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The Moth
The Moth
A message from the author: 'Before reading the following please bear in mind that this blog largely relates to my own thoughts and feelings and if my attempts to express myself seem clumsy or in any way offensive, please be assured that I mean no harm.
Written by one of our lived experience co-investigators
Bleak, depressing and dark…
As a lived experience co-investigator for the Complex Emotions Hub, I wanted to create some imagery to use alongside recruitment materials for our Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP).
Initially the sort of artwork that I had in mind conformed with what one might expect for a project exploring issues that relate to diagnoses such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BDP), Emotionally Unstable Disorder (EUPD), and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD): bleak, depressing and dark.
As I am diagnosed/labelled with CPTSD - aka BPD/EUPD alongside a whole other heap of similarly unfathomable diagnoses - black and white images with tears and half hidden faces felt apt to me; the idea of images of tears and sadness, of rage and suffering, seemed to match with my personal experience of the kind of symptoms that CPTSD can manifest.
I spent time creating some black and white paintings, with the limited palette also representing the idea that people with complex emotional experiences are often generalised as thinking of the world through a black and white lens.
However, a week or so later, I was pottering around in my backyard, just soaking up the rare experience of blue skies, hot sun and the warm breeze that occasionally brought with it wafts of jasmine and honeysuckle.
Even with thoughts of ‘BPD’ lingering, I couldn’t help but smile as I watched my cats, stretched out and rolling around on the flagstones, loving the heat and greedily grabbing as much of it as they possibly could.
For a few short moments I joined them; I drank all of this in, all of my senses alive to these simple wonders. I felt a warmth in my belly and a sense of calm and peace, as a clear, unusual and precious emotion revealed itself to me - joy.
Despite the fact that my condition of complex emotions brings with it confusion and despair I began to realise that this is also a part of me; this childlike delight in all of the wonder this world has to offer is every bit as relevant to my character as the tears and sadness.
With all of these positive feelings flowing through me, I had the great fortune to spot what I thought was a butterfly, delicate and bright, fluttering around the flowers on my oregano plant. However, later I discovered it was not a butterfly at all, in fact it was a mint moth; a creature I mistakenly believed only existed in darkness.
Delicate, bright and beautiful
This delicate, bright and beautiful, yet highly stigmatised creature, so tiny, darting from flower to flower on my oregano plant, thoroughly captivated me.
I crept closer to it, hardly daring to breathe, while wondering - as many of us 21st century folk do – ‘can I take a picture of it? Will it stay still long enough for me to go and get my phone and figure out how to work the camera on it?’.
I remember my heart beating faster, a sense of panic ‘I need to capture this!’. Why did I spot this creature? Of all the things to notice here in my little ‘yarden’, which is a cross between a concrete backyard and a little garden and is filled to the brim with flowers and plants.
It felt so important and I wanted to make it important. And, bless its little beating wings, it stayed still long enough for me to capture it – both in a photograph and in my mind. And in that moment the moth took on a meaning of its own.
This moth is so very similar in its splendour to its favoured cousin, the butterfly, and yet so often moths carry a different reputation and are misunderstood, even repugnant, to some people.
In that moment the little mint moth began to symbolise to me, not just the stigma that frequently surrounds the labels of ‘BPD’, ‘EUPD’ and ‘CPTSD’, but also the wide range of colour and strength that comes from having such intense emotional experiences.
I started reading about moths and it was interesting how some of the facts about moths and butterflies appear to align with this; although moths are seen as night creatures and butterflies as day, the reverse is sometimes true and, according to Hazel Davies and Carol. A. Butler, in their book ‘Do butterflies bite?’, the only reliable way to determine the differences between the two is to look at the antennae.
So, how close do we need to get to a moth or a butterfly to be able to spot the difference? I would suggest, as close as we would need to get to somebody with complex emotions in order to diagnose them.
It left me asking, does anybody with the potential to help and treat these conditions ever really try to get this close?
Moths and mental health
Consequently, I’ve become quite fascinated by moths and their behaviour, and also their negative representation in the public's eye. As I have often wondered why myself and others like me are also so stigmatised.
A brief Google search about moths gave me some interesting answers. One quote in particular stood out to me:
“They do not mind their own business. Instead, they will smash in to your face like a stupid fly might do trying to get through a window or to reach the lights they are so attracted to.”
I also looked at some scholarly articles that explored the attitudes of some mental health practitioners towards their ‘borderline’ clients.
