borderline (not madonna)

Frankly, though, diagnoses of Borderline and Asperger's are really hip at the moment -- finding a shrink who'll help you live happily and successfully strikes me as more important (and much harder) than finding one who'll put the right label on you.

worked with someone with borderline personality - really impossible to deal with over the long term. fortunately this person was not supervising me but the people she did were just so miserable all the time. how does one cope with this?

How the heck did you get her diagnosis?

ok, someone you are 99% sure has borderline personality disorder based on familiarity with the characteristics and 5 years of observation. there is no doubt she has some sort of mental illness. i guess i'm sort of interested in how companies treat people with mental disorders and how they deal with the adverse consequences of the afflicted person in relation to other employees, especially when that person is a supervisor.

I'd prefer to talk about this in a deindexed or secret forum, but what the hell. From another thread, MB and mh:

My only advice for dealing with someone with BPD is GET AWAY NOW.

Could not agree more. I feel a little bad saying that, but I've had my life carelessly wrecked by a couple of undiagnosed BPD cases.

Well I have some wonderful, wonderful news. Having fucked up so many close friendships in my life over the past ten years, been told I was bipolar, depressions, anxious, and so on by psychiatrists, therapists and doctors in walk-in clinics while in the middle of a breakdown, I finally took a few days in a hospital this week to really get to the bottom of what was up with me, and this is it.

Most of the stuff online I read about BPD is like "OMG stay away from these people", or "you couldn't possibly have that", and so I've been feeling an incredible amount of stigma and fear about this diagnosis. But in all honesty I've never felt so relieved, it's like a Rosetta stone has been placed over every insane moment in my life and things have suddenly started to make sense.

What is good is that I don't exhibit the violent symptoms. And the "positive" aspects of the disorder have become a defining aspect of my personality, as I'm endlessly cooking and giving and working for people for free and basically everybody thinks I'm just this super-wonderful generous person. What is also good is that I have an incredible boyfriend who's been with me for twelve years and just laughed at all the literature and how otm it all was and was super-supportive and unflappable about it all.

What is bad is that I've spent the last ten years of my life going from situation to situation feeling unappreciated and unwanted and unloved. I've ruined every friendship by obsessively calling them every day until they walk away. I moved away from the city in which I'd put down roots because I felt like my friends were abandoning me (and they weren't). Many of the best most steadfast people in my life have been sidelined for the people I've been obsessed with. I even think my ILX presence has been coloured by it, spending days feeling destroyed by some comment.

The last ten months, I've been in a poly relationship with another couple and it was the best seven months of my life, followed by the worst three months of my life, as fear of abandonment and insecurity turned me from a beautiful, stoic golden retriever into a chain-smoking, crying mess of a person. Screaming at them "I love you more than you love me and it's destroying me". Showing up to help them move, paint their apartment, and then crying uncontrollably when I realized I had nobody in my life who'd reciprocate these good deeds. Crying in bed and saying stuff to my boyfriend like "I want to feel like I'm the centre of somebody's world at all times and I feel like I'll never be satisfied" and "I'm not good enough for you you deserve somebody so much better."

I've lost so, so many days and weeks and months to this disorder. I feel so relieved and so scared and so fucked up. How are you guys doing?

Would rather not talk in the public forums about this topic either, plus I have had no sleep so wouldn't make any sense right now, but I'm glad that you have managed to identify this stuff - even though identification isn't a solution it's at least a thing that you can work with and get more specific support for. I hope things get a little better for you. x

Yeah, right now I'm just reeling with how much this all makes sense, but also so afraid that it's put myself in the position of antagonist in my own life story. The feeling of sadness and relief is really something

It doesn't sound like a fun place to be, but hopefully it's one of those ah-ha moments that is all "OK so that makes sense" and explains yourself to you and feels like you finally got all the jig-saw pieces the right way round (more than one of those moments where you feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you and you're not who you thought you were.) If it feels right, like it feels like it fits and explains stuff, then this can only be a positive thing, going forward, right?

Like it doesn't change who you are or what you do, but if it helps to explain why you do those things, that has to be helpful both to you and the people around you?

(in a bit of a similar "the diagnosis you've lived with for half your life is probably incorrect" moment myself, so I feel you on this.)

someone i love suffers from this condition. one of the most good-hearted humans i know. who’s been in a lot of pain all their life.
has great therapist now & is doing v well
diagnosis clarified many things; beginning of process/ journey (like we’re all on, to better understand ourselves & how to live in the world, with ourselves & with others)
since then we both continue to learn how to better communicate with each other, express/ accept/ interpret love, its flaws & its limits
heartfelt best wishes to you, fgti

The Louis CK "Of course! but maybe?" bit is really otm right now. Is my relationship in the pits? or am I wrong and everything is fine? Was my decision the right one? or was it distorted and I should've stuck with it?

So many times I've vented to this person or that about a situation and had them tell me "you are not crazy! that is fucked! get out of there!"

But the really real realization that I'm making, in viewing my friends who are happiest, and most stable, is that sanity is really a state of denial, floating through life with problems unacknowledged. In a way, having this disorder laid out for me has just got me second-guessing, CBT got me over-thinking. I wish lobotomies were still a thing tbh

Hi fgti. I don't post here much at all, but my boyfriend (who does) told me about what you'd said and I felt I should let you know how much your comments resonate. Firstly, congratulations on your diagnosis - I really hope it provides you with some real catharsis and a more combative sense of self. I fairly recently (a couple of years ago) discovered I have BPD and, like with you, the shockwaves of relief were overwhelming. Everything was suddenly very explicable in a very tidy package, or perhaps not that tidy, but a little bit more digestible than "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to rip up all my notebooks...I swear there's something seriously wrong with me! Please love me".

It can be very upsetting to read a lot of what's out there about BPD due to how profoundly misunderstood it is. Given that purportedly 1 in 100 people suffer, it is scarcely discussed in a way that people can have useful, everyday access to, with forums and articles generally favouring the 'Fatal Attraction' stereotype of a psychotic, manipulative lifesuck. The comments you pasted above exemplify that frankly prehistoric mindset, and for some reason this seems to dominate public discourses about BPD, grossly destabilising sufferers who introject these perspectives into their already terribly shaky sense of self-worth and often believe it to be true of themselves.

That's not to say it can't truly be draining for everyone involved... I've also driven a good number of people away. As soon as I sense even a hint of dissatisfaction in a relationship, then the old abandonment sirens are flailing and I have to prompt for reassurance every five minutes, and the mere fact of my prompting makes my inflamed paranoia question why I'm having to prompt in the first place, sending me further into despair, and inevitably that becomes infuriating for the person this is directed at, forcing them to further withdraw, making me more crazily insistent on being close to them...etc. But anyone intuitive or empathetic enough will see that at the heart of the storm is a fundamentally very loving person who is hyper-sensitive to their environment and just requires a bit (or a lot) of careful handling to help even out those jumping diagonals.

