#petty as hell but it was really bugging me that this wasnt showing up in tags so i'm posting it again lmao
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I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Ben having BPD
ok WHEW you just opened a fucking can of worms this about to be the longest post iāve ever made i hope you have your seatbelt on
let me just preface this by saying nearly everything i talk abt in this post will be based off of my personal experiences w bpd. some people experience it differently, some people might not agree w some of the things i say, but i can only talk abt my own pov. therefore, this just my own personal opinions on ben having bpd. so yh lmao
and disclaimer!! iām not a doctor!! donāt take anything i say in this post as diagnostic criteria! iām not an expert or mental health professional!! when it comes to your own mental health or the mental health of ppl in your life, do not consider me a source to reference like āoh well lauren sunsetsover said xyzā like pls just donāt do that. do your own research. and most importantly consult a doctor!!!!!! i am not one!!!!!!!!!
also there are very few sources in this post bc most of this is just shit iāve absorbed over the years from doctors and doing my own research lmao
now thatās out of the way letās go! (this became part character study, part informational masterpost on bpd. also it got really fuckin long, hence the read more, so be warned lmao)
warning for potentially triggering content (abuse/mentions of suicide and self harm - nothin too bad but i do touch on benās behaviour and history, and this is a p serious mental health issue weāre talking abt here so! take care of yourselves!!)
ok so! some things to keep in mind before we even get to ben:
i believe (at least in the uk) borderline personality disorder is considered to be an outdated name, and one that essentially isnāt appropriate or fit for purpose anymore, so in my experience, a lot of the time now itās referred to as eupd (emotionally unstable personality disorder) in medical settings. which is way more apt name imo, and tells you more abt what bpd actually is (but i still call it bpd bc itās easier and ppl know what that is lmao). so like. emotionally unstable personality disorder. i bet that conjures up a way more vivid idea in ur head than borderline Ā personality disorder does.
no one 100% knows what causes bpd, though itās thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors, like most things. but the general consensus is that bpd develops when something (usually traumatic, but not always in an extreme sense. ppl w bpd have often been victims of some type of abuse in their childhood, but thatās not necessarily always the case) happens in your childhood that impacts the development of your personality. kind of a bizarre metaphor but hopefully it will help u understand: u know how in finding nemo, the egg nemo was in got damaged by the shark? and even tho the damage looked minor, it actually meant that one of his fins was permanently damaged - it was malformed, it didnāt grow right, he couldnāt use it properly? well imagine the fin = the personality; thatās what happens to a person w bpdās personality. smth happens to us in our childhood that permanently damages our personality, and so it doesnāt grow and develop properly as the rest of us does, making it less functional than an average personās. u can imagine how that can lead to all sorts of problem (weāll get to them later)
but bc itās a mental disorder that affects the personality, you canāt be diagnosed w bpd until youāre 18, when your personality is basically developed fully (i believe it can be diagnosed slightly younger, but those are rare and extreme cases). however, symptoms can start to present themselves earlier, as ur personality begins to develop and mature. (mine started presenting in my early teens)
bpd doesnāt really go away, and treatment with medication generally isnāt effective for long periods of time. however symptoms can be treated with continued therapy, and symptoms sometimes can start to ease as you get older!!
bpd also gets misdiagnosed a lot bc a lot of the symptoms are similar to that of other mental health problems. the biggest one it gets misdiagnosed as seems to be bipolar disorder, which i get tbh. iāve always considered bpd very similar to bipolar, just likeā¦ quicker cycles. there are even memes about it. also bpd has a tendency to coexist w other mental health issues, which makes it harder to recognise and diagnose.
so now lets look at this from a diagnostic perspective
in order to be diagnosed w bpd you basically have to deemed, by a medical professional, to be meet certain criteria, and to have been meeting these certain criteria for a significant amount of time. there are some variations to this criteria, and proposed subtypes and basically different flavours of borderlines but iām not even gonna go there. iām just gonna talk abt what iām most familiar w and how i think that applies to ben.
