Well I decided to search tonight
to see if you still had a blog online...
What she had posted, I don't know who it was meant for, I just know that this is the best explanation of the disease I have ever heard and for once can actually understand why I'm diagnosed w/ it.
By Ann Appelbaum, M.D. and Frank Yeomans, M.D., Ph.D.
The symptoms of borderline patients are similar to those for which most people seek psychiatric help: depression, mood swings, the use and abuse of drugs and alcohol as a means of trying to feel better; obsessions, phobias, feelings of emptiness and loneliness, inability to tolerate being alone, problems about eating.
But, in addition, borderlines show great difficulties in controlling ragefulness; they are unusually impulsive, they fall in and out of love suddenly; they tend to idealize other people and then abruptly despise them. A consequence of all this is that they typically look for help from a therapist and then suddenly quit in terrible disappointment and anger.
Underneath all these symptoms, therapists began to see in borderline people an inability to tolerate the levels of anxiety, frustration, rejection and loss that most people are able to put up with, an inability to soothe and comfort themselves when they become upset, and an inability to control the impulses toward the expression, through action, of love and hate that most people are able to hold in check. And, furthermore, what most defines the "borderline" personality, is great difficulty in holding on to a stable, consistent sense of one's self: "Who am I?" these people ask. "My life is in chaos; sometimes I feel like I can do anything - other times I want to die because I feel so incompetent, helpless and loathsome. I'm a lot of different people instead of being just one person."
The one word that best characterizes borderline personality is "instability." Their emotions are unstable, fluctuating wildly for no discernible reason. Their thinking is unstable - rational and clear at times, quite psychotic at other times. Their behavior is unstable - often with periods of excellent conduct, high efficiency and trustworthiness alternating with outbreaks of babyishness, suddenly quitting a job, withdrawing into isolation, failing.
Their self control is unstable - ranging from the extreme self denial of anorexia to being at the mercy of impulses. And their relationships are unstable. They may sacrifice themselves for others, only to reach their limit suddenly and fly into rageful reproaches, or they may curry favor with obedient submission only to rebel, out of the blue, in a tantrum.
Associated with this instability is terrible anxiety, guilt and self-loathing for which relief is sought at any cost - medicine, drugs, alcohol, overeating, suicide. Sadly, oddly, self mutilation is discovered by many borderline people to provide faster relief than anything else - cutting or burning themselves stops the anxiety temporarily.
The effect upon others of all this trouble is profound: family members never know what to expect from their volatile child, siblings, or spouse, except they know they can expect trouble: suicide threats and attempts, self-inflicted injuries, outbursts of rage and recrimination, impulsive marriages, divorces, pregnancies and abortions; repeated starting and stopping of jobs and school careers, and a pervasive sense, on the part of the family, of being unable to help.
Sometimes, severe and chronic chaos in the family life plays an important role, but one has to differentiate the objective behavior of the family from the patient's subjective experience.
And, of course, the effect of the illness upon the life of the patient is equally profound: jobs are lost, successes are spoiled, relationships shattered, families alienated. The end result is all too often the failure of a promising life, or a tragic suicide.
posted by LittleOne @ 11:56 PM
2 Comments:
Heya, actually the two of us continue to read avidly. AC told me to check out your blog yesterday, I didn't make it past this post b/c I didn't do anything but glance over it and get angry. Stupid me, I thought you were making fun of me. ( Lord only knows why) But today I checked again and noticed I happened to find something that might have helped you out a little. And that felt good. You know, it helped me out too. (bathroom break...) I lay in bed the night before I posted racking my brain and torturing myself, 'Why am I such a fucking miserable bitch!?' 'What am I ignoring?' 'It must be something huge!' And so on and so forth.
Sure it turns out all this wondering and remembering is much too little much much much too late, but I still feel a sense of relief.
When I was in the program in the place with all the walls, and then in the one where I got to go outside, and then the one that lead me here, I was diagnosed with BPD.
Third time's supposed to be a charm, but oh no; not me. I was convinced one diagnosis was quite enough thank you. I knew what I had and no one no matter what their profession was was going to tell me otherwise. Hmph! They even started me in the DBT groups as treatment for it. I never made it to them for obvious reasons. I actually still didn't remember and accept it until I saw the DBT mentioned in the article you copied.
The PMDD only makes it more intense and obvious in the two to two and a half weeks that its in effect. But as I read I had many of my own questions answered as well. I felt more or less, 'more human'. Not quite so lost and well, pathetic. Hell I've felt down right dirty, thinking my thoughts, feelings, and actions, were manifestations of vileness and meanness. Atleast I don't have to feel like Satan anymore. LOL. 'Why did I ignore all those people?' 'I could have had SOME relief prior to now, had I cared to listen.' But we all know I'm stubborn and hard headed. So I can't be truly surprised.
There is actually a questionaire for people who live with sufferers of BPD which I will email to you. It really helped me see another side of things as well.
It's a little too late for me to seek any form of treatment, I've thrown away that right and option. But I still can't ignore that some sort of work needs to be done to better the situation in atleast some small way. So I try to differentiate between a real situation versus how I preceive and feel it. And various other self-training, disiplinary ideas, to help me get a grasp on reality I guess.
I remember when being diagnosed they tried explaining the how's and why's. That it breeds and configures itself through early chilhood. Tramatic events, the ways one deals with them, especially when it entails keeping secrets. The lack of 'role modles', or parent that you can model yourself after. Ergo diminishing a REAL sense of right and wrong, or fantasy vs reality. One BPD person thinks, 'I feel this, I persieve this, it MUST be'. 'God Damnit I feel it therefore it is, and there is no more.' We've trapped ourselves unknowingly in a life with only black and white, nice or mean, truth or lies, pain or joy. Our lives consist of polar opposites and our feelings, actions, and thoughts become polar as well.
We seemed to have used up all our coping skills before we ever knew how to use them. I feel living in this way, with this monkey on our backs, is like running through life like a chicken with its head cut off. No direction, only the pain and confusion of actually having a part of us severed from our bodies, as we run blindly and desperatley, grasping at any straws we can find,all the while bleeding profusely from our severed necks.
Pretty grim and gruesome portraile. But isn't it just that? And don't others just stand there laughing and mocking as we try to claw and peck our way to the next breath? Calling us 'crazy, and bitches, and psycho,and pathetic etc. etc. I know we've both had our fair share of that.
But having some sort of method to our madness kind of makes them the silly and cruel ones does it not? After reading a post below this one, all I can say is; Should you put yourself through more pain because of their nasty indescressions? Be rock, be an island. Neither of those are topples easily. And if all else fails, just say Fuck The World! Love you.....
That was supposed to be toppled not topless. LOL
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