Hello again,

Thanks to little digdee for posting the piece and further comments.

I personally was only diagnosed about 3 years ago so I am not used to reading in depth psychiatric journals. Ultramar doesn't appear impressed with the piece. However, there is similar thought processes on wikipedia about the similarities in affective instability in both BPD and Bipolar II.

The difficulty I have is that my depressions definitely manifest themselves in atypical forms. I also have unexplained pains and paralysis in my body and I am really reactive to sounds, noises etc. Sometimes I have intrusive thoughts in my head.

I definately have BPD traits around abandonment and rejection but I also have distractability, fatigue, either oversleeping or sleeping to little etc. I also often taken on to many tasks at once etc and am high achieving in my career having better ideas and projects than everyone else.

From my own research on the issue BPD does result in sleep disturbance, high functioning behaviour, distractability etc though the borderline is often a highly charismatic individual for instance. Bipolar 2 says the manic episodes are often negative that it cannot be often separated from regular depression with irritability, fatigue, anxiety, paranoid ideation etc. I definately have periods of those which can last a long time.

From my own perspective I found the above article very helpful. The BPD diagnosis I got was because I didn't have many periods when I felt ok inbetween episodes. The Pdoc said most others would diagnose me Bipolar and it was still marginal. He was also of a lower grade than the first pdoc (not sure if that means anything though).

My real concern is that I have been had on and off (more off than on) bouts of therapy for 20 years and often thought I was improving only to crash into depressions again and not feeling I have recovered because what is inside me continues to remain. I am scared of that happening again and even refuse to get my hopes up for fear of disappointment.