Posted on: Sun, May 18 2008 1:34 PM
Posted by: myrrh Posts: 2
Hi,
Just wanted to get this condition on the discussion boards.
For those who don't know about this condition, it's one of the more devastating and difficult to treat disorders in the mental disorder spectrum. It's not an organic condition but generally appears in teens and adults who were both abused and neglected. Most people with Borderline are female. I don't have the DSM handy but some of the hallmarks of Borderline are drastic mood changes, self injury, repeated suicidal threats or gestures, repeated suicide attempts, risky behaviors such as promiscuous sex, excessive spending, drinking, drug use, gambling, etc., fear of abandonment and difficulty maintaining relationships. This is a bit paradoxical, as most sufferers of BDP, upon first glance, are "apparently competent" and have a capable demeanor, which explains why this condition is so widely underdiagnosed.
For many years, BDP was considered extremely difficult to treat, thus it had a stigma among mental health care providers that made things more difficult for those suffering with it. This was due to the early theory that this illness was on the "borderline" between neurosis and psychosis and the belief that patients with BDP were potentially dangerous to their therapists as well as to themselves. Thankfully these attitudes and ideas have changed over the past ten years or so. It's sometimes said that people who suffer from BDP "grow out of it" as they hit their 30s - and to some extent, this may be true. One theory about BDP is that is may be a particular set of maladaptions related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
My own history does include abuse and neglect during childhood. My first suicide attempt was at age 8, I began physically abusing others at age 11, was hospitalized at 15 after an overdose and it just continued to spiral out of control from there. The first time I ever heard the term Borderline Personality Disorder was in my mid twenties, after I had been suffering for more than 15 years! Maintaining employment has been impossible for me and I have found it difficult to maintain friendships (not due to emotional dysregulation but just finding it hard to let people know me well). I have learned to regulate my moods better through personal study of cognitive therapy books and through my Orthodox Christian faith. When under extreme stress, I still exhibit PTSD/BPD type symptoms which typically appear as angry outbursts or suicidal ideation. Avoiding stress is helpful but in order to truly overcome this disorder, it will be necessary to improve my coping abilities so that I don't have to avoid things that are ultimately necessary and beneficial (such as work!!!!). I have worked part time on and off over the years but ultimately my family has paid the price for my illness (literally) and that is a heavy thing for me to live with.
I'm not really interested in sympathy from anyone but rather in helping to make it known that this condition does exist and to encourage others suffering from it to accept responsibility for their recovery inasmuch as they are able.
Posted on: Sun, May 18 2008 1:46 PM
Posted by: madmumbler Posts: 249
Hi, and welcome to the board. You're right about BPD and how it's been mis/underdiagnosed. I've worked with hundreds of mostly women who have partners with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and it overlaps BPD in many ways. (It's very similar and on the same spectrum, I believe, but diagnostically it's extremely difficult to diagnose, and is usually diagnosed as a result of the mental health professional talking to the person's partner.) Unlike NPD, BPD is treatable if the patient wants to make the changes. In the over ten years I've been working with people, I've yet to see someone with NPD or someone who charts high on the narcissistic scale ever get into a serious recovery. Not saying it doesn't happen, but in my experience, I've never seen it happen.
A good friend of mine has BPD and she also struggles with PTSD as a result of years of systematic childhood abuse, and a physically abusive ex-husband. She's got the added "bonus" of having problems with some medications that don't work for her. On the plus side, her degree is in mental health and she works in that field, so she's got an excellent professional support network.
There is help and hope out there. The good thing is you recognize you have symptoms and are making strides in your recovery.
Posted on: Sun, May 18 2008 3:29 PM
Thanks for your comments.
It seems a few of the personality disorders are often comorbid.
I remember reading somewhere that patients with Borderline often have a narcissistic parent. This really does fit as a causative factor in BPD, which is said to be caused by lack of validation (it's a shame this word has been cheapened, as it refers to something so important to proper childhood development). Because people with pronounced narcissistic personality traits have difficulty seeing others are distinct people, it would be quite difficult, I think, for them to recognize feelings and needs in young children, let alone to validate them (not impossible but difficult).
It would be interesting to hear from more folks on the boards with personality disorders.
Posted on: Sat, May 31 2008 10:00 AM
Posted by: teetee Posts: 3
I was first told I had bpd when I was in my early 30's and I didn't know what it was, I just denied having it. Then about 5 years into it I decided I had better learn about bpd and so the journey began. For the most part yes I agree I believe a person does grow out of the bpd state. I believe this is done threw alot of inter personal work and a wanting to be well. The stigma attached to such a disorder is horrible I did not discuss the disorder with anyone. My current psy. doc. doesn't know about the bpd as I have not allowed my medical records to be forwarded to him. To this day I believe that was the right decision for me at least. I have my doctor's full attention on my clinical depression which I feel I need the most help with.
If I am lucky I will be envolved is a clinical trail using an implanted device to stimulate the vagal nerve within the next month.
Here's keeping my finger's crossed XXXX
Posted on: Tue, Jun 24 2008 5:10 PM
Posted by: naomimimi Posts: 180
Hey Myrrh,
BDP has been a huge part of my life since I grew up with a narssistic (sp?) AND BPD parent. It is a very tricky and difficult diagnosis, and from what I understand, the exploration is only beginning.
It's always nice to know that there are others out there who can relate when I talk about growing up in a home with BPD.
Posted on: Tue, Aug 26 2008 2:09 PM
Posted by: langkris Posts: 34
Hi
I am glad you brought up BPD on the board. For what it's worth, I wanted to pass on a few things I learned getting my degree in Psy and knowing a Narcissistic parent and a sister with BPD.
