BPD Experiences??
 

Today I read about Borderline Personality Disorder - funnily enough i'd always confused it with split personality disorder thinking they were similar illnesses. Turns out that its not, and BPD seems to encompass every mood swing and false diagnosis I'd received in the past. I was wondering if anyone with diagnosed BPD is on this site and could spare sometime to talk...share their experiences??

While looking for help in the past i spent 2 years bounced around between doctors and different possible diagnosis and felt defeated and more alone than ever. It was as if I'd never find a diagnosis even let alone an answer or normalcy, and would live in a mysterious hell of sorts for the rest of my life. I'm just asking for this clarification so I'm sure I want to go through this again - maybe to give me some faith in the official diagnosis process again, I dunno - but if I'm completely off in thinking there might be some sense in what's going on with me after all, I'm not sure I really want to visit any doctors quite yet. But I don't want any potential posters to worry I'm using this as their 'professional experience' i'd never place that much actual diagnostic value in what is said here, rest assured. I just think I can learn a lot from what you know...:)

Thanks for reading guys n gals!

XX

((((((((HUGS)))))))
sry sybil, i dont know much about it,
but i hope u find what ur looking for.

lots of love
ozzy <3

Don't know if there are rules against this if so take it off and please don't kick me off...i just don't hav etime to check.

but this is the description of BPD on this site NIMH &#183; Borderline Personality Disorder

"While a person with depression or bipolar disorder typically endures the same mood for weeks, a person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last only hours, or at most a day.5 These may be associated with episodes of impulsive aggression, self-injury, and drug or alcohol abuse. Distortions in cognition and sense of self can lead to frequent changes in long-term goals, career plans, jobs, friendships, gender identity, and values. Sometimes people with BPD view themselves as fundamentally bad, or unworthy. They may feel unfairly misunderstood or mistreated, bored, empty, and have little idea who they are. Such symptoms are most acute when people with BPD feel isolated and lacking in social support, and may result in frantic efforts to avoid being alone.
People with BPD often have highly unstable patterns of social relationships. While they can develop intense but stormy attachments, their attitudes towards family, friends, and loved ones may suddenly shift from idealization (great admiration and love) to devaluation (intense anger and dislike). Thus, they may form an immediate attachment and idealize the other person, but when a slight separation or conflict occurs, they switch unexpectedly to the other extreme and angrily accuse the other person of not caring for them at all. Even with family members, individuals with BPD are highly sensitive to rejection, reacting with anger and distress to such mild separations as a vacation, a business trip, or a sudden change in plans. These fears of abandonment seem to be related to difficulties feeling emotionally connected to important persons when they are physically absent, leaving the individual with BPD feeling lost and perhaps worthless. Suicide threats and attempts may occur along with anger at perceived abandonment and disappointments.
People with BPD exhibit other impulsive behaviors, such as excessive spending, binge eating and risky sex. BPD often occurs together with other psychiatric problems, particularly bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and other personality disorders."

I said I'd write my life story on here cause I found it interesting - I wrote it but can't post it but for anyone who wants to know this is what it feels like to be me.

This is the most concise description i can make, the most honest answer...this is the most shame i can share in one post...i'm walking away and not looking at this posting again either i don't think...well i'll try but pm me if you like.

PS. ozzy thanks so much for that posting by the way...I don't know if ever i did post back here

Sybil the diagnosis of BPD was put out there for my daughter who self harms. I immediately did all the reading I could (non-academic and some academic) What happened to me was this: After a while I couldn't see the wood for the trees. It became very difficult for me to look at things objectively. I know I am not explaining this very well. I started to explain her actions and my actions through the filter or lens as it were of a BPD diagnosis, which impacted on us greatly. I got caught up in the medical wheel. As you are aware the root 'cause' for BPD has a knack of mentioning childhood and mothers. Hello! I am the mother. So anyway, I was convinced that she had BPD. It didn't take long before a good friend shook me and said 'Bullshit. I think your daughter is taking drugs." So I did the same research and it scared me because she fit that profile as well. My daughter displayed pretty much all the symptoms of an ecstacy user and crystalmeth user. She also fit the profile of bi-polar with a number of underlying disorders and I read up on them. I could have read the DSM IV and put label after label on her. One day, I stepped back and let all that stuff go. I remembered she was my daughter, I loved her and these were the only eyes I needed to look at her with. She still occasionally sees the psych but at 18 you simply cannot diagnosis BPD and I am not willing to apply that label. I am willing to say she has some problems that we need to work on and also manage and get help for. The medical profession hates bpd. It is obscure, vague and those with it don't fit into a box. Better to call them the too hard basket people, is what a nurse told me. I resent that, so this is why I have the view I do.

