To think people with eupd are badly treated

[Nownow8]

Like people say we enjoy being in hospital and our illness isn’t a real mental health issue etc. we are also often left under the Gide of positive risk taking it’s just awful.

I had to cut my friend with BPD off as well. She was extremely manipulative, demanded so much from me and tried to treat me as a support worker while she’d be going out partying with her other friends.

She crossed the line when she started some weird hate campaign against her church pastors children who were like 8 and 13 (she was in her early 30s) and I learned around the same time that she’d a relationship with a teen in another church a few years before. She would never take accountability for anything to the point of telling me this teen seduced her and she didn’t seem to get why this teens parents didn’t like her.

In my opinion the behaviours are stigmatising in themselves and so the name doesn't make any difference

I think this is true. The name wont make a difference . I didn’t even know my friend had that diagnosis initially, but she was still having a massively negative impact on my mental health based on her behaviours. I did start to suspect it was that after I did my own research , then she happened to confirm it.

That was my experience with one person though, I wouldn’t count someone out as a friend in the future on the basis of having EUPD. I try and take people as I find them. I do feel for the internal pain and agony I hear many experience.

My daughter has this diagnosis and I battled when she was 19 to get her DBT

Where we live they have an amazing 12 month programme and honestly it has helped her so much

She is such a different person now, has learnt to recognise and cope with her symptoms

Is she cured? No but she can handle it much better. She still suffers with lows and we deal with them as they come up

I am so glad she got the treatment here, as she moved away for uni and the treatment where she lives now is non exsistant

She has a degree in psychology and now works on a ward in the local mental health hospital, and I am enormously proud of her. Interesting though that her dissertation was on the stigma of BPD

Personality Disorders are now classed as mild, moderate or severe, yes.

https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/personality-disorder/

This what I want for my dd who is also 19. Just don’t know how to battle for her.

I did this online DBT about 5 or so years ago before zoom was a thing really but it was all online. It's in the US so if you can't attend live group classes you can watch the recordings https://emotionallysensitive.com/classes/?gadsource=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzZmwBhD8ARIsAH4v1gX246x1XLc1nxGNCR9sFZpCkCnF8O0N-J4j-nrWb0ISyrFZ30Lp3j4aAkiJEALww_wcB

I used my local MP at one point to oversee a complaint of her treatment. He was great tbh

It really depends what is offered where you love. The programme here is likely the best I have come across

Could you dm me where you are and what it is.

Will try, am on the app and struggle. Feel free to send me a dm

Thanks @SiousieSoo - and I am very sorry for your loss. I spent a decade working in psychiatric hospitals - fortunately while I was there there were no suicides, although a few attempts where people were found in time, but I know when we heard of an ex patient who had killed themselves, the whole staff would be sad for days.

Unfortunately a lot of people will be out for blood if someone dies in treatment. And while not everyone with EUPD comes from an abusive background, a significant number do, and those are the families that create the most in my experience. If Coroners are involved, there is no check on them making pronouncements about blame and there is no right of reply or appeal. Even if the coroner states something should have happened which does not make sense, if you are found not to have complied with the suggestions in future you run the risk of bringing a lot of trouble on yourself. I really think coroners should not handle MH cases unless they have specific training.

@Mummame2222 - when I was training we spent a year looking at personality disorders and were told clearly at the beginning of the year that we would all be convinced at some point we had one or all of them. They were right, we all did. PDs are common personality traits but become a disorder when these are extreme and exaggerated and causes significant distress or difficulty functioning. So it is possible to have strong traits and similarities but not have the diagnosis.

All the people saying it is given wrongly - absolutely. You cannot actually give the diagnosis to someone under 18 because all teens have personalities which are in flux, that is normal. I actually think you cant really give the diagnosis with any clarity until someone is in their 30s and has had a full Autism assessment.

Having said all that, it is still a group I find extremely challenging to work with, because of the instability which is baked it. You think things are working and people are better, and then they try to kill themselves. As a clinician, its devastating. You truly need a large, well supported and well funded team to work with EUPD - as a PP has said, it can be done - but unfortunately they are in very short supply in the NHS.

