[ECHOES]

from: http://www.borderlinedisorders.com/public.htm

I like this description of Borderline Personality, maybe it just resonates with me, but anyway I thought I would share.

I. DIAGNOSIS

The term "borderline" goes back a long way. For centuries, European society excluded people regarded as "insane" from normal life, confining them to asylums or driving them from one town to another. By the 18th century, a few doctors were beginning to study the people in asylums, and discovered that some of these patients had, by no means, lost the powers of reason: they had a normal grasp of what was real and what wasn't, but they suffered terribly from emotional anguish through their impulsiveness, ragefulness, and a general difficulty in self-government caused others to suffer. They seemed to live in a borderland between outright insanity and normal behavior and feeling.

These people, who were neither insane nor mentally healthy, continued to puzzle psychiatrists for the next one hundred years. It was in this "borderland" that society and psychiatry came to place its criminals, alcoholics, suicidal people, emotionally unstable and behaviorally unpredictable people—to separate them off both from those with more clearly defined psychiatric illnesses at one border (those, for example, whose illness we have come to call schizophrenia and manic-depressive or "bipolar" disorder) and from "normal" people at the other border.

About a hundred years ago, a bright but very ill young woman found that if her doctor listened to her for hours while she told him about her inner experience and her memories, the symptoms that were making her life unbearable would gradually subside. The patient recovered and went on to become the first social worker in Germany.

Her doctor, Dr. Breuer, went on to become one of the teachers of Sigmund Freud, inventor of the "talking cure" -- psychoanalysis. At first the students of Freud thought that the talking cure would help all mentally ill people except those who were seriously psychotic. But over the years they found themselves dealing with some patients who were in the same "borderland" described before: people who were not psychotic, but who did not respond to the talking cure in the way the therapists expected. Gradually, therapists began to define this "borderline" group not so much by their symptoms as by the special problems that were underneath the symptoms, and by the effects these people had upon others.

The symptoms of borderline patients are similar to those for which most people seek psychiatric help: depression, mood swings, the use and abuse of drugs and alcohol as a means of trying to feel better; obsessions, phobias, feelings of emptiness and loneliness, inability to tolerate being alone, problems about eating.

But, in addition, the borderline people showed great difficulties in controlling ragefulness; they were unusually impulsive, they fell in and out of love suddenly; they tended to idealize other people and then abruptly despise them. A consequence of all this was that they typically looked for help from a therapist and then suddenly quit in terrible disappointment and anger.

Underneath all these symptoms, therapists began to see in borderline people an inability to tolerate the levels of anxiety, frustration, rejection and loss that most people are able to put up with, an inability to soothe and comfort themselves when they become upset, and an inability to control the impulses toward the expression, through action, of love and hate that most people are able to hold in check. And, furthermore, what most defines the "borderline" personality, is great difficulty in holding on to a stable, consistent sense of one's self: "What am I?" these people ask. "My life is in chaos; sometimes I feel like I can do anything--other times I want to die because I feel so incompetent, helpless and loathsome. I'm a lot of different people instead of being just one person."

The one word that best characterizes borderline personality is "instability." Their emotions are unstable, fluctuating wildly for no discernible reason. Their thinking is unstable--rational and clear at times, quite psychotic at other times. Their behavior is unstable--often with periods of excellent conduct, high efficiency and trustworthiness alternating with outbreaks of babyishness, suddenly quitting a job, withdrawing into isolation, failing.

Their self control is unstable--ranging from the extreme self denial of anorexia to being at the mercy of impulses. And their relationships are unstable. They may sacrifice themselves for others, only to reach their limit suddenly and fly into rageful reproaches, or they may curry favor with obedient submission only to rebel, out of the blue, in a tantrum.

Associated with this instability is terrible anxiety, guilt and self-loathing for which relief is sought at any cost--medicine, drugs, alcohol, overeating, suicide. Sadly, oddly, self-injury is discovered by many borderline people to provide faster relief than anything else--cutting or burning themselves stops the anxiety temporarily.

The effect upon others of all this trouble is profound: family members never know what to expect from their volatile child, siblings, or spouse, except they know they can expect trouble: suicide threats and attempts, self-inflicted injuries, outbursts of rage and recrimination, impulsive marriages, divorces, pregnancies and abortions; repeated starting and stopping of jobs and school careers, and a pervasive sense, on the part of the family, of being unable to help.

And, of course, the effect of the illness upon the life of the patient is equally profound: jobs are lost, successes are spoiled, relationships shattered, families alienated. The end result is all too often the failure of a promising life, or a tragic suicide.

[JayS]

Thank you ECHOES,

This explains so much... but now I feel even worse cause for me this is all true.

[ECHOES]

What if we felt no pain?

And we broke our leg and couldn't walk.

