Posted by deerock on April 21, 2010, at 10:01:39
hi there,
i keep bumping into this issue with my T but we dont talk about it too often. it came up in a big way yesterday.
i told her that i realize that some of the issues we work on (self destructive behavior, rage, mood swings, impulsivity, splitting) are common in people with borderline personality disorder and i said that i thought she was thinking i had that disorder. She said she did not want to label me. I said my concern was not about labels. Rather my concern was that by thinking that I had these problems, she was identifying behavioral patterns and feelings that were quite unusual. And I said that my concern was that she was telling me that I am experiencing and feeling things she has never ever felt. And she said well what if that is true. And I started to cry and said then that means that I feel like an alien. And the session started to wind down and she said this is it right here, stick with the feeling of feeling like an alien and lets talk more next time.
The whole thing makes me feel really uneasy. Like she sees me as a sick person or a hurt person. Like she acknowledges that I am feeling things she has never felt. That she is well and I am not.
The reason this bothers me is because I used to have another therapist who made me feel quite differently. I would ask him if I had a personality disorder or if something was wrong with me and he would say you know rock, you have tendencies like everyone else has tendencies. Your mind happens to have tendencies towards anxiety or depression. There is nothing wrong with you at all. You have your tendency and everyone else has theirs.
This message seems quite different than when my current T avoids saying that she thinks something is wrong with me yet she will confirm that I feel feelings she has never ever felt before. Its the choice to use the language that it something is wrong with me that she wont subscribe to and thats fine. I pay her to sit there and tell me there is nothing wrong with me. But for some reason, her approach is making me feel that there is something quite disturbing about what goes on inside me otherwise why would anyone bother to identify the behaviors as something that is exactly what borderline personality disordered individuals do.
For anyone who is reading this who is bothered by my reference to BPD as an illness or that there is something wrong with people who have it, I apologize. This has more to do with my personal views on the illness as well as long term prognosis for borderline personality disorder. I believe what I have is not a long term illness yet I am bothered that the T uses terminology that is consistent with BPD which is considered a long term illness as far as I can tell.
poster:deerock
thread:944317
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20100405/msgs/944317.html