Help diagnosed with bpd today

[SectOfValtiel]

ive had suspicions since around october last year, i got into this rabbithole where i did a bunch of different online tests for it and read into it a lot and it seemed like i checked every box
but when i mentioned it in therapy he basically just told me it was hard to diagnose and i left it at that
until a few weeks ago when i got into the self-diagnosis rabbithole again and saw again that i checked every box in every online test
so during our last session i had him test me for it, said i definitely share a lot of symptoms but he needed a consultation to confirm
and today he confirmed it as a diagnosis on my chart

im not really sure how to feel
thought it would be a relief, at least now i have an explanation for why i feel the way i do, at least i know its not all in my head... well, it is, but you get what i mean
its not just some amorphous curse anymore, now theres a proper psychological explanation for the reasons i force myself to stay away from people now
and theres value in that
but i think i feel a little worse now
hearing about DBT and all this shit you have to do to get any significant difference is horrifying
i already felt like i was stuck mentally but now i know how much more effort its going to take to '''fix''' it and i dont think i have that in me anymore
if i got this diagnosis a year ago i would be putting everything i had into trying
id be working my ass off trying to be a better person than i was
but now ive reached a point that feels well beyond no return

i still dont entirely understand it, i forgot everything i read up on last year so im starting from square one again
but for some reason im too scared to read more into it now that i actually have the diagnosis
feels like the more i understand it the more im going to hate that aspect of myself
and the amount i hate every other aspect of myself is already unbearable
now i know i was right and this shit in my head really isnt fixable
just potentially manageable
that makes me want to give up and catch an early bus even more, even though im pretty sure im not capable of that either

i just feel even more lost than i did before

 

[jodes2]

Well done getting your diagnosis, it's a step closer to recovery. On the plus side, BPD is known to improve with age and therapy, even if it's hard to treat with meds. It'll get easier , well done, very well done

 

[not_actually_human]

If you really have BPD, I'd advise you to learn about your own condition and that of other humans. Literature on BPD/NPD/aspd is a good place to start. Look into schema modes, and analyse yourself and your environment/ the world.

Meds can be very helpful in the short-term, crucial even. (And also, get checked for ADHD too)
Therapy/DBT, avoid imo, until you have a good grasp over your vulnerabilities. Seeking therapy as opposed to seeking to understand things through an intellectually honest way causes far more harm than good. Understanding others seems to be essential to understanding yourself.

All of this is, again, if you have BPD.

 

[outatime_85]

Awesome, I am glad that you were able to get your therapist to test you.

It is a shock, but now you have some peace of mind and guidance, as well as knowing that it was not all in your head, and the therapist has more information, which will also help them treat you.

I think you are on the right track, and because you were given a legitimate medical diagnosis, you can now research your diagnosis and view the information from a different perspective.

Side note: I'm sure some or most of us here would prefer to have things completely fixed, but having things in a manageable position isn't always a bad thing.

There may be ups and downs, but you've got it covered. (You got this.) Now go forth and start kicking life in the nuts.

Sorry if I am off the mark, out of line, incoherent, or rambling.

 

[Man_in_The_Box]

Hey man, just joined the community again today, I'm amazed at how difficult it was to find SS again. I really cherish the openness and non judgment people value here.
I'm 24 yo now, seems strange to even write that
I always thought something was different with me, since i was little
I always had suicidal thoughts, social anxiety, panic attacks, and dont even start me about trauma
At the age of 21 with the insistence of now girlfriend, i started therapy.
I was right away recommended antidepressants and xanax.
I went on a rage with the xannys, i really became addicted and did not give a fuck.
If you are like me this little pills fix everything that was wrong with you since you were a child. No more chest pain, difficulty breathing, anxiety out of nowhere, no fear.
And than it gradually fades, but of course i wanted more. and with abuse they take you with them, abuse leads you to feel like a zombie, nothing matters, but in an apathetic unconfortable sense. I changed cities and therapist , just to be prescribed more and more antidepressants, mood stabilizers, etc
There is no real medication for bpd, no real treatment, just access of symptoms. So all those medicines really did nothing for me, from my personal experience at least.
After some months of nothing working and still feeling the same way i underwent 7 sessions of electroshock therapy.
I feel a little different after that but i dont think much has changed
I really just have to learn how to deal with it
I dont take medicine no more, it just makes my mind hazy.
I self medicate with weed since i was 20, before i use to drink a lot, but i dont abuse alcohol anymore.
My relationship with my girlfriend really helps me wake up everyday.
I thought i would never ever have a relationship
We with bpd have enormous difficulty with relationships, they are rocky to say the least
I usually drove people away as a mechanism in order to not give them the opportunity to reject me
This girl insisted in me, she really saw something in me, and she went through my emotional barriers.
She keep me going everyday.
Borderline is a fucking curse and I woudlnt wish it upon my worst enemy.
Research say it is the most painful mental disease one can have. THE. MOST. PAINFUL. MENTAL. DISEASE. No light statement, and still people dont believe how much it hurts especially when you just hide it, there's not much use in talking about mental pain with the majority of people in my experience. But finding someone to share it is key.
You suffer so much you literally feel physical pain. A lot of it. It's like you were put in a torture chamber when you were born and now and then it's time for the mental torture session.
If you know how that feels, man... I know how tough it is. People have no idea.