It can absolutely exhausting. I feel at once as though I've got the emotional reflexes of an infant, and also like I've lived 200 years. Time seems to stretch very far when every comment is analysed over and over, every minute occurrence - real or fantasised - is responded to with such emotional intensity that it feels absolutely unsustainable, and yet somehow it is, which isn't necessarily a positive because then you're stuck with what feels like an infinitely lonely experience. Which is why it means SO much when I'm told "hey someone on ILX wrote a post about BPD", because visibility and creating a dialogue for real understanding is so important for sufferers and non-sufferers alike. And for a second I can let myself feel like ours is the normative mindset!

Jesus this is all a bit much though...I really hope all of this is okay to even say... Also, it should (but doesn't) go without saying that this fucked-up set of symptoms comes with some amazing ones too: extreme emotional empathy (nothing at all like narcissism, despite popular misconception), deep love and appreciation of a broad array of things, creativity, passion, generosity, and tremendous resilience like no one even fucking knows.

Sounds like your primary relationship is a really cherishable thing and it's so nice that you can share this whole discovery process with them. I have a whole reading list of stuff that might be useful if you're ever interested...

Thank you again. Sorry for weird, gushing midnight post.

I would love that reading list, please share if you can.

When I went in for diagnosis I was happy when they got to the part about self-harm, because I've never done things like that, or any real extreme substance abuse. Hooray! Until I was re-reading the literature this morning and it got to the part that said: “unlike suicide attempts, self-harming behaviours do not stem from a desire to die. However, some self-harming behaviours may be life threatening. [...] People with borderline personality disorder may self-harm to help regulate their emotions, to punish themselves, or to express their pain. They do not always see these behaviours as harmful.” And the fact that I jumped from five to twenty-five cigs a day overnight suddenly made sense.

Ha! Yeah I was exactly the same - people don't necessarily realise that self-destruction can come from any number of places. I've got a bad habit of losing myself on night buses post-blackout right now, which is obviously a riot for everyone involved...

Reading list-wise, I've found the following either useful in a therapeutic sense or just as a means of positive self-indulgence:

Non-fiction:
'I Hate You, Don't Leave Me' by Kreisman and Straus - don't be put off by the 80s self help aesthetic - this book is a tremendous resource, especially if you can trick other people into reading it too. If not it still wins through on the 'God...that's so me' gratification level.
'Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder' by Marsha Linehan - She invented Dialectical Behavioural Therapy as a means of coping with her own BPD and this 'activity book' of sorts offers a lot of tried and tested practical advice for coping.
'The Drama of Being a Child' by Alice Miller - Not overtly BPD-related, but an amazing exploration of how things like this develop.
I also find anything by D W Winnicott about transitional objects very soothing - all about combatting anxieties through childhood and into adult life through the conduit of toys/culture/religion.

Fiction:
'Are You My Mother?' - Alison Bechdale's incredible follow-up to Fun Home. The central and therapeutic relationships here really spoke to me.
'The First Bad Man' by Miranda July - Just finished reading this and again, although not overtly about BPD, the insecurity and impulsivity is very familiar. It's also unbelievably funny.
'Good Morning Midnight' by Jean Rhys - Wildly oscillating and brilliant...desperately depressing too, but I find it comforting through like-mindedness.
'The Sorrows of Young Werther' by Goethe - I run the risk of stereotyping a little with this one, but wow...Goethe really feels things to their liminal point.

I sound like an over-zealous pamphlet. I hope some of this is useful to you.

Not at all it's good. I've read the Bechdel and the July and of course I'm all about little Werther but that stuff's not healthy, Goethe and Barthes just revel in self-as-zero imo. Will check out the Rhys and the non-fiction stuff, definitely feeling super skeptical of mindfulness and all the acronymical "sleep exercise meditation eat" entry-level DBT info I've discovered online but I'l cautiously optimistic, have DBT sessions coming up this week

Woah this is super weird. I do not have BPD or EUPD but I've become extremely interested in it and have been reading a lot about it lately because I've been using some of the techniques of DBT. OK going to read this now.

fgti I'm sorry that you've been struggling but I hope that having this diagnosis will help you begin to understand and heal.

I have GAD but also exhibit some of the symptoms of BPD (namely distress intolerance, disordered eating, extreme fears of abandonment) and have found some of the midnfulness and DBT stuff to be really really helpful. I was super skeptical of it and still have to get over my "Oh God this is so hokey" thoughts a lot of the time but it really has helped.

Yes. Since I was diagnosed I've been talking about it with some "crazy" friends and they've found that they identify with many of the symptoms, if not the entire disorder and the punishing physical side of it. I figured that sure, it'd be worthwhile for anybody to get into DBT, why not? It's about relearning basic life skills, really.

My issue I guess with all the "software"-based versions of mental recuperation-- like mindfulness and CBT-- is that they're essentially rooted in a kind of "teaching your brain denial".

CBT would have you frame all shitty stuff in your life as being actually fine and good, all shitty feelings as actually baseless and silly. Most of the exercises that I've worked through are reliant upon certain constants, such as, "Anxious Joe is actually a great public speaker", "Insecure Mary is actually very attractive", "Antisocial Stevie is so fun to be around when he's positive about it".

Real, indelible truths-- "I'm becoming a lonely old gay man," i.e.-- hit a wall and are just dismissed as ridiculous! because within the world of CBT, there is no such thing as poverty, old age, ugliness, unlikeability, unfuckability. And of course, most of these constructions come crashing down the moment that I try and hang with an acquaintance who ~is~ in fact kind of insufferable, or obsessive. I look at them across the table and think about, or read their insane Facebook update, and realize that in fact, I am one of those misfits.

Regarding DBT and mindfulness, it's been an interesting investigation on my end to really figure out why my social circle "prefers" to hang out with my boyfriend, who is a very in-the-moment kind of party-starter, who happily shirks his responsibilities for a round of shots, etc. I look at him and think to myself "happiness, sanity, they're rooted in being in a state of denial." They tell you denial is bad, and should be dealt with, should be talked through, but in truth, denial is good-- I think this. Then, in comes meditation and mindfulness, which preaches, in other words, this exact idea. Deny your thoughts, deny your worries, exist in your body in the present moment.

In short I do acknowledge that BPD is a sickness, but the treatments so far seem to be simply all about clouding your mind from the truth, or telling yourself lies to cope. The truth being, of course, forgive the Tumblring, that the world will always favour the young and strong and rich and able and beautiful and naturally funny and happy, and that the rest of the world is destined to try their best to be content with that.

CBT would have you frame all shitty stuff in your life as being actually fine and good, all shitty feelings as actually baseless and silly. Most of the exercises that I've worked through are reliant upon certain constants, such as, "Anxious Joe is actually a great public speaker", "Insecure Mary is actually very attractive", "Antisocial Stevie is so fun to be around when he's positive about it".

Real, indelible truths-- "I'm becoming a lonely old gay man," i.e.-- hit a wall and are just dismissed as ridiculous! because within the world of CBT, there is no such thing as poverty, old age, ugliness, unlikeability, unfuckability.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. This is exactly how CBT reads to me, and why I cannot get on board with it even though I know lots of people it has actually helped.