But didn't know why?

We have pain to help us know what needs to heal.

So we can walk unimpaired and freely.



This isn't anything we brought on ourselves. It is what we learned about how to deal with the world. There is no blame or shame in any of it.

[JayS]

I understand what you are saying... but I have already "literally" wasted a little over 10 years of my life over these feelings... I'm worried about the tragic end... it's all I think about.

[ECHOES]

Hang in there. You can move forward with therapy.

I was not lucky enough to even know these things about myself until over age 50. I wasted most of my life. I firmly believe my life would have been so much better if I'd had the kind of therapy I needed, and the diagnosis that I should have had.

All any of us can do is move forward from where we are. What else can we do, we can't go back. And since there is no blame or shame, we can free ourselves of those bondages and there is hope instead.

I still have 'those' thoughts too. One thing that helped me was when someone said that those thoughts are thoughts that say "how much" pain we are in... "I am in so much pain...". Acceptance that we have those thoughts sometimes, and like all thoughts--they are just thoughts--and don't have to be acted upon.

[pachyderm]

Originally Posted by ECHOES

from: http://www.borderlinedisorders.com/public.htm

About a hundred years ago, a bright but very ill young woman found that if her doctor listened to her for hours while she told him about her inner experience and her memories, the symptoms that were making her life unbearable would gradually subside. The patient recovered and went on to become the first social worker in Germany.

Her doctor, Dr. Breuer, went on to become one of the teachers of Sigmund Freud, inventor of the "talking cure" -- psychoanalysis...

The story is rather more convoluted than this hints at. The young woman was known for a long time as "Anna O". Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim. Some versions of the story have it that when Breuer realized that she was in love with him, he panicked and stopped the treatment, and she then got worse and was institutionalized. She did go on, largely through her own efforts, to become a well-known social worker. I see now that her story has undergone revisions, so that some claim that her problems were not psychological in origin at all. See Wikipedia at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_O

[ECHOES]

yes i have read much about that. maybe i should have cut parts out,, but i wanted to post the whole section. it was the description that i was interested in because it goes beyond the cut and dried list most sites and books use.

[pachyderm]

Isn't Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Marsha Linehan) supposed to be one of the most successful ways of treating BPD?

[ECHOES]

According to some. I did not do that but I had years of useless CBT.
I am now in psychodynamic psychotherapy and it is very helpful. I wish I'd known years ago...

[JayS]

Originally Posted by ECHOES

Hang in there. You can move forward with therapy.

I was not lucky enough to even know these things about myself until over age 50. I wasted most of my life. I firmly believe my life would have been so much better if I'd had the kind of therapy I needed, and the diagnosis that I should have had.

All any of us can do is move forward from where we are. What else can we do, we can't go back. And since there is no blame or shame, we can free ourselves of those bondages and there is hope instead.

I still have 'those' thoughts too. One thing that helped me was when someone said that those thoughts are thoughts that say "how much" pain we are in... "I am in so much pain...". Acceptance that we have those thoughts sometimes, and like all thoughts--they are just thoughts--and don't have to be acted upon.

I'm sorry it took so long for you to figure things out.

I'm trying to move forward but I get very strong urges... In my head it's so real looking, I see myself getting up and just doing it without even thinking twice about it... it's like a dream but when I'm awake... it's not easy.

[ECHOES]

Don't give up. Commit yourself to not giving up. When you get in therapy it feel good to have someone on your side, someone who will accept all things about you, someone who will understand how difficult it is for you. Keep going.

[JayS]

I'm trying... but this isn't all that's wrong.

[paddym22]

I am reading "Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder" by Marsha Linehan at the moment. It is a challenging read both mentally and emotionally as I read about what I feel is myself. I cannot quote from the book as yet as I am still wading through the initial chapters, The history of how the term borderline came about and how the actual diagnostic criteria for BPD in the latest DSM IV was formed .

Linehan and colleagues have formed the Biosocial theory and it is out of this that DBT was developed as the most effectual tool in the treatment of BPD in our day.

Biosocial is broken down as follows

Major Theorists - Linenhan, Millon, Turner

What is meant by borderline - a specific personality disorder comprising of emotional dysregulation, Interpersonal dysregulation, Behavioral dysregulation, Cognitive dysregulation and Self dysfuntion

Etiology of the disease - Nature/Nurture

Recommended Treatment - Modified behavior/cognitive behavior therapy - DBT

Thats as far as I have read, so apologies if it is over simplistic.

Interestingly BPD'rs are compared to people with third degree burns, touch us and our emotions hurt like hell.

[Michah]

I hear you on that one Echoes!! Thanks for sharing that.......ah boy, one wonders how we get through it sometimes.......we truly are warriors of the spirit and mind!!

In stillness.......