No longer Borderline; I am now Bipolar II.

My diagnosis has been changed yet again!

I no longer have Borderline Personality Disorder, according to my psychiatrist. She is now "quite confident that what we are seeing here is Bipolar II".

I agree on some points:

- I have experienced hypomania for days at a time
- I am in chronic, debilitating depression when I am not in hypomania (previously diagnosed as MDD)
- SSRIs have induced full mania and psychosis

I disagree on others:

- I self-mutilate
- I avoid others to the point of previously being diagnosed with AvPD
- I have no sense of grandiosity or narcissism whilst hypomanic or whilst in SSRI induced mania
- I apparently have classic BPD black and white thinking, pointed out by several members on this forum
- I deeply fear being abandoned
- I have had extensive psychosis

The ambiguity of all of this is beginning to lose its fascination for me. I wanted to pursue a Masters degree in the social construction of mental illness and health, but I don't think I want to know how far this ambiguity really goes.

I think I could write an utterly humourless book about the ridiculous 'science' of psychiatry.

Timeline of my psychiatric diagnoses changes:

AvPD + Social Anxiety --> Borderline Personality Disorder + Social Anxiety + MDD --> Bipolar II + Social Anxiety disorder.

I feel so lost, empty, identity-less. Bipolar II? BPD? AvPD? I have all of them! Or none of them!

All I know is that none of them really fit. None of them.

I f*cking hate this, I'm tired, I want to give up. I don't want the labels and disorders anymore. I just want to be alright with myself. But I can't seem to do this. I keep ending up in hospitals.

I'm sorry you are feeling so despondent and have been so jerked around by your diagnoses. BPD and BPII aren't mutually exclusive. You could have both like me. Welcome to the club

Wow, Biitchelectric - I saw your post to my thread & decided to visit yours. Looks like we both were just switched to Bipolar II. I'm sorry that you've been flipped around in the diagnosis department. It's frustrating figuring out whats wrong. Most of my simpler diagnoses have stayed the same, such as Depersonalization Disorder & Social Anxiety Disorder. The ones that keep changing are the mood disorders. Borderline PD, Major Depression, Depressive NOS, Bipolar II. Just keeps changing around. Unlike you, however, I believe that Bipolar kinda makes a lot of sense, even though I'm still researching it.

I don't have much to say other than I'm here if you want to chat about this stuff.

biitchelectric wrote:My diagnosis has been changed yet again!

I no longer have Borderline Personality Disorder, according to my psychiatrist. She is now "quite confident that what we are seeing here is Bipolar II".

I agree on some points:

- I have experienced hypomania for days at a time
- I am in chronic, debilitating depression when I am not in hypomania (previously diagnosed as MDD)
- SSRIs have induced full mania and psychosis

I dont know much about the SSRI thing, only that I don't get on with them too well either but for different reasons.

depression can have all sorts of causes. there used to be a distinction between endogenous and exogenous depression (inside causes/outside causes), in reality some depression can have physical causes, some can have psychological causes from inside (deep rooted inside psychological causes - problem i had,) some is a direct response to life events (psychological/circumstantial outside causes.) it only makes sense to say the same about mania. I used to send myself "high" through psychological stuff, so i guess for each person its about trying to pin causes down.

I also used to have hypomania lasting for longer periods. at the moment i seem a bit chirpy but am mostly anxiou and confused and trying to be cheerful about it, lol

biitchelectric wrote:I disagree on others:

- I self-mutilate
- I avoid others to the point of previously being diagnosed with AvPD
- I have no sense of grandiosity or narcissism whilst hypomanic or whilst in SSRI induced mania
- I apparently have classic BPD black and white thinking, pointed out by several members on this forum
- I deeply fear being abandoned
- I have had extensive psychosis

The ambiguity of all of this is beginning to lose its fascination for me. I wanted to pursue a Masters degree in the social construction of mental illness and health, but I don't think I want to know how far this ambiguity really goes.

A long way.

I'm no doctor. Just as someone hwo y is familiar with what BPD looks like from a personal perspective, from that description you seem to have a lot of very obvious BPD traits to me. I'm not sure about psychosis, depends what you mean. "transient stress-related" particularly delusions based around believing your loved ones are leaving you/are mad at you/hate you etc, very BPD "psychosis". i haven't thought of that as psychosis exactly when ive felt like that myself, but it sure as hell looks "psychotic" from the outside, when you are the other person going, huh? I only wanted to give them a big hug and they think I want to leave them?! Hallucinations for example i'm not sure about, i know a friend of mine (who had a serious self harm problem and kicked holes in all her parents' doors !) had both auditory and visual hallucinations in her teens, and didn't go on to develop a psychotic disorder, she recovered with a few years in therapy & antidepressants and lives a normal life now, so i think psychosis CAN be psychological in origin. i.e linked to stress from BPD. its a tricky one.

biitchelectric wrote:I think I could write an utterly humourless book about the ridiculous 'science' of psychiatry.

Timeline of my psychiatric diagnoses changes:

AvPD + Social Anxiety --> Borderline Personality Disorder + Social Anxiety + MDD --> Bipolar II + Social Anxiety disorder.

I feel so lost, empty, identity-less. Bipolar II? BPD? AvPD? I have all of them! Or none of them!

All I know is that none of them really fit. None of them.

I f*cking hate this, I'm tired, I want to give up. I don't want the labels and disorders anymore. I just want to be alright with myself. But I can't seem to do this. I keep ending up in hospitals.

Don't give up. But if you are sick of all the labels & disorders, be sick of them. they might tell you something, they might not, the DSM changes them in every revision - which means they are as unsure as you and your doctors are.
Just be aware your problem doesn't have to have a name to be real. People used to think cholera was spread through bad smells. that didn't mean no one was sick, it just meant no one knew what they were doing.

You don't need to know what you have to recover. Most of my recovery so far has been from the perspective of being entirely clueless/confused about "what I have".

What you need to know is what you feel, what you experience, how you act.

If you know you have BPD traits, AvPD traits, Social Anxiety and Mood Swings, make a list of those problems. - Symptoms themselves, instead of trying to fit them into disorders, work on what you know you have. Disorders are just groups of symptoms, with mental health, looking for a dx or needing one is often like trying to apply shorthand to your disorder/illness. Take it back to the long version, write down everything you have, like "Black & White thinking" and "Mood swings" "Delusions" (describe what they are, how it feels, etc as best you can.)

biitchelectric wrote:I think I could write an utterly humourless book about the ridiculous 'science' of psychiatry.

Absolutely!
Hope you are well.

Key thing to remember is that no matter your diagnosis, main thing is to focus on taking care of yourself and feeling better. Don't know that we always need labels to do that.

I, too, have been diagnosed Bipolar II by my psychiatrist, and I also feel like I disagree more than I agree about the diagnosis. Same as you, I feel like I have much more BPD traits.

I don't really have more to contribute, but I wish you luck in receiving a diagnosis you think is accurate. Maybe it's just me, but having an officially accurate name for what is going on with me is important to me. I still haven't found an acceptable diagnosis that I agree with, but maybe the psychiatrist knows better than I do...

There was a really good article in the NY Review of Books about the recent history of psychiatry, and specifically the DSM, and how f*cked up it is:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... sychiatry/

The author also talks about how bipolar disorder has been overdiagnosed.

Sounds like a promotion. Take it!