I have been doing some research on Borderline Personality Disorder. I was diagnosed with a "variant" of BPD as it has been somehow decided that I do not have all the symptoms. However, I was diagnosed with full-blown BPD at age 20 when I had a horrible eating disorder and tried to kill myself. I now fully realize why some therapists in the hospitals I ended up in (and in the ER a couple of times) were really unkind to me.
Every time I happened to see on a piece of paper that my diagnosis was BPD, I also noticed that clinicians felt the need to be pretty heavy-handed with me, which is exactly the opposite of what I needed. This attitude would often start the minute I walked into their office. They assumed that I was going to start manipulating them right off the bat. This diagnosis has garnered such a bad reputation that some therapists, as a rule, will only take on so many borderline patients without first giving them the benefit of the doubt.
The truth, as I knew it, was that I was just incredibly sad and disconnected. I remember one therapist in particular who had a cold look and mean tone telling me that I had tried to commit suicide to get back at my parents, that that was the "ultimate fuck you."
Maybe I was unconsciously doing that, but mostly I was really miserable and severely depressed. I felt that there was no getting out of my eating disorder, though I survived it for another 10 years before I beat it. If I did anything for attention, trying to kill myself was really a way of trying to find a release from the stress I was under all the time. If it was a cry for help or a rescuer, I must have really needed a hand at that point.
After getting re-diagnosed again a few years ago, I remember thinking that since it is a mostly a female problem, that BPD might be somewhat of a feminist issue or could be looked at as even a pejorative label. It almost seems like somewhat of an extension of the "mad woman in the attic" story, fodder for feminist literary theory based on a character in the Charlotte Bronte novel, "Jane Eyre."
I think there are some valid diagnostic criteria for the symptoms, but I no longer think the BPD label is very helpful since it inspires fear in the patient and his or her community.
I only seem to notice the related severity of symptoms when I get into an intimate relationship or get around my mother who has mood swings and can become verbally abusive and irrational. Sometimes there are other triggers and I need a lot of time alone. I have a hard time figuring out if certain people or groups of people are "safe" for me, but feel I have come by that honestly and that it often-times just makes good common sense.
On the other hand, my most recent disassociated traumatic episode, has helped me in that I am starting to look at some of what I am going through in the context of BPD - especially the thinking styles - and realize that the diagnosis can be a helpful way of gaining self-knowledge in some areas - but just for the time being. For example, I realize that I do that "splitting" thing over situations and other people as well in regular day to day situations. Some of this is due entirely to my fluctuating mood that causes changes in my cognitive approaches to things.
I remember being really pissed off at this mental health center I went to in Akron when the first therapist I saw there had me sign some papers for a treatment plan. Right there in front of me was a whole list of diagnoses assigned to me - narcissistic, dependent, avoidant, and borderline personality disorders. She had only met with me once before the treatment plan signing! I have read that it is not uncommon for these people to unscrupulously diagnose other personality disorders with BPD.
I was annoyed even further when on two other occasions, she told me that she didn't agree that BPD might be part of a mood disorder and that it was entirely learned. On another occasion, she felt the need to point out to me that many psychologists do not even believe that Fibromyalgia even exists, thus covertly stating her opinion (given the context) about one of my conditions. Yes, it occurs more often in certain personality types and those with mood disorders, but again, the research is pointing to a sensitive biochemistry that more or less throws off the stability of a fragile nervous system and causes or exacerbates the condition.
I was also in this therapist's coping skills/DBT therapy group and I hated the way she dealt with patients. She got way too heavy handed with a woman who had been cutting herself with a potato peeler. It seemed unprofessional to come down that hard on her in a group setting.
The next time I tried to attend her group, after I had fired her and got a much more reasonable therapist who was her boss, she was telling a patient, who probably had a bad case of tardive dyskenisia (from her description of how it started after being on a anti-psychotic), that she had total control of her chronic torso undulations and facial movements. She told her that if she just tried to stop doing that for five seconds, it would add up eventually to longer. She was kind of heavy-handed with her as well, and not very bright about it, being that she is not a medical doctor and the woman had yet to be properly evaluated.
Once again, I noted how clinicians often treat those labeled with BPD as pariahs. The underlying message from some of them is, "You learned your way into this misbehavior, now you better work hard as hell to get yourself out. And besides, you're a pain in the ass to everyone around you."
I am glad I've been doing my research. I think that I would rather talk to someone about the fact that I have some kind of childhood PTSD that developed along with my mood disorder, rather than to admit to a diagnosis of BPD. A search on BPD and PTSD reveals that many clinicians believe that BPD is not much different than, or occurs along with
complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Maybe it is time to get rid of the whole BPD label that seems mostly to blame women as having personality flaws, as women are historically put down for exhibiting or expressing dark feminine energy or experssing certain emotions.
While it seems rather "uncool" or out of vogue these days to talk about the problems of one's childhood, I would have no other way of explaining what was going on with me all last week, that I became emotionally dysregulated in a state of hyperarousal or "fight or flight," and that I became really sensitive to rejection, even if that was not the other person's intent in the end. So most of the BPD shoe does fit, but I still retain my right to resist that label and to have a choice in how I define my own humanity.
I really liked
this article that hypothesizes that BPD is a diagnosis that might have garnered more attention over the last couple of decades as a separate issue from mood disorders and PTSD, simply because the psychiatric community just needed more funding to do more research on other affective disorders. As well, the author talks about the enormous section in bookstores on BPD and the idea that maybe the publication drives the diagnosis more than the other way around.
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