Extremely upset after receiving new diagnosis

Like many people have posted here it does fit you. Your reaction to the diganois is standard for borderllines. Your impulsively, your hate -idolize your I hate him I don't want to lose him. Your I quit, no no I want my time right now I can't wait. Are all definitely symptoms of BPD
c-ptsd is not a recognized by doctors, your T is a doctor. Your T is a professional accept his years of learning and move on to the treatment instead of spending so much wasted time on the push-pull it of I know you don't.

Even if you do have full blown BPD, Hope, it has a very good prognosis with the right therapies like DBT and schema therapy. A lot of people with BPD develop it from complex trauma like you've experienced.

I agree that CPTSD is similar in some areas with BPD (and BPD + PTSD is common) alongside some key differences, but what matters is not the label but how your pdoc/T is going to approach treating the underlying traumas fuelling your symptoms.

I don’t see how he doesn’t follow the manual. Just by what you post on here you likely exhibit 5-6 traits of BPD. And we don’t know you in real life yet everything you post about every situation that occurs is very common for BPD.

I don’t think your pdoc wants you have this particular diagnosis. Why would he? He maybe wants you to finally have a diagnosis that fits your symptoms so you can maybe start working on those symptoms, with professional help.

You’ve been seeing therapists for years but your symptoms don’t improve because they either don’t address your traits or you quit therapy or therapy becomes about your idolizing and disliking of your therapists, so you don’t get better. He wants you to get better.

Unless your sister is also a trained mental health professional, her opinion can’t hold more value than your doctor’s.

Now you don’t have to discuss BPD with him or anyone actually. You can just work on symptoms with him. Ask him what he thinks needs to happen for you to handle life challenges better. You don’t have to call it BPD. You can talk about strategies of improving your reactions to things and your overall quality of life.

His diagnosis of you isn’t going to make you have BPD. Diagnosis just helps to figure out treatments better. If he decides not to call it BPD because it makes you upset, it still won’t make BPD traits go away. Focus on getting help and getting better. Not not a diagnosis. No one but your pdoc and you need to know about your diagnosis

I also wonder if having this diagnosis might help you qualify for disability. You haven’t been employed for awhile and I wonder if your difficulty maintaining steady employment could be attributed to BPD. There are some people with BPD who are on disability due to that. Now it might be temporary measure until you are better, you are still young. But that might be an option.

Nothing wrong with asking about BIpolar disorder. It is possible. But it’s not mutually exclusive. I know people who have both BD and BPD.

When you shared your goals, and he made it sounds as it can’t happen what goals were those?

Having trauma experience doesn’t mean you can’t possibly have BPD.

The symptoms that I listed come from what you have been writing about for a very long time. Has your doctor mentioned DBT as a treatment for you? It is true that BPD is not a lifetime diagnosis, if you continue to work on it.

As far as C-PTSD and even PTSD goes, you can actually have BPD with these disorders.

I just wish you finally find help and peace! Having a diagnosis can help so much in that, when you stop seeing your issues as "mistakes" and you recognize them as symptoms of disease which can be worked on. From what you've written here for a long time, it seems very probable you do indeed have BPD symptoms in combination with trauma. Instead of wasting your energy fighting the diagnosis, you could find relief in rwasearching treatment options and possibly reading books about it. That's what helped me with my diagnosis. For me, getting a diagnosis was a tremendous relief and hope. Before I got that, I saw myself as "bad and weird". Having a recognised diagnosis gives you an opportunity for self compassion!
Please Hope, accept the professional help that you're lucky to have.

How would someone work on accepting a diagnosis that they hated having?

Take focus of diagnosis and focus on improvement. Hating diagnosis is fine but it isn’t getting you no where if you don’t accept you need help.

My boss was recently diagnosed with diabetes and she was very upset about it. But knowing what she has led to her taking meds and following better diet so now she is doing much better. If she decided that she doesn’t have diabetes because she hates the diagnosis and hates her doctor, she’s be still eating junk and not taking meds and is very likely she’d be dead by now.

You have two options.

One not accept diagnosis and the fact that you need help and go on the way you did for years and you’ll be posting exact same things 5-10-20 years from now. The other option is focus on getting better with professional help and seriously work on lessening your symptoms. And hopefully you’ll have a better happier life.

Hope, you don't have to necessarily accept the dx but you do need to start working on treatment in order to feel better. This is true no matter what your dx is.

I certainly don't want to have orxaccept that I have DID, I would love to just agree yhat I have major depressive disorder and PTSD but just working on those 2 dx would not totally help me. DID causes a lot if my symptoms and makes my depression worse. The trauma that caused my PTSD also caused my DID. They are all related but they do have some different treatments.

I was diagnosed with DID over 2 years ago now and I still struggle with accepting it but I continue with the treatment because I want to get better regardless of the dx. Sitting on my hands and arguingcwith T about the dx is not going to help me.

BTW I actually have CPTSD but my official dx is PTSD because CPTSD is not in the DSM. I doubt your pdoc will dx CPTSD since it is not an official DSM dx.

Try to get past the label Hope. Just start working on treatment. The sooner you do the sooner you will start to heal the pain you are always talking about. It is in your hands; your decision.

What does it even matter? Its like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Like divine said, unless you use the diagnosis to get on disability, its not really used for anything.

There are books around on how to build a life after depression. Maybe something like that would be helpful. But they usually involve regular habits and discipline and that no longer appeals to me. I feel like i had it forced on me for too long. Its hard for me to even find anything i like. Maybe you can start with something you like to do. When you get bored, try something else.

