Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder with Niki Saks

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self-love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Now, in a world where mental health struggles to still remain often hidden in the shadows, my guest today has boldly stepped into the light to share her experience and erase the stigma surrounding mental illness. Niki Saks is a best selling author, mental health expert, well being thought leader, and entrepreneur with over four decades of experience in fields of nutrition, fitness and life skills. Her groundbreaking book, Hiding In The Open, Living Sensitively, is a raw and honest portrayal of Niki's journey living with borderline personality disorder, otherwise known as BPD, a condition affecting millions worldwide. In this episode, we're going to discuss mental health specific to early life events and borderline personality disorder. Niki will share her own personal experience living with BPD, her road to healing and ultimately thriving. First, I want to disclaim that this podcast is for information and entertainment. We don't give medical advice and we don't treat, cure or prevent any disease. Next, the opinion of my guests are theirs and may not necessarily align with mine or The Human Beauty Movement.

Jennifer Norman:
And last, no one's responsible for your health and well being, but you so make informed decisions with guidance from accredited professionals to determine what's best for your own mind, body and spirit. So with that, I'd like to welcome you to the show, Niki.

Niki Saks:
Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me here. It's really nice to see you.

Jennifer Norman:
It's an honor to have this conversation with you. And you're joining me all the way from Sydney, Australia, which is just so exciting to me. I love being able to have conversations with people from everywhere. It's just so exciting.

Niki Saks:
This podcast world is fascinating because it just connects people from all over, which is so exciting because a lot of people, the voice gets spread, which is.

Jennifer Norman:
Great, you know, the voice, the power of human connection. And first, I do want to tell everybody we had to reschedule this interview a couple of times because you recently lost your mom, and I am so sorry for your loss. I wanted to ask, how are you doing?

Niki Saks:
I'm okay. It was on the 2nd of December. I have set myself up in such a way which I can go into more explanation in the book. When you talk about thriving, there are certain mechanisms I have put in place in order to survive and protect myself. And when a situation like a death of a parent or a loved one happens, that you need to draw. I need to draw really well on those skills that I have in place in order to be okay. Death is a transition, and it's something that I have been able to process a lot easier now than I probably would have had many years ago. So it's been hard.

Niki Saks:
My mom was ill, but thank you very much. Thanks for asking. It's been a couple months. Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
My heart goes out to you dearly. It's never easy. So turning to the topic of what our podcast is about now, you have made it your mission to break the stigma around mental illness, particularly around borderline personality disorder. I imagine that BPD is often misunderstood. So I would love for you to be able to provide some insight on what it's like to live with BPD on a daily basis and how it has affected you personally in various aspects of your life.

Niki Saks:
Thank you. I'd love to share that. So if I could just go back a bit. What we know, and as you said earlier, I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I am somebody who, I've studied wellness. I've practiced various means of it, but my thoughts and opinions are my own. I have been diagnosed with the condition of borderline personality. All mental illness, in my opinion, starts with childhood trauma.

Niki Saks:
And so what that means is the caretakers that are in your life when you're young, to be able to hold a space for you that make you feel safe, that make you feel loved, that make you feel cared about and protected a lot of the time on a mental illness perspective are not there and they're not showing up as they should. So a child would grow up feeling as if they're questioning where they fit in the world. They can't understand that. If, if love is something from a nurturing parent, how then are their parents or caretakers behaving the way that they do? It's an interesting, so from a borderline point of view, it is about growing up in an environment that is very invalidating. In other words, you know that you are in a home where you have parents that love you, but it certainly has no way of feeling that way. And I think a lot of us go through that and whether you suffer from mental illness or anxiety or whatever form of mental illness, which is, you know, I don't believe that anybody escapes trauma, pain, and grief. I think there's various degrees of it at one's home, but we all go through some suffering. And how borderline kind of manifested in me was early signs of depression, early signs of feeling as if I didn't belong in the world.

