Living With Borderline Personality Disorder

by Urban Woodswalker Borderline Personality Disorder has taken the place of Bi-Polar Disorder as one of the least understood dis-eases. Manic Depre

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder

by Urban Woodswalker

Borderline Personality Disorder has taken the place of Bi-Polar Disorder as one of the least understood dis-eases. Manic Depression or Bi-Polar has several celebrities who have said they suffer from it and others have helped make the bi-polar person real and the label less dreaded.

The same thing needs to be done to BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). It is not the end of the world to be diagnosed, and you can live a productive life with good treatment, self awareness, and medication.

In my case, I was not aware that I was different until my first year in college. I had not suffered the splits where your self becomes fractured until that date. After coming home from college I did not realize that it could happen again. I thought it was the pressures of being away and unhappy at a college I did not like that caused the "break down". I thought I had a nervous breakdown pure and simple-whatever that may be.

The next episode occurred at my first job teaching in private schools. I had gone around the world that summer and felt a lot of dissociation, similar to splitting where you sense of self feels empty or gone. It is difficult to act, talk, make decisions if who you are is not being continuous , or you feel your self is vacant.

I was lucky that I could compose myself sometimes quickly. I was resilient. My attitude was to keep going. I thought it would pass. There was a long period of highs and lows: anxiety that could set off the splits and depression.

I would stay at jobs for about three years and then get the urge to change. Impulsive decisions are part of this dis-ease,

When a form of psychotherapy started, the leader asked me what I was feeling. I slowly put names to feelings: anger, rage, sad, defensive, depressed, reactive, lost, split, and others. The negative feelings were identified first.

It took another therapist to give me the names of other feelings: beautiful, delightful, endearing, peaceful, glad, happy, to mention a few. Each experience of a feeling, felt, came with her story telling.

Her relationship with her husband, her children, her parents, her grandchildren, and interests became fodder for the stories. The telling was like a romp: playfully guiding me through lots of experiences and feelings. I not only could name the feeling and attach them to situations, I could open up to a larger range of sensation. It became more fun to be happy than depressed. I liked being on the positive side of the rainbow. I knew her for about 5 years and would see her periodically for another 3 years.

Borderline Personality Disorder AnxietyAttack.org

An Overview of Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder

life i suffer from psychosis depression anxiety borderline personality ...

Source : http://imentalhealth.net/mental-health-disorders/personality-disorders/living-with-borderline-personality-disorder

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Commonly question about Living With Borderline Personality Disorder

Question :

Are there any support groups for families living with Borderline Personality Disorder?

The person diagnosed is a ten year old girl. We have been to all the counselors in town and they don t help. My daughter shuts up like a vault, and her psychiatrist has tried all he can to get her to open up.

Answer :
NO therapist worth their fee is going to label a ten year old girl with BPD. It sounds like she has a reason to shut down,and it sounds like she is now the scapegoat for whatever is going on that she does not feel safe enough to talk about.
Regardless it sounds like she may be being sexually abused and is in fear of talking about it, as a possiblity.
There are groups for support , if you just look /search them for your area or dailystrength.org
I think this child is being harmed by family and therapists alike.
No one treats 10 year olds or children and teens this way.
It is unprofessional.
I would find some healing therapists that can help her and the family, or get her out of there completely, until I knew she is safe.
eftmastersworldwide.com

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Question :

Living with Borderline Personality Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder?

What helps you get threw day to day life when you have these two disorder s? What are some on the destructive behavior s you have and how you cope with them? I have both disorders and am just looking for some similar people who can shed some light at the end of the tunnel...

Answer :
Although Borderline Personality Disorder is less well known than bipolar and
schizophrenia it is more common, affecting 2% of adults in the US and accounting
for a whopping 20% of psychiatric hospitalizations in the US. Completed suicide
rates in BPD is an incredible 8-10%. All that having been said, borderline
personality disorder is not a death sentance. There is strong research which
suggests that often symptoms of BPD decrease as the sufferer ages from a
teenager to a young adult and their brain fully develops. With early
intervention, likelyhood of recovery is also increased

