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Bun
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30 Jan 2012, 8:30 am

StanleyTweedle wrote:
With so much information on the internet about every topic under the sun, it's not unusual for people with problems to self-dx. Especially if they have a crappy doctor or no doctor at all if they lack health care insurance.

Yeah, well, I get *that*. What I don't get is why would anyone feel encouraged by reading the criteria for BPD, it sounds like professional speak for 'problem patient'. Or like someone said here, a wreck that can't go in a relationship without serious treatment (I know I'm heavily paraphrasing, but this is what it felt like to me, reading the post I'm referring to).


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30 Jan 2012, 8:44 am

Bun wrote:
StanleyTweedle wrote:
With so much information on the internet about every topic under the sun, it's not unusual for people with problems to self-dx. Especially if they have a crappy doctor or no doctor at all if they lack health care insurance.

Yeah, well, I get *that*. What I don't get is why would anyone feel encouraged by reading the criteria for BPD, it sounds like professional speak for 'problem patient'. Or like someone said here, a wreck that can't go in a relationship without serious treatment (I know I'm heavily paraphrasing, but this is what it felt like to me, reading the post I'm referring to).


Yeah its not a very fun disorder, so I imagine people who self diagnose themselves with it must be experiencing some pretty horrible symptoms and might find that explains it.


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Bun
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30 Jan 2012, 8:58 am

True. While I don't know anyone who self DXed with it, I know someone who got her diagnosis changed from BPD to C-PTSD, and she still thinks Borderline explains a lot for her, she's really well-read on it as well. And I can tell these are very real issues to someone experiencing them. Another thing I want to add about BPD related articles out there, it talks about the patient experiencing imagined abandonment from the same sex-parent, and experiencing the other sex parent as abusive. These are definitely real issues for some people who are diagnosed with BPD, who are not just projecting/having some sort of distorted perception, but really went through abuse and neglect. On the upside, I read that DBT recognises that people who have this disorder often come from invalidating homes, and need a protective/close relationship with their therapist. I wonder if it's only been implemented in recent years, and if there had been a turn in the approach to borderliners lately. I was diagnosed 10 years ago, and I didn't even get as much as an explanation about it, maybe because of the 'problem patient' attitude, or maybe they thought I wouldn't be able to understand it.


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StanleyTweedle
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30 Jan 2012, 1:20 pm

Bun wrote:
StanleyTweedle wrote:
With so much information on the internet about every topic under the sun, it's not unusual for people with problems to self-dx. Especially if they have a crappy doctor or no doctor at all if they lack health care insurance.

Yeah, well, I get *that*. What I don't get is why would anyone feel encouraged by reading the criteria for BPD, it sounds like professional speak for 'problem patient'. Or like someone said here, a wreck that can't go in a relationship without serious treatment (I know I'm heavily paraphrasing, but this is what it felt like to me, reading the post I'm referring to).


Hurray for heavy paraphrasing! It's nice to see different arrangements of alphabet describing a person, situation, thing or place.

It does seem to defy all logic that a person would be encouraged by reading a dx and identifying with it.

The only reason that seems to make sense to me is the problem people with Borderline have identifying themselves. Once I read and identified myself as being such and such or whatever, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. Finally there was a name for something that explained 'me' I felt, for the moment, that I had a sense of control where before I had none. If I knew what was wrong, I was armed to then do something about it.

I will admit that I felt a deep sense of shame in being able to relate to BPD at the time. To be able to identify with that particular disorder meant quite a few things to me:

1. I was manipulative
2. I engaged in drama [suicide threats, bursts of violence]
3. I was 'spoiled' and had to have my way at all times
4. I was an all-around pain in the ass and control freak
5. Responded poorly to medication management

I used to cling tenaciously to my Dx of Bi-polar disorder. I'm not even Dx'd with BPD, but relate more to the symptoms of that disorder than Bipolar. and nowadays even more so with the 'secret schizoid' set of symptoms.