Niki Saks:
Feeling like I was uncomfortable in my skin, having very unstable relationships, whether it was with men or whether it was with friends. Kind of having close friends for a moment and then just wanting to pull myself back. I found that it was easy to get involved in tense relationships that were toxic or didn't benefit me. And I know that a lot of this kind of could ring true with people when they hear it. But the thing with borderline is that it kind of gets exacerbated by an intense emotional override. So everything that I did in my life was an emotional journey. It was one moment I would be feeling okay, something would happen, or a friend would say something, or I would get a message, or I would do something, and suddenly my entire mood would change and I would feel rejected. The other thing about borderline is one has a very unwavering sense of themselves. .

Niki Saks:
So I never knew where I fitted in. I'd had no opinion. I was kind of like a chameleon. I would go into a group of friends, and I would just change who I was in order to fit in. I was so terrified of being abandoned on any level, whether it be by parents, by loved ones, by friends, by anyone, that I would become this person that just changed all the time in order to make sure that I wasn't rejected and I wasn't abandoned. And then the various other traits of borderline personality, which, I just need to add, does affect about 1.6% of the population. And the thing about it is, it's very difficult to diagnose early on because young children, and it affects men and women, a ratio of, like, two to seven, of two to eight.

Niki Saks:
So there's men and women, there's far more... And I think that's because women seek help. I think men a lot of the time don't seek help. So they're not diagnosed. Yeah, but borderline is very difficult to diagnose when you're early, because women go through a lot of emotional things with hormones and things like that, so they're also very reluctant to pass the diagnosis on. It also, it has a direct correlation with eating disorders, which is something interesting.

Niki Saks:
So if you can imagine trying to fit into a world where you have no control over what's going on, you're totally emotional, you're terrified of being abandoned. You think you have to be, in order to be accepted, you have to look a certain way. So it has a natural progression in some kind of way into an eating disorder. And the other thing which is very highly put onto as one of the traits is suicidal idealization. So a lot of borderline people tend to fantasize about suicide. Often 10% of the borderlines that actually suffer from the condition do actually end up taking their lives. So it's a very intense, very unpredictable, very lonely, very hard condition to kind of just feel in the world.

Niki Saks:
And there's a lot of people experiencing that, so they tend to isolate a lot. And so it does stem from a massive fear of abandonment. One changes their entire being, the way they look, the way they act, in order to just fit in. A lot of time that then would lead to some kind of eating disorder or self harm, which is even in cutting themselves. So it's quite a complex diagnosis, but a lot of people that present with the symptoms often are diagnosed with bipolar. So it kind of does. It starts anxiety and things like that. Until I was diagnosed eight years ago, but prior to that, I just thought I had clinical depression and I was bipolar.

Niki Saks:
So when the information came forward that this was, and I was in my forties, I was in my mid forties when this happened, suddenly it all made sense to me. Suddenly everything that I was living, everything that I was experiencing, it all just made sense. And what it also did was give me an opportunity to recover.

Jennifer Norman:
It's interesting because as I was doing research on BPD and finding out what the signs and symptoms were, I was like, oh, my God, that's me. Like, I could not tell you how much I related to it, but I did not go see a psychologist or a therapist as a young person. I don't know if a lot of young people do. And so it just goes like, you just have this feeling like you just don't belong anywhere. Or, yeah, you have these emotions, you have depression, you have this feeling of loneliness, of, like, all of those things that. And the eating disorder, I mean, you described, I mean, it's just like, yep, check, check, check, check. And so I was like, wow, maybe I had it and I just didn't know it.

Jennifer Norman:
And sometimes putting a name to it is very, it's liberating, too, because it's like, I wasn't going...it wasn't just like me, making this up. It wasn't people just saying, oh, she's just being sensitive, or she's just moody or like, dismissing how you're really feeling, which feels just terrible when you're a young person as well, even if you're an older person. I mean, it's being dismissed for how you're feeling is very, very challenging. Very difficult and makes relationships all that much harder.

