I live in a seaside town, not far from a big city. Like all the big cities in the UK, my city has become really vibrant. Huge glass tower buildings seem to have sprung up from nowhere, and it's hard to remember what was there before they were built. It's as if they've always been there. At Christmas time, the streets are full of continental type markets, and there are a couple of really cool Morrocan stalls there, full of exotic ornaments, ornate mirrors, and wall rugs. It's like a hippy's paradise. There's also a funfair, with a helter skelter, and a permanent Big Wheel. All of the other UK big cities seem to have a similar theme, and have changed drastically in the last five years or so. It's as if the UK has suddenly evolved and caught up with the rest of the western world. I like change. I thrive on change. I like to reinvent myself every five years or so.

I think every city in the UK has its own distinct personality, that permeates into all the people who live there. Each city has its own distinct accent or dialect, and the UK is unique in having so many different accents, especially considering it's a really small country. In the UK, people become defined by the city they live in, and adapt to the ways of the local people. Maybe by doing so, they lose some of their individuality, but if we are to take Jung's concepts seriously, maybe they're establishing and claiming their own unique part of a Collective Consciousness.

I started a thread in HPD today about archetypes, and the defined roles that people play. I could recognise myself in the archetypes I talked about in my thread, and I began to wonder how much of an individual I really am. It seems that we all adapt to and adopt defined roles in life, and we all live by labels. I've come to define myself by various labels. I'm not defined by my nearest city. The natives of that city all seem to have distinct mannerisms, attitudes, and outlooks. I've always been different, more artistic and Bohemian in outlook, but that in itself is a definition and a label. I'm also typical of my disorder - not in a bimbo Barbie Doll sort of way, but in a flamboyant, colourful, arty way. Sometimes I wonder where I begin and my HPD and cyclothmia ends. Since I've grown in awareness about the disorder, I've been more aware of how I could let it define me.

As I walked around my city recently, I found myself looking at all the people, each of them different, and each of them wearing their own labels - mother, brother, boyfriend, wife, daughter, office worker, road sweeper, bank clerk, solicitor. They each seemed to be behaving according to the labels they and society had attached. Their faces seemed to have their characters etched onto them. I could see this in their lines, their smiles, their frowns, their expressions. I wondered who these people would be if they took off all of their labels one by one. Who would I be, without all my labels? I have many labels - mother, aunt, partner, female, HPD, moderator. These are just a few of them. I have so many more. Even my name is a label that I was given at birth. In the past year or so, I've begun to call myself by my middle name, or a hyphen of my first name and my middle name. Maybe it's my way of establishing my own identity? My user name on here is interesting. It just about describes HPD in a nutshell.

When we all take away all of our labels, one by one, we're left with our own uniqueness, and a spark of humanity that could be described as a soul if you're at all spiritual. I believe it's that part of ourselves that we recognise in others, when we reach out to them and it's that part of ourselves that we begin to access through therapy and self awareness. When someone takes the trouble to reach that part of ourselves, we're truly privileged and moved in profoundly deep ways, but when we reach it ourselves, it's almost a mystical and spiritual experience. When we detach ourselves from that part, we...

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I've been thinking a lot about my childhood today. Maybe it's the build up to Christmas. The shops are full of bright and shiny things, corny old songs are playing in all the supermarkets. The shoppers are weighed down with bags and wrapping paper. It's getting colder outside. It feels like the usual run in to Christmas, and I can't get excited, or motivated to do anything about the festivities yet. I'm in a kind of denial, if I don't think about it, it might all go away.

Lots of memories seemed to hit me today. Memories of childhood paper chains with the sticky glue on the side, coloured and gold stars, chocolate coins, and the smell of mince pies cooking. A lot of my childhood was actually quite happy. Christmases always were. They all seem to blend together, and I can't remember a single bad Christmas from my childhood. I can remember as many happy times from my childhood, as I can unhappy times.

During my therapy, I used to wonder why my therapist seemed to focus only on the bad things, the times when my father was abusive, the times when my mother had hysterical fits in front of all the neighbours, the times when my parents rowed in front of me, the times when I was the family scapegoat, the times when I would sob loudly on my bed, desperate for someone to come in and hug me, and make it all alright, but they never did, the times when I would stand alone in the playground, feeling very different from the other kids, but never crying or letting anyone see I was hurting. My therapist focused on all of these things. I wanted to scream to my therapist that it wasn't always like that. I can remember happy holidays when the sun always seemed to shine. I can remember the family sitting around the fire, talking about memories and laughing. I can remember the affectionate teasing I used to get for being dipsy and scatty. I can remember my cute little dog who came to live with us when I was ten, and then died when I was twenty. I had him for all my teenage years. He understood everything I said to him. I can remember the sense of excitement and anticipation as a teenager as I got dressed to meet my friends. I can remember the music, the smells, the feeling that the world was new, that I had a million tomorrows to look forward to. I can remember my first job, my sense of achievement as I got my first wages. I can remember my first holiday without my family, the flight to Spain, the sunshine, the noise of the crickets at dusk, and the narrow streets with pretty little white washed buildings. I can remember parties that died finally late into the night, with people sleeping and a lone guitarist sitting in the corner. I can remember festivals and camps, and the long conversations with interesting strangers. I can remember the births of my kids, and their sweet baby smell, and the feeling that I wanted to hold and protect these tiny perfect human beings for ever. I can remember watching my son when he was three, sitting on a swing, and singing to the butterfly that fluttered around him. I can remember friends from the past who spoke words of wisdom. I can remember the excitement of moving house, unpacking, and creating beautiful surroundings from chaos on a meagre budget. I can remember the work that went into all of my paintings, and the pride I felt when they were finished. I can remember getting the all clear from a health scare, and really noticing the beauty of this planet, thinking what a privilege it is to be alive. I can remember all the beauty.

