Anyone with experience of borderline personality disorder?

[officiallycrazy]

I've just been diagnosed with it and am scared...

Have the same thread in health . Wasn't sure where to post this.

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Thank you, thank you... You don't know how much it means to me to know that other people understand this and aren't as appalled by it as I am.

You're stories are really helpful - I need to hear that this isn't the end and that people do get through this and that I may be ok. Some of you seem to think you're rambling but it helps. Honestly - it's just what I need to read.

I will copy this thread (and the other one that some of you posted on - sorry for the confusion ) and keep reading it and look into some of the book recommendations.

Danae - that's it, I know I want to be and can be a better mother than mine was. I know DS must be able to express his feelings, whatever they are without fear of worrying or upsetting me or of me judging and criticising him. I like your way of describing how much better you are now than 7 years ago. I know there is a different 'me' somewhere - I am not always like this but I have forgotten who I am. I need to scrape off a lot of crud (as you put it) and work out who I am and how to accept that and get on with life. It's just so daunting. All I really want to do is sleep this away.

I think my next step needs to be working out what help I can get. I will look into the CAT therapy - I am in therapy atm but have no idea what - I've only just started really so it's all new to me.

alcyone, I didn't think you were being flippant - thank you!

Thanks officiallycrazy, but maybe i was alittle flippant, i do like me, but honestly, when i look back to my twenties i remember how cluttered up my brain really was.Also used to self harm,although never really seriously.there were days when i wanted to curl up and be left alone. 18 months therapy, meeting a man that could put up with me and lots of hard work got me through,oh and also various medication.
Slight slip up with pnd didnt help either.....However, today things are much better, and yes, i do like me. Take care and i hope you get all the support youneed

Oh, and before i scuttle off to work, i know it is not the same for everybody,but being in my parents company for long periods of time can cause my mind to revert back to the bad old days, it's not really a conscious thing,i have to remember that i am a 'grown up' and i will be responsible for my own thoughts and behaviour. I dont know if this has any relevance to your situation.

I'll post on this one now officiallycrazy I have skimmed it, as it is long, so glad you have had a good response. I think Sophable puts it well. When I said mood swings, I think "regulating their emotions" is a much more effective description.
Curable, well thats an important difference from "clinical mental illness" as our personalitys are formed, and can change with the right interventions, so its not a curable thing as such, but you can move on from it, and change certain personality traits, which makes a massive difference to how you function

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I am a psychiatric nurse and have worked with quite a few people diagnosed with BPD. In my line of work there can be a negative mindset about people with this diagnosis (wrong, I know) but I think this is partly because they do not fit into the acutely psychotic category which we are supposed to cater for. Every single person I've worked with who has this diagnosis has had a bad relationship with one or both parents and many have been sexually abused. I often think a diagnosis like Inadequate Parenting would be a kinder label and attribute less blame to the person suffering.

plummmymummy....just out of interest, don't you feel that that label (inadequate/abusive parenting) could be applied to most diagnoses apart from the organic ones brought on by medical conditions?

I agree that the term 'personality disorder' is misleading. It's used to describe people who have usually been deprived of emotional support and/or suffered traumatic experiences in childhood. As a result they haven't learned effective coping mechanisms.

So it's not you as a person that's 'disordered' - it's that under stress your resources are stretched. You may fall back on coping mechanisms that are only partially effective and come at a high cost (like self-harm).

It's not 'incurable' either. Everyone's personality (range of living and coping skills) is work in progress. Experiencing a good non-judgemental, empathic and trustworthy relationship is healing. Learning to understand yourself and what's good and bad for you helps - as many people have already said.

And medication has a role for some people, for example to bolster their resources by treating depression, or reduce stress by alleviating anxiety symptoms.

Sounds as though you have made a good start on thinking about how you can help yourself. All the best

Great thread. It's so good to read positive stories about BPD and hear about people moving on significantly with their lives. I wish you all the luck in the world, officiallycrazy.

soph- what kind of diagnoses are you talking about? Other mental health ones?

Yes, my mum has it. Really good book is- walking on eggshells

Yes scummy, most psychiatric diagnoses.