Niki Saks:
I think that firstly, we, a lot of the time, grow up in environments where our parents are so preoccupied with other things. And a lot of the time, it's this, it's their survival. I only say that we're doing the best we can based on the tools that. And so parents. And if you can, if you grow up in a place where you're not validated, your experiences aren't validated. It's very different, difficult to later on in life feel okay with being the way that you are. So we tend to vacillate between being okay and not okay and thinking, is that okay? And my biggest thing was, I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin. I just felt like everybody was judging me.

Niki Saks:
I felt like, and we say this, and as you say, a lot of people can identify. I mean, I grew up in a time where we didn't have social media and things like that. I mean, now I just think the whole experience has been magnified or multiplied by so much based on all the stuff that's going on. But one also has to be very careful of the diagnosis and saying a lot of those traits that I can suffer from or whatever, it is something that needs to be diagnosed medically and professionally because we also tend to bandy the word around a lot. You know, we'd speak to people and they go, oh, yeah, I'm sure that my mum has it or my girlfriend has it or whatever. And, and especially if you go onto Google, it doesn't sound very nice when you look up borderline personality disorder. It makes you sound like a crazy person sometimes. So one has to be very mindful of the words that one use to describe a situation or a person's tendencies or actions.

Niki Saks:
But it is a real thing. It is a real thing, and it did affect my life for a long time.

Jennifer Norman:
It does remind me of, I had some acquaintances whose children were diagnosed with ADHD, and there was a lot of controversy and discussion about whether or not that was a, quote unquote, real diagnosis. And again, sometimes it helps to have a name for it because it's a condition where there are certain traits that abide by the condition and it is diagnosed and there is a way and there's a path forward to helping to address it. And that can come from your medical practitioner. And it really doesn't matter what anybody else thinks, frankly, it really doesn't. It's really just between you and how you wish to address it, how you wish to help empower yourself to perhaps be able to overcome certain of the challenges of the past and be able to have a happier and more enriched life and not feel necessarily a victim of the past. And that is what defines you. We talk a lot about identity and we talk about a lot about, well, I don't even know who I am. And to your point about being a different person depending on what friend group that you were with, I mean, a lot of people can certainly relate to the idea of people pleasing, but this is to the nth degree.

Jennifer Norman:
I know that I literally changed the way that I dressed, the way that I talked, the way that I would be, depending on who I was planning to go out with at night. And so it was almost like, because I didn't have a good, solid sense of my own self, I felt that that's what I needed to do to fit in and be accepted and be liked. And I can imagine, to your point about social media, the kids and today having it to the nth degree, it can be perhaps overwhelming.

Niki Saks:
I think it must be horrifying. It's hard enough as a human being, just being and finding your own way, but to be led in any way, I mean, it's not a social media thing, but I certainly have got my own way of making sure that I'm okay and that I can thrive through this. Because the other aspect of living in this kind of existence or having these kind of traits is that all the men that I found myself, if I'm a vulnerable person, the type of man that I'm going to attract. So if I'm insecure with myself, if I'm vulnerable, the type of man, and sensitive, because that's the other thing, it's being highly sensitive as a border, I'm going to attract the type of man that is going to prey on all those traits.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes.

Niki Saks:
So they're going to be, without using the word that everybody uses, they're going to be predators because they love getting the attention that you get, that you give, because you need the feedback from them that you are wonderful and you are perfect and you are everything they could dream of. So I found myself in situations that were less than perfect, went through a marriage, had a couple of relationships, and in fact, I was at the bottom, the bottom when I went to seek help. And that is when the team together came up with this diagnosis. And suddenly it made sense to me. It does certainly attract a certain type of person that does kind of like to be able to manipulate.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Niki Saks:
If you're a vulnerable, sensitive person.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's going to be the way that you both feel that you can almost like yin and yang off of each other. I complete you, you complete me, which is nonsense. We complete ourselves. But that kind of power dynamic is not necessarily the healthiest, for sure.

Niki Saks:
I find that the healthier one gets, the more the relationships that they attract are healthy, and that includes friends. The more, as you say, the more you are in touch with what it is, the more you accept what it is that you have and you don't judge yourself for it. The more energy that you put out, the right people are going to come into your life, and that's been an incredible transition for me.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow. So tell me, eight years ago, you got this diagnosis, and you said it was at the throes of a lot of just tumultuousness in your life. So what was going on? And then once you got the diagnosis, what happened after that?

