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I have borderline personality disorder (BPD). AMA.

Patorick

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Emotion+Regulation+Handout+14+PLEASE+Skills+DBT.JPG
 

Patorick

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What You Need to Know about Borderline Personality Disorder

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...ed-know-about-borderline-personality-disorder

By Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.

New findings in one of the most puzzling of personality disorders

Posted Dec 15, 2012

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a long-standing psychological disorder in which a person lacks a clear sense of self-definition, has difficulty maintaining boundaries in relationships with others, and may engage in occasional acts of self-harm.
It’s not easy to spot, and once you’ve had a relationship with a person who has this disorder, you may never feel the same way about yourself, or relationships, ever again. By the same token, if you have been diagnosed with this disorder, you know that relationships with others are one of your chief problem areas of life.

Unfortunately, there are media images of people with this disorder that reinforce its worst, and scariest, qualities. Alex, in the movie Fatal Attraction (the one who cooked her lover’s rabbit), is perhaps the most memorable. The young women in Girl, Interrupted (based on Susanna Kaysen’s remarkable book), also presented a view of people with this disorder that emphasized its most extreme qualities.

In case you’re wondering where the term came from, its origins can be traced to psychoanalysts who believed that people with certain chronic disturbances were at the “border” between neurosis and psychosis. In other words, they experienced such “neurotic” symptoms as anxiety and depression but also showed “psychotic” symptoms in which they seemed to lose touch with reality. The diagnosis of BPD was rather imprecise and based, in part, on the individual’s symptoms not fitting neatly into any particular category. As its use in psychiatry and psychology evolved, the diagnosis of BPD became more precise. However, therapists still continued to use BPD as a catch-all diagnosis, sometimes reserving it for their clients who were most resistant to treatment. In many ways, people with BPD were the clients that therapists loved to hate.

Part of the difficulty in dealing with clients who have BPD (however defined), is that these many of these individuals can be very sensitive to any signs of rejection by their therapist. They might storm out of a session if they believe that they’re not getting the right kind, or enough, attention. If their therapists announce that they’re going on vacation, the BPD clients might quit therapy in advance, so as not to be the ones who are left behind. Many theories about BPD were based on the notion that they suffered real, or imagined, abuse from their parents. Other clinical theories proposed that their mothers were too interfering in their lives to the point of suffocating their individuality.

As friends and lovers, people with BPD can present similar challenges. They may get very close, very fast. Once they sense that you’re retreating, they may become enraged at you, pursue you, or suddenly drop you entirely. The character Alex was an exaggeration, but in real life, a person with BPD may make your life quite difficult until the situation resolves itself.

There are ways to detect whether a potential partner has BPD, but because many people are below the threshold (a fact recognized in the upcoming DSM5), the signs may be tough to spot. Your best key may be one that has the technical term “counter-transference.” This sounds very psychoanalytic, and it certainly is where the term originated. However, in daily life, we experience counter-transference all the time. Here’s how it goes. Transference occurs when someone unconsciously “transfers” onto you the feelings they had about an important figure in their lives (often a parent). For example, they think you’re being critical of them when you’ve done nothing at all (transfering their insecurity onto you). In counter-transference, you react negatively to a person who, at a level below your conscious awareness, triggers problematic feelings within you. Without knowing why, you find yourself feeling uncomfortable.

Counter-transference can also lead you to act in uncharacteristic ways. The person with BPD may seem extremely enticing and desirable to you, and you feel like you’ve found your soul mate. You’re getting too close too fast, but you can’t stop yourself. By looking at your behavior and stopping yourself before you get in too deep, you might head off a relationship that will only create problems further down the road.

However, it’s important to recognize that people with BPD don’t want to make your life, or theirs, miserable. They don’t want the relationship to end badly, it just does. Research by Mount Sinai psychiatrist Antonia New and colleagues (2012) suggests that people with BPD have difficulties in understanding their own, and other people’s, emotions, in ways that land them in relationship trouble. 79 adults with BPD completed a questionnaire testing the fascinating term “alexithymia” meaning, simply, the inability to read emotions in others. Based on the premise that people with BPD have impaired social interactions, the research team decided to find out whether people with BPD could read the emotions of others compared to how they could read their own emotions. If people with BPD can feel, but not identify, emotions, this could provide clues to their problematic relationships with others.

The focus of the study was a task in which participants saw a series of pictures depicting people in various situations and rated what they believed the people in each picture were feeling. Then, looking at the pictures again, they were asked to imagine themselves in the situation and rate what they would feel.

The findings showed that people with BPD (compared to healthy controls) were less able to identify feelings, but it was the feelings within themselves that gave them the most challenge. Their difficulty was in putting themselves into the situations, especially when the feelings depicted were negative. Unlike people with antisocial personality disorder, individuals with BPD can feel compassion toward others and even empathy. It’s their own inability to tolerate (and therefore think about) negative emotions that seems particularly disturbed.

These new results add to the scientific data on BPD which is bringing new light into understanding this complex and mysterious psychological condition. If you’re in a relationship with a person who has (or might have) BPD, the findings can help you understand the distancing that your partner may engage in when it comes to painful emotions. If you’re an individual who has this diagnosis, the findings point to a possible way that you can gain insight into your own experiences with negative feelings. By gradually acknowledging them, people with BPD may be able to accept not only these feelings but also gain greater self-awareness and acceptance.
 