iām copying and pasting the diagnostic criteria part from here bc as far as iām aware this is the criteria doctors use for diagnosis. there are 9 different āindicatorsā/ācriteriaā, and you have to display or meet at least 5 of them in order to be considered for a bpd diagnosis:
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
this is one of, if not the biggest part of bpd. that trauma i mentioned earlier? often stems from or is related to abandonment, or perceived abandonment, in childhood, be it physical or emotional. for example, a child thatās being abused by one parent might feel abandoned by the other parent if they donāt do anything about it, even if the second parent has no idea the abuse is going on. sound familiar? a similar thing happened to ben, with stella. phil not doing anything about the abuse ben was facing at the hands of stella - even though he didnāt know it was happening, even though phil did do something once he found out - was an abandonment to ben. and thatās just the tip of the abandonment iceberg for ben - kathy faking her death and leaving him was an abandonment (even when he thought she was actually dead), philās own abuse was an abandonment, as was his reaction when ben came out, and so on. and abandonment like that skews your thinking so you believe that everyone is going to abandon you, sooner or later, that they must be abandoning you for a reason, you must be a terrible person, you must be unworthy of peopleās effort/time/love etc etc.
even when paul died, that was an abandonment to ben! like logically we know - and ben probably knows too - that paul didnāt want to die, he didnāt want to leave ben, he didnāt deliberately leave ben. but that doesnāt matter. mental illness is illogical, bpd is illogical, esp when it comes to abandonment. e.g. my therapist had to cancel a few of our appointments once bc she was ill, and it felt like an abandonment. like it was personal somehow, like she wasnāt coming into work bc of me, bc i was too much work, too hard to handle. ofc that wasnāt true, but thatās how it felt. itās illogical. so ofc my solution was to just not go to my appointments even when she came back, bc like what other response is there lmao. itās just that everything a person does feels personal, like itās because of/about you, even when it isnāt. even when it has nothing to do w you. thatās probably why ben can come across at selfish at times, like heās making everything about him. because it is all about him, in his mind. everything is because of him, is his doing, his fault etc. his way of thinking is skewed into thinking like that, bc shit keeps happening to him and ppl keep leaving him, so it must be his fault.
and!! āfrantic effortsā isnāt necessarily what u think it is!! it can be desperate begging āiāll do anything to keep you in my lifeā type actions, but it just as equally can be lashing out and abandoning someone in order to prevent them from abandoning u first - a āget them before they get meā mentality Ā (the whole scene where phil was in the hospital comes to mind - the āwhy doesnāt he love me back?ā was the more desperate part of him, tho it wasnāt necessarily an āeffortā per se, but then him trying to kill his dad basically in order to have the abandonment be at least on his own terms? thatās lashing out, and def qualifies as a āfrantic effortā lmao). and how often do we see that in ben? lashing out at jay in the hospital because he knew he was mad at him, and heād rather hurt jay physically before he could hurt him emotionally? ben trying to support callum and showing him kindness, only to turn around and threaten to out him when he finds out callum asked stuart to sort him out? everything that happened w his dad, trying to fuck him over before his dad can get there first, trying to get rid of keanu so he canāt be abandoned in favour of him (although that didnāt really work, but it rarely does work the way u want it to lmao). and the biggest one to me, though probably one that people have already forgotten, is him breaking up w that guy he was seeing in newcastle even tho they were into each other bc he āhad to, otherwise [he] would have ruined his lifeā. even tho we donāt really get details, that says it all to me. itās v much a pattern thatās present in ben.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by extremes between idealization and devaluation (also known as āsplittingā)
i feel like this one doesnāt need much explaining lmao
here is a definition of splitting from here (which is a very good article on splitting imo if u wanna read more abt it): āSplitting is a term used in psychiatry to describe the inability to hold opposing thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. Some might say that a person who splits sees the world in terms of black or white, all or nothing. Itās a distorted way of thinking in which the positive or negative attributes of a person or event are neither weighed nor cohesive.ā
a little explanation of it from me: ppl w bpd can sometimes have very simplistic, all or nothing views on things. and splitting is basically when ur opinion on something or someone changes very quickly (sometimes instantly), often to an extreme (e.g. going from loving and idolizing someone, to absolutely fucking hating them, or from having a neutral opinion on something to suddenly becoming extremely angry abt it) sometimes without even having an identifiable trigger. it links into black and white thinking, which u may have heard of before - u either love someone and they can do no wrong, or u hate them and they disgust you. either something is amazing or itās terrible. there is no grey area, no in between. it goes back into the whole ānot being able to regulate ur emotions properlyā thing lmao thereās rarely nuances to our emotions or feelings, weāre all or nothing a lot of the time. so splitting is when ur opinion rapidly changes to one of these extremes. sometimes u can even go back and forth, splitting over and over on the same person/thing which is super fun.