Niki Saks:
So I have two children. They are 22 and 21. So they too went through a lot of stuff with me because as growing up, firstly there was the depression and then there was the high, and then there was this bad relationship. And so there was a lot going on. So I realized at this stage, I was in a really bad relationship and to the point where I didn't want to live anymore. And I went to go and see somebody that I was recommended, then sat down and put me in touch with a psychiatrist because. And so one thing that I, a bit of a sensitive subject, but I find that medication for me is vital in order to. So I was put in touch with a psychiatrist who then worked with me.

Niki Saks:
The relationship that I was in was a mess. My kids, they weren't close to me. I found at my rock bottom there were very few people I could actually reach out and call. You know, that feeling of, like, who do I call in a situation like this? Because everybody thinks I'm perfect. At the time, I was modeling and I had, it seemed from the outside, like I had a great life and I was busy all the time, but meanwhile I was at home alone. I was sad and I had nobody to really lean on. So I sought help and I just dedicated myself as a process called dialectal behavioral therapy, which is like, is cognitive behavioral therapy, but it's more a mindfulness practice. That's what it is.

Niki Saks:
It's more a mindfulness practice. And I literally, the practitioner said to me, because I was, as I said, rock bottom, and he said to me, if you can give me a year of your life, then I will promise you a life that is worth living. And I thought, what have I got to lose? What am I sacrificing? I'm in this situation right now. And that's what I did. I dedicated a year to that and it made a huge difference, and I still practice it to this day.

Jennifer Norman:
Can you describe some of those practices that you started and that you continue doing that are helpful?

Niki Saks:
Definitely. There's Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. It is a mindfulness practice. And what it does is it helps you understand, accept and acknowledge how to move forward. So there's a very simple acronym that I use, which is SOS, which is stop, observe what's going on and then steer in a direction. And mindfulness helps you, the DBT, it makes you get perspective on things. It helps you regulate your emotions, it helps with interpersonal relationships, because if you can imagine, rather than being this emotionally charged, hysterical person, but you, what you manage to do is calm yourself down to a point where you can have a decent conversation or you can get perspective on what's going on. But that's part of what I do in order to be okay.

Niki Saks:
I have created a manifesto for myself on a daily basis, which I have to follow. And that's the simple things. You know, it's going back to basics. It's the simple things like making sure that I have a certain amount of sleep a night, that I get into nature, that I concentrate on breathing, that I stay off social media as much as I possibly can. I never feel great for being on it, but it's certain things like YouTube, and that where you're learning and podcasts is a different story. I watch what I eat. There's certain. So I've created, and I wrote a book and I created a manifesto by which I live.

Niki Saks:
And if I go off kilter, I can feel that. So it's a combination of mindfulness practice, and it's a combination of the daily practice that I need to do in order to have a life worth living.

Jennifer Norman:
That's amazing. And I want to circle back because you mentioned medication. And I, too, when I went through a real bad, my first divorce, I needed help. I just could not see a way forward. And it was the thing that saved me. It was one of those things where my parents. For years, my father suffered from clinical depression, and he was kind of emasculated for wanting or suggesting that he might need to go on medicine. It was seen as very taboo from the perspective of my mom, until he actually said, I'm doing it, and went on it and turned into a different person.

Jennifer Norman:
Like, he was just delightful, happy, could smile again. And my mom said, oh, my God, why did I prevent him from being like this for all of those years? Like, she realized that it was for naught. And so. So when I was going through very hard times, I said, I think I might need to see somebody for help. And they said, we only care about your happiness, and if you need it, if it's what you need, it's what you need. And it's something that can really help you see yourself out of your darkest days. And then, you know, little by little, perhaps wean yourself off of it. But if not, I don't judge anybody that needs to have a bit of pharmacological help for things like that to balance their system that has gone into this massive tumultuousness.