The scariest and most frustrating thing that I've been feeling over the last few days is that the only people I want reassurance and reconciliation from are the people who I've perceived as having "done me wrong", either the people I've driven away with my bullshit, or the genuinely abusive people who've been shitty to me. My mom calls to ask if I'm OK and I feel irritated, but an ex-lover messages me a <3 and I feel elated. Somebody please come by and beat me to death

I dunno; remember that time I said CBT didn't work for me (and in fact it might not be the other poster "not working hard enough" and might just be CBT not being right for them) and basically got shrieked off the thread? That's why I don't talk about therapy (mine or other people's) on ILX any more.

But fgti I hope you find peace or self acceptance or something that works for you.

I've been feeling kinda haunted by the quote of mine you posted above, and wish I could retract the nasty thing I said thinking it might hurt you or others. But you can't. I'm not going to excuse it saying it was coming from a place of ignorance and fear, though it was. I'm just going to say it was coming from a place of having been badly hurt and traumatised. I'm sorry; it was a shitty bad thing to say.

thanks for the reading list tangenttangent

But the really real realization that I'm making, in viewing my friends who are happiest, and most stable, is that sanity is really a state of denial, floating through life with problems unacknowledged

Yesss! But that is life, isn't it? There are always going to be 'problems', and happiness comes from how you choose to react. Maybe their problems aren't 'unacknowledged', maybe they are 'accepted', (or maybe they are indeed ignored) and as corny as it sounds, maybe we do have to accept that our quests for self improvement or actualization or success or whatever really do have their hard limits sometimes..

Well, I kind of was delighted to realize that my favourite Lovecraft quote was super-applicable to a lot of this therapizing:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

Branwell, the goriest part of accepting and 'going public' as having this disorder is that the people, most consistently, who reach out to me with the greatest tenacity are of course the craziest people that, while I haven't tried to avoid them, I definitely feel no solace in knowing that it's their misfit asses that are coming to my aid. So your quote remains otm.

I'm reminded of the sick pleasure I feel when I hear teenagers and young adults engaging in ageist banter and statements, knowing that it's they who will suffer the most when they find themselves aged. Me, I've always had patience and time for anybody and everybody, but my deeply repressed feelings of mistrust toward the "crazy" are now being directed inwardly. Reap what you sow, I suppose.

Interesting that you think of meditation/mindfulness as denying, fgti; I've always thought of it as the opposite. Perhaps that's because I sound more like your bf; I pretty much used to live a happy-go-lucky life, ignoring problems with my career, relationship, life, etc. in pursuit of the easy, fun path. If I was ever faced with something major that I couldn't deny, it would crush me - I had no practice dealing with problems. Meditation helped me concentrate and focus and acknowledge the problems without getting crushed by them. But I can see it your way too. Mindfulness can help you ignore problems when it's not productive to deal with them, say, in your head at 3 AM. Best of luck to you, it sounds like you've made a step in the right direction.

I feel a v self-serving need to be less glib than I was on fb, hope u can forgive this urge

I am awed by your forthrightness & i think your capability for self-examination & reflection will steer you true.

I imagine it must feel weird to still be the 'same' fgti, yet now somehow 'new'... & constantly swirling with re-examinations of all yr behaviours seems like it will be stressful for a while. But I think it's good that you might now hang your hat on some kind of pattern where there had only been chaos. Any kind of hand rail is a start, surely.

I am just an internet person who does not know you irl but there must be a category for the kind of ilxor love i feel here, just being proud or supportive of your discovery. idk i'm overdoing it and this is way too long but <3

Thanks VG you are sweet.

I reexamined those "misfit asses" and saw a common thread through all of them. Though none of them might be particularly good at a dinner party, they are all phenomenally talented people, with far more to offer the world than just being "good as socializing". So I'm just going to focus on my work for now, leave the emotional world for those who have less to do.

was thinking earlier that my mother obviously has this, and my dad... is just an asshole. so i'm an asshole with borderline.

which i meant to be funny by posting it but it's kind of desperately sad when i think about it.

still p funny

So yeah, the main reason I didn't want to talk in public about this is that I hadn't yet had a diagnosis, but now, yup, BPD. I am trying to cling on to this: even though identification isn't a solution it's at least a thing that you can work with and get more specific support for, despite the fact that tbh I feel like just shutting down completely.

Diagnosis is both the end of one process, but it's also the start of a separate process? Like, it's not necessarily an answer, but more like an arrow pointing where to go next. Though the direction of where the arrow is pointing might not be clear immediately.

I think that a big diagnosis/change like this is usually going to involve a period of ... well, it's something like mourning. Shutting down might be a part of that process, a stage on the way to acceptance, picking up and going on. Dealing with a diagnosis itself is a process, just as much as *getting* one.

I apologise if this is unhelpful. I just really wanted to say I hope this diagnosis is useful to you, emil.y, even if you don't know what to do with it yet.

It's funny, I've clearly had this thing since I was a kid (they say that diagnosis is only possible from early adulthood, but what few memories I have from being a child fit the pattern of basically my entire life). And yet now I have a diagnosis I feel it more acutely. I worry that in some ways it's even worsening the bad patterns because I'm subconsciously conforming to it or something. But then I have a notoriously bad memory for how bad things were in previous times because I'm used to blanking things out in order to survive, so every time in-the-moment is bad it seems like it is the worst thing I have ever experienced.

The scariest and most frustrating thing that I've been feeling over the last few days is that the only people I want reassurance and reconciliation from are the people who I've perceived as having "done me wrong", either the people I've driven away with my bullshit, or the genuinely abusive people who've been shitty to me. My mom calls to ask if I'm OK and I feel irritated, but an ex-lover messages me a <3 and I feel elated. Somebody please come by and beat me to death

― got a long list of ilxors (fgti), Thursday, August 6, 2015 5:37 PM (1 month ago)

I am also feeling this very very much.

And Branwell, it wasn't unhelpful. Sorry for not saying that before.

I'm glad you found it useful.

Again, this is all... take with a grain of salt if it's helpful, file in the round bin, if it's not.

I feel weird posting about this here, but another ILX0r asked me IRL recently if I'd been diagnosed with BPD because I was posting on this thread. I have not; what I've been rediagnosed with is Asperger's/Autistic Spectrum whatever etc. So the disparity of living 30 years with one understanding of my brain (bipolar disorder) which never really fit and the treatment methods for which just plain didn't work - and then suddenly being given a roadmap to my entire life. This is a very familiar feeling. The path from "OMG fucking NO" to "wait, wow... TRUTH BOMB" to "OK, so now I know this, what the hell do I do with it?" For a couple of months, there was a massive sense of relief that all the things I'd been shouted at for, my entire life, were ~not my fault~. But now that sense of relief has kind of passed and it's just a sense of "Ugh. Now I know *why* so much of dealing with people feels like wading through treacle, but it doesn't stop the treacle from being any less sticky and impossible."

