- I'm Nadya Okamoto.
I live with borderline personality disorder or BPD.
And I'm gonna talk to you
about how it impacts all areas of my life.
[upbeat music]
Career, sleep, self care, exercise,
eating habits, relationships.
BPD is a mental health disorder that impacts the way I think
and feel about myself and others, manifesting in challenges
with emotion regulations, intense relationships
and even how I feel in my body.
BPD really manifests in feeling no self worth.
And I think one way that I'm able
to contextualize my worth is through work.
I am the co-founder and CEO of a period brand called August.
We make more sustainable tampons
and pads that actually work. .
For years, I would close my laptop
and have panic attacks and feel the urge to cut myself.
Like I felt like I was worth nothing outside of work.
So I went to rehab for six weeks in 2020
and a lot of my work addiction kind of caught up
to me in 2020 where I had basically gone a few years
with barely sleeping with not having a lot
of joy in my life with not like addressing the dissociation
and like the self-harm tendencies.
And it caught up to me and I just crashed.
And I think that it took me six weeks
in rehab to kind of come out
of that burnout hole and also just learn more about myself
like get a BPD diagnosis.
You know, rehab for me it was something
that I was really ashamed of having to go
but it honestly saved my life in so many ways.
I think a lot of my BPD tendencies, but also mistakes
that I had made in the past, like caught up with me.
And some of them were rooted in like leading from a place
of scarcity or leading from a place of insecurity.
And you know, it still like pains me to say
but I think it's really important
for me to acknowledge that if I leave my BPD unchecked,
I'm not a great leader because it makes me really insecure,
it makes me, you know, make rash decisions.
And I think that addiction to work got so extreme
that I forgot to do other things.
I lost a lot of relationships, a lot of friendships
because I was so addicted to work.
I've always loved my job, but I think
that I've really learned that if I lose myself in my job
I become so dissociated
that I'm not even giving myself this space to enjoy it.
I haven't worked through all of my, you know, challenges
around prioritizing my health and myself over work.
And what that means is like, sometimes I will go, you know
a whole day skipping a lot
of meals because I just wanna keep working
or I'll literally forget to go to the bathroom
and get sometimes like a UTI or I won't poop
for two weeks because I'm literally wanting to work
and I kind of ignore the urge to go.
A lot of my BPD manifests
restricting myself from rest and sleep.
I think that working
on sleep has been my biggest accomplishment
in my mental health journey
because I've struggled with sleeping since I was a child.
I think that a lot of the traits
of not allowing myself to rest
or not allowing myself to sleep and be nourished
do stem from this like lack
of self worth feeling and like what I'm worthy of.
I do think that it's made worse in many ways by my BPD
and like the struggle with feeling like I deserve that
and feeling like I've done enough to be able to rest.
I used to work in bed a lot
because I would work until I was so exhausted
I would pass out.
And now like this space has reserved
for sleeping and for naps.
One of the ways that I've been able
to help the busy mind when I go
to sleep is to listen to audiobooks or podcasts
or yeah like guided meditations.
For me I don't have an extensive morning or night routine
because I try to maximize the number of hours I can sleep
and I'm not a morning person.
There are certain things that have really
helped like weighted blankets.
Some people are a little bit sensitive
to how much weight they put on themselves.
I love as much weight as possible.
Showering is not really my thing.
So I take really quick showers,
even if I don't have a whole makeup routine
or I don't shower every day
I have to brush my teeth every day,
I floss, I do my little water pick thing
and I'm like really into my skincare. .
And my skincare, again,
isn't this kind of extensive process.
I use one moisturizer.
Like one basic fragrance-free night cream.
Those small actions that I know are gonna happen
every day are really important.
And they're my own version
of self-care and my own version of personal hygiene.
So I'm gonna do some cupping on my neck.
I woke up and I had a lot of pain here.
It's hard for me to sometimes feel present in my body.
And when I do things like this, I think honestly
the sensation brings me back to my body and it's kind
of scary to admit because it is like a pain sort of feeling.
But I think also the relief then makes me like really
it makes me feel relieved
and it makes me feel like more full.
And then I'll make TikToks for like five minutes.
Part of BPD is feeling like I don't control my body.
And so working out has always been a daily habit.
This is my happy place.
I come here more days than I don't come here.
I got into solidcore last year.
And it's been really good specifically
around dealing with like any self harm urges.
And honestly, if I skip a day or two
of any sort of movement, it's hard for me to go to sleep.
But I also just like, get more jittery or like
if I'm dissociating already in an episode
I will have like more urges to do destructive things
that kind of bring feeling back into my body.
I think a lot of my past urges for like
self-harm have come from feeling out of my body.
And so even if it's a little bit of stretching
I feel like having some sort
of movement or specifically doing things
like solidcore has been
really important for me to work through that.
- Push through it, fight for it. What do you want?
Send it up, send it right back down. Let's go.
Yes, smiling helps.
[laughs] There you go.
- So one of the traits of BPD
is an intense feeling of emptiness.