Jennifer Norman:
What we go through and the chronic kinds of stress that we have put our bodies through, it is unnatural. And sometimes we need interventions that can help us get onto a place of balance in order to find your way and then get into better practices. And so that's something that I am absolutely like, do what you need to do.

Niki Saks:
I think you're right. And there are two things that came up for me in what you were saying, and one, which is that elephant in the room is the stigmatism around it. Especially for men, there's such a massive stigma. But I think that we're, if anything, one degree of separation away from anybody that is affected by mental health issues and the number of people that are putting their hands up and saying this and this, it's getting better, but it is actually. It's still something that's out there. And I definitely think that, you know, if it wasn't for medication, I probably. I don't know what would have happened, to be honest, because I was, like, really low and having BPD, I'm on a number of medications to health my mood, to help my anxiety, and I write about that. I say that I totally respect people.

Niki Saks:
But, you know, what happens with trauma is it has an effect on the neural pathways in your brain, and it has an effect on the way we think. And it stops certain transmitters, the trauma stops certain transmitters and hormones from connecting, and those don't grow back. Doesn't. So if you can live with them during hard times, then that's great. But if you can't, then medication is a serious option. And there are new methods, there's microdosing with psilocybin, there's various things that are considered today, but I think that everybody needs support in one way or the other. And if medication is going to do it. And at the end of the day, the stigma thing, it's like I've just got to a point in my life and I don't know if you're the same way.

Jennifer Norman:
I just don't care, and you should not care. Other people's opinions, and it doesn't. It really doesn't. It's whatever's right for you.

Niki Saks:
People want to talk. Yeah, they want to talk about this, or they want to talk about any mental struggle, or they were like, I don't judge anybody because it would be in a judgment of myself. And I. Yes, that's something that I don't.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, yeah, no, I applaud people for the way that they are able to live their lives, which is best for them. After I was. Things got better, I ended up being able to wean myself off of the medicine that I was on. But then there came another trauma. I almost lost my son when he was two and a half years old, and he was hospitalized for. Yeah, he was hospitalized for four months and came back with a tracheostomy. And when he came back home and then he started to heal, I couldn't understand why. I was overwhelmed, like, things should have been great.

Jennifer Norman:
We were happy that he was surviving and all that, but I was just crying all the time and I was shaking. And then I realized after going to see a doctor, I was like, I was diagnosed with PTSD on top of everything else, which makes sense. And so again, I needed support, and thank goodness, because then I could function again. I could be myself again. And so for years, and lo and behold, it was just like one thing after another started to happen in my life. And so I don't discount the fact that people have been through it. I mean, my story is no different from anybody else's. It's no better or worse.

Jennifer Norman:
People have. Everybody has their story, and I want...this podcast is really all about how we can connect and share our stories so that there can be healing in knowing that you're not alone and knowing that there are folks, folks like you that have been through it, who have come out the other side and are still on their own healing journey, but have been able to muster up the strength and resilience to be able to turn and support others who are going through something similar that they had gone through and helping to guide the way, just like Niki is. And so, you know, Niki, you've written this beautiful book, and so I want to give the opportunity for you to share a little bit about it. It's called Hiding In The Open, Living Sensitively. Would you...there it is.

Niki Saks:
Can I show it, please?

Jennifer Norman:
Please do. For those who are on audio, Niki is sharing her beautiful book, Hiding In The Open, Living Sensitively. Can you tell our audience what they can expect by reading your book?

Niki Saks:
So what the audience can expect is, as you said, it's a life like better or worse than anybody else's. But it's my story through mental illness. It was about my hiding in the open all my life, until one day I realized I had to start living in the open. It was. I cover areas of sensitivity because there's being a highly sensitive person, ADHD, all these kind of...some of the symptoms or some of the conditions that I was labeled with that were making me sensitive. It talks about my life story and all the trauma that I went through, which I call compound traumas.

Niki Saks:
So, as you said with your son, you got in a situation where you should be happy, and everything's gone okay, and you're alive, or he's alive, but there's still a trauma that's based on that. So it compounds in how it makes you feel. My diagnosis was with the borderline personality and then how I have navigated survival, because with borderline personality, it is survival. It is a case every single day of making sure that you're okay. And then it's just my love story, how I have got myself together and met the love of my life.