The reassurance and reconciliation thing... Christ, yeah, that has hit me, too. It was such a truth bomb and an "OMG, this explains *everything*!" to me that I really had this stupid fantasy that I would tell people and they would suddenly become understanding and forgiving, and I would get some ... I don't know. Some kind of acknowledgement from the people who would insist that I MUST MUST MUST catch and understand things (humour, social context, etc) that I just didn't and who would shout at me that I must be stupid or just wilful or A Bad Person Because I Didn't, when the truth was, I just couldn't. Maybe even some kind of apology from people who told me I was AN ASSHOLE or accused me of truly horrible, dreadful things when I was just being autistic; or "throwing a tantrum" when I was having what I now know to call "an autistic meltdown".

Of course those acknowledgements and apologies and reassurances and reconciliation never came. That's not the way it works. I have an *explanation* for those events, but I can't roll back time and make those events not have happened. It's only a truth bomb for me, it's only a roadmap for my therapist. It's my job to work out what to do with it.

But instead, I'm trying to cling harder to those "misfit asses" (that's an affectionate term to you "misfit asses" that post to ILX, BTW, I'm trying to ~do humour~ here; I hear it's a thing!) who reacted with the "Yup, that makes so much sense" who reacted with compassion and understanding. The "craziest people" are often the people who have dealt with the worst shit, and if they can go through all that, and still find a way to be compassionate to me, wow, that speaks a lot to the quality of their hearts.

I don't know if that's relevant or not. I don't have the same disorder, and in fact because of my own disorder, I find it really hard to tell if I'm being helpful or just talking at someone who stopped listening 8 paragraphs ago.

But, y'know, a diagnosis being a roadmap, and not a textbook... I think it's natural to readjust and re-view events from your past through this new knowledge. That's good if it's a healing process that leads to self acceptance. But also, it helps me to remember, the thing about a roadmap is, just because a road is marked on a map does not mean you *have* been down it, or that you *have* to go down it. Spotting patterns is helpful, but it doesn't have to be prescriptive. (Though, for my specific condition, I've found that struggling against my patterns makes things worse for me; but choosing to steer into the skid helps me get control of my life again. I have no idea if that translates for other conditions.)

Again, I hope that you can pick out something useful about the "dealing with a new and scary diagnosis which rearranges your whole life" even if the specific diagnosis is different. I don't have many people I can talk to about this stuff, so if you'd like to talk, I'll try and shut up and listen?

Great post, Bw/aN, thanks!

lost, abandoned, shunned, broken, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

All I really want to do is stop my brain forever, but nobody's willing to help you do that.

emil I am at a Michael Rother show! Buffeting your brain with extreme bass is I think a form of trans-cranial oscillation which makes brain activity cancel out or short out at least for a short while.

Same!

I don't want to die any more! My self-esteem is back, somewhat. Still unpacking everything, got a therapist (paid for) and another therapist (a friend who I speak to regularly). Every day I boil down the issue further and further but it funnily enough feels like a Shepard tone, I'm uncovering more and more baggage but not actually fixing anything.

---

It's been suggested to me that "an inconsistent demonstration of love while growing up" has put me in a position in which I'm unable to process good news, happy thoughts or positive things when they're in front of me.

The only times I feel happy are when I'm being surprised by lateral demonstrations of positive re-enforcement (a new lover, a new job, a surprise gift, an e-mail from a hero)...

...or when I'm able to inhabit other people's lives and problems (cooking for you, therapizing your life, painting your apartment, looking after your children).

---

It's also been suggested to me that I naturally accumulate toxic relationships, become obsessed with them-- I describe my conscious mind as being like a white blood cell, always focusing on my most problematic friendships. My friends, my mom, my therapist, screaming at me to "cut [person] out from your life, it is clear s/he is making you miserable", right at the same moment that that person still feels like "the love of my life" or "the best friend I've ever had".

---

Deep down, I'm pretty sure that "BPD", for me, is only part of the story. Dealing with aging, a long-term relationship, a bear-market career, it's very easy for my current self to be wishing I was elsewhere, I was somewhere else. I seek out other people and other occupations as a method of escape. I smoke to wait. I board to wait. I drink tea to wait. I'm waiting for something to happen to me.

I have always wanted to die, and it's a source of unending shame to me that I find myself unable to correctly perform the acts necessary to do so. Some of it is because it's actually harder than you'd think, some of it is because I am afraid - I don't believe in any afterlife... but what if I'm wrong? What if it *doesn't* stop? The whole point of me dying is to stop.

My friends, my mom, my therapist, screaming at me to "cut [person] out from your life, it is clear s/he is making you miserable", right at the same moment that that person still feels like "the love of my life" or "the best friend I've ever had".

Haha, v similar here. Though I don't think the intense destructive friendships are b/c the people involved are toxic. I think it's b/c I am toxic. And I'm pretty sure if you asked anyone who used to be my friend they would agree.

emil I am at a Michael Rother show! Buffeting your brain with extreme bass is I think a form of trans-cranial oscillation which makes brain activity cancel out or short out at least for a short while.

I am jealous. Also I think it is true, particularly loud live music, you can zone out and quiet bits of brain -- hell, I've even been at gigs where I've been feeling physically (not mentally) sick and the power of LOUD has healed me. But alas, it is only temporary. And more importantly, my outlets for that are now curtailed to practically nothing, due to both internal and external forces.

I don't really know you, emil.y, but your brain seems nice. And culture will never abandon you. The more I treat it like an animate thing, the more hopeful I feel. That and documentaries about space are my greatest personal defence against feelings of crippling isolation. Somehow all that redistribution of energies feels inordinately comforting. Like all the particles are doing their bit at last...

Sometimes I like to read this when I'm any kind of ill: http://www.woolfonline.com/?node=content/contextual/transcriptions&project=1&parent=56&taxa=45&content=6225&pos=13

And if there's one thing about BPD, it's the preternatural elasticity - your darkness will disintegrate a little soon, I hope.

Fgti, lovely post. I can relate to the waiting. And to those specific happinesses. Always in others, or when taken by surprise. Never in the prescribed or supposed ones... It's great you have those stable therapies.

For my part, I'm off work at the moment... I just couldn't think any more. I still can't. I'm hoping something shifts back into place by next week or I'll be raving and drawing pictures of my brain in Paint in an effort to explicate why I can't follow simple tasks any more.

Oh, my post is an xpost. Hadn't seen that you'd posted since (using Pret internet...)

Totally understand about the toxicity too. Whenever I watch a horror film that features something bursting out of someone or puking endless bile, I feel like I can really relate to both the person and the bile. I'm pretty sure I'm a 'bad influence' and that I can 'bring out the worst' in people. But it's all defensive and compulsive... You can't blame yourself for that. Sadly there's a dearth in the world of the super-resilient people we need... And obviously it's nigh on impossible to stop feeling something. Oh hideous paradoxes, how I loathe thee.

Not read the Woolf piece before, I really like it. I guess it's off-topic but it set me to try to think of good books about illness - but not "here is a character dying of consumption, oh isn't it sad", illness as Woolf describes it. And it's hard. I guess Hunger by Hamsun and Nausea by Sartre have this a bit, and iirc By Night in Chile by Bolaño does a pretty good fever. And (don't trigger self by thinking about failed phd don't trigger self by thinking about failed phd) BS Johnson has varying stages of dementia represented formally in House Mother Normal. Otherwise I'm struggling.