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30 Jan 2012, 1:35 pm

Miharu wrote:
I haven't tried a mood stabilizer yet. I was on prozac for the past 2 years, it really helped me alot with alot of things. But it stopped working for me. Now i'm going through withdrawal. I'm planning to try mood stabilizers when i'm completely off it.


There are very few options for mood stabilizers. I recommend trying Lithium as a last resort because it really slows you down. Lamictal is good. So is Geodon (unless you have hormone issues because it can throw your prolactin levels out of whack). The other one I tried was Abilify but it made me super manic (a problem I didn't have before taking it).


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StanleyTweedle
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30 Jan 2012, 2:44 pm

For some of you, this post will be so much preaching to the choir. So, this is really for the benefit of those who don't understand, or who understand symptoms, but not the underlying cause. I will use my own experiences as a 'case history'. What I provide is a combination of what I've read and learned from various sources, my experience, thoughts and feelings, and conclusions I've drawn.

Abandonment [real or imagined], abuse and neglect.

BPD has it's seed planted between birth and age 7 or 8, the so-called formative years of childhood. These years are of extreme importance in the life of a human being. Because the body and brain are being formed and developed to reach the same proportions as an adult by the age of 7 and 8, the things learned in the home become hard wired into their being. Things that happen, for good or ill, during these years become part of the core personality of that person.

The baby is born. It has nothing like real cognizance at the time. It is confused, wails and cries in frustration and rage over being stuck in a form which they cannot yet master the movements of. It is helpless and wholy dependent upon the big people to provide every need. Something goes wrong. The baby cries and is ignored or yelled at or shaken. Their first experience with 'God' is cruel.

"Our parents are our models for God" -Tyler Durden, Fight Club

In those early years, particularly before a toddler first says "No", the parents are merely an extension of themselves. They have no concept of a self beyond the mirror. Healthy parenting will teach a child their value. Neglect, abuse and emotional and/or physical abandonment teach a child that there is NO SELF.

In later years, a child this unfortunate may be treated with further insults to it's being. This child maybe be verbally abused. In my case, from about age 3 or 4, when my brother and I would do something wrong and have the utter gall to defend ourselves or our actions, my mother would say, "Who do you think you are?" To which she demanded that me and/or my brother reply, "Nobody." At that age, a child will believe everything the parent says!
The lesson learned:
There is no self.

Enter sexual abuse, the gift that keeps on giving. All of this is very hush-hush and a tremendous responsibility is placed on the shoulders of the child. "Don't tell your mom, it would devastate her, she wouldn't understand."

The child receives two legacies: Sex is shameful because it's hidden, they are shameful because they're being acted upon sexually and they are also hold tremendous power in their tiny hands. [empowering abuse] They can crumble an empire [the home] with a word!
The lesson learned:
The body is to be used for sex.
You are shameful for being targeted for such treatment by the fact that you are receiving it.
Sex is a tool to be used to manipulate others

Enter peer exposure
You go to school and for some reason or other, you just don't fit in with others. You don't know why, since all you want is to please others, make them happy and be liked. You want the peer mirror to tell you that you are okay so you can feel safe in society. The peer mirror does not. This is when human beings, quite innocently, behave like chickens in the chicken yard. They peck on the weakest one there. Sad, but true. It's human nature. The harder you try to be pleasing, the more fun the peer group has setting you up, pretending to be your friend, only to yank the rug out from under you [Like Meg Griffin in Family Guy when the popular kids pull this stunt] When you are the new kid on the block, your mettle will be tested by the alpha peer groups [Borderlines, myself included at that age often crave the acceptance and prestige of being popular]. This testing of one's mettle is as old as history. Such ordeals as being tossed in a garbage can as a freshman, having your head stuck in a toilet and then being flushed, are initiations. The person who takes all of this with a good humor, or at least a grain of salt, are then left alone and maybe accepted by the peer group depending on how well they hold their self respect together. The Borderline person has no self to respect, only the peer mirror.