Jennifer Norman:
Yay.

Niki Saks:
Yes. Hence my moving to Sydney from Cape Town, South Africa. So, yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
Amazing.

Niki Saks:
So there is always. There's a happy ending, you know? Yeah. When you. When I think that when you make do the work and you accept a lot of the stuff, it's called radical acceptance. When you just may not like it, but it is what it is, and you just move on with your life instead of making it a burden and carrying it around with you. I think that you can find happiness.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, that's beautiful. And it's true. I feel like for so many years, I was just regretting my childhood, feeling angry, feeling embittered about how things were. And until I realized, you know, what? Can't change the past. And to your point earlier? You know, my parents did the best they could with the tools they had, and I give them a lot of credit for that. I mean, the way that they grew up during the war and there's like a lot of trauma that they had gone through and the strictness with which they were brought up being like war babies and whatnot, it's definitely something where it's like, I understand it. I understand how they had six children. They were exhausted.

Jennifer Norman:
You know, it's like they had no energy for me. Like, by the time I came around number six, it was like, there is just like no way that they could really be fully present working and all of that, all of that. And so I have lots of, like. And they're both passed on in life, and I have these conversations with them that have gratitude. Like, thank you for everything. Thank you for being there. I know it wasn't perfect. I know that if you had to do it all over again, it'd probably be a little bit different, but it wasn't.

Jennifer Norman:
And I just. I'm here, things are good, and I've learned to really love life. I've learned to really make the best out of it and think so positively. And I don't think think it would have been unless I had something that to foil up against. You went through that for a reason. We went through, we go through all of these things in life for either the life lesson that they could be, or else we get buried by them. But you choose. You choose the path forward and doing it in a way that, and I'm hopeful that on this podcast we can show people that it's much better to live empowered lives.

Jennifer Norman:
It's much better for you to be able to say, you know what? It's going to start with me. I'm going to do things differently. There might have been all of this intergenerational trauma, there might have been all this stuff that had happened. But I'm choosing from this day forward to have intergenerational healing. I am going to be the one that's going to change the trajectory of the way things are for me and my kids and the folks and the people and my friends around me.

Niki Saks:
I think we have the power to do that. As far as the friends as well. It's very important to surround yourself with people that feel the same way again. I agree with you. We can carry this shit along for as long as we want to hurt. There's a saying in Buddhism, right? But if you're attached to anything, you're going to suffer. And it really is about letting go of that. As hard as it is to not be able to use the fact that you are abused or whatever as a way to get as currency, but more as a way to get freedom, that happened to me, therefore, I have the power to be able to become a better person because of where I come from.

Niki Saks:
It's powerful. It's really powerful if you can move on in that way, I think. And you think?

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, absolutely. Well, I am delighted that you have gone through this journey and you're sharing it with us. You're so boldly helping to erase the stigma around borderline personality disorder, which a lot of people have not heard about. And if this is the first time, then perhaps it is a little bit of a door or a glimpse into what may be going on with you or a loved one that you know, because Lord knows, it's probably more prevalent than we are familiar with and understand that there is a way forward, that it's not something that you have to deal with alone, that there are professionals and individuals who can be supportive of you. And if you surround yourself with those people that understand and are empathetic and compassionate, then you can also reflect on that and feel a bit of compassion for yourself and developing a little bit more of that self love for yourself and get support.

Niki Saks:
Have the conversations that are difficult, lean into the groups that are there and do that sort of thing to grow, I think is important.

Jennifer Norman:
Absolutely. So, Niki, where can people find out more about you and where can we find your book?

Niki Saks:
Thank you for asking. I have a website. It's nikisaks.com. there's all the information about me and a link to the book, but it is available on Amazon and on Kindle worldwide.

Jennifer Norman:
Niki, thank you so much for being my guest today. It's an honor to have you as part of the movement. Thank you so much.

Niki Saks:
Thank you and thanks for the invitation to join.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to the Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much much for being a beautiful human.