Borderline personality disorder

[Oddcat]

We haven’t had a diagnosis but I strongly suspect my dd 21 has BPD , she ticks every single box and I am really struggling with her mood swings and violent verbal outbursts .

She admits she needs help but won’t go to the gp because ‘they’re rubbish ‘ . She suffers with bad periods , I suggest different ways to help with this but she rejects everything.

I’m exhausted and also dealing with elderly parents, my dad has recently had a heart attack and is today having a biopsy for suspected prostate cancer. My mum is agoraphobic and needs extra care.

I am thinking of sending dd to a rehab in Thailand ( cannabis use) she is keen to go but last night had another meltdown and said she doesn’t want to go.

I’m at my wits end.

People have mentioned autism but I just wanted to mention PDA, which is an ASC. A lot of people with BPD diagnosis seem to end up with a PDA diagnosis later.

If I told her to get help or get out she would take that as I don’t want to help her - any sort of rejection sends her into meltdown and it seems harsh to chuck her out when she’s not well.

I will gently ( I have to pick my moment) press for her to see a psychiatrist here , I can pay privately as I think the sooner the better, I’ve been waiting 5 months for counselling on the NHS.

I just came here from your other thread in mental health. I’m really sorry you’re going through this but if she’s going to go through recovery surely it’s better that she has the support of her mum in her day to day life rather than being so far away from you. I have bipolar (only recently diagnosed) and my mum often had to drag me kicking and screaming to the gp to get some help in my early twenties- at least if you do that the gp can then see that there is a problem and that she does need help

I’m not dragging her kicking and screaming to the gp, she’s a whole lot stronger than me for starters.

She says she wants to be away from home- I mentioned the idea of a rehab type place and she liked the idea of Thailand- I am not forcing her to go, she wants to go.

I hope you can get of some sort it must feel very isolating

Of help sorry my words disappeared

Sorry I hadn’t meant to suggest that you wanted her away from you. It’s clear from your posts that you are wanting to support her and do what’s best for her. But she is only 21 and obviously not well and if she isn’t well in this country how can she recover in a foreign country where the culture is so different to what she’s used to. In order for her to get better she might Have to do what she needs to rather than what she wants to.

It would be worth gauging how committed she is to the therapy side of Thailand by suggesting similar here, or somewhere less luxurious. If she's not interested then you need to question why she wants to go to Thailand.

Also BPD is not something you overcome in rehab. It's something you learn to manage with long term treatment/ therapy.

I would have thought she was thinking Thailand would be some sort of holiday, tbh. She should be showing a commitment to treatment here first. There's no point in paying tons of money for a month or two of treatment if she doesn't have a local psychiatrist on board here.

It sounds really tough for you. I hope you can get an appointment for her soon and start to get her the help she so clearly needs.

Is she committed to giving up cannabis?

I have BPD. The absolute worse thing for me is inpatient treatment. It causes my symptoms to amplify and get so much worse. I believe it’s fairly common for people with BPD to react badly to inpatient care.

The best thing for me has been being prescribed anti psychotic medication instead of just anti depressants. I am on olanzapine and honestly it has changed my life.

If you have money then get her seen by a private psychiatrist and get her on the right medication.

Psychiatrists just prescribe drugs. Given her previous poor experiences it makes sense she doesn't want to revisit it. It's not really drugs she needs though by the sounds of it anyway.

Given the context from her childhood, it sounds like developmental trauma and Complex PTSD. Not a "chemical imbalance" a few drugs can knock back into shape.

Psychologists do the understanding and changing things stuff. They work with trauma.

Something doesn't have to be dramatic to cause trauma - especially with developmental trauma.

Have you read anything about Complex PTSD? You might find it fits... If you can make sense of how she feels and reacts it might help you cope and respond in ways that will in time help her.

I genuinely think as a teen I would have been diagnosed with a mental health problem had it not been for a clever GP. I had severe Pre menstruel issues. The pill and a high dose of iron (and now b6) were all fantastic and life changing.
She may well have mental health issues but I would also try and sort out some of the other issues you mention because the difference could make the mental health problems more manesgable.

She only mentioned yesterday that she thinks she has BPD and we have been discussing Thailand for a few weeks before this . When she first admitted that she needed help, she said it was for depression and cannabis use , now she has mentioned BPD (or whatever it is) I might be able to make her see that if she gets a proper diagnosis then Thailand isn’t the place for her.

She says she doesn’t want to smoke cannabis when (if) she returns from Thailand but doesn’t seem to be making much effort to stop at the moment. She spends most nights at her friends flat because she says I make her feel awkward if she goes over the field to smoke weed .

If she's been smoking it constantly for a while she'll probably struggle to stop smoking it. It's not easy and it is addictive

She will struggle to stop smoking the weed especially as her friend does too , along with her father who sees no harm in it .

Quick update- dd has agreed to get a diagnosis here in the uk and has even agreed that Thailand may not be the right place for her to go to at the moment. Phew !