I posted a post a week or so ago on by initial diagnosis of Bipolar which was changed to Borderline Personality Disorder. I would like to explore something that I am exploring in psychodynamic psychotherapy and see if this resonates with people.

My story is that I was seperated from my biological Mother in the first few weeks of my life then fostered and adopted. The family that brought me up had there own problems and I was either overindulged with love or harshly spoken to and controlled and put down. My Pop was very passive and my Mom often agressive and dominant but with occasional warmth.

I had mood swings for years and suffered a breakdown when I was in my 20's which I know now through hypnotherapy and other alternative forms of thereapy was the repressed unconscious feelings of seperation emerging into my conscious mind after experimenting with cannabis. There were alot of psychotic aspects to the breakdown also and I still feel I have not fully recovered from it but it has been a very transformative process.

I traced my biological Mom a few years later and my mood swings became pretty intolerable. I would have paralysing depressions followed by bliss like states. In my 20's I nearly became a Buddhist monk because of this annihilatory depressive feeling followed by periods of bliss.

This has gone on for 20 years or so and is improving now with psychotherapy. In recent my mood is much more irritable and depressive than blissful but the bliss is still there. That is why I was concerned about the BPD diagnosis because it appears to suggest lack of periods of blissful type feelings.

My moods swings have even occured when I see the psychotherapist each week. Excitement and bliss feelings followed by crippling depressions when I arrive in therapy. I can just about manage to control them but they are still there.

The good news is the pdoc who is Freudian in thought maintains that these are a defence against the very early disruptions I have had. I was concerned about any genetic issues and he does maintain that I could have inherited a temparemental genetic disposition but doesn't think that there is a strong genetic disposition towards very severe mental illness (though I would maintain my symptoms HAVE been very severe over the years).

If we leave the issue of diagnosis to one side for the time being. Does what I say resonate with a number of people here? That the blissful feelings seem to be a defence against something deep inside or should I perhaps be posting this elsewhere?