bpd and multiple identities, and solving this?

Ennayr,

It is good that you are becoming aware of problems while very young. You have a lot of time to make significant changes and decide what directions you want to go in, in different areas of your life. Hopefully you will be able to make things work out with your significant other, but even if you do not work it out with this one, it can get better as you date different people over time. The most important thing obviously is you and developing your own self-esteem and sense of identity.

LostNVegas,
That must be very difficult having your sister with scizophrenia at home. My father was borderline psychotic (and physically abusive to me), and as long as he was around it was a horrible atmosphere in the house and very difficult to make progress on anything. Maybe your sister is different, but having someone who's that ill around has to be challenging - I'm sorry to hear about that.

You might be interested to know that psychoanalytic therapists also developed therapy that fully cured schizophrenia, but it's very little known today. There is a great recent book about this, Rethinking Madness, by Paris Williams, which talks about 6 schizophrenics he worked with who fully recovered. My favorite book on schizophrenia is The Infantile Psychotic Self and Its Fates, by Vamik Volkan. Volkan treated schizophrenics in intensive treatment 3-4x per week, and (according to the outcomes of patients who he followed over many years) cured or greatly improved 90% of them. His case studies are fascinating. Weirdly enough, you can actually learn something about BPD from reading about treatment of schizophrenia.


Something I've realized since coming on these boards is how little access there is to intensive therapy. One thing that I was very lucky to have is my parents' support in going to therapy (psychodynamic) about twice a week for several years. I wish everyone could get access to that. It is possible to recover without therapy - for example, Clare, writes about how she fully recovered from BPD alone here - http://tacklingbpd.com/ - but IMO it is very helpful if you can get good therapy.

From my reading, there used to be much more access to affordable therapy - i.e. therapy that affordable insurance would pay for - in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, before my birth. However, then (in America) in the 1980s and 90s Big Pharma and managed care came to dominate the scene, and more and more mental health conditions came to be treated in short-term therapy and/or with medications. That has obviously affected how Borderline Personality Disorder is treated. It's too bad because our society would actually save money and reduce suffering if more long-term affordable therapies were offered for BPD. The short-term/medication approach is just not as good IMO.

I like to think that even if someone doesn't have a lot of money, that if they are persistent and motivated they can find a good therapist who knows how to treat BPD, who will offer lower-cost (sliding scale) therapy. It is good that there are these new DBT programs that are helping people cope and improve in managing their symptoms. I never did DBT, so really cannot speak much about it. However, I am a bit doubtful about DBT as a long-term solution, because when I compare it to my experience of doing psychodynamic therapy for BPD multiple times a week, it seems it might not be as deep or do as much to help me to understand my historical problems. But given my lack of experience with DBT, I must admit that I could be mistaken about that, and if DBT does help to people to recover, then great.

Something I want to emphasize is how much it helped me to study BPD from an object-relations standpoint - meaning understanding how neglect and abuse (a predominance of unsatisfying versus satisfying experience) leads to severe splitting, which creates the all-good and all-bad self and object groups of images, which (along with other defenses against bad feelings) cause all the 9 BPD symptoms. This process occurs almost in a mathematical way - the borderline individual is "attached" emotionally to all-bad images of themselves and others, and because of this attachment and familiarity (and the fear of loving, vulnerable relationships) they keep inevitably repeating dysfunctional patterns they learned in earlier years. The only way out is to accumulate enough positive relationships experience - meaning a strong enough internal set of good self and object images - to integrate the good and bad clusters/units and become able to tolerate ambivalence. Otherwise the good/bad units stay split and the borderline symptoms remain.

I don't know if that made any sense. But it was understanding the object relations basis of BPD that guided my behavior from my late teens. I realized that I had to form trusting, dependent, loving relationships with new people that were totally different from my abusive relationships in the past. As I did this, using my therapist, my mother, a few crucial friends, and my 12-step group, over a period of several years, I internalized enough support and love to become able to regulate my feelings, develop an identity, and to begin integrating good and bad self and object images. In the beginning, it was very difficult because I had no idea what I was missing, and all of these descriptions meant very little to me. But today IMO, the psychodynamic object-relations viewpoint on BPD is an almost-perfect model for how the disorder works underneath the confusing symptoms. It's like opening a car and looking at its engine.

I would be happy to talk with anyone more about the object-relations way of understanding the disorder. You can obviously tell that I enjoy thinking about it

LostNVegas, if you are ever looking for someone to do therapy with more intensively, you might also look at PsychologyToday.com's database of therapist. They must have some good therapists offering varying rates on treatment.

HuiYaMing wrote:I have no idea who I am or what gender I am supposed to be to be honest.

I had this same feeling when I was younger, like about 14 or 15; I felt so lost and confused as to who I was, I was even questioning if I was the correct gender, as well. It's not a good feeling, and I hope you will overcome it! I wish you the best luck~

LostNVegas wrote:ENNAYR

when you said "I'm a pessismistic person (not that I want to be)" is what made me recall when I started to realize I struggled with being happy and positive. That's what brought back all the memories of when I moved to Cali.

