Sophie Interview

J- So what disabilities do you have?

O- So I have PTSD and I have borderline personality disorder

So, I don’t know how familiar you are with, say borderline personality disorder. It’s a kind of cluster of traits which affects the way that you interact with people you know, a lot of it is skill based. So, it’s a lack of skills and understanding in so many areas as a result of the trauma. Quite often people with BPD are quite rigid and struggle with change, we can struggle with having long term friendships or relationships. Splitting between black and white thinking, so someone can go from being someone that I love more than anyone to someone that has hurt me and I can’t even bear to look at them. It’s really like constant flickering between two extremes.

For PTSD, you know when an event is traumatic, the brain can’t always understand or comprehend what’s happening. So, with PTSD it will replay the thing it doesn’t understand with external triggers as an attempt to understand them. Obviously for people suffering with PTSD that’s consistently being dragged back to a really difficult time. If someone would touch me, I would be quite violently sick straight away and it wouldn’t always need to be touch, if I smelt something or felt something it would instantly make me sick as a result of the PTSD attack. It’s not very cool but you know I’m just managing my best way, you know.