ben splits on his dad all the time. all the fucking time. he doesnāt care about phil at all and wants to ruin him, then he wants philās approval and to be welcomed back into the family fold and the business. then ben hates him and wants him dead, then 5 minutes later he wants his love, wants to be a good son again. thatās splitting. u can also see it w jay, too, but no where near as extreme as w his dad. and iāve seen it a couple of times w callum too, but again, itās way more subtle. u probably wouldnāt notice it if u werenāt looking for it, whereas w phil itās obvious.
but like i donāt need to explain āunstable and intense interpersonal relationshipsā, do i? just look at the relationships w phil, w jay, w lola, w callum, even w paul - they were unstable back when they first got together, and were arguably kind of intense too. (he settled a bit w paul, but his death/perceived abandonment fucked him up a lot beyond the expected ways). heās always arguing w the ppl he loves. he tried to get poor billy killed, and yet since then heās had no problem w him!! none of his relationships - apart from maybe his mum and ian (i donāt include lexi bc sheās a child) - are stable. and i would definitely describe his relationships as intense lmao
3. Identity disturbance: Markedly or persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
u can see this most - as most things - in his relationship w his dad. he fluctuates between seeming to know his worth (and demanding other people know it too), knowing he deserves his dadās love and approval (why else would he be so mad abt the fact hes not getting it, if not bc he knows heās worthy of it? if he didnāt think so, he wouldnāt be so angry abt not getting it - heād be accepting/understanding, wouldnāt he?) and being desperate to do anything to get his dadās love/approval, even things that are below him, turning into a child, begging to know why his dad doesnāt love him, why heās never been enough. that scene where phil had found out abt ben trying to frame keanu and leaving him for dead is the epitome of this. u can see ben fluctuate between a hurt, traumatized little boy, begging his dad for some answers, some explanation as to why heās not enough, begging him not to start drinking again, and a man who is angry, angry at his dad, angry at himself for crumbling like this, bc he should be stronger than this. u see him change multiple times in that one single scene. go watch it again. youāll see it too.
some more examples: his absolute certainty that he is better and more qualified than the likes of shirley and keanu for working with his dad, and then being like āmy dad was right, iām good for no oneā - they donāt line up. does he have self esteem and know his worth or not? also his entire relationship w callum is an example of this - all those changes in his attitude towards cal and their situation? he often treats callum like theyāre equals who understand each other, yet sometimes it seems like he thinks heās superior to callum (e.g. the scene outside the cafe), and others he behaves (keyword) as though he thinks heās not good enough for callum (why else would he just take all that shit from whitney and not say anything in retaliation? why, if not because he deems it more important that callum has an easier time of it than he does; that he regards calās comfort more important than his own? and why would he do that, if he held himself in such high regards? i mean he certainly acts like it sometimes, so why not then?)
also likeā¦ā¦. who is ben? is he the bastard who cares about no one but himself, whoās always causing trouble not only for himself but for the people he cares about? is he the guy who just completely folds when people he knows hurtle abuse at him, accepting it lying down, who thinks heās no good for anyone? the guy who goes out all night and drinks himself silly and purposefully gets himself into fights? the guy who shows callum so much empathy even tho it brings him nothing but pain, who loves jay unconditionally, who tried so hard to help bobby when he came back from prison? which one is he? which one does he want to be? does he even know?