I know Delta, and that's kinda what scares me too cause when I read it I was soooo relieved to finally have something that makes everything in my life fall into place. But when I read further I now realize the difficulty it implies and even the imploication it has on the person I am, so I am wondering what happens once its treated, will it be successful? if so will I be me or a nicer version of me or am I the angry person? I don't know. so it is scary I'll admit and I understand the idea of putting everything through a lens, but for me I've already been putting everything through a filter mentally, detaching myself because of conditioning.

As a child I was VERY BPD but my family is not one to jump to psych. and they took it as me being a problem child of sorts, always fighting everyone, always playing the victim but they thought its cause i was the youngest and most spoiled as a result. In fact I've never felt that, but what they did do was tell me my behavior was wrong and I need to control it etc. so the erratic stuff I've been filtering since then. I filter myself on here, I filter myself everyday with the people I speak to. I only know how to be comfortable if I am on the other persons playing field and so they accept me, I've molded myself and adapted myself my entire life under this premise not knowing why I can't have my way like other people. How come I don't have a personality that fits anywhere, my family even went as far as teasing me that i'm adopted my entire life that's how far I didn't fit. The long posting I wrote yesterday details parts of my childhood I thought were normal and never considered a problem. I had a talk with my bf once I read this and told him these things, and he confirmed they are very not normal i should have different feelings. But its things like being 6 yrs old and thinking the people bullying me were irrelevant cause intellectually i could not define what the problem they had with me was. So I just distance myself from them, but never felt bothered by them. Yesterday I read that with BPD, that is a defense mechanism, intellectualization...i think in blaack and white, etc. I basically fit this description to the dot. And I realize the difficulties that treating it will have, but I can't live with the natural tendencies not treating it leaves either right?? So I'm facing this challenge straight on. BPD has the highest rate of self-harming...I remember cutting myself at 12 and thinking it was normal to be curious about death...guess what i never shared that with anyone but now i see its not so normal so maybe my depressive behavior started earlier than i thought etc. it just places to many factors in a perfect line...its the only hope i have to escape my mental reality so as much as i can deny it and try fixing pieces of me and building myself up (which i've done as well my whole life literally) it may be better to let the therapist just fix it if she can...??

Anyway it is messed up but my default setting is dark and I never say those things cause I just think thats the way i think i'm negative etc. but its just not healthy...who knows how long i can rationalize it to myself and keep myself from hurting me...its just better to face it in my case. I think.

But I definitly agree with you and as a result have and am trying to stop reading too much into it and just be...my new therapist also suggested i now leave it to them and I am...I'm hoping they're that smart lol....always the skeptic. But they work in a huge group and have specialists and things so they'll evaluate me, discuss all of it together then assign it to whomever's field my diagnosis lands in.

I think that's also why I'm able to spill it out here...cause the control is out of my hands in a sense so i can just put it here and what happens happens. but it really explains my life better than I can...weird.

By the way Delta...I forgot to add this in reference to you...I love my mother to death but was not raised with her. My boyfriend brought this up last night ...

cause he is EXACTLY like me in his mindset, same sensitivities as BPD and everything...he does things the way you and your daughter are, coping with the little fixes and not considering himself 'BPD'...he's had drug problems and things in the past...but he's a darling mama's boy now lol. it works. he's my template i want to be like.