This made for difficult reading, for example one quote I found said: “Specifically, they revealed that they experience “an aggressive attempt by borderline clients to invade their internal psychological space” (p. 41), characterizing it as ‘a process of “getting under their skin” (Mental Health Professionals’ Attitudes towards Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder: The Role of Disgust by Papathanasiou Chrysovalantis1* and Stylianidis Stelios).
The connection to the perception of moths was made clear to me; the moths dashing themselves endlessly against the glass, and although I found it quite painful to read, it further demonstrates how much maligned both people with ‘BPD’ (and I use inverted commas here because this is not a name I like) and moths are.
Are we the ‘moths’ of the mental health world? Do we just bounce around aimlessly, annoying people and behave in a deliberately stupid manner for dancing too close to the flames, expecting sympathy every time we get burnt?
I don’t think so.
Moths are not truly drawn to artificial light, they are just confused by it. They are actually trying to fly in alignment to the light of the moon, a natural source of light; people with complex emotions also do not act without reason. Our behaviours, no matter how confusing to others, have an internal logic. It is shaped by our experiences, our wounds, and our need for connection.
I may, at times, act in a similarly confounding manner, but I too have completely explainable and natural reasons, given my personal walk through life, for my behaviour and my intensity of feelings.
And yet, just like the moth, it would appear that myself and others who share similar difficulties to me, have been consigned to the rubbish bin, with a barely acknowledged ‘It’s probably BPD’.
Moths may be a creature that is associated with darkness but they are invariably orientated towards light, even though the light is often artificial and all too often they are burned by it.
I too have existed in darkness, but have always been drawn towards the light and I too have been burned many, many times by the flames that I mistook for safe guiding lights, only to realise too late that they were not what they seemed.
Unfortunately, in my case - and possibly for other people with this ‘affliction’ - family, friends and mental health teams have appeared to be a genuine source of light, of comfort and direction, but all too often it has transpired that this is not the case and it is an artificial source of light, and I have dashed myself against its flames too many times to count.
A visual representation for the Complex Emotions Hub
This is why moths have become a visual representation for ‘BPD’ in my mind. I wasn’t searching for a metaphor that day - it found me. It came to me quite by accident and as such it almost felt like a sign. And with it came a realisation: the paintings I had started, focused only on darkness, were incomplete. I needed colour.
All of these racing thoughts, rushing around and jumbling up and coalescing into a push towards a new direction, a new angle regarding the paintings I had already done and, again, like the dashing moth, I needed to capture these thoughts, not with the precision of a camera but with the often unwieldy strokes of a paintbrush.
Suddenly, I saw the paintings differently. I needed more than just darkness; I needed a full spectrum of colours; cadmium red, yellow ochre and cool greens emerged behind my eyes. I reflected on the paintings I had already made in an effort to capture the darkness of ‘BPD’ and realised I was using an unfair and incorrect approach - I needed to add colour and light and motion into the imagery.
I wondered why I was buying into this notion that all there is to a person diagnosed with ‘BPD’ is doom and gloom. Of course, there’s no getting away from the fact that ‘BPD’ does involve a lot of pain and suffering.
I don’t suppose it would be a ‘disorder’ – another word I’m unsure of – if it didn’t, but what doesn’t seem to be reflected quite as much is how colourful, bold and bright, people with ‘BPD’ can be; their strengths and creativity contribute so much to this world and yet this is all too often overlooked. Surely there has to be beauty and colour, light and hope, in there as well?
A brief search of academic literature tells me not, but anecdotal and wider literature paints a different picture, with many blogs and articles describing the positive traits held by people with complex emotions.
In an article in Psych Central, written by Christine Hammonds, the author describes ‘the ability to feel intense passion and infectious enthusiasm’; while blogger Emily Eveland talks about people with BPD as resilient and well intentioned.
Emma Kenny, in her true crime YouTube video, speaks of people with a diagnosis of ‘EUPD’ etc when she says: “They are loving. They are spontaneous. They are funny, they are clever, but they don’t see that about themselves very often.”
I’d like to think all of this is true - or is this just me thinking wistfully? I think it’s also important to note that she warns of a particular vulnerability when referring to how people with complex emotions can be manipulated: “When you don’t have that sense of self-worth, people know it. Predators know it”. I find this chilling and I ask myself - are we really like moths to the flames?
This is just the beginning of my own personal, creative journey with the Complex Emotions Hub and I only have a vague idea of where it will take me.
On a very personal level, I know that my moth is imperfect and incomplete and although I have an urge to keep improving it, on a very different level I know that I should leave it alone and accept if for what it is… imperfect, as I myself am imperfect.
What I do know is that this journey will involve many others, both with and without this label, and we will realise mine and their own visions.
And perhaps, together, we will start to change the way the world sees the “moth”.
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