The lead up to Christmas this year has left me feeling numb. Perhaps it's because I know that Christmas for a lot of people will be triggering, that it won't be much fun, that they'll be lonely. I want to do something constructive this year, and have a low profile Christmas, and maybe get out and do some voluntary work. I want to help people see that they can find something positive, even in the most negative of circumstances. I want to help people to look...

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I've been thinking about the way I've changed since therapy, and I can only liken it to wearing a new coat that doesn't quite fit. Well, it fits, but it feels strange. It doesn't fasten like my old coat. It doesn't "sit" like my old coat. It doesn't feel familiar. It's all new and unblemished. I've changed in so many ways, into the person I should have been, would have been, if my abuse hadn't happened, and I'm still changing.

I don't acknowledge the abuse to my family members who are still alive. We all pretend that our family is functional, happy and normal. We don't do hugs much, even in greeting. We talk about pleasantries, make jokes and it's all very ...........polite, and it reminds me of how I learnt to use politeness as a mask to hide behind all of my life. To be polite is not to say how I really feel. To be polite is to allow others to impose themselves upon me. To be polite is to pretend that there is no unpleasantness or resentment or anger. To be polite is to not communicate. Hardly surprising I developed the appeasing type of HPD. I developed a persona who was funny, charming, friendly, sociable, always saying the right things, always being pleasing, always being pleasing to the eye, always concentrating on what was on the surface, and not which lay below. For someone who was so "nice", I hid inner resentments, insecurities, unhappiness and uncertainty. There was so much I wasn't allowed to express, and it all became suppressed, erupting sometimes in short bursts of intense emotion. Because my emotions were never validated as a child, or acknowledged, I felt that I didn't have a right to have them or to own them, and so when they erupted they would disappear as soon as they came, which made them look fake. I suppose that is what is meant by rapidly shifting shallow emotions. But they're not shallow at all. They run deep, very deep, but they're not allowed expression. I've just noticed that I'm now writing this in the present tense, and maybe this is because they're still an issue for me, as I still find it difficult to express them to people. I have cyclothmia as well as HPD and when I go into a depression, usually in the winter, I don't tell anyone. I simply hide away. My friends, who only see the happy me, don't question it. They simply assume that I'm occupied with something. It's a lonely place to be, but I find it hard to even acknowledge the loneliness, and I brush the emotion away.

Yes, I've come a long way in therapy. I have a deep self awareness, I care about people and have something of an over active conscience. I've become more empathic and discerning about friendships and relationships. I've become much more focused and mature as a person and scored normal on a personality disorder inventory. That's not to say I'm cured. I did the inventory on a good day. On a bad day the old feelings and attitudes will resurface, but I've learnt to become aware of them through CBT and to challenge them when they arise. Stress or illnesses can become major triggers.

I have issues about being ignored. If a friend forgets to call or if I feel excluded in a conversation, I will really take it to heart, and feel rejected, abandoned, unworthy, unwanted and unhappy. I will try to compensate by pushing my way into the conversation, almost competing for attention, and have to stop, tell myself to be rational and not take it to heart so much. It's improved a great deal since I've been working on my self esteem, and looking inside for validation and not from outside. I know exactly when these feelings began. They came from childhood, when I was ignored, passed by, invalidated, not taken seriously. I got attention if I made people laugh, and so I became a comedian, always joking or doing silly things and I still do this today. It's almost a subconscious mechanism, and I don't really know any other way to be. I can also be serious, though, thanks to therapy, and now...

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Histrionic Personality Disorder. Histrionic Personality Disorder. Histrionic Personality Disorder. It has a Name. The person I grew into and spent a lifetime trying to understand, is not the only one. There are other people like me, and there are reasons why I developed as I did. This is a comfort, and in a strange way assures me that I am not bad or mad, or even as different as I feared myself to be.

A year or so of therapy has helped me to gain awareness of myself, the things that trigger my disordered thinking, the ways I can improve myself and strive to be a better person. I spent some time in denial of my disorder, thinking that this couldn't be me, that there had to be some sort of diagnostic mistake, but finally admitting to myself that I fit into every symptom has empowered me to seek changes.

I will never be cured of this disorder, but I can learn to control the illness and manage it, just as I would if I had diabetes or asthma. The tools I use that I learned from CBT techniques are my medicine. If I forget to take my medicine, I will have a bad day, but it is not the end of the world, for tomorrow will be fresh and new, and I can choose to be healthy.