Full Recovery from BPD

Hello,

I'm a former borderline, now fully recovered. I'd like to share a little bit of my story here because it might encourage others that complete recovery from BPD is possible - that one doesn't have to just manage the symptoms forever.

I was diagnosed with BPD by a psychiatrist 10 years ago, at age 18. At that time, I was suffering all 9 out of the 9 DSM symptoms for BPD. The next 4-5 years were extremely difficult, with me feeling extremely depressed, anxious, often suicidal, and hopeless about the future. I wasn't able to consistently attend college or work, and I lived at home without any real friends. I was also very discouraged because I had read online in 2004 about BPD, and there were many websites that said it was lifelong and that borderlines were difficult to treat and often didn't get better, etc. etc.

However, part of me always believed I could get better. I was very lucky to have my family support me to go to psychodynamic therapy, which I went to once or twice a week for several year, with a therapist who was very good at treating BPD. This gradually changed the course of my life. My main historical problem was that my father had been severely physically abusive, often beating me, and my mother had not protected me and had been distant, leaving me on my own a lot as a child. As a result, I never learned to trust anyone, and felt very afraid of the outside world. I couldn't trust other people enough to become friends with them, and asking girls on dates was something I all but forbid myself to do.

At the same time that I started therapy, I began to read a lot about the borderline disorder, especially the authors Gerald Adler, James Masterson, and Vamik Volkan. I understand how BPD represented - from their perspective - a developmental arrest (stunted emotional development), in which the person never has a supportive, loving relationship for long enough to feel secure and learn how to manage their feelings. The various borderline defenses, like splitting, projection, projective identification, and so on, serve in various ways to keep the borderline internally attached to negative views of himself and other people, and to make the borderline reject outside people who really do want to help.

For several years I worked to open up to my therapist about my abusive history, to learn to trust someone for the first time. I gradually formed a relationship with them that was parent-child-like, where I came to feel loved and supported for the first time. Gradually, I felt safe and ok, and was able to control some of the bad behaviors I'd developed to cope with my anger and hopelessness, especially my use of drugs and overeating.

Over several years, my self-esteem improved a lot, and I started feeling good more often than bad. I took risks to go back to college and eventually apply for a job working with children based on my academic interest. I have now been doing that job full-time for several years and really enjoy it. I took risks to open up to people and make new friends, and now have several people who know my history and accept me as I am. In the last year, I've also had my first serious girlfriend, who is great!

Today, I have zero out of nine borderline symptoms, and for the last three years, I have not had any serious relapses into the horrible way I used to feel all the time when I was borderline. It is incredible to feel alive and happy a lot of the time, especially because many years ago I felt helpless and could not dream of a recovery like this.

I'm posting this because there are still websites out there saying that borderlines are hopeless, or that once a borderline, always a borderline. That is just not true and I feel compelled to speak out! With good support for long enough, anyone can recover from BPD. It is hard work and takes time but it's always possible.

I would be interested to hear if there are others on here who are far down the road to recovery, or are fully recovered former borderlines.

Also, if there is anyone who could use a supporter or non-judgmental mentor, perhaps someone just starting out on their recovery from BPD, I would be happy to listen to you and provide support.

Thank you so much for your post and for sharing your story bpdtransformation.

As someone who has been diagnosed with borderline for over a decade, and who has suffered with it from much longer than that, your story is an important beacon of shining light and hope for me, and, I am sure for many others on this board and elsewhere.

I actually have tears in my eyes as I am writing this.