@Atethehalloweenchocs Thankyou I appreciate that. It affects her life massively and everyone around her, she’s just not aware of it. Her Nan died in a mental hospital as did her Great Nan, her Mum to was very unwell. Can this be hereditary?

I dont think we understand enough about it, @Mummame2222 to say if it is genetic or environmental. But certainly growing up around someone who has this kind of behaviour can shape your own choices. And we know that underlying predisposition to MH problems can be genetic - the best answer seems to be it is a combination of both with some luck, choices and timing thrown in. Check out 'Stop Walking on Eggshells' - it is an old book now, but helpful for people who have challenging relatives.

Horribly stigmatised. Awfully so. I got an EUPD diagnosis which was quite quickly changed to cPTSD & ASD working together. I never had it - it was just the two others mixing (which tbh, presents as EUPD minus a few symptoms). But my god I have never been treated so horrifically by healthcare professionals. I'm absolutely treated better now that it's not on my record and it's cPTSD & ASD instead.

My partner holds down a job just fine. To the outside world he would seem like a typical man with no mental health issues what so ever. Although he lies and fabricates to other people at times, they have no idea. Its me and a relationship in general where his EUPD is blatantly existent. When he spirals, you honestly would not believe he is the same person. I get the other version of him when this happens. Everyone else gets a made up, distorted view of his reality, but he won't appear to be struggling mentally to them, and his story of events are very convincing so they just take him at his word. The majority of the time, they unknowingly add fuel to a fire that they don't Evan know is burning.

Amazing. Thank you so much, I’ll have a look at it.

I don't believe there has to be sexual abuse for the development of EUPD, but there will be trauma which often turns out to be caused by abuse. With your dd though that trauma could be navigating the NT world as a child with ASD and ADHD. That can be an extremely traumatic experience and research shows people with ASD are more likely than NT people to develop personality disorders. It could be bullying or exclusion at school, it could be feeling you don't fit in or belong anywhere, it could be related to the hospital stays you mention, there are likely to be genetic factors as well. Having EUPD definitely does not mean your dd must have been sexually abused though.

The treatment of your dd sounds appalling, of course she needs the ED and the EUPD dealing with at the same time as they're bound to be feeding into each other in one way or another. The treatment of people with MH issues in this country is just horrendous.

At the heart of EUPD IMO is anxiety and the desperate need to feel safe after a childhood that for whatever reason didn't feel safe. It's such a sad thing and awful that it is so stigmatised - but also can be so difficult for the people around to cope with which just increases the person with EUPD's fear that they are going to be abandoned.

Definitely CAMHS needs to be more holistic. My D has suffered from anorexia since age 11, and is now 19 and in remission. Her personality when severely underweight is totally different, leading me to believe that the ED should be treated first.

@Atethehalloweenchocs I totally agree with you that Coroners should not be able set out decisions and recommendations when the complexities of a severe mental illness are the underlying cause of a suicide. The impact on the individual clinicians must be devastating when they are implicated within this. I know that working in a psychiatric ward must be so challenging and hard and I really detest the ease with which people are thrown under the bus.

I'm sorry to hear about your sister.

In the case of BPD/EUPD I really don't think it's blame culture. When you've got patients who are denied services, given no legitimate way to access the help they need, blame and dismissal from staff, a culture in services that tell then they are worth as little as they feel... then yes, the finger needs to be pointed at those who let them down so badly.

I had a lovely friend who killed herself after losing hope after years of this arms length non-treatment and blame from mental health services. She had more compassion in one atom of her being than she was ever shown by services over many years. After she died the messages flooded in from so many people, largely online, that she'd supported and helped despite her own difficulties. She was extremely psychologically aware (and educated in psychology) and would have been brilliant at helping others, had she been able to get the help she needed first.

The problem is that there is no way for these people to get the help they need. PPs have mentioned the way services/therapy are only provided if the person will get better fairly quickly. Or crisis services to intercept a suicide attempt, but no ongoing help to get to the root of the troubles and get better. People talk of "cry for help" suicide attempts, but don't stop to think why no-one was listening to the point the person felt they had no other option to make themselves heard.

