help.
I am not a doctor but my personal experience is that bipolar disorder sufferers swing between “highs” and “lows”. Highs aren’t necessarily happy but they are very active, manic. Lows aren’t necessarily sad or depressed, but they are lethargic and slow.
Borderline personality is a like a person who is walking into the ocean. They keep walking as though their intention is to drown themselves. They fling themselves violently into the ocean all while screaming at you and everyone else to help them, to save them. You try to pull them back but they physically fight you to keep walking into the ocean, even while the wail and cry that you aren’t doing enough to help them. They curse you and hate you for not helping them, all while clawing at you to let them go and kill themselves. You finally do let them go because you are bleeding and exhausted and then they either drown or write a book about how much stronger they are alone.
I had a gf for years and eventually started hating her. I am 99% certain she had Borderline Personality Disorder. One day I realized I hated her and had to get rid of her.
Let me back up. Her problems arose because her parents were more focused on their own problems, when she was a kid, and she eventually had to go live with a cousin when she was a teenager. So she basically had problems with abandonment. She was always afraid I would abandon her, too. Ironically, that’s what she forced me to do.
Everything was cool until I moved in with her. She would say she loved me, then act like she hated me. She was verbally abusive, and sometimes even physically so. Suddenly I wasn’t allowed to have anyone else in my life.
My best friend moved far away, and I was excited when he came to visit my area. I was allowed 10 minutes with him, and that was it! I put my foot down, and she took a piece of meat out of my arm with her teeth. I still remember her picking the hairs out of her teeth. The weirdest part? I looked at the other arm and realized it also had a scar in the same place. She had done it before and I *repressed it*.
Bipolar disorder is an emotional-regulation disorder. Patients experience long periods of regular-old depression, but they are occasionally punctuated by brief periods of euphoria and high energy.
Borderline personality disorder is a controversial diagnosis, some psychiatrists have questioned its usefulness. But generally it’s considered a disorder of interpersonal *attachment*. Patients do not do well at forming healthy, stable attachments to other people. They experience extreme emotional dependence on people, but these attachments are volatile and often erupt into conflict where a patient severs attachment and hates the person they were attached to. Sometimes alternating back and forth.
It might be easy to think of it as bipolar is about emotions, and borderline is about relationships.
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