Just now I've been chatting online with a friend who has been diagnosed just this week as bipolar. We've known each other a long time, I guess it must be going on 20 years. Anyway - we were discussing a few things - like: how long have we been "ill" and when is it that being different, or more intense, or impulsive, or whatever ... became pathologised? That made me think - well, it's a bit like alcoholism I guess - your mental state is a problem when it is causing harm to yourself, or others. Being moody, labile, excitable, low - or whatever ... it's just not a problem provided you continue to have a life you feel is worth living and to be able to support yourself and be there for your family, to have positive friendships and all that stuff.
I guess that's a bit how Kiera's story finalised at the end of The Buddha and The Borderline. She concludes, if I'm getting it right, that she still has BPD, but that she is by then, in control of her life, happy, and making positive progress. It's not about not having the 'disorder' - being "cured" is more like: attaining wellness, on your own terms. The label ceases to matter so much if you have your life in a place that you want it to be. Then you are just a person, with some, I guess you could call them - tendencies. BUT - while the think is in full swing, and has you by the throat, and is tearing all your relationships, especially the one with yourself, apart - then you are in a very bad place.
I feel like I'm in that very bad place at the moment. I am tearing me apart. I am tearing my relationship apart. I fear I am damaging my relationship with my son. I am jeopardising my right to be a parent. I have relinquished a really well paying job. I barely know what to do when I get out of bed in the mornings. In fact, some mornings, I struggle with getting out of bed at all.
The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) used by psychiatry, defines Borderline Personality Disorder like this:
A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1) frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
2) a pattern of unstable & intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
3) identity disturbance: markedly and persistent unstable self-image or sense of self
4) impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g. spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
5) recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
6) affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
7) chronic feelings of emptiness
8) inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
9) transient, stress related paranoia or severe dissociative symptoms
So for me, those symptoms, or some of those symptoms, is what sickness looks like. The big task then, is to home in on those things and seek the other end of the spectrum ... or at least to slide myself along the scale as much as I can. Perhaps examining all 9 of those today is a bit much - maybe it's something I can do one at a time, especially with the ones I think apply the most to me.
I think I do have abandonment issues. It's confronting thinking about what the 'frantic efforts' are. Oddly - I do a lot of 'pushing away' behaviour - which my doctor thinks is to subconsciously prove a point, and to fulfil a pattern, like: there, I knew I was unloveable, and that no man would ever stay with me, and it's happened again. See? I DEFINITELY have intense and unstable interpersonal relationships - primarily with men, partners - and occasionally with someone at work, where I do a 'demonisation' thing, from time to time. Yes to impulsivity - I'm the queen of quitting (jobs), and occasionally there have been other things as well. Maybe more than occasionally, LOL. Yes to recurrent suicidal gestures/threats & to self harm .... oh dear, how many is that so far?
I'm not so sure about identity disturbance, so maybe I'll give myself 4 out of 5 right now (she says, crossing her fingers behind her back & certain that some of her friends are chuckling at this denial). A big YES to affective instability/marked mood reactivity. At the moment yes, yes, yes to chronic feelings of emptiness - though this is one that has come and gone, and not been huge at other times in my life. It gets really bad at the moment though. Yes to inappropriate/intense/difficult to control anger. My partner copped some of that, swung and strung wildly between batches of tears and silence, just last night.
A big 'not sure' to criteria number nine. Perhaps, a little yes, a little bit of the time (hangs head in shame). I don't like that one at all. I don't think it's big, for me. Maybe just a little bit ... just sometimes. I think that's one I could control, fairly easily - and that if it's there, even just a little bit - it will automatically go away/diminish as I get other things in hand and feel happier and more stable. I don't feel like it's one I need to work on specifically or intensely.
So after having said I wouldn't look at them all today - I just have, though not in depth. But - that's what I've got to work with I guess. Intuitively - I feel like my journey of exploration needs to be about working AWAY from the low/bad/destructive end of each of those aspects and TOWARDS the dialectal opposite - the positive end of each spectrum .... the place in which, while that thing is still an aspect of 'me' - it becomes a good aspect. Because - I think the reality is: it can't be made to go away. A leopard is still a leopard, even if it does change it's spots (or shorts, if you are a Terry Pratchett fan).
More on this to come, I hope. Now it's time to get up and get my son moving, and then to dive in to The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook and to see what the FlyLady has to say today. I somehow stumbled across this site, through searching for housework tips .... and though I felt a bit dubious when I clicked through from somewhere else, I was delighted to find that 'Fly' is actually about FINALLY LOVING YOURSELF, and so I've decided I like her a lot, after all, and I have shone my sink! It gleams. It's not all neat all around, and dried on the inside, like she suggested, just yet (things fell apart again last night, before I got to that stage) - but it IS shiny.
http://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/
I'll be turning to those baby steps as much as I can manage. It's exactly the kind of direction and guidance I was hoping for.
I've got a friend to meet up with as well, today. I forgot to tell my partner that. I'm sure he'll be annoyed that he was 'the last to know, like always' and will interpret that as evidence that he is the 'least important person in my life' - but that's for him to grapple with, right? I have enough shit of my own right now. And I know how ungrateful that sounds at this precise moment, when he has been so incredibly patient, and loving, and supportive, and is basically making the ultimate sacrifice (allowing me to give up work, in order to try to get well, while he supports us all). But even so, in the interest of not losing myself completely (to death, or madness, or whatever) I still have to be a bit self focussed right now, and I'm sure that seems very very selfish.
