Don't try anymore

I used to be in therapy (31 years to be exact). I used to want to be the best I could be. I used to do all the right things. Highly overrated. Well I left therapy because no therapist wanted to work with an old BPD. They said if you don't have it yet nothing they can do. That hurt at first then I decided the h**l with it I am going to be me at age 67. I work full time and hard I want to play hard. I am me with BPD. I am NOT me BPD with nothing else. I don't define myself anymore with a DSM-V description. I am me with loads of parts one of which is BPD. I want to live life have fun travel and if my destiny is to be alone so be it. It is what it is. We are supposed to have a distorted view of reality well is that so bad. Reality today government is shut down there are starving children and adults. I could go on for pages of what is wrong with reality and the world. I like my distorted view. maybe others should have OUR view. End of rant. Good night everyone and have the best life you can.

Thanks for your rant! I'm 69. And I feel pretty-much the same way you do I think. I don't see a therapist. I've tried a few in the past for brief periods over the years. But, in my case, it just never seemed to amount to anything. I still technically have a pdoc. But I'm not on med's & I have no plans to see him again.

I didn't become actively involved with the mental health system where I live until around age 50 or so. But my sense is that I was already excess baggage on the mental health railroad, so to speak. From my perspective, mental health services are for young people. (And perhaps that's the way it should be... I don't know.) The older one gets, the less anyone cares about your mental health issues.

I have a deep-seated need to understand what happened to me that I turned out the way I did. But the reality is I'm never going to know. And no one within the mental health system is interested in helping me even if they could. (Realistically they probably couldn't anyway.) So my plan is to just live my life & do my best not to ruminate over it. The world is a mess. There's nothing I can do about any of it. I think we'd all probably be a lot better off if we could simply accept that we are who we are & it's okay. Best wishes with regard to having fun & travelling!

I'm 52 and agree with the above opinions, that the public health care system treats older people with mental health issues at low priority. I can see why: treatment may enable young people to live a happy and successful life, whereas at 50 the damage is pretty much done. Also, people in their 50s may be deemed to be able to cope on their own, as otherwise they wouldn't have made it this far. I'm with dancinglady: I'll probably stay alone for the rest of my life for what it's worth, so why not just live the day and see what happens.

The future will tell if privately paid therapy did me any good. On one hand I feel I'm gaining a lot of valuable insight, on the other therapy sessions are difficult to integrate into my work life and it looks like they just contributed to a significant and very demotivating setback.

They will care when we end up in nursing homes for sure. Then we will all the help and meds they can manage to give us. LOL. Probably have a conservator too so they can make all of our decisions. I feel at that point I will act like a spoiled brat. Lol

Hi dancinglady,

I agree with you, trying to do all the right things, trying to be the best I could be, going to therapy to help address issues -- all very highly overrated. Expensive and a waste of time. Basically, a con. If they had just told me, this is the way you are, some people are really not going to like it, and you may have a hard time getting along with the rest of the world sometimes, but you can find things you like to do and ways, maybe, to contribute to the world anyway. I think that would have been a much better way thing to do than, "Anything you are willing to face, you can overcome." Basically, a lie.

I didn't have BPD, I probably had OCPD before I fell apart after my husband died. Over-rigid control that kept impulses dissociated and otherwise in check. After I fell apart I couldn't work, so you're doing great, it seems to me!!

I don't want to tell you what to do , but make sure you have someone other than the state to be your advocate/guardian, like written in a legal document, notarized, the whole thing. My grandmother, who surely had some form of mental illness her whole life, left no will or anything. When she was placed in a pysch hospital at age 79 after being hounded by state social workers, unknown to us, they drugged her with meds that are not supposed to be used with older people. I'm glad that she had at least some strength to slap the doc. Since she was likely ill her whole life, along with us, we assumed it was just her personality coming through with the vicious phone calls. She ended up calling the police on the social worker, and threatened to shoot herself if the woman did not leave her alone. We still can't understand why they never attempted to get a hold of family. This type of harassment of her apparently went on for months. We lived out of state, and the family was used to this kind of talk from her, from everyone really. Well, it sent the state into full force, and they took full control of her. We actually believe that they run some sort of crooked operation where they take incapacitated, vulnerable people's money in this state. We attended a hearing to try to get guardianship, but it was too late. The state had their claws on her, and were probably after her property and assets. We got a lawyer, and tried to obtain guardianship, and were gonna get her back to our state into a good home. Afterall,she had worked for that money to have care when she could no longer care for herself. Instead, the state put her in a hellhole nursing facility where they denied a relatively simple surgery that could've saved her. She died from not getting that surgery. Nurses laughed at her because she thought that she worked there, or lapsed into childlike states thinking her parents were coming to get her. It was horrible. It was one of those things that you get caught up in a whirlwind of Twilight Zone scenarios, and you don't even know what to do before it's too late.