Sophable (as some else who worked in mental health) yes, it can be applied but its all relative and depends what part it plays, in terms of diagnosis.
It can be argued for example that good parenting involves teaching some one how to handle their emotions, so if that is not present, that person is at a disadvantage. This does apply to some one with depression as well, but it is not necesscarily the presenting problem.
Um, don't think I have articulated that as well as I might after a friday evening of relaxation, and after being a SAHM for a few years now

Hard one. I suspect that a lot of mental illness has some biological basis interacting with environmental and interpersonal pressures, actually. e.g. I personally think that schizophrenia, for example, has a definite biological basis but the way people are treated by their families and the environments they inhabit can trigger and affect the course of their illness and their recovery or lack of profoundly too. It's complex, imo. I think psychiatry and psychotherapy of many kinds have done many caring parents, and particularly mothers, a terrible injustice by concluding that their children's schizophrenia has been definitely and solely caused by refrigerator parenting, a bit like the way autism was once widely thought to have been caused by emotionally cold mothering by Bettelheim et al. I think that vestiges of that attitude are still remarkably common- I was still using case studies from the 70s in my family therapy course that absolutely took the theory that the family dynamic was such as to cause psychosis as read before any therapy or even assessment had occured. I was astonunded that this thesis still held such currency, tbh. The danger is that it causes perfectly loving parents to go through extra hell, often at times when they are desperately worried about their children.

I think there's a lot of awareness of the need to look after family members nowadays, Scummy. Parents can be loving and at the same time be acting towards their son/daughter in ways that contribute to the problems. Good family therapists can help without bringing blame into it. They can also help mental health teams to avoid 'taking sides' in the family.

the psychotherapy clients I have seen have without exception had neglectful, abusive or simply absent parenting which can be seen to have been the major contributing factor in terms of why the clients are there to see me (variously eating disorders, depression, panic attacks, self harm, suicidal ideation, obsessive compulsive tendencies etc etc etc).

I've seen maybe 40 clients so far.

ime the hypothesis that the early years primary caregiving relationship, especially during infancy is the crucial factor in terms of adult mental health is holding up pretty well.

having said that, blame is entirely inappropriate as I am of the firm belief that parents do the best they can do with what they have been given.

scummy 'perfectly loving' (genuinely so) parents are often extraordinarily abusive emotionally without in any way intending to be. A mother can love her daughter absolutely and be intrusive, enmeshed and entirely inappropriate in the way that she parents, with grave consequences for her child: doesn't mean she is to blame.

That's really good to hear, eemie. Often I've felt that carer's stuff is still a lot about lip service and that quality interventions of any sort can be thin on the ground, though there are exceptions. Hopefully things are changing, though.

I do completely agree with you and sophable that loving parenting certainly doesn't always equal good enough parenting and that finding interventions that acknowledge this and enable people to move forward can be crucial.

Not so sure about early years parenting always being the primal causal factor in mental illness though. Do you think that you inevitably see what you are looking for, to an extent, Sophable? I've found that the way I view someone's situation can depend heavily on which 'lens' I am viewing things through. So if I am looking at how someone has managed to survive mentally ill on the streets without money I am very likely to attribute their situation to disgraceful social support, whereas when I am noticing that they have concurrently stopped their medication and have started hearing frightening voices again I am inclined towards a more biological/medical explanation of their condition. Then again, when I look at their family situation that often seems to provide a different and equally useful causal explanation. At other times their personality, insight into themselves and their condition and situation seems crucially important. All these things (and others) seem to interact and play off each other. I just don't feel confident about privileging any one cause really. Having said all that, most of my mental health work to date has been with people who have severe and enduring psychotic mental illnesses rather than neurotic illnesses like depression and perhaps a better argument can be made for poor early parenting as a cause with neurosis? I think Freud thought that analysis was pretty much useless for psychosis, didn't he? Don't know if that is still accepted by the many schools of psychotherapy today though. I know CBT is pretty well thought of as an intervention precisely because it looks at day to day functioning and management rather than delving deep into early childhood.

This is such a fascinating area. I think that there are always many contributing factors, biological and environmental. I do think that Schizophrenia for example is a chemical inbalance. But there are so many factors that prompt this to come out, ilicit drugs, poor emotional relationships, poverty, many many social factors. If you think about lung cancer for example, it is a biological illnees, but if you smoke this ups your chances of getting it massively.
In all my years in mental health I have yet to come across some one with a diagnosis of Schizophrenia (not episodic psychosis)whose family situation is not difficult in some way. Then I guess no body has a family like that This is not to say, that we should go back to an approach of blaming parents, but we shouldn't ignore this factor. I always found it an incredibly difficult balancing act, respecting and supporting parents/partners rights, with somtimes feeling that they were unintentionally hindering recovery

How are you Officiallycrazy, I haven't forgotten that this thread was started by you for support. It is interesting to me as a professional. But you are living this

It's interesting for me to read this and see the point of view of people who work with people like me...