And if there's one thing about BPD, it's the preternatural elasticity - your darkness will disintegrate a little soon, I hope.

See, I also have a v. downbeat attitude to life in general and comorbid depression, so I never get the ups. Always used to be jealous of my bipolar friends for their manias, which is a terrible thing to think but think it I did. Though I say I never get the ups, people have reported to me that they think of me as a happy and silly person, which is SO STRANGE to me I can't describe it, but then I think well, I do laugh like a drain about stupid things and frolic like a loon, but... that state never sticks, and I can't access it when it's not there. The only thing I can access is that aching empty void, stretching out to infinity with no letup from the pain.

I can tell I am writing quite badly but I'm just emptying out bits of my head now, sorry.

Empty away! Not that it would matter if it wasn't, but it's still totally well-written and engaging. And it's always comforting to hear of relatable experiences, no matter how bleak. Also, fwiw I've only ever known people who have quit their PHDs.

Manic isn't always the greatest...my hourly peaks are more commonly abject fury than anything lighter. Though there are wild passions too, but likewise when I'm the lowest I can't imagine for a second that any of that is true, and if I then met myself professing the truth in my joy, I would burn her to the ground. That said, I'm sure there's a sincerity to your frolicking when you are in the moment!

I used to get weighed down in contemplations of mortality and emptiness a lot more than I do now (though it's still frequent), but I've become better able to stuff the void with the candyfloss of continuous audiovisual oblivion. If the only thing I can do is hit 'play' on whatever is most immediate, then I know I'll become diverted in spite of my own bitter thought cycles.

Re: books...it is one of my favourite things! I have a list I'll try to locate once j get in...

Ha, yeah, my three states that I recognise tend to be misery, anxiety and intense burning rage. I cycle through *those* quite regularly. I think paranoid delusions (except they're NOT delusions they're real so horribly horribly real) probably pop up in all three modes, though, as does suicidal ideation.

I always say I "failed" my PhD when I do in fact mean "disappeared in a haze of can't-cope nononono", so I am another quitter.

Please do w/ the books, that would be great.

It's taken me literally FOUR YEARS to complete my year-long MA (and even that's still very much pending, based on one mystery essay mark and some hefty debt-clearing), so the fact that you even contemplated a PhD is pretty impressive. If you got anything out of it, and I'm sure you did, then it was worth it.

Yay, Bolaño! He's wonderful with illness in general, though his mental health ones are never labelled as such. The Third Reich is great about obsessive behaviour...it's not tragic, but it's not exactly Woolf-empoweringly beautiful either. Other books (compiled from both a reading list and memory/bookshelf) that are either positive or enjoyably accurate about illness (I mentioned some more of these upthread too actually):

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rilke <3 (semi-autobiographical and wonderful about paranoia and depression and everything)
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks (great pop-science about every kind of auditory disorder and hallucination ever)
Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins (pathography about laughing through cancer and defying doctors)
The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt (Seven Psychopaths this is not... Wonderful Latin American turmoil)
An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (pioneering autobiography on manic-depression [her choice of term] and working through it)
Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag (Sontag being amazing)
White Noise by Don DeLillo (full-blown death anxiety everywhere)
PWA: Looking AIDS in the Face by Oscar Moore (intimate and at times hilarious pathography of a journalist's progression through various AIDS treatments)
The Divided Self by R.D Laing (schizophrenia's breakthrough 60s text)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy (death fear as death approaches...brilliant, but my God it's too dark)
The Diary of Frida Kahlo
All Plath
All Jean Rhys
Almost everything from this Artaud anthology, especially Description of a Physical State
This website, though old now, offers some fascinating insights: http://medhum.blogspot.co.uk
Also, I'm veering off-topic from the off-topic here, but this is lovely about patient-doctor encounters and something I want to print out for every doctor I ever meet: A Confusion of Tongues

Hope there's something interesting here for you and apologies if a lot of them seem like obvious choices. It was interesting to compile and I'm psyched at realising that Artaud anthology is online!!

A lot of hatred. A lot of memory loss. Everything is directionless as much as it is useless. Explanatory action does so little. This is redundant.

All that keeping a journal did was make me realize that I was having the same Eureka! moments once a week. I'd be in the shower and think "by George" and then go to my computer and realize that the "Huge Realization" that I'd just had was the.. same realization that I had the week before, and had typed it exactly as I was about to type it.

So yeah, memory loss is right.

Having had zero experience with anti-depressants, I started taking buproprion and it's been wonderful, I am still pretty up and down, and prone to obsession, but not nearly so much.

For the record (edited down from hate trains going 3000 years through the night), I know what you all think. It is important to me that you know that I know. [separate thought:] Always navigating between men feigning empathy and men with no empathy. I am yet to experience a successful intermediate state. Why choose it when there is a choice, after all? Oh "a not-very-bright fly on the wall might ask why not choose?". Obviously these feelings are introjected a thousandfold, and then where? So boring. Very very bored.

Bupropion... I'll explore it maybe. I like the sound of your repetitive Eurekas!!

Hate this personality disorder so much.

Hope you managed to quiet the thought spirals a bit and are feeling okay this morning, tangent.

<3

Morning, afternoon, evening, whatever, my sleep is so fucked up.

Aaw I only just saw this. Thank you so much! Yes - I took the day off work (the facade has been slipping all too regularly recently...) and that plus the oblivion of books and films has helped. It's probably worth going back on medication at this point. Feared loss of creativity is not worse than the current unpredictability of everything! I hope you are doing comparably better at the moment.

Any time before 7pm is essentially still morning, I think.

Who would work in an office? Silence is like a warm damp cupboard.

Silence is a warm damp cupboard -
That lurks inside the hall -
Within it hides the stifled cries -
Of hope dashed to the wall.

(I'm very sorry to both tangenttangent and Emily Dickinson, I just really liked the phrase 'silence is a warm damp cupboard'.)

I love this! Thank you. :)

<3

So, probably not a good idea to read forums for 'partners and family members of people with BPD'. Apparently we're all hideous evil monsters. Probably true in my case, but still...

Emil I don't know if this is directly translatable, but the day that I stopped reading autism blogs by parents and partners of autistic people, and started reading blogs by actual autistic people was the day I stopped feeling like a sad, sick, broken, out-of-control monster problem child and started feeling like a complete human being who for the first time felt understood by other people and myself.

If "BPD blogs by people with BPD" are not really a thing, then maybe write one.

^ otm

Equally, don't trust partners and friends to do their own research and arrive at the same horrific pages without you around to defend yourself... I went through a few of those vile places posting retaliative responses and they all got deleted! What drove me most crazy was seeing some apparently qualified clinicians and psychotherapists arriving at the same toxic conclusions. We remain in the dark ages for mental health empathy. There are good sources out there too, but less violently obvious. If you wanted, I could always post you a useful book or two?

You're no monster. That is your protection spirit! It is frightening, but not unlovable.

Been reading shitborderlinesdo.tumblr.com which has some great links, but seems very much geared toward people who think they might have BPD and doesn't really have much 'day-to-day' stuff on it. I don't know, I'm not even sure what I'm looking for when I go on these searches, like, nothing is going to suddenly make it better.