But it's also a blessing

I am creative beyond my pears, i am very intelligent, but mainly i have so much intrinsic emotional knowledge and i am so acute to pain, all of my experience suffering helps me be the most empathetic person my friends say they ever knew. We have the power to put ourselves in other people shoes and feel how they feel intensely, and so we have the power to lissen and help other, although it is sometimes nearly impossible to that for ourselves. Bpd brings many symptoms, you will learn about them, dont be discouraged, you are a very special human being and you are not alone.

I just woke up, sorry for the long text i would have so much more to share. If you want to you can chat with me if you want to know more about my experience with the disorder.
All my blessings and strength to you my unknown friend!

PS.: The thing that helped me keep afloat all these years has been art and expression. Specially through music, i play a couple of different instruments and i've always been passionate about how artists an express their emotion and just put it out in its rawest so it dont consume them. I'm learning everyday new ways to put it all out

 

[never mind me]

I think it's a good thing you were diagnosed, so now you can try to work on your issues and hopefully recover. The notion that you cannot recover from BDP is a common misconception. It may have been true a few decades ago, but newer studies show that remisson of BDP symptoms and improvement of general functioning in every day life is not only possible, but common. So if you take into account that many other mental illnesses like depression or schizophrenia are often also recurring or even chronic one shouldn't consider a diagnosis of BDP as being so much worse than other mental health issues. Below is a link to an open access systematic reviw on recovery of BDP.

Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder: A Systematic Review of the Perspectives of Consumers, Clinicians, Family and Carers

Purpose Longitudinal studies support that symptomatic remission from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is common, but recovery from the disorder probably involves a broader set of changes in psychosocial function over and above symptom relief. A systematic review of literature on both...

journals.plos.org

 

[SectOfValtiel]

Hey man, just joined the community again today, I'm amazed at how difficult it was to find SS again. I really cherish the openness and non judgment people value here.
I'm 24 yo now, seems strange to even write that
I always thought something was different with me, since i was little
I always had suicidal thoughts, social anxiety, panic attacks, and dont even start me about trauma
At the age of 21 with the insistence of now girlfriend, i started therapy.
I was right away recommended antidepressants and xanax.
I went on a rage with the xannys, i really became addicted and did not give a fuck.
If you are like me this little pills fix everything that was wrong with you since you were a child. No more chest pain, difficulty breathing, anxiety out of nowhere, no fear.
And than it gradually fades, but of course i wanted more. and with abuse they take you with them, abuse leads you to feel like a zombie, nothing matters, but in an apathetic unconfortable sense. I changed cities and therapist , just to be prescribed more and more antidepressants, mood stabilizers, etc
There is no real medication for bpd, no real treatment, just access of symptoms. So all those medicines really did nothing for me, from my personal experience at least.
After some months of nothing working and still feeling the same way i underwent 7 sessions of electroshock therapy.
I feel a little different after that but i dont think much has changed
I really just have to learn how to deal with it
I dont take medicine no more, it just makes my mind hazy.
I self medicate with weed since i was 20, before i use to drink a lot, but i dont abuse alcohol anymore.
My relationship with my girlfriend really helps me wake up everyday.
I thought i would never ever have a relationship
We with bpd have enormous difficulty with relationships, they are rocky to say the least
I usually drove people away as a mechanism in order to not give them the opportunity to reject me
This girl insisted in me, she really saw something in me, and she went through my emotional barriers.
She keep me going everyday.
Borderline is a fucking curse and I woudlnt wish it upon my worst enemy.
Research say it is the most painful mental disease one can have. THE. MOST. PAINFUL. MENTAL. DISEASE. No light statement, and still people dont believe how much it hurts especially when you just hide it, there's not much use in talking about mental pain with the majority of people in my experience. But finding someone to share it is key.
You suffer so much you literally feel physical pain. A lot of it. It's like you were put in a torture chamber when you were born and now and then it's time for the mental torture session.
If you know how that feels, man... I know how tough it is. People have no idea.