(and you could argue that people are just multi-dimensional, but thereās just such a vast gap between these different facets of benās character and he can flip through them so fast itās jarring, which is why i think itās more like he straight up doesnāt have a consistent sense of self. which is a big part of bpd)
4. Impulsive behavior in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
again, does this need explaining?
doing illegal shit, excessively drinking, becoming unnecessarily violent, fucking up his relationships, just generally doing reckless things regardless of the consequences - this has always been a part of benās character.
(his constant hook ups could be another one, but the juryās still out on that one. if anything itās less the sex that worries me and more the flippant attitude he has when meeting up w ppl - they could be anyone and do all sorts, at the end of the day)
it became most obvious recently around the anniversary of paulās death - drinking himself sick, gambling all his money away, deliberately starting fights. but even before that and since then itās been there.
itās basically just a way to self sabotage.
i feel like this one isnāt a consistent part of benās behaviour like the others are, but it is undeniably there, so.
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-harming behavior
although ben (to my knowledge) hasnāt displayed any suicidal behaviour, he has at times spoken in ways that could kind of sway that way. (iām no good for anyone, iām not worth it, why do you care etc)
also self harming!!! just because he doesnāt hurt himself in a direct way doesnāt mean he doesnāt deliberately put himself in situations where heāll get hurt, and that is self harm!! letting stuart beat him at pride was self harm!! picking that fight w those homophobes at e20 was self harm!!! drinking to excess is a form of self harm!!! putting himself in harmās way, even if he doesnāt get hurt, is self harm!!!! just bc he might not be self harming in the traditional sense doesnāt mean heās not hurting himself!!! this one has been on my mind for so long!!!! oh my god!!!!! he absolutely has a pattern of self harming/self destructive behaviours, and just a general disregard for his own safety and well being!!!! the fact that it doesnāt worry more ppl in his life is so upsetting to me!!!!!!
6. Emotional instability in reaction to day-to-day events (e.g., intense episodic sadness, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
aka the biggest part of bpd: pt 2
i feel like this definition doesnāt really do justice to this aspect of bpd. this is basically you literally having no control of your emotions. āday-to-day eventsā have fuck all to do with it half the time. u could be sitting there minding ur business and all of a sudden you wanna smash up the entire room, for seemingly no reason. one time i was crying - like uncontrollably sobbing, a complete mess - and had been for maybe half an hour? and then all of a sudden, literally mid sob, it stopped. like it just stopped. i was done, i wasnāt sad anymore. i went from inconsolably crying to perfectly fine in a split second. can you even imagine that? itās fucking crazy. thatās what having bpd is like. itās like mood swings x1000 (thatās why i describe it like bipolar on a smaller scale - their mood swings last days/weeks/months, ours last minutes/hours, sometimes days but not often). you can be fine, then all of a sudden youāre not. or you can be not fine, and then all of a sudden you are. you can be ecstatic, then all of a sudden all the joy gets sucked out of ur body n u wanna die. then 5 mins later ur fine again. u can cycle thru every single human emotion in the space of a few hours with no warning whatsoever. u can go from feeling so many emotions u donāt know which one to focus on to feeling none at all. itās exhausting. so yes āday-to-day eventsā (this can be as minor as the way someone speaks to you, or not enjoying ur food as much as u thought u would, and it can make u terrifyingly sad or spark uncontrollable rage in u) can trigger it, but itās likeā¦ at least thatās kind of justifiable. most of the time u just cannot regulate, control or predict ur emotions whatsoever. and often the emotions u do feel are not appropriate for the situation at hand lmao
on top of that, ppl w bpd have massive problems processing their emotions. while most ppl have the capacity to identify what theyāre feeling and why, ppl w bpd often canāt. and bc they canāt identify it properly, they donāt know how to process it. thatās why emotions and feelings are so often black and white - we might develop the ability to recognise Big Emotions, like love and hate, happiness and sadness etc, but we canāt figure out the smaller, nuanced emotions. it becomes or, not and.