Sorry world. I have some very deep needs I have to address right now. I'll be back, in full form, when I can. Until then, I'm going to be a bit erratic and seem unfocussed/self absorbed/unproductive. OK? It doesn't mean I don't love you. I just means I need to learn to love me.
I guess that's a bit how Kiera's story finalised at the end of The Buddha and The Borderline. She concludes, if I'm getting it right, that she still has BPD, but that she is by then, in control of her life, happy, and making positive progress. It's not about not having the 'disorder' - being "cured" is more like: attaining wellness, on your own terms. The label ceases to matter so much if you have your life in a place that you want it to be. Then you are just a person, with some, I guess you could call them - tendencies. BUT - while the think is in full swing, and has you by the throat, and is tearing all your relationships, especially the one with yourself, apart - then you are in a very bad place.
I feel like I'm in that very bad place at the moment. I am tearing me apart. I am tearing my relationship apart. I fear I am damaging my relationship with my son. I am jeopardising my right to be a parent. I have relinquished a really well paying job. I barely know what to do when I get out of bed in the mornings. In fact, some mornings, I struggle with getting out of bed at all.
The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) used by psychiatry, defines Borderline Personality Disorder like this:
A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1) frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
2) a pattern of unstable & intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
3) identity disturbance: markedly and persistent unstable self-image or sense of self
4) impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g. spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
5) recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
6) affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
7) chronic feelings of emptiness
8) inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
9) transient, stress related paranoia or severe dissociative symptoms
So for me, those symptoms, or some of those symptoms, is what sickness looks like. The big task then, is to home in on those things and seek the other end of the spectrum ... or at least to slide myself along the scale as much as I can. Perhaps examining all 9 of those today is a bit much - maybe it's something I can do one at a time, especially with the ones I think apply the most to me.
I think I do have abandonment issues. It's confronting thinking about what the 'frantic efforts' are. Oddly - I do a lot of 'pushing away' behaviour - which my doctor thinks is to subconsciously prove a point, and to fulfil a pattern, like: there, I knew I was unloveable, and that no man would ever stay with me, and it's happened again. See? I DEFINITELY have intense and unstable interpersonal relationships - primarily with men, partners - and occasionally with someone at work, where I do a 'demonisation' thing, from time to time. Yes to impulsivity - I'm the queen of quitting (jobs), and occasionally there have been other things as well. Maybe more than occasionally, LOL. Yes to recurrent suicidal gestures/threats & to self harm .... oh dear, how many is that so far?
I'm not so sure about identity disturbance, so maybe I'll give myself 4 out of 5 right now (she says, crossing her fingers behind her back & certain that some of her friends are chuckling at this denial). A big YES to affective instability/marked mood reactivity. At the moment yes, yes, yes to chronic feelings of emptiness - though this is one that has come and gone, and not been huge at other times in my life. It gets really bad at the moment though. Yes to inappropriate/intense/difficult to control anger. My partner copped some of that, swung and strung wildly between batches of tears and silence, just last night.
A big 'not sure' to criteria number nine. Perhaps, a little yes, a little bit of the time (hangs head in shame). I don't like that one at all. I don't think it's big, for me. Maybe just a little bit ... just sometimes. I think that's one I could control, fairly easily - and that if it's there, even just a little bit - it will automatically go away/diminish as I get other things in hand and feel happier and more stable. I don't feel like it's one I need to work on specifically or intensely.
So after having said I wouldn't look at them all today - I just have, though not in depth. But - that's what I've got to work with I guess. Intuitively - I feel like my journey of exploration needs to be about working AWAY from the low/bad/destructive end of each of those aspects and TOWARDS the dialectal opposite - the positive end of each spectrum .... the place in which, while that thing is still an aspect of 'me' - it becomes a good aspect. Because - I think the reality is: it can't be made to go away. A leopard is still a leopard, even if it does change it's spots (or shorts, if you are a Terry Pratchett fan).
More on this to come, I hope. Now it's time to get up and get my son moving, and then to dive in to The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook and to see what the FlyLady has to say today. I somehow stumbled across this site, through searching for housework tips .... and though I felt a bit dubious when I clicked through from somewhere else, I was delighted to find that 'Fly' is actually about FINALLY LOVING YOURSELF, and so I've decided I like her a lot, after all, and I have shone my sink! It gleams. It's not all neat all around, and dried on the inside, like she suggested, just yet (things fell apart again last night, before I got to that stage) - but it IS shiny.
http://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/
I'll be turning to those baby steps as much as I can manage. It's exactly the kind of direction and guidance I was hoping for.
I've got a friend to meet up with as well, today. I forgot to tell my partner that. I'm sure he'll be annoyed that he was 'the last to know, like always' and will interpret that as evidence that he is the 'least important person in my life' - but that's for him to grapple with, right? I have enough shit of my own right now. And I know how ungrateful that sounds at this precise moment, when he has been so incredibly patient, and loving, and supportive, and is basically making the ultimate sacrifice (allowing me to give up work, in order to try to get well, while he supports us all). But even so, in the interest of not losing myself completely (to death, or madness, or whatever) I still have to be a bit self focussed right now, and I'm sure that seems very very selfish.
Sorry world. I have some very deep needs I have to address right now. I'll be back, in full form, when I can. Until then, I'm going to be a bit erratic and seem unfocussed/self absorbed/unproductive. OK? It doesn't mean I don't love you. I just means I need to learn to love me.
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