But yeah he pointed out last night that his friend (has severe BPD, literally acts out like a child non stop, angry, drug abuse, cutting non stop, severe punishign of those around him, blame etc.) and this goes on for 4 days a week with him. I just lapse into depression and stuff. but what my bf pointed out was his friend and I both left home (as in with parents in it) by 14, rarely spent time with family since that age, had little consistency in our lives after etc...his idea was that that's why mine is harder for me to deal with, his friend is even worse...etc.

so maybe there is a reason why the BPD thing didn't totally fit with your daughter and maybe that is the fact that you have been there...the mother!

Esentially it is vague enough that anyone can think they are there...but its clear when its in your own mind and the stability is not there. I can blame and hate anyone and anything from the most irrational triggers and always thought that was me like I said. But that's now taught meto look at my childhood and instead of blaming my dad or anyone i'm thinking its just my mind that wants to blame, they are human. omnipotence is not a human trait etc. it rationalizes so even if your daughter thinks she is or was or anything like that, it doesn't mean you are definitly the cause it could be she's sensitive and thinks so, but you've actually been the reason she's hung in there. Don't sell yourself short, if there are flaws in psychology it could be that one just as easily.

PS. I don't think everyone is BPD, but I think my bf has picked out a lot of BPD personalities which is statistically possible and also he's admitted to me as 'i like quirky friends etc.' calling all the girls he knows 'strong yet crazy and scary women' so i think subconciously he's comfortable and well-formed cause those around him he's chose as his close friends and is soooo careful about this, its weird, they're all like this. and he's been telling me these traits all along and we only fit it together last night cause we read a book that listed the traits (its a doctors guide) and he literally was piecing together all these people...of course in private, we'd never say anything like that to a perfectly happy person. just so you know, its not an obsession its just a topic thats on the table for me right now. :) i don't wanna worry you i guess.

Well I think BPD is another word for idiopathic - no known cause. Doctors relegate people there when they don't have an answer. I am being cynical I know.

you are right, that's why I was really just shocked and annoyed by it after my initial reaction cause it erally is not an answer at all. You said it right on that is what it is, that is what i read. Its basically because BPD patients have complete knowledge of reality and are clear as day, so not psychotic, but there is an element of neurotic, but also other things, but just troubled i guess. but they have not divided it up officially into different names yet so that does suck!

You have every right to be cynical, and I agree with you 100%.

I just can't afford it I guess, so I'd rather just see if the doctor's actually found something helpful from their research since.

Otherwise I really have nothing to go on right...i've had too many diagnosis and now i've read too much i guess, to think i'm a depressed person is insulting the people who really are depressed. I function one day and the next I don't, you know how dumb I feel?? fake?? it really is something for me to hold on to as an explanation where nothing else did tht before and i know it.

I totally agree with your skepticism and stuf, and i'm actually enjoying your input so much now cause that was the reason for my original posting...i figured there would be complete skeptics and that would keep me in check.

which you are...thanks.

how are you today though? enough about this i guess.

Sybil, you need to do what is right for you. You are so obviously an intelligent insightful indivdual. There is no doubt in my mind that you will challenge where you need to and ask the hard questions. My situation is different simply because I have a loved one who is wanting to be labelled - anything, anything at all as a 'get out jail free card'. For example, she wanted to use this diagnosis to apply for disability pension. You are genuinely participating in the management of your own health care, so you're not likely to get shafted. I am if I am not careful

I see...I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe its important you do keep being skeptical in that case.

I know that can be a problem...I kinda have to keep a conscious check on myself too cause when i'm down and even now i still do plan this (but in more socially acceptable terms), ways out of life. I can't kill myself so lets get a financial bundle that will allow me to feed the depression or whatever it is. I have very interesting schemes i've developed, several exit strategies...but the bottom line is you're still as miserable and that feeling doesn't become easier cause you erase all responsibility from the table.