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The best treatments for Borderline Personality Disorder are deeply personal

https://www.saybrook.edu/unbound/be...ine-personality-disorder-are-deeply-personal/

By Saybrook University

Saybrook Forum, Blog, Therapeutic Practices
- Friday, April 01, 2011

It’s a diagnosis that ravages two percent of the general population and twenty percent of patients in psychiatric inpatient facilities. Characterized by frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, intense patterns of idealization and devaluation of interpersonal relationships, high levels of impulsivity in spending, sexuality, or eating– all with deleterious effects—and this is only the beginning.

Welcome to the world of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

The fragile realm of BPD is rapidly changing in treatment and diagnosis. Changes to the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) are heralding the most prominent adjustments to psychiatric diagnosis in some thirty years. Personality disorders are taking the biggest hit – half of personality disorders in the current manual getting the “boot.” All these changes and more are preliminary and awaiting field trial.

While diagnosis is an important part of the mix of modern medical and mental healthcare, it does little to directly help treatment and recovery. For those effected by BPD – it’s ravaging. For those that treat it – taxing.

But advances in treatment have occurred: you just won’t find them in the DSM. Research-based humanistic person centered treatment methods provide a beacon of hope for those with BPD.

Research published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology provides hope and help. Adam Quinn, a social worker and clinician whose work covers the gamut of trauma survivors, veterans, and seriously mentally ill clients tackles the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder with the Person Centered Treatment Model (PCT).

Quinn tackles the diagnosis and treatment of BPD with rigor, practicality and eloquence. Examining the array of conventional approaches, Quinn highlights the empirical evidence for person centered treatment for individuals diagnosed with or possessing characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder.

It’s Carl Rogers’ technique, twenty first century style.

The following six process mechanisms, resulting from Person Centered facilitative mechanisms demonstrate the effectiveness of such therapy:

Increased Accurate Awareness: Through the therapist’s facilitative embodiment of congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding, a BPD client moves from a state of idealized interpretations of their environment to reality based interpretations; thus a lessening of interpersonal abandonment issues.

Internal Locus of Control: As the therapeutic alliance continues to authenticate and express congruence, a BPD client gradually moves from the external locus of control that causes many issues, to an internal locus of control.

Assimilate Previously Threatening Experience: In the process of gaining an internal locus of control, the interpretation of external experiences changes and assimilates into the realistic realm of expectations. As an increase in accurate awareness of inner and external realities occurs, the positive regard of the therapist becomes part of the “selfhood” of the client; thus promoting inherent elf-actualizing and self-growth tendencies.

Defensiveness to Acceptance: Based on the facilitative qualities present in the therapeutic relationship, the client gradually moves from their classic defensive state to a state of self-acceptance. The borderline tendencies of the client begin to substantially lessen as the internal locus of control recognizes its value as a person through the experience of the therapist’s genuinely expressed non-possessive unconditional positive regard. Issues of suicidality are common in this phase for the client as they test their “worthiness” in the face of the clinicians continued positive regard.

Increased Acceptance of Others: Through the testing and subsequent internalization of the therapeutic acceptance, the client begins to more fully accept themselves and in turn begins to accept others; without the previous fear of abandonment, and the elements of devaluation and idealization. Self-harm behaviors lessen as interpersonal unstable relationships decrease. The self-actualizing tendency further promotes congruency between self and experience; thus the client begins choosing healthier relationships.

Reliance on Self Evaluation: In this phase, internal evaluation of experience becomes paramount as increased reliance is placed on the client’s internal locus of control. Through the genuine person centered therapeutic relationship, the client moves toward an inner locus of control; where reactivity and affective instability cease to exist and self-evaluation predominates.

With Quinn’s research as a foundation, great work and hope remains to recognize the endless possibilities with treating borderline personality disorder with the person centered therapy model. As Carl Rogers once said, “This is the person-centered scenario of the future. We may choose it, but whether we choose it or not, it appears that to some degree it is inexorably moving to change our culture…”

— Liz Schreiber
 

Patorick

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Special Guest Blog Post

I've known Pat for a few months now, first meeting him at the embrace mental health group.

Pat was very open from the beginning and courageous in the way he spoke about his experience of borderline personality disorder.

Over the time I've known him, he has brought a refreshing new take on a lot of different things and I think this is such a gift he has in his ability to be able to see things in a new way.

He is always open to meeting new people, sharing his experiences and giving anything a crack!

The way he has taken a step past fear to really open up to whatever is required to live a live which gives him a greater sense of purpose and happiness is a shining example for what we can all do!

I'm so pleased and excited for Pat and all that he will bring this world through the sharing of his experiences and the way he continues to transcend adversity and his experiences into seeds of wisdom that will hopefully also resonate with others, allowing them to take that step also.

Samantha Brunskill (Friend)

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Patorick

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Is the song to do with BPD or just a song you like?

I always thought it was about sex
I'm pretty sure the reference to "fisting" is highly allegorical, though it is interesting that it is such a sexually shocking use of symbolism.

Boredom is a symptom that is also highly correlated with borderlines. just another angle that I thought others might consider.

The borderline is actually a thin "veil", if you will, that i think is approx. 4-6 inches in front of your face that is sorta like a barrier between this physical consciousness and some "higher" plane of consciousness.

"Keep digging till i feel something" means that he is going through "the looking glass" and searching for something.

I think the "veil" is an energy vibration and when/if you are able to sync up your body/spirits energy on the same energy level as the "veil" you will be able to go through it in some way.

https://toolnavy.com/showthread.php?t=31565

The song deals with how modern technology tends to desensitize people and keeps them from really feeling.

It states that only way to really feel true emotions is by experiencing things with other people; really connecting and stripping them of all their outer layers and really penetrating the person underneath that, hence the fisting metaphor.

It also states how addictive and primal this is.

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3391
 
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