That feeling of emptiness can either leave me feeling numb
and it kind of leads me to different self harm urges
or it makes me feel like I need to fill my body.
This is not bad at all, actually, but I have some videos
on TikTok where like, if I'm feeling shaky
and a lot of it is that I haven't eaten.
Like my hands are like this.
I have a lot of pain up my arms because of the shakiness
but it's my body kind of freaking out
'cause it's not being nourished.
I live with my boyfriend and Henry, my boyfriend
has been such an incredible accountability partner.
He's been really supportive
of just helping me find what works.
So whether that's reminding me to have lunch
like he'll text me or he's definitely better
about making sure we have groceries in the fridge
because I have, again, this scarcity mindset where I feel
like I don't deserve to have food on hand
but when it comes to nourishing my body
with food and rest and love and time for myself
that's where I have a scarcity mindset that is really hard
for me to work through.
So if I go grocery shopping, I won't buy a lot
because I'm really terrified of wasting anything
or I'll spend a lot of time in the grocery store
figuring out if I should get the organic one or not
because am I worth getting the better one?
So for me, grocery shopping is hard
because it's that's extreme scarcity
or it's I need to buy everything
and I come home with literally dozens of cartons
of ice cream and cereal and snacks that I don't need.
Delivery apps in New York City have been really helpful
because it kind of makes it more removed from myself
where I can just plan out exactly what I need.
My cooking routine is really not creative or daring.
It's like very plain chickens and just get
making sure I have the right ingredients.
I'm kind of just thinking about function,
getting the nutrients that I need.
I just kind of do it quickly.
And then I stick it in the air fryer and I just take it out.
Then I'll use this oil and that'll be my oil for my eggs.
I'm still trying to figure out the whole meal prep thing.
So I usually meal prep
and cook as much as I possibly can on Sundays.
I'll have all this prepared food in my fridge
but it doesn't restrict the urge of binging.
So even if I have prepared food
it's hard for me to be like, okay
I'm not going to eat all the chicken I prepared.
That's supposed to save me through the week.
Often I forget to meal prep at all
because I don't prioritize it as much as I should.
My binging gets worse when I'm depressed.
So if I'm triggered or
if I'm just not feeling great or I'm feeling dissociated
I'll just kind of check out while I'm eating.
And then I'll kind of snap back into reality
because I start feeling pains in my stomach.
So it's not a great situation, but I'm working on it.
And a lot of how I'm working on it is just making sure
and working with therapists to make sure
that I'm eating a balanced diet with a lot of protein.
So it actually makes me feel
like I have something substantial in my stomach.
Because I focus so much on my work relationships
and my work in general, I'm not the best at prioritizing,
creating time for myself or my personal relationships.
The fact that Henry, my boyfriend knows that I have BPD
is such a game-changer to have a supportive partner
because I think that in the past
when I've been in relationships
and I had trouble with my emotion regulation,
oftentimes I was also not with the most supportive peoples.
One of the things that I'm currently working on
in therapy is like prioritizing quality time
with friends, with my boyfriend.
I've definitely gone into little spats with Henry
because like, I won't have a lot,
I won't create or prioritize a lot of time
to like go on dates or hang out.
Sometimes I'll send him calendar invites
because like that's how I think of my life.
Like, especially when I'm going
through dissociative episodes
I'm like not consciously going about my day.
Like I had a dissociate day, like really badly yesterday.
No idea what I did yesterday.
Like I'll have to look at my Google calendar
to tell you what I did yesterday.
And there are like sometimes periods of my life
like years that go by where I am like dissociated
like kind of just not, like sleepwalking through life.
And so because of that, when it comes to like
trying to make time in my personal life
like everything is on the Google calendar
from blocking off time to sleep, blocking off time to travel
or breathe or to walk from one place to another.
I think that the most special thing
about my relationship with Henry right now
is that this is the first time I've been in a relationship
where him loving me unconditionally
inspires me to love myself.
That's the greatest gift he could ever give me.
Because again, that type of relationship
ends with me feeling better about myself
and also feeling more independent, less codependent
and more excited to just like live consciously
in what we are creating.
I think understanding BPD has been a huge
beneficial thing in my relationship with my family.
The most important people in my life are my sisters
and my sisters are everything to me.
I don't have a lot of friends.
Like I probably can count the number
of close people who I consider real friends like on my hand.
And yet I remember getting diagnosed
with BPD and honestly like not being
in a good space with any of my family members.
My mom was not talking to me, my middle sister
and I had not talked in about 10 years.
When she learned of my diagnosis
and I got on the right treatment plan,
I started medication for the first time,
I think that also allowed her to forgive me for a lot
of past behavior and things that she was angry at me for.
I agreed to make this video because there's
so much to be said around borderline personality disorder.
And if there's one takeaway I could give all of you
is that we're all a work in progress.
Mental health is a never ending journey.
And the most important thing is that you just keep going.
Thank you so much for watching
and I really hope this helps anyone
out there who might have BPD
or thinks they have BPD and just know you're not alone.
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