Don't worry, that you cannot control, its just the bottom I believe (it may not be the same for everyone) but I think its the line that is there that says ok well you're not going to end it you know its bad, there's no grand plan (that works 100%) to escape it either...and that's when you just face it, seek treatment, ignore it, push push push then you can stop having to worry and you'll see that the pension plan does not matter...its going to be all about getting better.

But in all fairness, if I won the lottery tomorrow I can't say I won't buy an island, a boat full of intoxicating party favors and fry my mind till the last breath i breathe. I don't want to die...but I would sooooo get revenge on my brain and enjoy doing it. Now things like that...i know normal society won't approve of, and I can't become a hippie in 2008 so ah well...we'll call it a pipe dream i guess lol. but i just don't want to be a hypocrit cause its all in there i still think these things, i've just learned ot compartmentalize it so i see your side as well. I think its my self-support system.

anyway i'll do what i need i guess but i really do appreciate your feedback...so you know. I have a hint of a suspicion i probably frustrated you and I do that a lot when i get really into conversations so please know I do understand the difference, I really do, its just maybe i use you to say all the things i would say to the people who've been around me in the past and didn't give credit to their efforts...you do good you are right and i have not once heard anything dumb, or i don't respect or anything from you at all...every discussion has been great insight and input and yo uhave a lot more depth and understanding than i ever will to tell the truth. hence i don't want ot be misunderstood.

You haven't frustrated me. I enjoy perspective. I really genuinely concerned about my daughter's health. My underlying concern for her is that she needs to become proactive in taking care of it. To me, it doesn't matter what the diagnosis is if she doesn't give a hoot and sits in an armchair all day, missing doctor appts. I have epilepsy and I am sure if I try hard enough, I can use this to get out of working and participating in a positive way. What I can do is go down a path which is not so good. If she does have BPD, then I expect her to embrace it as part of her unique identity rather than use it to exempt herself from having to perform like the rest of us. I know I sound hard. I am not pushing her any harder than I would anybody else. she just got a bill for $607 for the ambulance on Sunday for her self-harming and a letter from Social Security saying she has been rejected because she has not applied for benefits correctly. She still expects me to fix this, because she isn't well. Later, she schedules and organises social time with her friends. 'ok, I will be there at 3pm' She makes and executes those engagements with her buddies yet she can't do it for appts to manage her health or get on Youth allowance (because she isn't well) I am not prepared to enable this cycle on the premise that BPD made her do it - especially when we have support services and I remind her each day. I hope you understand my posiiton Sybil.

I totally do and to be totally honest i agree with you.

I sympathize with her cause I know the stress of hanging out is minimal whereas just the thought of doing something (even if you have the parts and its minimal work to accomplish the task) feels stressful, especially if its important to life. You've read on BPD and so I won't bring that in but I'm sure you've read the relationship here?

I came to the conclusion after 6 years of living a torturred life in silence and pretending to be happy at these social gatherings. It was a slow progress of deterioration, i lost friends as i started to feel more dettached from these social activities - i kinda got turned off by my friends cause i was having depressive episodes and all sorts of thoughts when hanging out and i thought it was them. But after spending my one year in bed all day and partying all night i realized that I would easily looose my entire life, what i worked for, in a matter of a year and had to pull it together. No one could do it for me cause at 16 I was sent away for rebelling...

but that lack of support did push me to help myself so hence i did when i was hitting near rock bottom but i was 22 then.

So you are right, I can't do much to console you its your daughter...you could pull the rug out from under her and if she has no support she won't be enabled or take advantage of it...I ten to do that when i have support to...I read BPD patients do that as well.

But the thing is I would not recommend it if she was diagnosed BPD don't take the risk cause the severe BPd is unpredicatble and so what she does to get your attention maybe worse than actually just letting life detriorate...i'm sorry to say that, i'm sure you already know this.

The tough love while you are supporting her is the only middle ground I can think of as well...I'm here for when you're frustrated, want to vent etc. or anything feel free as usual. And again good job on the job you are doing I seriously am still amazed at your ability to understand something so far from your reality.

You're a blessing someday she'll see it and use it wisely.

Thanks Sybil. It's heartwarming to hear your sentiments