A couple of breakthroughs recently, both personally and in a family relationship. Family member had issues, too, so it was not just me – the “mentally ill” one, scapegoat, identified patient.
But I am still pissed that it has taken so damn long for me. 50 years of therapy on and off, 11 years since I had a major breakdown.
T says nothing I can do about it, just grieve. OK, so yeah, the anger and wanting to change things IS a well-ingrained defense against hopelessness and loss in my personal life. But I’m 66, almost dead for heaven’s sake! Since I’m still here, just passively accepting the fact that many therapists don’t know how to recognize, let alone treat, personality disorders and thinking that’s OK – NO, it’s not.
I think many therapists need the success stories, too. So they can have some direction if they are treating someone or, perhaps more importantly, they can be willing to recognize problems and refer people on to a specialist. Knowing that success can be had for the person – but maybe NOT by a non-specialist therapist – could, perhaps, mobilize something besides an avoidance and rejection reaction. Good Lord, I’ve had so many of those!! I’d be “nice”, as I learned to do in the 1950s, and then honest, as I understood I was supposed to be in therapy, and then therapists would recoil. And I didn’t have a clue – which is part of the point of having a PD, at least mine.
Key for me, in the last 3 ½ years, is that I’ve had a therapist who specialized in trauma. Also I’ve found some in-person support groups, as well as online forums.
Personality is something that develops in the process of socialization, so my belief and theory is that, to be changed, it needs re-socialization. Therapy may be a part of that, but can’t be all.