My understanding of BPD

What is MBT?

I need to go back a bit for this blog post. After a couple of sessions I began to realise that I had had my diagnosis of BPD for a lot longer than most of the others. I seemed more, I don't know, at ease with it. Sure, the name doesn't sound great and it does seem to suggest negative connotations, but I was so happy to finally have a name, a condition, a reason for why I felt the way I did that I saw straight past that. In the early sessions they tried, and in my opinion failed, to explain to us what was meant by 'mentalisation'. In basic terms I understand it to mean changing the way we think about things, our feelings and emotions in particular. How you change something as automatic and ingrained as the way you think, I just don't know. They are yet to fill me with confidence that this can actually be achieved. Still, it seems to me that, first, you need a good understanding of the condition before you can understand the treatment.

Extensive research

My phobia counsellor suggested to me that she had been reading up on something and wanted to share it with me. She stressed this was not her area of expertise and she might be wrong but from her time spent with me and her reading she thought I might suffer from something called a borderline personality disorder, had I heard of it? Like 99% of the population, I told her no, I hadn't. Immediately, my back was up, was she calling me a schizophrenic? No, as it turns out, she wasn't. She asked me lots of questions, but the one I always remember is 'do you still feel sad after watching a sad film or reading a sad book a long time after the event?' I thought, oh my god, yes I do. I don't watch sad films (Pay it forward ruined those sorts of films for me, didn't see it coming and cried, genuinely, for about a week after watching it) or read sad books (I have only just forgiven the friend who gave me One Day to read, over Christmas no less). For me, it just wasn't worth it. I can't watch or read something emotional, realise it is fiction and move on. It makes me so upset, in a really intense way. My therapist thinks I can't cry for myself so I use these things as an outlet for my own pain. Makes sense in a way.

Still, everything that she asked me about the condition applied to me. I had gone from feeling like a potential schizophrenic to feeling like I had an answer in a short space of time. I went home after the session and immediately logged on to google. The real test would be whether my therapist though I had it, but for me, I was already convinced.

Turns out there was more information out there than I was expecting, for a condition I had never heard of. I wouldn't say a lot, but I was pleasantly surprised, for example, that the NHS had a page on it. I became obsessed with reading about it, largely I think as the more I read the more I was convinced that this is what was wrong with me.

Relief

I had been lead to believe, largely by my family (my father in particular) that I was simply a 'drama queen'. There was nothing wrong me with, I was self indulgent and 'too sensitive'. With that message being hammered home for 28 years and no one around to offer an alternative I had begun to buy into it. I cannot explain the feeling of sheer relief I felt to discover that it was probably something I was born with. I say probably as it is a relatively new condition (first formally diagnosed in the 1980s) so the evidence is not as robust as one would hope. Still, from everything I have read and seen (there is one excellent video, American obviously, which I think brilliantly explains the condition from both clinician and patient perspective - I have watched it probably close to 30 times) the science suggests that people are born with a presupposition to the condition and the environment in which they grow up in can influence whether they develop it or not. There is evidence which shows our brains don't work in quite the same way as everyone else.

After the initial feeling of relief, I felt and still feel, vindicated. I knew, deep down I always knew, that there was something not quite right with me. For my family to make me believe otherwise was, a terrible thing to do which I am not sure I will ever recover from.

Back to the present

I think both my extensive research and my willingness to readily accept my condition put me in a somewhat unique situation in the group sessions. Some members are weary of the condition, others just don't know enough about it and some simply don't believe they have it. What they do have that I don't, is, currently, a genuine willingness to engage.

I think that, since I have had my diagnosis for a while and have talked about it at length with my therapist, I have a better understanding not only of the condition but more so of my interpretation of it and how it affects MY life. This, I have found, is not always a good thing. I have always been very sure about my feelings, or more importantly about being right. I guess, I felt them so intensely how could they be wrong? To feel this strongly about something must be right, no matter how 'irrational' it seemed. However, since I have gained a better understanding of my condition I now realise how irrational I truly am. Yet this does not stop the feelings. For example, I hate getting caught in the rain, not in a 'my hair will get messed up' kind of way, but a thoroughly depressed, crying kind of way. I don't know what it is but being wet in dry clothes is very distressing to me. Years ago, I would cry and feel sad and angry about it and think that was a perfectly acceptable response. Now, I still cry about it but I know how ridiculous and irrational I am being. Doesn't stop the intense feelings though.

I really do believe that sometimes ignorance is bliss and I was better off when I thought I was right.

Until next time, over and out.