Again I was about your age BUT I had no clue of what caused my issues and did not find or have the resources that you currently have.

I wish you the very best on your journey to recovery and happiness in life!

It's nice being in touch and communicating and sharing with you both.

Dealing with your sister's illness must be very tough, and I'm sorry that you have to deal with that along with your BPD. Also - I know what you mean about getting easily annoyed at overly happy and optimistic people. It's just kind of depressing for me to see or be around people who are so happy all the time, because it makes me jealous that I can't be that way as well. Even though, maybe I can be, and I'm just holding myself back somehow.. I don't know, but I definitely understand that feeling!

And thank you very much! That's so nice. I wish you the very best on your journey, as well! You talk about how you started later in life- but like they say: it's never too late!

(Also-- wow! You were run over when you were two?? It's amazing that you are alive! What a miracle.)

bpdtransformation wrote:Ennayr,

It is good that you are becoming aware of problems while very young. You have a lot of time to make significant changes and decide what directions you want to go in, in different areas of your life. Hopefully you will be able to make things work out with your significant other, but even if you do not work it out with this one, it can get better as you date different people over time. The most important thing obviously is you and developing your own self-esteem and sense of identity.

Thank you! I'm hoping things will work out. And that's true. Thanks again for your input, it was very interesting; it really seems that you've done your research! As I said in the first post I'm currently studying / majoring in psychology in school now, so this has all been fascinating to read, and I'd have to agree: I think learning more about BPD would really help to overcome it. Or at least, I'm hoping that to be true!

I've been reading up on BPD since I've been diagnosed with it, with all 9 symptoms. I think it's intriguing, and the more I learn, the more I feel that I know what I need to recover; the problem is, even with knowing what I need to do (establish a solid sense of identity, reduce black-and-white thinking, etc), I struggle with knowing exactly what to DO to achieve those things, like how to go about them. You're right though, I think knowledge is the first step to recovery! Learning more about it has helped me to see what I'm doing (and when I'm doing it) that may be caused by my BPD, and understand more of why I'm doing these things. I guess the next step would be learning to recognize my actions as I'm doing them, and learning how to control them-- or recognizing when I'm thinking irrationally, and learning how to change that, as well (e.g. stop my jealous, paranoid thoughts in their tracks).

About the cost of treatment - Right now I have really great health insurance that covers just about everything, because I'm under my mom's insurance still. I'm so afraid for the day when I'm no longer covered by it! I don't know what I'll do- as it would affect my therapy (I'm going once every other week), and the costs of my medications. Yikes.

Ennayr,

That is good that you can get some treatment from your mom's insurance. Do you know if the insurance would cover you to go more often, like once or twice every week? IMO, it makes a big difference if you can go more often. Or perhaps, would one of your relative support you for a while financially to go more frequently? I know that is asking a lot and may not be realistic.

What you are doing with insurance is similar to what I did (from my dad's insurance). I used to go twice every week and get most of each session covered. I was able to keep the insurance for a long time via COBRA coverage (you would want to check into this, it extends your ability to use your mom's coverage until age 26, and it might be available through your mom's employer). It was incredibly lucky that I had that, and it is unfair that not everyone has the same kind of coverage.

When you talk about not knowing "what to do", that is something I often used to berate myself for. I would say, "If I only knew exactly what to DO to get better, I would do it!". In retrospect the #1 thing that helped, was becoming able to trust someone else, have a positive relationship with them, and feel secure in their presence. I would work on this with multiple people, but especially my therapist, mother, and my closest friend. A good supportive relationship is what every healthy child needs and what borderline people need to grow through the developmental phases that they got stuck in, somewhere in childhood.

That is also funny that you do psychology - I studied that in college also! To be honest I did not very much like my psych classes. So hopefully yours are better than mine

You're very kind and thoughtful in your responses when you post - that's a good sign and you'll find that will only help you going forward.

bpdtransformation wrote:Ennayr,

That is good that you can get some treatment from your mom's insurance. Do you know if the insurance would cover you to go more often, like once or twice every week? IMO, it makes a big difference if you can go more often. Or perhaps, would one of your relative support you for a while financially to go more frequently? I know that is asking a lot and may not be realistic.

What you are doing with insurance is similar to what I did (from my dad's insurance). I used to go twice every week and get most of each session covered. I was able to keep the insurance for a long time via COBRA coverage (you would want to check into this, it extends your ability to use your mom's coverage until age 26, and it might be available through your mom's employer). It was incredibly lucky that I had that, and it is unfair that not everyone has the same kind of coverage.