A note here: The Borderline person actually does have a self. We all have a self. But the Borderline person has no sense or awareness of who they are outside what the mirror tells them. They have never grown beyond the parental model. They were never nurtured and assisted in developing a sense of selfhood. They feel like they stand at the very center as a core of nothingness, with the unconscious sense of themselves being outside themselves, a true outsider. Everyone and every thing around them IS who they are. So they spend years trying to placate this outer self and wondering why they fail.

Puberty hits and all hell breaks loose.
This was one of the least painful parts for me, but certainly the most dangerous. This is where the sexual abuse gift re-awoke and resumed giving it's legacy.
The most unfortunate thing happened to me at that age. I discovered my outsides were pretty. I was handy with a makeup brush. Boys noticed me, girls envied and hated me. I was vindicated! I took on many masks, of which the pretty, made up face was one. I could not be seen not wearing it. The moment I took it off at night, I resumed being a loser/ geek.
This is when the dangerous act happened. I reflected on what I thought was myself. I turned on and despised the person who had been picked on, rejected and pecked into nonexistence. I threw that part of myself, the immature child that never grew beyond the need for validation by the parents and then peers, into a dark hole, locked it and threw away the key and vowed to create myself according to how I wanted to be seen. Unfortunately I lacked the skill set required to further develop a real self. I created a counterfeit, a homunculus, really. An artificial self.

There was still no sense of a self. Ever plagued by 'who am i? I mean who am i really?'

Enter Love.
For a whole year I experienced a flood of euphoria and sense of belongingness, a sense of oneness with another. I felt accepted, desireable. Acceptance at last. Then something happened which was according to the way of human beings, but which I had no idea was normal. The sex went from extraordinary to ordinary, a bit stale. My partner wanted less and I always wanted more. It was a fix, my validation. Then the manipulative behavior set in. Always threatened by this invasive belief that I was going to be abandoned, I became clingy, whiny, reproaching, guilt inducing, etc. You name it I tried it. Anything to accomplish what I believed was nothing less than survival. What would I do without him? How would I survive? How will I take care of myself. I can't! I can't! I can't live without this person! There would be screams and accusations. I would plead, in so many word, for them to tell me something to reassure me. At first the reassurances worked. Over time, I developed a complete lack of ability to believe what I was being told. In spite of all evidence presented to me that I was loved and cared for, I didn't believe it. How could this poor man win? He couldn't! Nothing he did was right. Nothing he could say could allay my fears. He began walking on eggshells, which I interpreted as highly suspect behavior. So the poor man loses again. You add to this mixture a good dose of drugs and alcohol, which was also a temporary avenue of feeling validated in myself, and you had an ungodly mess. Two abused and confused people trying to survive in a world where no actual threat existed! It didn't have to. We created our own crisis and drama. We both lost ourselves in each other. We had no sense of self outside the mirror presented to one another by one another and by others. Me, for my reasons and he, for his own reasons.

All the manipulation in all it's forms were dysfunctional ways of coping. They were ways of fiercely clinging onto ways of controlling another to maintain what I believed was necessary to survive and to not die. When I say it that way, it's true. Deep down inside the darkest part of many people with BPD, is the belief that they will 'disappear' metaphorically speaking without the persons closest to them providing constant validation and reassurance and the security no human being is obliged or able to provide. No matter what a person does, there is no quelling the terror of the BPD person because it is their own task to develop a self, security, reassurance, self validation, etc, ad nauseum. But how? Indeed. A person so damaged in their formative years eventually must reach a truce wherein they realize that they will never be cured, there will always be discomfort to some degree or other. There is no happily ever after. There is only life as it actually is. There is only the task of making the inner journey to retrieve the person you threw away, dust them off and let them grow, being fully prepared and ready to protect and defend this raw, unrefined, childish and immature self from the abuse of others. It means learning to make new choices. Choosing nurturing friends as opposed to abusive friends and relationships. It means reaching a point in your life where you not only logically know you deserve as good of treatment as any other loved person, but you also feel it deeply enough to take the actions required to provide a healthy environment for this undeveloped and abandoned self, because having been abandoned and abused so frequently, at long last we did the only thing we knew how to do, we abandoned ourselves. We alienated ourselves from others and called it rejection. But what the hell, at least we were right. Can I get an Amen? lol