this is also why our emotions feel so big and all encompassing!! we canāt ignore our emotions!! they are our focus in a lot of ways. when ur sad, it feels like the world is ending, every single time. when ur happy, ur euphoric and nothing else matters, and so on. every emotion has the volume turned up to 100. thatās why our emotions sometimes come out in extreme or unhealthy ways - our emotions often feel so big we have such a hard time handling them. so we go to drastic lengths, whatever they may be, to cope.
(also bc most ppl w bpd are victims of abuse, weāre often hyperaware of other peopleās moods, which can impact ours. someone can be annoyed for some innocuous, innocent reason, and yet bc we can sense it, we become scared or defensive and may lash out.)
and benā¦ little old ben, have u ever seen him have a rational reaction to anything in his life? how often have we seen him have an appropriate response to smth? my dad is shit, so i have to destroy him. failing that, i have to kill him. oh, my brother isnāt gonna let kill him? time to punch him in the face. my daughter ate all my cereal? itās Overreaction Time. (this one in particular is Very Me like yes lexi is a child and he was unfair but my 7 year old cousin once drank all my j2os and i almost had a breakdown so i Get It) iām feeling like shit? time to antagonise these homophobes until they beat me in the middle of the street. i sleep with this man once? time to get overly involved. he shows me a little bit of love and kindness? time to develop feelings for him despite him insisting heās straight, the fact that heās with a woman and i have been harassed and beaten by his homophobic family multiple times. but it isnāt going the way i wanted it to? time to impulsively hit him for not knowing what he wants, then immediately regret it.
and like. he went from crying his eyes out in his dadās kitchen to threatening kat slater within the span of what, 10 minutes? he went from trying to kill his dad, to falling tf apart w jay, to trying to manipulate his dad - who had just woken up from a coma - for his own gain again, in the span of maybe an hour. if that doesnāt say rapid cycling, inconsistent emotions idk what does.
like idk enough about the old bens to say if this is a consistent characteristic of his or not (although based on the fact he killed a woman bc he was angry w his dad, iād say itās fairly safe to assume lmao) but ever since he came back his reactions and emotions have been pretty much never once been rational, stable or consistent.
(and like i wanna say i am saying all of this from the perspective of the bad days. so if youāre thinking āwell, ben isnāt like that all the timeā ur right. neither am i. some days iām fine, some days itās not that bad, sometimes i can cope. but i still have bpd, even on those days. and imo, so does ben.)
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness
this is one i donāt really see in ben. we maybe see moments of emptiness, but certainly not enough to call it āchronicā.
also a lot of the moments we do see emptiness in ben, i feel like itās forced emptiness, more for his own benefit or for the benefit of others rather than actual genuine emptiness. itās not that heās not feeling anything, itās that what he is feeling heās not showing. thatās very different from actually feeling empty.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
this! is! such! a! massive! part! of! having! bpd! and itās a part that no one ever fucking talks about either!!!
and again, does this one need explaining?
ben is anger. heās a ball of it, and he has been for a very, very long time. heās angry at his dad, at the world, at himself. for all sorts of reasons, both complex and simple. if i sat here and tried to get into all of it this post would be twice as long as it already is. and i donāt think i really need to, anyway. itās not as if any of us need to dig very deep to see it, is it?
āfrequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fightsā like i really donāt need to elaborate do i? bc what does ben do when heās angry? his temper flairs up, he gets physical, lashes out, makes threats.
and heās so often angry in response to emotional pain, which is the saddest (and for me, most relatable) part. just look at paulās anniversary, how angry he was just in general, to everyone - even his mum, who is like the only exception to his anger since heās been back - when he was just hurting and sad. how angry he got when he found out keanu had replaced him in philās will, when really he was just hurt. he gets angry and violent so people donāt see him as weak bc heās hurting. he has been conditioned to get angry instead of getting sad. itās not healthy at all.
there is so much more but i feel like itās unnecessary for me to get into it. bc u know. benās not exactly subtle in his anger is he lmao
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
this is the only other one that i donāt see in ben at all, and itās one that i donāt really experience myself either so i donāt even have any insight to offer lmao
so!! more or less 7/9!! thatās a passing grade for diagnosis!!! welcome to the club, mr mitchell!!!!
all of this, of course, has been purely from a medical, diagnostic standpoint (w some of my personal experiences sprinkled in lmao). thereās so much more to say from like a āliving w bpd day to dayā standpoint but like, this post is already way too fuckin long so iām just gonna hit on a few that i feel are important in regards to ben, and ones i haveāt spoken abt yet
most ppl w bpd have a āfpā or āfavourite personā (tho it can be multiple people), which sounds nice but itās kind of a really complicated and difficult thing tbqh. hereās the best definition i could find: āWhen someone with BPD uses the term āfavorite personā to describe someone else, they are typically insinuating that this is a person they cannot survive without. For BPD sufferers, the favorite person is the person who is a source of emotional support and dependence. This individual has the ability to truly impact the BPD suffererās day in either a positive or negative manner. The favorite person to someone with BPD holds a critical role in their lives by holding the power to āmake or breakā the successful navigation of daily tasks and struggles.ā itās a difficult thing to explain/understand (so please feel free to google āfavourite person bpdā to get a better understanding), and is not always as dramatic as it sounds, but itās likeā¦ even if they arenāt a source of āemotion supportā, ur mental wellbeing can hang on this personās every move. (which is not healthy, i know, but itās just a thing that happens w bpd!) and phil is absolutely benās fp. ben hates phil, and yet is still so desperate to be in his good graces, in his life no matter what that costs himā¦ and benās self esteem, his actions, his moods are so dependant on phil. it just?? makes so much sense to me. i realize it may not make much sense to someone who doesnāt have any understanding of what a fp is, but like if u do, iām sure u see what i see.
i think maybe jay was another fp of ben for a while in the past. i donāt think he is as much since ben has come back, but in the past?? maybe. like less in the āmy happiness is dependant on uā way and more in like a āiām very very attached to u and need u in my life and would maybe go crazy if anything or anyone got in the way of thatā way.
and i think callum might be sneaking into territory now too tbqh. it would explain why callumās actions and words have such an impact on benās moods despite not much really happening between them. and like i wanna say: someone becoming ur fp is not a choice. it just happens. itās not like ben is going āoh im going to get overly attached to u just for a laughā, no. this would be completely out of his control. and when it happens, it fucking SUCKS. so if that is whatās happening, itās going to have a massive impact on ben - and it seems like it already is.
and like taking the whole fp thing out of it (bc i know itās complicated and hard to grasp) bpd would explain why ben seems to be so attached to callum even tho very little has actually happened between them!!! like bpd will have u falling in love w someone who just shows you basic human kindness and decency, and i mean that very literally!!! bc like i said when you have bpd, you struggle to navigate and handle basic emotions, so all the nuances of romance and love? jesus christ. it goes back into black and white thinking - i either love this person or i hate this person, there is no in between. so callum, showing ben kindness? showing him support with whatās going on w louise and what happened w phil? not hating him and thinking heās despicable and evil and all those things people say about him? and ben, having bpd? he probably wouldnāt be able to comprehend that maybe calās just being friendly, esp not after they slept together. so ofc he would latch tf on to that. i would latch tf on to that. his behaviour towards callum just seems very on brand for having bpd to me, genuinely.