There is no legitimate (from services POV) way to access the help and support required. There is no way to say "I am overwhelmed and feeling suicidal and need some support, some kindness, because what I'm feeling is terrifying". There is no way, no matter how coherent and logical you may be, to approach services and say "I need some long-term in-depth therapy to give me a realistic chance of hope for the future and prevent the ongoing downward spiral" and actually receive any.

I speak from experience. I had the misfortune of being labelled BPD at the off, and everything that came after was shoehorned in to fit the diagnosis. I have sat in front of mental health professionals scores of times, in sham "assessments" where the pre-determined outcome was always no further input. I have spelled out, calmly and logically, how my issues began (in a way that would have a half-decent psychotherpist already picking at threads to begin unravelling and working through), and how I know I need therapy to recover but without it I see no hope and feel suicidal. And in return I have been judged, labelled, and dismissed.

At some point I had a lightbulb moment, that psychiatry was in the role of abuser, that I kept returning to like a beaten-down woman to an abusive man, who was never going to give me what I needed. That was when the healing really started to begin. (That and having access to things like benefits and reasonable housing so I had a safe place in which to heal.) At some point, I returned specifically for ASD assessment (no professional had ever twigged before) and was diagnosed. My problems stemmed from what I shall call mild ASD (*not getting into that here!) and trauma. In fact, the trauma was the biggest disabling factor. Benefits enabled me to pay for some private therapy. After many years the real deeper healing happened when I found myself in a relationship with the loveliest, most empathetic person, who thought I was wonderful. Somehow I internalised this, and it has lasted far longer than the relationship.

I know services cannot provide the latter (although long-term therapy with an empathetic person who regards them positively is loosely similar in the ways that matter). But I also know that what they do is the precise opposite of this. They judge, belittle, and shame. They actively compound the original problem.

I was one of the lucky ones because I'd had enough good formative experiences, enough safety and care in my life to just about hold on and believe I was worth more than their shitty treatment of me. Interestingly, they hated this. They seemed to want to beat down any self-worth I had, for me to accept their poor judgement of me, to believe I wasn't worth helping and just go away.

Now many years on I have started training to be a psychotherapist. What has really struck me is how it's almost the exact opposite of what services do, the attitudes to the client and so on. And the code of ethics, of the things we strive to be ... would be nice if mental health services had even the slightest attempt at something similar. Someone on another thread wondered why so many MNers want to train as counsellors not mental health nurses - I am sure this is why.

This post has turned out way longer than I thought! But I'd just like to end by saying a big FUCK YOU to all the soulless wankers I encountered in services previously. :)

then yes, the finger needs to be pointed at those who let them down so badly.

But who is the 'they'? Yes, there are many doctors and nurses in the NHS who are lacking in empathy. But also many who are passionate about helping people.

I am a psychotherapist, and am constantly in the position of either taking someone on for therapy who really should not be accepted into our service or trying to refer or recommend them to services that are not there. If I decide to offer treatment and things goes wrong, it will be laid at my door. Is it right that fingers are then pointed at me? I am in a system which is almost impossible for people with EUPD to get any other help. But I also dont have access to the wraparound care people may need if they decompensate. So I take my chances, help where I can and hope for the best.

MH services are far too led by the medical model and not enough by psycho-therapeutic approaches.

You have eloquently put, everything i feel and would say if i knew how to verbalise it.

Ive had a mirror experience.

I have a sister diagnosed and work with the more severe forms. This is my opinion on those with the more severe presentations.

Not remotely sorry about my 'worrying' language.

I also had to cut out a pathological liar with EUPD.

Spiteful, nasty, manipulative and the like.

Sorry, but they often do present like this when they're deteriorating. It's almost always a result of trauma, usually sexual abuse.

They can't help it. I'm not blaming them or being nasty. It's the reality of many of those with the condition.

Wrote them off? No.

It is absolutely considered to be the most difficult PD to treat, live with and deal with in a professional capacity.

One of the things that always struck me was Amber Heard was diagnosed as BPD by Dr Curry as part of Johnny Depp's defamation trial. The ease with which she lied and the frightening nature of her extreme abandonment issues, as well as her physical violence was awful. I am not saying she is representative but it was eye opening.