But it's also a blessing

I am creative beyond my pears, i am very intelligent, but mainly i have so much intrinsic emotional knowledge and i am so acute to pain, all of my experience suffering helps me be the most empathetic person my friends say they ever knew. We have the power to put ourselves in other people shoes and feel how they feel intensely, and so we have the power to lissen and help other, although it is sometimes nearly impossible to that for ourselves. Bpd brings many symptoms, you will learn about them, dont be discouraged, you are a very special human being and you are not alone.

I just woke up, sorry for the long text i would have so much more to share. If you want to you can chat with me if you want to know more about my experience with the disorder.
All my blessings and strength to you my unknown friend!

PS.: The thing that helped me keep afloat all these years has been art and expression. Specially through music, i play a couple of different instruments and i've always been passionate about how artists an express their emotion and just put it out in its rawest so it dont consume them. I'm learning everyday new ways to put it all out

im 25, turning 26 in just a few months
ive had maybe two medications actually help- but a majority just made it worse, and the few that helped, stopped after a week or so anyway
i smoke weed a lot to distract myself and that helps when my emotions start to get overwhelming... but i only have enough for a day or so left, so

my ex was the only reason i was ever happy tbh
she was the first time i actually understood what love felt like, she made me actively work on being a better person just by being in my life
she gave me hope for a future i didnt even think i was gonna be alive to see
and then everything fucking fell apart
and the last three, almost four years now have been hell just missing her and trying desperately to even just get the fuck over her
its still every day every second i let my mind wander and im thinking about her again
and i hate it
i wish i didnt know what love felt like lmao i think id be in less pain if i hadnt
shes never coming back into my life, she made that clear, and even if she did id just fuck it all up again so im not sure id let her
wherever she is now shes probably doing better than she did when i was with her

i stopped talking to people because i have constant thoughts that they dont care about me and that everything they say is a lie
even though i know logically that cannot be true
doesnt help my last ex, after the one that truly helped me, her last words to me were basically 'kill yourself'
shit, i should have just said 'yeah, wish i could' lol
but after that i literally am incapable of trusting people
i hate being alone- hurts worse than almost anything
but hurting others and risking being hurt is worse
so i isolate
theres zero chances ill ever meet someone again like this, im on my own whether i want to be or not
no girlfriend- or boyfriend- is going to save me, nobody would want to, thats just reality for me

lmao
im too depressed to be creative, even if i have all these ideas in some aspects, i hate everything i try to such an extreme
and its not like i didnt try to push through that, it just almost always resulted in a relapse or an overload of emotion and i cant handle that right now
i also wouldnt say im particularly empathetic...
back when i first met my ex, sure, i mean half the reason i fell for her was because i wanted to help make her happy, and i really tried my best to
but i failed at that
and after literally being told to kill myself by another person i loved, i just cant find the energy to go out of my way for someone anymore
i dont see the point if theyre always going to leave or forget about me or end up hating me as much as i do anyway
im an inherently selfish person
i like to say i isolate to avoid hurting people, maybe theres some truth there, but lately the main reason is just to avoid being hurt by them again
even when i have the intention of helping someone, ive never been able to
never
i only seem capable of bringing everyone else down into the same shit ive been stuck in for most of my life


i appreciate what youre saying but i *am* alone
and i have no clue how to actually express myself in a way that doesnt just frustrate me into another relapse
id love to play instruments again, learn the guitar or something, but that just isnt something i can afford
i dont have an income so i cant even afford to take care of myself let alone start up a hobby

 

[noaccount]

Hi Sect.
To be fair the doctor's diagnosis doesn't necessarily mean anything - it's not based on any objective "tests" but on the doctor's opinion of how you match a checklist of traits, and your own opinion on the matter is probably more well-informed than the doctor's. It's only really useful if it helps you access some treatment or other that you want.
Nor does it explain anything, it merely describes something.
Fair warning that most of what you read from clinical people will be written in very misogynist and ableist ways.

You may want to read about why Dr. Judith Herman called personality disorder labels "little more than sophisticated insults."

 

[Regen]

I can empathize with that. BPD is both a friend and an enemy.

When I was young, I liked the diagnosis because I felt I had an identity and a cause for my behavior and problems. More than ten years later, I was tested and interviewed and I was very glad I didn't fill in the blanks. A lot has changed in my life and I don't want to be the borderliner anymore.

But today - another ten years later - I can't close my eyes to accept that I have borderline problems. Mostly not on the outside, but on the inside. My thoughts are a problem. And, for example, my reactions to people. I really don't like to hear that from my therapist..... But unfortunately, she's right.

You can't change what you get in life. Some have physical problems, some have mental problems. It's not fair. I hate it. But having BPD doesn't mean you can't get better. But yes, I think it means you will always have a handicap. Just like many others.