Thank you again,

840

I've noticed that my dissociative avoidance of the world and of myself results in the feeling of emptiness - if there is the 'real me', I'm just too afraid to express it in any way. I'm constantly blocking myself from myself, and it is not a conscious choice. However, I've noticed there is also some unwillingness on my part to break out of this 'shell', to surrender to the 'goodness' of people as real as thet goodness might be. In a way it has something to do with some basic resentment towards the 'world' - the positive sides of people in a way 'disgust' me when I've experienced too much of the negative sides. I always sense something 'hypocritical' in the positive sides of people, and positive engagement in human community feels like I'm being robbed of myself - the basic feeling of inferiority makes me feel like a slave even though the present situation didn't imply that sort of thing. But anyway; I feel like I need some sort of 'catharsis' for my hate to get 'even' with the world. The problem is: there is no clear 'target' which would really 'deserve' the discharge of my resentful anger so I can't 'take a stand' because that stand concerns the vague notion of my 'history', the whole of my life, and the mixture of all different dysfunctional components of my development. So there is hate that I feel I should be able to express 'rightfully' but there isn't any 'rightful' target (at least anymore) I think that is one of the basic problems. That's why there is always some sort of avoidance or antagonism between me and the 'world' in my experience - because there is this unresolved sense of 'being uneven'...

Amazing post, wonderful story, and great encouragement. I know I am heading the same way. At 18 I would have met all 9 too. I had a hellish few years. Gradually, my number has decreased. I'm down to 6, and it is very much confined to one specific trigger situation involving abandonment fear.

I find it very interesting the way you described opening up to a therapist as part of your healing, developing a relationship you never had with your parents. It's given me plenty to think about. I'll check out those authors, too.

Well done for your amazing achievements, and thank you for thinking of us still travelling the same path

Oh, and have you thought about writing a book about it?

Thank you 840 and good luck to you! I hope you are getting whatever help you need and moving forward toward getting better.

Lemrty, I used to feel angry like this and project that anger onto other people all the time. Even the smallest things that people do, like not holding a door for me or not looking at me while talking to me, would annoy me and make me enraged. That came from my father who was physically abusive and disrespectful and caused me to be very angry at the world. I needed to feel loved and cared about before I could let go my anger. Because as long as you feel stifled and thwarted in life - that you are not really alive and that the chance to be real and have good relationships is being stolen from you - the rage will continue to simmer underneath. I hope you are able to get some therapy or support from friends and family to help you. Taking the risk of opening up to some new friends and telling them about my abuse was really helpful. If you can afford psychodynamic or DBT therapy, that is also very helpful; but it's also available in many major cities at low cost or even for free in some countries. So don't give up!

Iloveandhatebrains,
Well done, only 2 more symptoms to go and then you will (hopefully) never be borderline again!
It sounds like you have already made very good progress, and that outside of the times when there is the abandonment fear, there is probably a good amount of time when you are not fully borderline anymore.

About the authors, Gerald Adler (Borderline Psychopathology and Its Treatment) is by far my favorite author from that group. Volkan is very technical, and Masterson's writing is kind of outdated. So try Adler is you want a psychodynamic book on BPD.

The best book in my opinion though, above all of these, for understanding BPD is Jeffrey Seinfeld's book, The Bad Object. It's a weird title, but conceptually brilliant. He describes the object-relations basis of the disorder (how the borderline's attachment to past and present bad objects constantly operate, preventing attachments to good objects ("objects" mean other people), and how this bad object relationships create the negative emotions that drive all the DSM symptoms, including fear of abandonment. He also describes four phases of psychotherapy of BPD, two of which are "borderline" (out of contact and ambivalent symbiosis) and two of which are narcissistic and neurotic/healthy (therapeutic symbiosis and resolution of symbiosis). I was greatly helped by applying his writing it to myself. It showed me where I was, how my defenses worked, and allowed me to concentrate on forming "good object" relationships with my therapist and with a few trusted friends that helped me to recover. I could track my progress through the four phases; I am still not 100% better, but I am not borderline anymore. Right now I am somewhere in a neurotic spectrum, which means mostly better but with a few occasional conflicts. However.... it should be noted that reading books is of course not a substitute for real people. Much more important than the books was my therapist and friends.