When you talk about not knowing "what to do", that is something I often used to berate myself for. I would say, "If I only knew exactly what to DO to get better, I would do it!". In retrospect the #1 thing that helped, was becoming able to trust someone else, have a positive relationship with them, and feel secure in their presence. I would work on this with multiple people, but especially my therapist, mother, and my closest friend. A good supportive relationship is what every healthy child needs and what borderline people need to grow through the developmental phases that they got stuck in, somewhere in childhood.

That is also funny that you do psychology - I studied that in college also! To be honest I did not very much like my psych classes. So hopefully yours are better than mine

You're very kind and thoughtful in your responses when you post - that's a good sign and you'll find that will only help you going forward.

Yes, being under her insurance is very very helpful! It even covered my visit to the hospital and my stay in the psych ward. When it comes to my therapist, right now I'm actually not even sure if my health insurance is paying for it, or if she's directly billing my mom (we haven't talked about payment since I stopped being able to pay the $20 every visit, so I honestly forget, haha).
My mom is really helpful with all of this, she's so supportive about my efforts to recover from this and learn to be a better, healthier person. That would be really great if I could extend it to until I'm 26, I hope that I can do that, I'll have to talk to her. Thanks for the advice!

I have a lot, a lot, a lot of trouble trusting others. So learning to trust in others is going to be extremely hard for me. I have a lot of trouble trusting my boyfriend, and he has never done anything to not be trusted - He even told me that a girl tried giving him a lapdance at a party once when he was still with his ex girlfriend, who he had been dating for four years, and he just jumped up and told her he had a girlfriend, completely rejected her! And he says he never once cheated - So I have nothing to worry about, yet I still do worry.
Here I am getting into my jealous, paranoid relationship problems again... I feel like I bring it up a lot - but that's because it's a huge part of my life right now.

But anyway, I guess that is where I could start trying to trust others, by forcing myself to trust him, and that he won't do something like that to me... and if he does, then he's not worth my time! (Easier said than done)

Oh, I so wish knowing exactly what to do was easier. It would be nice if there was like a simple checklist of things to do, and once you finish the list, you've recovered and transformed into this new, healthy, stable person.


I'm sorry your psych classes weren't that great - I've really enjoyed(/am enjoying) the three I've taken so far! The one I'm in now, adolescent psych, is especially fun because we have a case book, and we have to read a case and then write a paper analyzing the person's situation and talk about what we think is going on in their life. It's like playing psychologist, it's really a good feeling.

And thank you, you seem very kind as well! I try to put a lot of thought into every one of my posts

--
Sorry if I've kind of been rambling, I'm feeling especially talkative because I'm procrastinating on a history paper I'm writing, haha.

Ennayr,

Sorry if I'm being bossy, but you might want to find out exactly how frequent of a treatment your insurance will cover. Some employers' plans are really generous and you can really take advantage of them, whether that is right to do so or not When I found out my dad's plan would cover 80% each of two visits per week, I was like wow! and that made it a lot easier for me to keep going for a few years to intensive treatment.

Another way I funded my treatment was by giving tennis lessons. I was a very strong high school and college-level tennis player and became certified as a tennis coach. In my area you could advertise online and make $40-50 per hour giving lessons at public courts. So I used to do those lessons with kids several times a week, and a few of these lessons together could cover a therapy session. As it was, that money mostly went to boost my living expense fund and savings due to the insurance, but it could have covered therapy if it had been needed. If you have some skill like music or tutoring kids, that might be another way to cover more frequent treatment. I know that academic tutors in my area can easily make $45-60+ per hour by advertising on Craigslist and going to public libraries or people's houses to tutor kids. It is something to be cautious doing and to consider having private tutor's insurance if you do ever are interested in doing it.

That is so great that your mom supports you! Definitely value that and see if you can perhaps use your mother's help to work through problems in more depth or in ways you haven't yet considered. Many people don't have that. I was fortunate to also have a mother who did everything to help me get better. I had originally been very angry at my mom, because when I was a young child, she tried to deny my father's physical abuse of me and didn't intervene to stop it. I always held this grudge against her. But once she moved out from my father and showed some interest in my problems, things changed a lot. I was able to gradually forgive her and come to trust her enough to open up about my problems.

About the boyfriend ,when you say "If he does (let you down by being unfaithful), then he's not worth my time", IMO that is a very healthy attitude. With my old girlfriends, I didn't used to worry about that issue per, but I was constantly preoccupied with "Does she or does she not like me?" It made it very difficult to be myself with them, since I was always looking for even the slightest sign that they weren't listening to me closely, or weren't encouraging of me and so on. The problem was really mainly in me and not them... b/c of course in every relationship there are going to be some conflicts and doubts and uncertainties, but in good relationships the good aspects outweight the bad. With my last girlfriend that has mainly been the case. She is actually studying abroad right now, and I do occasionally wonder about whether she might be seeing another guy. But I doubt that she is, and even if she were, it would be a bad reflection on me, and I would have the freedom to date someone else if I chose.

I am actually procrastinating on doing my taxes right now. What a horrible task that is. But I better get to it. But good talking to you!