Why I think your thumbs up emoji means you’re mad at me, and other things my brain does

Look. I’m not trying to come for the habitual thumbs‑up emoji users. This is not an attack – I’m not the emoji police. But any time someone uses it in response to a message or post I’ve written, my brain goes into overdrive.

What your thumbs‑up emoji probably means:

• “Got it” (understood)
• “I like this”
• “Yes”
• “Agreed”

What my brain tells me it means:

• You’re furious
• “Got it” (the sarcastic kind)
• “Fine” (like when someone says it’s fine, but it’s really not fine)
• The infamous “quite good” as us Brits understand it to mean: “satisfactory,” “fairly good,” or “not that good,” not what it means to American people: “very good” or “excellent.”

Lots of people experience these kinds of anxious interpretations. For me, living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) means everyday signals can get rewritten into catastrophic scripts. It’s not because I enjoy drama. It’s because my brain is wired to fear abandonment so intensely that even emojis feel like rejection letters.

What's BPD?

Borderline Personality Disorder is characterised by emotional instability and unstable interpersonal relationships. It affects thoughts, emotions, self‑image and behaviour. People with BPD often think, feel, behave, or relate to others differently than the average person. As well as affecting your mood and interactions, it can also distort patterns of thinking. Like me, you might swing rapidly between confidence and despair.

BPD is a complex mental health condition. Just to give you the full picture, here’s are the key markers (note: not everyone with BPD experiences all of these):

• Fear of abandonment – even small changes in communication can feel like huge losses.
• Intense emotions – joy, anger, sadness and anxiety arrive like tidal waves.
• Impulsivity – decisions made in the heat of distress can backfire.
• Unstable relationships – swinging between idealising, fearing rejection, splitting (seeing things, situations, or people in extremes – all good or all bad, with little room for nuance).
• Chronic emptiness – a sense of being hollow or disconnected and sometimes dissociating.
• Self‑harm or suicidal thoughts – coping mechanisms for overwhelming pain.

Now, I’m not saying everyone with BPD will have these extreme (and often unfounded) assumptions when faced with the dreaded (and much maligned, in this piece) thumbs-up emoji. But many of the symptoms I experience means there’s probably a link there. Everybody experiences mental health problems differently. And even those who experience the same symptoms might see them manifest in unique ways.

Some other things my brain frequently tells me:

• Delayed text reply? My brain: They’ve left me. Forever.
• Neutral tone in an email? My brain: They hate me. I should resign immediately.
• Friend cancels plans? My brain: They’re abandoning me. I’ll never recover.

It’s exhausting, not least because I make a concerted effort to learn as much as I can about BPD and mental health more broadly, so I’ve got the intellectual grounding to lean on. But that doesn’t mean I can control my thought processes any easier. That’s a key thing to understand about mental health: it’s not as simple as “think positively” or “stop overthinking.” Our brains are wired differently.

When I’m in a semi‑okay headspace, it’s oddly comic to step back and realise how much emotional energy I spend decoding punctuation. Humour helps me cope. But on the days when I’m already devaluing myself, having extreme and inaccurate perceptions of myself and others, (or I’m mad at myself), my brain insists that your very‑likely‑innocent, likely-thought-nothing-of-it thumbs‑up emoji means you’re mad at me.