A couple of beers, one old song, and suddenly I’m right back in the headspace that kicked off Manchester Madness.

But before I even set foot in the UK, there’s a pretty big blind spot in this story that I need to own. This isn’t just my story. It’s also the story of a woman who got pulled into the chaos of my untreated, untamed Borderline Personality Disorder — and wore far more of the emotional fallout than anyone should have had to carry.

I rewind to the lead-up to my student exchange, the Manchester Metropolitan University group chat, and the bigger, louder version of myself I started creating online. Then a psychology student goes from being “someone interesting” to, somehow, “the one”, before we’d even met.

Looking back, the warning signs were everywhere: idealisation, obsession disguised as purpose, intense attachment and a desperate need for connection that I simply didn’t understand at the time.

I also unpack what BPD felt like from the inside, while being brutally honest about some of the more cringe-inducing parts of this story. Because if I’m going to tell Manchester Madness properly, I can’t polish the uncomfortable bits or pretend my mental health only affected me.

This is where the story really begins.

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Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience.
Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

I didn’t plan to record again so soon, but the last chat about Manchester lit something up that I couldn’t ignore. After I stop talking, I’m back walking Newcastle Beach, doing that familiar late-night scan of the stars and asking the same old question: why am I still alone? The unsettling part is that life looks different now and I’ve done so much work on myself, yet the feeling lands in the same place.

I get into a word I missed last time: insight. Awareness is noticing what’s happening, but insight is understanding why it happens and what it costs. With more insight, therapy tools, and hard-earned stability, I’m not the “perfect” version of me, but I am a better version. That’s why it stings when Avril Lavigne pops up on my playlist and the emotional flashback hits. The soundtrack changes, the years pass, and still the relationship questions follow me from the beach to the highway.

Then I lay out the big metaphor: my life as a car that used to be powerful but unreliable, with gremlins that could make it blow up. Over time the engineers (me, plus treatment and effort) fixed the faults. The 2026 model is solid, resilient, and ready, but it feels like nobody’s buying, like the market has moved on to a different life stage. If you’ve ever felt the frustration of mental health recovery not delivering the one thing you want most, you’ll understand the punch-in-the-guts honesty here

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Follow The Dysregulated Podcast:
Instagram – @elliot.t.waters
Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast
YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel)

Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience.
Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

A six-month university semester to study in Manchester, United Kingdom was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. Looking back, it became the dividing line between thinking I was coping and realising there was a hell of a lot more going on in my head than anxiety and depression alone.

Walking along Newcastle Beach (like so many times before), I kick off Manchester Madness, a three-part series looking back at one of the most chaotic and important periods of my life. Part 1 is the build-up: disengaging from uni, drifting through life without much direction, and then suddenly having this huge adventure on the horizon.

Manchester became more than a student exchange trip. In my head, it was going to be the place where I beat social anxiety, became confident, found myself and maybe even found love. For a while, I felt almost invincible.

But underneath it all were patterns I didn't yet have names for — intense relationships, intrusive thoughts, jealousy, emotional instability and behaviours I would later understand very differently.

This is the story before everything went off the rails. Before the diagnoses. Before I understood what was happening to me.

And before Manchester changed everything.

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Follow The Dysregulated Podcast:
Instagram – @elliot.t.waters
Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast
YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel)

Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience.
Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.