 

[SectOfValtiel]

Hi Sect.
To be fair the doctor's diagnosis doesn't necessarily mean anything - it's not based on any objective "tests" but on the doctor's opinion of how you match a checklist of traits, and your own opinion on the matter is probably more well-informed than the doctor's. It's only really useful if it helps you access some treatment or other that you want.
Nor does it explain anything, it merely describes something.
Fair warning that most of what you read from clinical people will be written in very misogynist and ableist ways.

You may want to read about why Dr. Judith Herman called personality disorder labels "little more than sophisticated insults."

knowing what kind of treatment you need from your therapist is arguably extremely useful for therapy, especially when youve spent 4 years without much success
and as someone that feels like they know nothing about themselves
labels are also very useful

plus ive lived in america for 25 years, to expect otherwise in any system would be kinda naïve at this point

 

[leeloosnow]

i've found https://www.youtube.com/@DrDanielFox helpful, and on meds/therapy for it. having an early diagnosis is helpful tho, you got this

 

[SectOfValtiel]

i've found https://www.youtube.com/@DrDanielFox helpful, and on meds/therapy for it. having an early diagnosis is helpful tho, you got this

thank you, his videos have already been really helpful and insightful
im learning a lot more about it thanks to him

not sure id call it an 'early' diagnosis, wish i would have known four years ago
but better late than never i guess

 

[noaccount]

knowing what kind of treatment you need from your therapist is arguably extremely useful for therapy, especially when youve spent 4 years without much success
and as someone that feels like they know nothing about themselves
labels are also very useful

plus ive lived in america for 25 years, to expect otherwise in any system would be kinda naïve at this point

Sure, and what you find that you need for your own goals - of how you want to live and feel - may be very at-odds with how a therapist wants you to think or live.

 

[deathbylife]

ive had suspicions since around october last year, i got into this rabbithole where i did a bunch of different online tests for it and read into it a lot and it seemed like i checked every box
but when i mentioned it in therapy he basically just told me it was hard to diagnose and i left it at that
until a few weeks ago when i got into the self-diagnosis rabbithole again and saw again that i checked every box in every online test
so during our last session i had him test me for it, said i definitely share a lot of symptoms but he needed a consultation to confirm
and today he confirmed it as a diagnosis on my chart

im not really sure how to feel
thought it would be a relief, at least now i have an explanation for why i feel the way i do, at least i know its not all in my head... well, it is, but you get what i mean
its not just some amorphous curse anymore, now theres a proper psychological explanation for the reasons i force myself to stay away from people now
and theres value in that
but i think i feel a little worse now
hearing about DBT and all this shit you have to do to get any significant difference is horrifying
i already felt like i was stuck mentally but now i know how much more effort its going to take to '''fix''' it and i dont think i have that in me anymore
if i got this diagnosis a year ago i would be putting everything i had into trying
id be working my ass off trying to be a better person than i was
but now ive reached a point that feels well beyond no return

i still dont entirely understand it, i forgot everything i read up on last year so im starting from square one again
but for some reason im too scared to read more into it now that i actually have the diagnosis
feels like the more i understand it the more im going to hate that aspect of myself
and the amount i hate every other aspect of myself is already unbearable
now i know i was right and this shit in my head really isnt fixable
just potentially manageable
that makes me want to give up and catch an early bus even more, even though im pretty sure im not capable of that either

i just feel even more lost than i did before

Don't get hung up on the diagnosis. It can be stigmatizing. I was diagnosed about 30 years ago. Never had a pleasant experience with treatment related options. Hopefully that's changed. I'm convinced it's primarily a PTSD response to childhood/teenage/young adult trauma. You really have to be committed to start DBT.

 

[Shadow Life]

Hi Sect.
To be fair the doctor's diagnosis doesn't necessarily mean anything - it's not based on any objective "tests" but on the doctor's opinion of how you match a checklist of traits, and your own opinion on the matter is probably more well-informed than the doctor's. It's only really useful if it helps you access some treatment or other that you want.
Nor does it explain anything, it merely describes something.
Fair warning that most of what you read from clinical people will be written in very misogynist and ableist ways.

You may want to read about why Dr. Judith Herman called personality disorder labels "little more than sophisticated insults."

I agree. Diagnoses are just labels. Labels put us in boxes. Don't live your life in a box; Don't let others put you in a box..
If you took away all the psychological labels describing every person (and then grouping them,) if you removed labels placed on us by others, what do you have left but a population of people who are simply humans with different quirks, preferences, temperaments, etc.

Ask yourself, How would my thoughts or feelings about my life experiences change if I didn't call myself a borderline? Try not to think of yourself as a Borderline. Think of yourself as a human being who is unique, yet also the same. You see, every human has the same bag of emotions, feelings, and whatnot - but not every human will express them, or have them, in the same manner; not every human will react or respond to external stimuli in the same manner, either. That is what makes us unique from one another. Improve your self-awareness and understanding. Find what makes you different - and cherish yourself for it