Jesus is not at the wheel!

I don't know about you guys, but a common trend I have gone through with my disorder is the concept of it being a "personality" disorder, and that somehow the very fabric of my personality was disordered, that everything I was stemmed from the disorder. It was a while before I realised the name was flawed, imperfect, and my personality was not entirely ruled by my disorder.

So when someone commented they felt like a different person when their disorder took control, I flashed back to every disordered situation I'd ever been through, and absolutely agreed with the statement.

Before we get too involved in the tangent I am no doubt going to embark on, let me just clarify that I do not have dissociative identities (to my knowledge) and when I talk about being a different person, watching myself speak, etc it is not in the same sense as a person with DID would experience (I imagine). 

Anyway, continuing with the tangent... There are situations in my every day life, though rarer and rarer these days, where something will flip a switch and I will go from Dimmie to Borderline in 0.23 seconds flat. I, Dimmie, will be inside my brain, clutching at my hair and clawing at my face in horror as Borderline screams, shouts, abuses, rants and otherwise makes a royal cunt of themselves (myself!).

I will be locked inside my head as Borderline says things with venom I would never dream of saying, and it makes me feel powerless that my disease can take control with so little warning. The number of friendships that have ended after Borderline has had a red hot go at them is astouding, and I have shrunk away from mending things out of shame. Shame for the things I have said, and a lot of fear of rejection (which I should talk about, but that can wait for another post).

I absolutely 100% believe that part of my personality is influenced and perhaps controlled by my disorder. Obviously some of my quirks are a direct result of my diagnosis - abandonment fears, 0-100 in a millisecond, and various other exciting things - but everything? Of course not. I think that to believe my entire personality is disordered, a casualty of my disease, is ignorant at best. 

Not for the first time I wish a more accurate and less misleading name could be found for my disease, but in the meantime I will have to live with not having my druthers!