Research of Hope

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.