I heartily endorse the words of Kurt Vonnegut in the book Timequake. The words belong to Kilgore Trout, his alter ego and frequent character in his books, that: "To be alive means either being bored stiff or scared s**tless."

Nowadays I still don't fully grasp the enigmatic question: Who Am I? What is a Self? I content myself with being "Nothing." Because a Nothing implies an Everything just as everything in this existence implies an opposite.

I am not good and I am not bad. I am this, but that is also who I am. And just when I think I have all my ducks in a neat little row, all the pieces move around.

I cannot be named, so I write.

It's life and you'll never get out of it alive anyhow and there is nothing new under the sun.

"All is one and one is all. If the all is not one, then the all is nothing." - Van Hohenheim, Fullmetal Alchemist

P.S. It's all balderdash, nonsense. I embrace my balderdash, but I believe none of it because eventually it will change, of that much I can be certain. If I haven't provided anything of use to anyone, I at least hope to have amused a few. :)



Bun
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30 Jan 2012, 5:27 pm

StanleyTweedle wrote:
Bun wrote:
StanleyTweedle wrote:
With so much information on the internet about every topic under the sun, it's not unusual for people with problems to self-dx. Especially if they have a crappy doctor or no doctor at all if they lack health care insurance.

Yeah, well, I get *that*. What I don't get is why would anyone feel encouraged by reading the criteria for BPD, it sounds like professional speak for 'problem patient'. Or like someone said here, a wreck that can't go in a relationship without serious treatment (I know I'm heavily paraphrasing, but this is what it felt like to me, reading the post I'm referring to).


Hurray for heavy paraphrasing! It's nice to see different arrangements of alphabet describing a person, situation, thing or place.

It does seem to defy all logic that a person would be encouraged by reading a dx and identifying with it.

The only reason that seems to make sense to me is the problem people with Borderline have identifying themselves. Once I read and identified myself as being such and such or whatever, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. Finally there was a name for something that explained 'me' I felt, for the moment, that I had a sense of control where before I had none. If I knew what was wrong, I was armed to then do something about it.

I will admit that I felt a deep sense of shame in being able to relate to BPD at the time. To be able to identify with that particular disorder meant quite a few things to me:

1. I was manipulative
2. I engaged in drama [suicide threats, bursts of violence]
3. I was 'spoiled' and had to have my way at all times
4. I was an all-around pain in the ass and control freak
5. Responded poorly to medication management

I used to cling tenaciously to my Dx of Bi-polar disorder. I'm not even Dx'd with BPD, but relate more to the symptoms of that disorder than Bipolar. and nowadays even more so with the 'secret schizoid' set of symptoms.

That was a good post. In hindsight, I can identify with those things, but I try to correct my behaviour. I'm not sure if it came to me after reading my diagnosis, or maybe sooner... It would be years since I had done so, anyway. And I only knew about my DX years after I was DXed, I discovered it by mistake. Maybe it was good that I carried on regardless. I got to know my first love/first adult relationship a little after I got diagnosed, and I can tell it was real love. So much for bad relationships. :D

ETA: I noticed you've written a follow-up post as well, thank you for sharing your story. It does seem to provide a background to the symptoms you describe as having. I think it's important maybe that doctors hear such stories so that they'd know how to treat their patients.

I can't say I was handed a bad hand in life, I was just maybe a little hypersensitive from age four or something like that, but still, it wasn't really beneficial that the psychiatrist who DXed me with BPD made all the mistakes my mum did (try to put words in my mouth by saying things about myself that weren't even true).


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