Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Support Group

This is a place for us to share our creativity including our music, visual art, and poetry. It does not have to be about Overwhelming Emotions or BPD.

Elizabeth Bogod

Elizabeth Bogod has lived in Victoria, BC for thirteen years. For much of this time, Elizabeth has struggled with the mental illness, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), an often misunderstood disorder surrounded by stigma. It has only been in the last three and a half years that Elizabeth has found a sense of health, happiness and mental wellbeing. With the help of medication and Dialectical Behavioral Techniques, Elizabeth now enjoys life. Art has always been a big part of Elizabeth’s recovery journey and at times has served as her “saving grace”. Art has been the distraction needed to help Elizabeth through the overwhelming emotions that characterize BPD including depression, anger, intense emptiness and severe dissociation. In many of her paintings, birds are a mainstay because  they represent freedom and a journey towards healing. Elizabeth works in various mediums including acrylics, watercolor, computer graphics, pen and ink and charcoal.

Elizabeth is now a certified Community Mental Health Worker from Camosun College. She is a Peer Support Worker at the BC Schizophrenia Society (Victoria Branch) – BCSS. She works one to one with individuals with mental illness and as co-facilitator of the New Light Recovery Workshop, a  psycho- educational skills training program for people with overwhelming emotions which includes BPD. Because she is the only Peer Support Worker at BCSS with BPD, she often works with peers who have the disorder which she finds very rewarding. Recently, with the help of another young woman with BPD who is also far along in her recovery and two moms, Elizabeth has started a support group for people affected by BPD called the Overwhelming Emotions Support Group.

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Seth Micheal McKay – Sculpture

I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality disorder, approximately 12 years ago. Since I did not find any accurate information on this diagnosis, all I had was a name for my internal prison.

Before the classification of, BPD, I was labeled as a “troubled and emotional disturbed child.” My first encounter with a psychologist was at the age of 7 due to violent temper tantrums that began around the age of 3. My first hospitalization was at the age of 15 from bouts of emotional “outbursts”, and drug and alcohol abuse.

Later in life, each intimate relationship had usually ended with extreme pain and inner torment within myself. The only relief being a new relationship combined with several bouts of self injurious behavior and a steady drug addiction.

Approximately 15 years ago, while hospitalized on an psychiatric ward, after being physically and emotionally abused by a girlfriend, I found my only outlet in the name of clay. I sculpted several images a day to reflect what I was caged by everyday. However, this was only being when I was not enmeshed with another human being. So there were several years I did not utilize the ability to open the curtains for an inner view.

To date I am close to graduating an intensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy program. I have also completed nearly one hundred sculptures several of which, in the image of what the forest fires of overwhelming emotions have felt like to me. I plan to continue this quest of self expression and hope to someday find several venues to exhibit examples of what the depths of BPD hell was like for me.