Posted by alexandra_k on April 23, 2005, at 21:27:09
In reply to Re: Borderline stigma » alexandra_k, posted by Shy_Girl on April 23, 2005, at 20:27:51
> I'm curious, how did you manage to overcome the hurt from ill-informed clinicians? I think it would be a good thing to dimiss them and find more understanding clinician...but to be rejected really really hurts.
Yeah. Rejection does really hurt. Hmm. 'Intense fears or real or imagined abandonment' - I've never gotten over that one. How to overcome the hurt... I guess that either they get to know me as a person in time (in which case I manage to forgive them their initial judgement), or else they terminate me. Which hurts like hell, but is probably best in the long run because they can't help me if they judge me. They just HURT me.
> The pdoc my GP recommended a couple of years ago (when I first started to have problems) refused to even see me. I was devastated.Thats gotta hurt. You don't know why though. Maybe they had too many clients on their caseload. I was reccomended to see a p-doc who is supposed to specialise in personality disorders - especially avoidant and BPD but he wouldn't see me. I don't know why.
>The pdoc I see now works mostly with uni students since she works at the health services centre there. I've been seeing her for I think 2 years now, on and off...maybe she's kept the diagnosis from me that long.
What is that person like? It sounds promising that they have worked with you for that long and that she was worried about letting you in on the dx.
> I question everything I've thought now. I don't know if what I believed to be true, IS true. Are the memories of events I've experienced accurate? ...or tainted by irrational throughs brought on buy my explosive emotions??
Thats a problem for everyone - and not just for you in particular. The thing I struggled with the most was hearing all about my supposed cognitive distortions and faulty logic. How can a philosopher have faulty logic??? I mustn't be able to be a philosopher after all... Everyones thinking gets distorted to a degree with emotional stress. It is just that we get more stressed more often. Linehan emphasises that the errors in cognition are secondary to the disorder in emotional regulation. She developed DBT. If you do get the chance to do it...
> That is a ray of hope for me.More than a ray, sweetie :-)
>I've read that many people with a BPD get much better as they reach their 30s and 40s. I'm hoping that life experience will help me change. It also helps me to know that people's personalities are not static...they change over a lifetime.
Yeah.
> Knowing my dx is hurtful for me, but I cannot deny that I have some very maladaptive coping mechanisms. I should change them because changing them will make me feel better, and I do want to feel better. Facing this is going to be difficult. Destructive as my coping mechanisms are, they do work...to a degree, but I really want to LIVE life, not avoid it.Yeah. They do work. Thats why we do them - because they do work to a degree. But there are other coping mechanisms that work even better - though it is really really really hard to switch to them.
> I thought it was odd that I could have a BPD and be so shy around people. I thought (mistakenly) that all people with a BPD get themselves tangled up in all sorts of relationships. I think to a certain degree my avoidance has shielded me from that aspect of myself. I never get close enough for people to see the "real" me...who is very unpredictable.Not everyone meets all the symptoms on the criteria. Also a lot of people with BPD are afraid of anger and avoid that while the DSM presents borderlines as having difficulty inhibiting anger. I used to believe that I never got angry. It took me a while to discover that one.
> Posting here, I begin to see bits of my BPD coming out. I'm uninhibited...not sure if that's a good thing. It was probably a good thing I got blocked for a week, I was raging for quite a bit.Linehan talks a bit about changing a personality 'disorder' into a personality 'style'. She says borderlines will 'always be the 'colourful' people of this world'. Just because you meet DSM criteria for BPD doesn't mean that you don't have a FABULOUS PERSONALITY with heaps of REALLY GREAT AND POSITIVE TRAITS. Really.
> I just don't like the word "personality disorder." I think that in of itself creates some stigma.Yeah. I struggled with that too.
Hang in there. You will get better. Really.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:488384
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050420/msgs/488523.html