I believe that all persons with BPD have an external locus of control. The state of their emotional self is dictated by their environment. My ownn personal metaphor is the reptile's ability to maintain its body heat is dependent on the temperature outside. A mammal can maintain its body heat in a variety of temperature depending on the species. A person with BPD cannot maintain a constant emotional state on their own. To make matters more difficult, the events, conditions, etc. that trigger a change in the emotional state are different for each and every person depending on their abuse history and their family of orgin. The "locus of control" or the 'ability to maintain body temp/emotional state' can be internalized. It is not hopeless.
I had my sister start writing a 'rule book' in which she would write down rules about everything that happened to her in a single day and the way it was "supposed to" work. In the evening, I would go over and help her change the 'rules' she had written to 'rules that could be universalized'. For example, one of the first 'rules' she wrote was " the guy in the brown car should not have cut me off on the freeway" - after asking her several questions we got to the 'rule' that "persons should not drive recklessly and cut people off because it is illegal, rude and dangerous to themselves and the other motorists" Finally, we came to the rule that "persons do not have the right to act in such a careless manner that they or other persons might be injured or killed. (both the 2nd and the last are universalized to different degrees)
To make a short story long (:-), I taught her how to take emotional situations and analyze the foundation beliefs and the motivations and responsibilities of each person involved and to WRITE THEM DOWN. This 'training/teaching' brought her to the point that she was able to regulated/control her emotions more because they had an INTERNAL Foundation rather and EXTERNAL Locus of control-(the environment and others)
Hope this helps some
Good Luck
Kris
Posted on: Thu, Sep 18 2008 10:47 PM
Posted by: Megan N All Posts: 3
Think of stages of dissociation that we all know, not just the autopilot - how did we get somewhere when we've lost our memory of how we got there - but where there is something that frightens us. For example, a memory of school playground bullying where we seem to be slowed down somehow and yet your hearing and sight are very sharp and you have a sense of everything being in slow motion for protection. That's a sort of stage along the way. Then supposing it's you being kicked. There is then the sense of you being outside looking at that little you being kicked because it's not bearable to be there. This is the experience where people have all sorts of out-of-body memories looking down on themselves. If it's an attachment figure, and it goes on and on, then there is a point where it can't be me because my name's Mary and I'm eight, so that little girl there, she's not eight, she's five and she hasn't got parents. The next time abuse reaches a certain pitch, then that new one takes over and is fleshed out with fragments of the original personality to empower her. She then uses the creativity of the host to develop herself.
The research from America, where, as with everything to do with abuse and trauma, they seem to be about ten years ahead, was that this was linked to trauma. More specifically, trauma linked to attachment figures, in that the child under five cannot conceive of a parent or key caretaker who is sadistic, mad or in a temporary state of not managing. The child has to think the parent is good because their survival depends on it, so they have to find another way of coping. The normal kind of fight-flight mechanisms, that for a teenager can lead to running away, or fighting . . . if you're little you can't run away outside. No one would be able to look after you, you couldn't look after yourself and therefore flight inside is the only mode of survival. So it seems to be a very creative kind of use of the imagination for the purpose of survival.
Whilst you can have dissociative identity disorder from extreme emotional abuse on its own, and we really underestimate emotional abuse, the commonest group seen in America are where there's physical and sexual abuse too. We've been calling it an attachment disorder. There is controversy over this, but those of us who think that's useful language do so because concentration camp survivors, who've gone through extreme torture, do not develop DID. Vietnam vets have not developed DID. Yes, they can have amnesic states, fugues, dissociation, flashbacks, but DID seems to be where you cannot bear the nature of who the person is that's hurting you. So it's primarily for evolutionary purposes, the child's need for an adult for their survival.
Tragically, in the sample we've seen, but also in a lot of the American samples, ritual abuse of whatever kind, abuse in which there are regularities and repetitions of place, time, meaning, sometimes with a religious belief system, whether satanist or other, but where there are those repetitions around dates, and it involves family members too, is par excellence a breeding ground for DID. One of the problems there's been is that initially there was awareness of incest, families abusing their own children, then there was awareness of stranger danger, paedophilia. What has not caught on adequately and where the most serious, chronic abuse goes on, is where the two combine and you have got paedophilia in the family with outside people brought in and it is not just one parent, it is multiple perpetrators that are interconnected. Our theoretical difficulty in putting incest and paedophilia together is part of the reason why we find this hard to see. ~~~
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder, is a disorder in which a person has more than one discrete, separate identity. Each identity is unique, and has its own sets of memories, ideas, thoughts, ways of thinking, and purposes. One identity may be the protector, while another may be a child. On average, a person with DID has between 8 and 13 separate personalities. DID generally results from a severe traumatic experience during the early childhood years
We are happy to answer questions, and happy to write more about how we live tgether day to day. If it would help others, or if anyone would like to know.
Megan & All
Posted on: Thu, Sep 18 2008 11:17 PM
Posted by: Kara Posts: 2,333
Hi Megan,
Thanks for sharing about DID and welcome to Disaboom. It's a hard concept to view DID as a gift but I know that in some ways I consider my own condition (brittle bones) a gift as well and most people totally don't get that either! It's not ALL a gift and maybe that's how you view DID as well. Most of my contact with people who have DID has been as a therapist in an inpatient psych unit for children-it's fairly rare but can be so hard for teens/kids with DID and their families.
Did you always have a positive view of your diagnosis or how did you change your perspective?
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