Borderline Personality Disorder

Bagmagnet

Hello,

Just wondering if anyone had any information on borderline personality disorder, i.e. what is it like to live with this, what is it like to be in a relationship with someone who has this?

Thanks..

The Black Oil

I once read someone with this diagnosis calling it Bull**** Psychiatric Disorder..

It seems to be a bit of a catch all diagnosis. It also seems to have a bit of a negative reputation in that people with it are viewed as very, very difficult, untreatable etc. Admittedly, a lot of generalisations and negativity, but through my voluntary work it seems that some people who have it get a pretty crap time from mental health professionals. Yet, at the same time, some others with it use at as an excuse for a lot of things. It seems to big in the UK in that if you're female and self-harm they can start to push this diagnosis. This has happened a colleague and she's definitely not BPD. Anyway, I'm probably a bit biased.

http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Booklets/Understanding/Understanding+borderline+personality+disorder.htm

The Black Oil

The negative stereotype or perception:

'The borderline patient is a therapist's nightmare...because borderlines never really get better. The best you can do is help them coast, without getting sucked into their pathology...They're the chronically depressed, the determinedly addictive, the compulsively divorced, living from one emotional disaster to the next. Bed hoppers, stomach pumpers, freeway jumpers, and sad eyes bench sitters with arms stitched up like footballs and psychic wounds that can never be sutured. Their ego is as fragile as spun sugar, their psyches irretrievably fragmented, like a jigsaw puzzle with the crucial pieces missing. They play roles with alacrity, excel at being anyone except themselves, crave intimacy but repel it when they find it. Some of them gravitate towards stage or screen; others do their acting in more subtle ways...

Borderlines go from therapist to therapist, hoping to find a magic bullet for the crushing feelings of emptiness. They turn to chemical bullets, gobble tranquilisers and antidepressants, alcohol and cocaine. Embrace gurus and heaven hucksters, any charismatic creep promising a quick fix of the pain. And they end up taking temporary vacations in psychiatric wards and prison cells, emerge looking good, raising everyone's hopes. Until the next let down, real or imagined, the next excursion into self-damage.
What they don't do is change.''

Call me Socket

That's a brilliant piece of writing....

Matt Holck

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