Branwell so otm, autistic bloggers and other activists have had a massive impact on my professional practice in the last few years

It's like when people like Laing were saying fifty years ago or more that we should listen to people's existential accounts of their mental states and take those accounts seriously and the vast majority of professionals have ignored this and moved no further than refining their medical models and thinking in terms of pure pathology

listen to people's existential accounts of their mental states and take those accounts seriously and the vast majority of professionals have ignored this

that's so strange ... as the point of therapy is to "convert" someone from a "bad" mental state to a "good" mental state. How can you determine the best way from going from bad to good without understanding where the person is coming from?

Listening for truth versus listening for "symptoms". Sorry, I'm extra inarticulate when I'm on my phone

no, you made sense ... it's the "vast majority of professionals" that didn't!

Probably hyperbole, but "sick"/"well" is a problem dichotomy

it's fine if you are talking about stomach flu, but .... yeah

I used to think that personal sense of self-defeat or not feeling in control would be better markers for illness than societal expectations, but lately I've realised that your own dissatisfaction can be just as much a product of internalising the values of other people

First CAT appointment today. Think it went okay. My therapist is on leave for two weeks from Monday now though, so it feels like a bit of a false start which we'll then have to pick up again.

good wishes with this

So... my therapist has raised the possibility of my BPD being comorbid with being on the autistic spectrum. Instinctively this feels wrong, but even from the OP of this thread there seems to be some sort of correspondence between the two diagnoses.

I have privately messaged Branwell as I don't think they're on ilx at the moment and would prefer somewhere non-public to talk, but wondered if any of you others had experiences with the two? Or things to read?

Also, how is everyone? I am not doing so well. In some ways I have been putting on an act of moving forward, doing small things, talking about plans, but inside I feel horribly broken and empty and without future.

Eh, the more I look into this the more convinced I am that it doesn't apply to me. My ability to understand social cues and put myself into others' positions is very strong. It's only when e.g. facial expressions are directed at *me* that my ability to filter them falters, b/c I read everything negatively and as a threat. My therapist told me that it manifests differently in women but if the core traits of the disorder don't fit me at all then I don't think it's much worth countenancing. The traits that do fit are almost all ones that overlap with BPD criteria, with a few notable exceptions that do still fit with depressive disorders.

In a way I'm quite disappointed, because it feels like it'd be a more tangible *thing* to deal with, but tbh I was pretty surprised when she suggested it. It's been interesting to read about, though.

hi

Hey mookie. Do you have experience of this?

no -- garden-variety stuff for me, i suppose.

i just wish you were doing more well

Hello!

I was diagnosed with BPD last summer. Last summer I was in a state of constant suicidal ideation, I spent two months where literally all I could do was smoke and cry. At the time, it seemed largely caused by external factors-- my personal life had gone crazy, and I felt that most of my problems lay in my situation rather than my internal world.

I can truly and safely say I'm feeling 75% "sane" these days, and, weirdly enough, my personal life is exactly where it was a year ago, still embroiled in the same bullshit.

The two biggest factors were that I became 'mostly sober', that is, I cut my drinking back to two-nights-of-drinking-a-week-with-no-more-than-two-units-on-those-two-nights-- teetotalism is no good, just because it creates its own kind of panic and feeling of "imprisonment", but what has been helpful is to see people drinking their wine-at-lunch or their post-work-pint and thing "those people are normal and you are crazy, do not be tempted to think you can consume alcohol lightly". This near-sobriety state has been super worthwhile, I was never an alcoholic, not even close, but the long-term effects of unchecked consumption were having a definite effect on my brain patterns.

The second biggest factor was probiotics. This was the biggest surprise and had the most profound effect. I'm physically active, I meditate, I see a therapist when I need to. But I never felt consistently "OK" until I started taking probiotics rigorously. I have, for a while, fixed a date in March 2014 as "the last time I was happy"-- it was my first-ever night in Mexico City and involved a great bar with Oaxacan food and grasshopper quesadillas and salsa dancing with a live band and sitting watching my friends dance with 'dance instructors' and I felt actually blissful. When a friend told me that probiotics had completely changed his anxiety levels to "near-sane" levels, I remembered that shortly after that "perfect night in Mexico City", I got a stomach bug and was prescribed Cipro. My mental health was in slow decline that entire summer, and by August I was having full-on panic attacks.

You can read about the link between gut health and mental health, lots of articles are being written and it's been kind of the hot topic these past few years. (Soundbites include, "the gut is like your second brain", "it largely is responsible for the production of the anxiety hormone cortisol", "the flora in your gut create 'addiction' and mental health cycles in the interest of maintaining its own ecosystem", and so on). I hesitate to actually recommend the specific probiotic I'm taking, because it'll be spammy, but wth it's Jarro-Dophilus High Potency, which doesn't require refrigeration and so I can travel with it. I am literally buying boxes of it for people for Christmas this year.

Anyway, everything you're describing emil.y is like "totally me", I was watching Hannibal and my friend said "omg you're totally Will [the "100% empath"]" and I said "yes except instead of murder it's social situations and instead of being right I'm always wrong". DM me any time you need to talk, and I'm sure you've tried sobriety and meditation and all these other things, maybe think about probiotics as well it has literally been "the big thing" that has fixed up my tilting brain over the past few months.

I have nothing to lose on this probiotics recommendation, so I will start it from today and let you know how it goes. I've recently taken extended periods of time off work (not that extended...I mean, about a week each time) over extreme anxiety/terror/dysphoria, and also for constant stomach pain and nausea. I'm currently on a month long course of something (an antibiotic maybe? I'm not sure) and though it's making in-roads to some of the discomfort, I am scared that once it's gone I'll be back to feeling the same and needing more time off and work evidently already has me pegged as some kind of creepy malingerer.

I'm fascinated by this physical corollary of emotional turbulence and vice versa. I always imagine myself to be filled up with some kind of toxic, tar-like substance which threatens to bubble over and contaminate those who come into contact with it, so when I get sicknesses like this it makes perfect sense to me. Sometimes this follows an almost scientific rationale, like I assume that high blood pressure and acidity are by-products of my intensely choleric personality, but other times it feels more disembodied and that a demon is literally sitting in my stomach and threatening its influence over realities. In any case, for me the two are inextricably linked.

Drinking-wise, I've found that I've pretty much had to eliminate all friendships. I'm not really adequate at social engagements unless I can drink, and if I drink and am in an environment that's not at least 90% comfortable or familiar, then there's a very high risk of doing something hugely self-destructive and which usually has repercussions for the emotional lives of others as well. I took the risk time and again for years based on a fear of missing out, or nervous politeness, or compulsively wilful disobedience to what was 'right', but I'm so happy in my relationship and newfound ability to experience extremes other than rage and despair right now that the stakes are just too high to keep fucking it up in a way that should be avoidable. We'll see how this friendlessness infringes upon other things further down the line...maybe it won't! I have no idea.