I actually used to work with children with mental illnesses (bi-polar, schizo-affective disorder, psychoses nos etc) so I have some insight from a professional point of view. I never thought I'd be on this side of it

The parenting argument made me think more about my situation...It is odd to be back in the company of parents when you are older. I am beginning to realise that I think mine really do make me worse. They weren't bad parents really, certainly up to me being about 6 or 7. Although my mother did nothing to stop me being sexually abused (and, iirc, participated at times), she loved me and I never wanted for anything material. I am now wondering about the emotional side of my upbringing - I don't remember any hugs or ever being told that I was loved. Maybe that is something to do with this. My step-father had a horrible temper and, although not violent, was very aggressive at times. I think I probably have a lot to explore in therapy. I don't think I had ever considered how much this may have affected me. And now I am terrified that this will lead me to be a bad parent to DS.

The thing is, I am back to wanting to curl up and be alone. Or just to die. I hate this and just want it to be over. I can't continue to live with constant thoughts of how to end it all or how to hurt myself. And I heard (from an Ed. Pysch.) that if a child loses a parent before they are 5, it isn't so bad for them. So maybe sooner would be better than later. Especially as I think it will happen at some point. At least if I were to die now, DS would be too young to really remember it all.

I'm babbling again, sorry. Once I start writing on here, I tend to get a bit carried away, almost hypergraphic. I'll stop now.

Thank you all for checking on me and/or contributing to this thread.

Sophable - Scummymummy has answered your question far more eloquently than I can. I work in psychiatric intensive care so we tend to see the extremes but in my experience those with bpd have had greater trauma in early years - mostly due to violence, sexual abuse or psychological abuse. Negligence also. Parents are more likely to have had substance misuse problems as well. Officiallycrazy, I really hope you can overcome your problems enough to function better. It sounds as though you really want to be a good mum and that desire is more than a lot of people have (who don't even have a diagnosis like yours)and maybe if you get some therapy you will start to have more confidence in yourself and your ability to nurture your child. I wish you all the best.

'The thing is, I am back to wanting to curl up and be alone. Or just to die. I hate this and just want it to be over. I can't continue to live with constant thoughts of how to end it all or how to hurt myself. And I heard (from an Ed. Pysch.) that if a child loses a parent before they are 5, it isn't so bad for them. So maybe sooner would be better than later. Especially as I think it will happen at some point. At least if I were to die now, DS would be too young to really remember it all.'

Officiallycrazy I am also very much of that mindset at the moment too. I know it's wrong but can't seem to stop it either. Although I hate the idea of someone else feeling this way it is also something of a relief that I am not the only person thinking these things.

I am finally being started on CBT which I hope may help- what support do you have/are you being offered?

I would like to add that sometimes it's helpful to put a name or a label and feel you have a diagnosis and the package of "help and advice" that goes with it but sometimes the label becomes a bit of a stifling/scary thing itself.

It is only a name and depending on you may not even be the most accurate or appropriate one

the important part is building up your self and gaining self esteem and confidence

maybe if you don't take comfort from the label try to put it aside and concentrate on a get better plan?

Officiallycrazy I am also very much of that mindset at the moment too. I know it's wrong but can't seem to stop it either. Although I hate the idea of someone else feeling this way it is also something of a relief that I am not the only person thinking these things.

I am finally being started on CBT which I hope may help- what support do you have/are you being offered?

Charlieq - I am so sorry to hear that you are feeling the same way I am. I feel so guilty for being like this and for wishing I weren't here. And I'm sure that makes me worse. I know I am very lucky to have what I have. I know there are people who are seriously ill and want to live but have to fight for it. I feel very selfish for feeling this way. Everywhere I look there are tempting dangers - tall buildings, pills, knives... I hate not being able to look anywhere without thinking "Oh, I could do that..."

And I'm so tired of all this. I just wish I could go to sleep. If I could die without doing it myself, I would - That probably doesn't make sense - if it weren't for DS I would do it but I hate the idea of him growing up knowing that his mother killed herself. I am sure that would be detrimental to him. If i just died though, it would be different...

I am on meds and am having therapy (no idea what type though). I just don't see an end to all this and I am exhausted.

I hope your therapy etc will help you. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. I never expected to say I want to die but I do. I really do.

If you want to talk more offline, please feel free to CAT me.