With borderline personality disorder it s really hard to find good therapists
because everyone s either scared of the label or isn t experienced enough to
help you. One of the most effective treatments for Borderline personality
disorder is a type of therapy called DBT (Dialectical Behavioral
Therapy). DBT was developed by a psychologist who had borderline her self. She
found in her own recovery, and in treating her patients, that CBT (cognitive
behavioral therapy) was too oriented on change for borderlines, leading them to
feel invalidated and have a high risk of dropping out of treatment. DBT is a
balance of acceptance and change. The tag line is that DBT teaches you to "Build
A Life Worth Living". And two uniquie focuses of DBT include training on
dialectical thinking (seeing both sides to every story) and mindfulness ( living
in the present, concepts are most highly pulled from Zen Buddhism, but are not
at all religious in nature.) It teaches you skills in distress tolerance (which
is crisis survival), interpersonal effectiveness (how to improve your
relationships), mindfulness ( living in the present moment, meditation type
stuff), and emotional regulation (how to prevent yourself from going into crisis
to begin with..basic taking care of yourself kind of stuff). DBT is developed
for TEAMS of clinicians working together, and includes: individual
psychotherapy, group skills training, phone coaching, and consultation team-
which is when the clinicians meet to discuss cases and support each other.
Although consultation team does not directly impact that patient, it is seen as
a manadory component of DBT, and you should seek a DBT group or center, not an
individual DBT Clinician if at all possible.

DBT is very very different than standard psychotherapy, which tends to be a
processing therapy. While in standard therapy you may spend many many sessions
focusing on whats wrong, DBT is constantly redirecting you towards focusing on
solutions. and in absense of concrete solutions, acceptance, so you decrease
suffering.

I think it is important to emphasize that \DBT is not a magical cure, nothing is.
And it can take a lot of perserverence to continue to incorperate skills into
your daily life when you aren t seeing a dramatic increase in mood. Most DBT
outpatient therapies need a time span of 1-2 years in therapy for full benefit.
It is not meant to be a life long treatment, although you could use it that way.
But for someone who is intelligent, and is determined to make the best of what
they have been given DBT is an excellent choice.

If you are interested in doing some work in DBT on your own, I would
suggest the "Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Skills Workbook" its green and is
published by New Harbinger Publishers. Here is a link to their original one,
they also have recently published variations of it, and one of them I know is
for Bulimia.

http://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Behavi
/ref=pd_sim_b_9

Medication can help treat some struggles relating to BPD, but behavioral therapy
is considered much more effective.

Question :

What has it been like to live with Borderline Personality Disorder?

Hi,

If you or someone close to you is living with borderline personality disorder, I would greatly appreciate hearing about your experiences, views, and stories, long or short.

How has Borderline Personality Disorder changed your life?

All contributions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks :)

Answer :
Borderline Personality Disorder is hell to live with, whether you re on the receiving end, or whether you re the one experiencing it. Imagine having all these emotions but not knowing where they come from, not knowing how to deal with them, and control them without either blocking them out or having some sort of outburst. It s not a pleasant thing, but unlike some other personality disorders you can gain control over your emotions, and you can experience them without blocking them out. Basically borderlines lost touch with themselves somewhere along the way. Oftentimes borderlines are born to parents who are either just plain cruel, uemotional and unempathetic, or neglectful, narcissistic, with a failure to protect their children. They say Borderline Personality Disorder happens when a parent or key figure in the child s life fails to prevent that child from a very traumatic, abusive event or events. That s why Borderlines have a fear of abandonment. But to keep it short, one of the ways Borderlines can get in touch with themselves, and their potent emotions is to basically isolate themselves for a while, and try to get in touch with who they really are. As long as a Borderline lives with the people who have created that disorder in them, they will never improve. So it s best to take some time out for themselves, to be with their own thoughts and feelings for a longer period of time. At first it will be hell to deal with, because the Borderline will start feeling all these feelings, depression, abandonment, but this is actually what will get them in touch with their latent emotions. Once they are in touch with their emotions, they won t fall out of touch, that s why it s important for them to be alone for an extended period of time. If they have enough money to just be with themselves and not work for a month or two, even that is enough to get them in touch with themselves. Also they should examine their past, their family, caretakers and learn to identify these people for what they are. If they have a narcissistic parent, they need to see that parent as narcissistic, and not something else, because this will only perpetuate the illusion they ve been living with. They need to correctly identify all the issues their caretakers have, and sometimes even personality disorders, because oftentimes what led them to having borderline personality disorder is having to deal with caretakers that either have the same personality disorder, or perhaps something more incurable like narcissisim, histrionic or anti-social personality disorder. Good luck.