Anyway, that was more than I intended to write. I'm really pleased you've discovered these two remedies to the way you were feeling before and long may it continue! Incidentally, not that I've ever been, but Mexico City is my dream haven of idealised contentment, so that's interesting too.

emil.y, I'm sorry to hear you're especially not feeling good atm. I hope that your actions of moving forward start to filter into the way you feel too. The comorbidity of autism and BPD is a weird one, and I do think I've encountered a couple of people this is true for, but I get a (totally unfounded, unqualified) sense that the incidence of it actually occurring is overestimated. For example, I had this suggested to me once, and like you, didn't feel it applied at all. There seems to be a superficial similarity between the coping strategies under duress for BPD/autism in some people, so a clinician could reasonably be forgiven for thinking that the dissociation or lashing out of someone with BPD during a crisis could be related to autism. I think there's a kind of similar shutting down of the brain due to it becoming overcrowded with stress, but I really don't know enough to comment more. Naturally I didn't forgive this clinician (such was my dramatic disappointment at feeling misunderstood) and ran out screaming and scratching my face, never to return. Still, this was obviously rash, and it is definitely an interesting diagnosis to consider, whether or not it applies. Is the therapy you mention the CAT therapy you were starting a few weeks ago? How is it going?

I tried to quit my therapy recently out of a long-held frustration at never being able to address anything more meaningful than the traumas of daily life, and on pressing my therapist for more of a reaction he said "with a risk of being incendiary, it could be said that we haven't really started treatment at all", so I guess I'm staying. Other than that...job is terrible, directionless, Gilmore Girls.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I'm kind of a bit wiped out to communicate at the moment but just felt like I should say I have read and appreciated yr posts.

No need to respond at all. I know obligation can be the worst. I hope you have nice things to absorb yourself in and you feel a little better soon.

I just tried to play golf. I love golf but I don't think I've ever made it round a course without crying, throwing myself to the ground and declaring that I won't do anything ever again. I wonder what is the incidence of BPD amongst sporting professionals? My hunch is that it would be lower than in other career choices, but this is founded on relatively little. How are others with sport and competitiveness?

Meanwhile, I've been taking probiotics (I bought the most obscenely expensive one because it had great reviews) and whilst my mood has been similar/worse than usual, my stomach acid problems are definitely lesser. They say it's supposed to take about 12 weeks to fully feel reap the rewards, so I'll see where I'm at in a couple of months.

Hm, I don't know, a lot of people with BPD go into the arts, and that involves a whooooooole loooooooooad of rejection, so I'm not sure if sport would be avoided if a person had a propensity for it. I think it's more us average, not-so-sporty people try it and then it's so fucking infuriating and feeling shit at everything and why do I even bother trying to be alive when I HATE IT I HATE IT ALL.

It was not a fully formed notion and this more than adequately explains everything (ever). I think Art is definitely recourse number 1 and then all else is just whimsy leading to dread. I'm trying to write an email to work at the moment explaining all my absences and it starts out polite and rational and four paragraphs and countless links to videos later is talking about the windowless underground cocoon of the platonic office space and how everyone should be a therapist. I hope it's a hit.

Hee, tbh that sounds good to me. Somewhere along the way I curbed/repressed my tendency for logomania and became overly terse instead, so I just get jealous of people who still have it b/c it strikes me as a creativity I feel I've lost. Though it will still sometimes come out if I get really anxy and then I just. Can't. Shut. Up.

In medical news, I got dumped by my CAT therapist b/c she said I wasn't ready to move onto stage 2 and probably needed years before I could get there, so basically telling me I need to go private. I'm now starting up some 'graduated exposure' stuff for my agoraphobia/social anxiety, but even though I know I need it I'm just still fucking angry that it's not nearly enough. I was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism and anaemia and my body feels like it is attacking me in retaliation for all the times I have attacked it. Everything is falling apart and I can no longer tell which scars are from my own actions and which are from whatever disease is fucking up my skin. I feel like I'm succumbing to compulsive picking disorder as well, which really doesn't help. I am drowning.

The selection of services available for free is completely appalling. Like this entire plethora of illnesses that require treatment as sensitive and tailored as any physical medical procedure, and if you're lucky you get a choice of counselling, CBT or addiction treatment. So yeah, that sucks that you're not getting the help you need. Is private therapy an option? A lot of them offer means-tested (but they just take your word for it) treatment for as little as £15 per hour. And if you find you have the drive to do so, you could try calling up nearby hospitals and seeing if they have any workshops or sessions available that the doctors do not - there often seems to be no connection.

The constant fight with the body is one of the worst things. I'm really sorry to hear about all of that and wish I had more constructive advice on how to deal with it. I really hope whatever medications you have for it start fixing things and if I come across any remedies that seem applicable, I'll let you know. Have you read Sontag's Illness as Metaphor? It's not necessarily a comforting text, but I could definitely relate to a lot of the psychosomatic manifestations.

Logomania is not something I normally fall prey to at work. In fact, this is pretty much the first thing I'll have said to my boss in two years. I hate when it does happen though because there's zero self esteem to support it and then it's just like a death rainbow of inebriated-sounding bullshit.

Turns out that writing a frank admission of my difficulties to work wasn't the best option after all. Something I can't fathom is how amongst all my cynicism and mistrust of the world, little blundering optimism naively pokes its face into view like it still ultimately believes in human compassion above the received order. Now facing some seriously ugly consequences. I feel stupid to post here (now, and in general) but it feels important to at least document these systemic rejections of experience somewhere. No I don't want company-approved psychiatry. No I don't think it is your duty to inform the whole office of something so personal. is bad day.

Ugh, I'm so sorry. Is it even allowed for a boss to reveal somebody's medical history to coworkers? Do you have HR/are HR involved/are they the ones causing this mess? If yes/no/no I'd consider asking them about the situation, they *theoretically* should be ensuring that no unequal treatment is occurring. I'd try to suggest taking the offer of psychiatry as an attempt to be helpful, but it sounds like it's coming with a pile of crap so I know it can be difficult to separate out those things.

Thank you. <3 no HR department to speak of. In a way, I consider myself to be a kind of spiritual HR! I initially consented to seeing this psychiatrist until it rapidly became apparent that it would be less about what I wanted (medication) and more about a complete stranger under the remit of 'medical expert' passing on judgement to the company about how to deal with me, despite my protestations that flexibility with working from home was all I needed. But obviously, my rationality on this and everything is greatly compromised and this issue has 50/50 implications for me and for the company and it is going to cause distress for everyone etc. I have regular therapy today so will ask for advice but probably that's it for that job. Wanted to hang on until after Christmas because I desperately need the money but the daily hostility has become unbearable. Sorry for vent. I hope you're doing comparatively sort of alright? (Never know how to ask other sufferers how they're doing and not imply that I think it's going to be anything better than 'up and down')

yeah tangent that is a horrible way for yr employer to handle that information

and i would think unless you are doing cash in hand work that no employer in this day and age can flout privacy laws so blatantly like that? then again, idk what country you are in, line of work etc

but still.

huge sympathies to you, that is truly disgusting behavior on their part imo

Thank you for your support. I just work in generic media sector in the UK. I suspect that it is not a particularly legal approach but I don't know that I have any more energy to question it. I'll probably just get signed off again tomorrow (though I won't be paid for this) for a while until I figure out what to do. If I ever have another job I will try to be more aware of their mental health and equality policies going into it.

