May is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Awareness Month. While there are many sites with excellent clinical descriptions or offer advice for the loved ones of a person with BPD, there is a lack of information on BPD from the point of view of a person with BPD. So, in honor of BPD Awareness Month, here's what BPD is like for me.

In response to some of the comments I see here and elsewhere, here is my response to another ten myths about bipolar disorder.

The signs of verbal abuse are usually invisible to the world outside of your family. Verbal, emotional and mental abuse eats you alive from the inside out. Abuse can do heavy mental damage and cause mental illnesses like depression, anxiety and PTSD. Those illnesses have visible symptoms, but after developing the illness, no one but your closest friends may notice. (If you still have friends after being isolated!) So, the signs of verbal abuse are often felt instead of seen.

For months, I have felt consumed by anxiety and depression. I would sit down to write something, only to feel that the blank screen was taunting me. I would attempt to read something for graduate school, but could only manage to read a few sentences until my mind wandered off into nothingness. At its worse, I would pace the house and twist my fingers into knots, trying to will away the anxiety and do something, anything, useful. Today it hit me — anorexia nervosa has stolen key parts of my life and now I must fight to reclaim myself.

Anxiety manifests itself in the everyday, supposedly humdrum of it all, and fear has a way of telling me things which are otherwise impossible to speak; The things I cannot acknowledge must still be expressed, for so long as they are part of me, they will find ways to be. And so it is that the common cliches that clutter up the mind become the stuff of our most intense anxieties, and preoccupations:

Antipsychotic medications were so named as they were initially used to treat psychosis in disorders like schizophrenia. Antipsychotics include medications like Haldol, Thorazine, Seroquel, Abilify and Zyprexa. These medications are now being used, more and more, in the treatment of other disorders like bipolar disorder and major depression. One of the major problems with these medications is a side effect called tardive dyskinesia. Tardive dyskinesia is a disorder involving involuntary muscle spasms and can be (but isn’t always) permanent – even if the medication is discontinued. How can you and your doctor look for the signs of tardive dyskinesia?

When you're in a verbally abusive relationship, you need an exit strategy and a safety plan. You need them so you don't have to listen to your abuser's hateful words. Verbal abusers want you to be a man or have the guts to hear the truth. The abuser expects you to stand there and take the abuse because without you, the abuser cannot regain control of him or herself. When an abuser looks at you, he or she sees a target, not a person. The abuser sees something to throw garbage at until he feels less threatened - like a monkey throwing poop.

It has occurred to me recently, that I am often faced with choices in my life that have the potential to greatly influence my experience with depression. Each day, I face choices, sometimes simple, sometimes more complex, that could take me down a road towards depression or lead me away from it. The power of these choices is remarkable.

A few weeks ago, I put the kibbosh on Bob's playing with the gang of boys in our neighborhood. My decision came after he made the unfortunate choice to ride his bike with them to the middle school (several blocks away and out of my range of observation). It was, I believe, a necessity--the boys are mostly older than he is and, I fear, use him more for entertainment than anything--but I still hated to do it.

Nothing is impossible to overcome. That is the message that Nikki Rosen wants to share with you. Nikki grew up in an abusive home and suffered years of child abuse. It led her to drug use and engaging in self-injurious behavior at the early age of 12 years old. She spent years on the streets with a drug addiction and an eating disorder, even enduring rape, all of which fed into her belief that she was worthless. But, eventually, she found herself on the path to health and recovery.