and !! all those things whitney said the other night !! people complained about him not arguing back, but likeā¦ sheās almost saying what ben wants to hear, when it comes to callum. bc i touched on it before but like the thing is when, you have bpd ur thought process is like āi care about this person, they are good, i donāt deserve them, i am bad, i am going to ruin them, iām probably manipulating them into spending time with me and caring about me, but i canāt let them go, i need them, i bet they donāt even like me, i donāt deserve them, i donāt want them to get hurt, i donāt want to hurt them, i am going to hurt them, in the end.ā (and eventually it spirals into āactually theyāre probably going to hurt me first bc everyone always does so let me completely destroy this relationship so itās unrecoverable and hurt them now so they canāt hurt me laterā but thatās another story) and whitney more or less confirms that for him!!! in essence, what she says to him is āyouāre bad, he didnāt want anything to do with you but you manipulated him into it. you donāt deserve him, youāve hurt him, youāve hurt me, how could you do this?ā so likeā¦ ofc heās not gonna argue w her. heās already had a shit day, all of the fight is gone from him, and he agrees w her!! iām sure he was thinking that he deserved what whit was throwing at him - not necessarily for what heād done to her, but because he is Bad and callum is Good and he needs to stay away from him, otherwise heāll ruin him. bc thatās just what bpd brain tells u, even when uāve got no basis to believe it. (unless ur splitting or experiencing a big emotional high, but again, thatās a different story)
and that kind of makes sense as to why heād go to the wedding. going back to the anger instead of sadness thing - heās hurting, so heās going to get angry and vengeful. he has been hurt, so now he is going to hurt in return. esp considering both callum and whitney have seen him in such a vulnerable state. itās probably a pride thing, too.
also just to expand a little more on the āunstable sense of selfā thing - ppl w bpd (and also victims of abuse, but sometimes that particular venn diagram is a circle) tend to change the personality based on who theyāre with. which is what most people do, yes, but i mean the Extreme version. itās a trauma response thing - uāll reflect parts of a personās personality back at them, or even take bits from personalities of ppl u know they like in the hopes that theyāll like u more like that, as opposed to ur real personality (if u even know what that is). and sometimes those parts stick (esp when you idolize the person u stole them from/theyāre your fp), and itās like u all of a sudden realize ur entire personality is built of parts of other ppls personalities that youāve stolen. so it makes sense to me that ben seems to have so many differing personalities/sides to his personality, bc heās learned which parts to show to who, and in what situations - in response to his abuse as a kid, if nothing else.
(and before anyone can even go there: that is not an act of manipulation. itās a trauma response. itās something that happens without us consciously having any say in it, as a way of self-preservation. itās like if i make myself likeable and appealing to u, youāre less likely to hurt me, physically or emotionally. and yes ben has a habit of manipulation, but this is not a part of it. none of benās manipulation is directly bc of his hypothetical bpd, itās bc thatās just who he is. i donāt ever want to see the two equated, or see anyone say any shit like āben must have bpd bc heās manipulativeā, ever.)
just for the hell of it, here are some spicy bpd memes, bc thatās how we communicate on the internet. (here are two in particular seem quite relevant to ben rn lmao + bonus one for phil!!)
so! there we are!!! iām sure thereās some important stuff i overlooked and that this is not what u expected when u sent me this question, but there are so many misconceptions and stigmas out there surrounding bpd that i wouldnāt have felt right half assing it. and i hope, if nothing else, u learned something abt bpd that u didnāt know before :-)
if u read this far ur a trooper lmao but if anyone has any questions, be they abt ben having bpd or bpd in general please feel free to ask!! iāll do my best to answer them to the best of my ability šš
#ben mitchell#ballum#eastenders#petty as hell but it was really bugging me that this wasnt showing up in tags so i'm posting it again lmao#sorry if u already liked/replied to it :-(#bpd#anon#question
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