This is the hilarious paradox of mental illness. You need someone to talk about it, but talking about it just makes people avoidant, and jeopardizes friendships and working relationships.

I'm always reminded of stories of [a famous musician who was mentally ill and died from it], who was reportedly such a nightmare to everyone around him, and nobody could work for him, and yet here we are and he continues to be roundly celebrated and canonized. The joke is: you are a burden! it's not an illusion!

The wonderful feat of mindfulness is that it has been teaching me that my illnesses, my history, the carnage it's caused my social and romantic life, these are not defining characteristics. I've seen first hand, and recently, how a lover says "no thanks" when I decide to be honest with them about my mental health history. I have adopted a very rigorous paradox of my own: I am not mentally ill, but I am treating myself as if I were. I have been diagnosed borderline, I have cut out the narcissists and dependents whose behaviour laid me low and pushed me into treatment. I continue to stay sober and meditate every day and see a therapist when needed. But I do not identify as borderline, or tell people about the diagnosis (any more).

How are the probiotics working for you, tt?

Having received reactions like that, and improved your life in those ways, that seems an entirely expedient way of managing the diagnosis. In any case, diagnosis itself is riddled with contradictions. BPD is at once far too specific (a rigid symptomatology that is ticked off on various questionnaires) and not at all specified enough (high co-morbidity with other conditions, the prevalence of certain symptoms above others ranging wildly from person to person). Above all, diagnoses are almost entirely behaviourally and not experientially based and always seem to consign the person to the category and not the category to the person. I'm now in the habit of telling people (when I feel I have to) that 'I most closely identify with the set of symptoms belonging to BPD', but obviously the distinction is only clear in my mind...

I'm glad mindfulness is going so well for you. What approaches do you find most useful? I don't doubt its efficacy in treating borderline behaviours, but when I've attempted it in the past, my own self-sabotaging impatience usually sidles up before I can ever get going.

Ah and probiotics perhaps fell foul of that a little too. My body's high acidity was getting worse - not as a result, but in spite of the probiotics - and after my first batch ran out I just didn't renew it. I did initially experience a benefit though so I probably ought to return to it.

What was genuinely helping more than any medication I've ever tried was running! If ever I read or heard that running could alleviate depression I would inwardly scorn it, but then my friend with bipolar disorder described how it had helped her and I figured I had no right to be scornful without trying it and for a while it was just the most amazing coping strategy but now I've lightly fractured my ankle. Oh catastrophe, constant companion!

Off to see the doctor in a couple of hours. So scared about everything.

Oh yeah, exercise is fully proven to be beneficial to brain, that's not my issue with "try exercise!" suggestions (and I get them a lot) - my issue is that at most points in my life there is literally no way I can get up the energy/courage/motivation to do it, precisely *because* I am mentally unwell. The disease prevents the cure, or something.

I have been diagnosed borderline... I continue to stay sober and meditate every day and see a therapist when needed. But I do not identify as borderline, or tell people about the diagnosis (any more).

This sounds like a pretty healthy way of dealing with things. Certainly reducing yourself to a diagnosis is a bad path, and allowing yourself to be reduced to one by other people (be it psychs or friends or lovers) is terrible. I've been having mixed feelings though, b/c as I run in p radical circles I get to see a lot of anti-label stuff from other people with MH issues, and once upon a time I would've been right there with them (hell, even now I am plotting out litcrit based on radical psychiatry). However... being labelled borderline has been the one thing that has actually allowed me to access certain paths in the NHS (as opposed to being considered nebulously sad and being sent away), being labelled has allowed me to assess certain aspects of my life and behaviour through a framework I didn't have before, and being labelled has given me a sense of community with other people who have similar sets of difficulties (even though a lot of us *do* wildly differ). I mean, I don't even know how good these good points are, but they very much play to my neediness and compulsion to belong and be validated.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh, and good luck, tt!

I read a thing that said plainly "If you do not do an hour of exercise every day, you are signing a contract that says 'I, fgti, prefer misery to joy'." Having had to leave a relationship when I was 21 because my partner would NOT treat her depression with exercise, and reacted to my pleas that she try it out with anger and frustration, I've tried to keep that suggestion gentle to any depressive (or other MH-addled) friends, but it really is Step One. Which is kind of frustrating but also amazing? "Ah you just need more exercise and to sit quietly for an hour," like UGH but I mean even examining it logically, it seems as if it's a far more reasonable solution than anything else.

A big part of learning about borderline was the paradox I described above. Pia Mellody, who writes about love addiction, describes a model in which one person is love-addicted, and another is love-avoidant, and how the addict pushing for more affection just results in the avoidant digging their heels in more. It's an interesting model! But in more serious cases, where borderline tendencies are involved, like where I'm at, I think the more appropriate model is one of a person with chronic-fear-of-abandonment (myself) leaning on their friends and loved ones so much that their social circle develops "compassion fatigue". They love you and want your happiness! but they can't be that person for you.

Mindfulness meditation works sometimes, unless I'm on the verge of some pattern of obsessive thought, wherein it just triggers me. This morning I was worried about a close friend who I'm supposed to hang out with tonight, and whether or not he was going to follow-through with our plan. "What will I do if he doesn't come through," I thought. Suicidal ideation started percolating. I quit meditating and made coffee instead.

I'm still kind of sailing-then-failing this week, and I'm starting up with a DBT therapist again. I'm West Coast now so why not find a real DBT expert?

Here are some thoughts on different treatments.

CBT failed for me because CBT deals with overcoming the brain's capacity toward mental distortion and delusion. It's great if you're anxious or feel paranoid or are worried about fake problems. But ultimately, when you get down to a truth-- "I am ugly" "my voice is squeaky" "I'm gonna die sometime" "not enough people like my music for me to make a living off it"-- CBT can't fix those things, because they are truths, not distortions.

Mindfulness and the Pema Chodron approach is better at overcoming those difficulties-- accept your deficiencies and love yourself regardless. It's wonderful! There is nothing wrong with my ugly squeaky mortal self. Love myself regardless. But borderline has a way of circumventing that therapy as well. I can't really describe it.. you can train yourself to love yourself, but you still can't will away the trauma that put you in these circular patterns of thought.

DBT kind of hybridizes the two things. Borderline is a series of patterns of addiction, addiction to ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour that seem uncontrollable. I was addicted to suicidal ideation and would feel a dopamine rush every time I walked onstage and settled into my comfortable fantasy of walking into the ocean once I finished performing. I am still addicted to smoking, and venting, and talking to my mother about my problems. I'm still not sure how I'm going to break these addictions but I'm trying them one at a time. Drinking and checking-up internet-wise on the sources of my trauma have been dealt with. Venting is something I'm still addicted to but I'm controlling it to being toward certain places like this message board instead of friends who can't handle it. Smoking is soon to follow.

DBT seems to apply a CBT approach to accepting and breaking these addictions. It's been complicated to work through but not as difficult as it first appears.