About the abandonment fear you mention, I used to have that much more. Once I became much more independent - working full time, making some good new friends, and getting my own house - that fear diminished because I wasn't so worried about depending on any one person. If you are in your 20s, you will hopefully be moving in that direction too.

This must sound pretty academic! As you can tell I'm kind of obsessive about understanding BPD and how to recover from it! Hopefully it makes some sense.

Thanks for sharing this. With me, I had trouble 'not splitting myself.' I couldn't think that I could do any mistake(all good) and then there was immense guilt(all bad).

Those shifting perceptions(within hours) were scary.

Wow thank you for the post

I really want to heal the BPD

I have made a lot of progress but I
have a long way to go.

I believe part of it is my therapist is
good bit not the most effective in
treating BPD. She is CBT with knowledge
of DBT. I took DBT for a few months as a 3
day per week group intensive but it was in
the middle of a marriage crisis and I could
use another round but don't have the time
right now.

I am wondering how I can find a Psychodynamic
therapist? Is there a Website with a national
Therapist list? Is it a popular method? I'll check
around in my city. I really want to get better .

You give me hope. Thank you

This was very enlightening to read. I felt i must accept i would always be bpd(not diagnosed as of yet but i register 90 percent bpd on a online test and i resoundingly accept that this is what i am.

Anyway it is good to see you can recover if you do the work. I already am doing so much better, i am working it and many aspects of myself, tsthe more i understand, tsi unlock a locked door in my brain. tsStill i have some reactivity, tsand trigger moments but i can control more what i say do and durations and frequencies. tsThat is like so much improved.

Im so glad u oosted here and new books for me to read.

Now us psychodynamics same as dbt?ts

-- Wed Feb 05, 2014 5:21 pm --

What do u think about odd? Is it possible to become bpd? She i truly think is bpd but still a bit young , however it is a concern of her therapist. Could i teach her dbt techniques and other stuff that may prevent full blown bpd? What do you think? We are seeing pretty serious mental illness with her and she is only 11.

Monkey66,

Thank you for your thoughts. Regarding finding that type of therapist, I wrote an article a while ago with some advice about that; here is the relevant section -

-------------------

My favorite source for finding therapists is the Psychology Today’s Therapist Finder. It can be accessed at: http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/

This site has the largest and most up-to-date listing of therapists currently available in the United States and Canada. Once you click on a region, you can search for therapist by orientation (psychodynamic, dialectical, etc.), by specialty (borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, anxiety, etc.), and so on. For example, I just searched in the large American city nearest me, and found over 70 therapists who specialize in treating Borderline Personality Disorder. You can also find therapists that are covered by different insurance providers, which is important because insurance can often cover a significant part of the cost of therapy. And you can directly email or call the therapists directly from the site.

-----------------------------------

What I recommend is to call therapists directly, and ask them the following questions -
- Do you have a lot of experience treating personality disorders, in particular Borderline Personality Disorder?
- Do you believe that individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder can be successfully treated? In particular, do you believe that a sufferer of BPD can become free of the disorder over the long term, i.e. come to live a healthy life free largely free of borderline symptoms?
- Are you willing to meet with me for a 15 minute free in-person consultation to see if we might be a good fit?

If they answer yes to these, and if you can then meet with them in person and you get a good feel for them as a person, that they warm, understanding, supportive, etc, then that might be someone to consider working with.

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Jumpingjellybean,
Obviously I cannot diagnose your child. However, I do not actually believe that ODD or BPD are medically valid disorders. I think of them more as spectrum conditions that do not exist in the real world but rather are fabrications created by psychiatrists. I don't mean that pejoratively. I believe all the symptoms of BPD are real, challenging, and very painful, and I don't mean to minimize anyone's suffering. But, I don't agree that most of the disorders in the DSM are valid disorders. Having said that, if your child is exhibiting oppositional tendencies as a young age, it's always easier to intervene and help them when they are young, and without intervention it may (or may not) be the case that things will continue or get worse as they are older.