My perception of safety has always been skewed
My defensive shyness often construed as rudeness
The freezing sensation I feel inside
when introduced to a new person
I'm searching their features for a sense of familiar,
looking for something kind or similar
But danger is always omnipresent.
It makes me feel awkward and hesitant,
resistant to friendship.
Then at a PD conference Jeremy Hall spoke
of the research he'd done
with Merrick Pope and another.
MRI scans of borderline brains –
their findings seem to proclaim
I'm not a social moron after all;
it's down to that concentration of neurons –
that almond cluster they call the amygdala
in the pre-frontal cortex.
That's the reason for my social awkwardness.
Its hypersensitivity makes so much sense to me –
born of childhood adversity –
confused facial emotion recognition
affecting my social cognition.
This science of magnetic resonance imaging
is so bloody validating!
At long last – some Dignity and Hope.
Thank you: Nicol, Hall and Pope!
Selected by Femi Oyebode. From Stigma & Stones: Living with a Diagnosis of BPD, poems by Sally Fox & Jo McFarlane. © Sally Fox. Reprinted with permission.
Through their collection Stigma & Stones, writers/performers/partners Sally Fox and Jo McFarlane seek to promote understanding, improve treatment and reduce the stigma of living with a diagnosis of BPD.
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