I hate having poor eyesight since birth. Should I refuse to wear glasses?
I hate being overweight my whole life. Denying the fact I need to stop eating pasta and bread and I need to exercise won't help me.
My mum has had leukemia since 2012. I hate that diagnosis. Do I now sue her doctor for choosing an evil diagnosis for her?

Hope, it's completely up to you. Will you choose to accept professional help to help you with your symptoms? Or will you choose to refuse it and repeat the same BPD pattern over and over?

I'm sorry for sounding harsh but I only want you to get better and improve your life. Believe me, I know what it means to struggle with a diagnosis I hate. I'd love to have better eyesight and be able to drive a car. But I'm not so irresponsible to to sit in a car and kill someone in an accident. We can't just refuse diagnosis like you refuse a meal you dislike. We can only work on healing.

You denying BPD won't help you more than me denying I need glasses.

I also have chronic pain in which I was told there was nothing that they can do except manage the pain for the rest of my life.

And I had cancer in my 20s.

The difference now and when I was in my 20s is that now I really don’t even feel like being alive anymore.

Almost my whole family is dead and I miss them and I’m tired of life.

You could just focus on letting him help you treat the symptoms. Let him know everything that you feel that he needs to know that you haven't told him. Just remember that this doesn't have to be a lifelong condition.

I'm very sorry to hear that, Hope. I hear you. I truly do. That's why I'm glad you have a good therapist this time. He will help you if you allow him to. Just tell him everything and accept his help. You deserve it.

Hang in there. You do have a brother and a sister and that’s something. Life can be tiring and overwhelming. But lots of good things could happen.

Thanks for the kind words.

I do have an excellent therapist this time.

So if I work hard on the symptoms that cause the problems, I have a chance of overcoming this disorder?

My biggest problem is that everytime I try to embrace the BPD, I begin to feel like I’d rather be dead than have to deal with this disorder.

It's easy to get hung up on the label, but if you get stuck there, you don't move forward.

Look at the behaviors/symptoms you display (you don't even have to look at the list; you know what they are) that cause you the biggest issues, the most repeated issues, in your life. Work on discovering effective approaches for countering those issues. What do you need to understand, what do you need to do differently, so that those behaviors/symptoms start decreasing? What are the positive opposites of those behaviors that you'd like to see in yourself? What can you take control of so that you start increasing those positive qualities in your life?

It won't happen quickly. It won't be easy. I won't happen in a straight line. It will be more like three steps forward, two steps back. But change can happen. No one can do it for you though. It's work.

Is your therapist (who I understand to be a psychiatrist - not sure) really good at working in therapy mode? Does he have specific training to work with bpd? It might mean you need to find a different therapist (and still keep your doctor for meds if needed) who specializes in these kinds of issues. You might need to look into a good DBT program perhaps has a supplement to your work with your doctor. I don't know. These are the discussions you need to have with him. He'll be able to point you in the right direction.

My T is extremely experienced in treating personality disorders.

I understand the extremes of psychic pain, and my heart goes out to you, Hope. Sometimes the pain is too enormous for a narrative that explains or alleviates it, and that is a scary place be, a place from where it is easy to lash out at the office staff or the doctor . Physical pain is almost easier. I broke my back and leg once. Everyone cared, everyone treated it as a massive emergency, and everyone worried about pain. And yet, emotional pain from childhood is so much worse, but it isnt visible and doesn't elict care the way obvious injuries do. I dont have BPD, but I do struggle with emotional pain that has no easy answer from csa, and that makes me feel a bond with your pain. I hope your PDOC and others who treat you also have a deep awareness of how much suffering you do- who cares what they name it. To me, BPD is a constellation of responses to pain that make it worse by making it harder for others to care and keep caring. You can learn new behaviors so people can keep you better company with your pain.

Hope, there's a guy you can find on YouTube that you might like (or might not!) named Dr. Colin Ross, who runs some inpatient programs for people who've suffered severe trauma. What he has found is that no matter what diagnosis a person is given, if you help them address and work through trauma, their symptoms will improve. It doesn't matter if it's DID, psychosis, schizophrenia (which often has links to childhood trauma as well as to biology), BPD, or anything else -- if you treat the trauma, the person's life improves. I think this is a good way to look at things. T's can put whatever labels they want on things as long as they are willing to work on trauma with you, because that will help.

I also wanted to say that in some ways BPD looks to me (as a complete layperson -- my opinion is what you paid for it) like an attachment disorder, and it reminds me of things I've read about disorganized attachment. A person with disorganized attachment basically doesn't know how to insure an attachment with another person because when they were a little kid, they tried everything and nothing worked. So sometimes maybe they faun over / idolize someone, sometimes they flee them, sometimes they fight with them, sometimes they freeze (shut down) -- but those are actually trauma reactions and none of them really work for attachment, but that is not the person's fault. If they had been allowed secure attachment as a child then they would know how to do that, but they weren't. Lack of attachment as a young child is a kind of trauma and it makes sense to still be having trauma sorts of reactions when attachment is threatened. I think there are many ways to look at these things and we should try not to get locked into any one label or model for things.

You are a person with your own unique history Hope, and your T can't define your story just by putting some label on a few selected traits. The label may be useful to him in doing his professional work (like writing prescriptions) but it might be irrelevant to you. Figuring out what you do want to work on, like some of those borderline traits you do see, or attachment issues, or trauma -- that is what you get to define. Stick with him a little while longer and find out if he'll do this with you -- if he will come on your path with you.

Right now I want to quit my T because of the phone call we just had.

And now I can’t remember any of the reasons that I like him.

What went wrong in the phone call, Hope?

It sounds like you are having too much outside contact with him. I think he should be encouraging you to come in and talk to him. Therapy should be done in his office not on the phone.