Tips for helping cope with HPD

Hi,

I am 99.9% sure I have HPD. I hit all the criteria and it's really the only explanation for the MANY problems I've had. It's taken me a long time to come to grips with my behavior but now that I've faced the truth, I want to learn how to control it. This week, I've consciously avoided speaking about myself, saying statements meant to elicit sympathy and/or approval, or any attention-gaining behavior. It has SUCKED. It's soooo hard. I never realized how badly HPD is ingrained in my behavior until I purposely tried to stop. I have legit anxiety when I'm biting my lip to avoid eliciting that sympathy or getting that attention. It's really and truly an uncomfortable feeling.

I'm returning to my therapist. In previous visits (I can never maintain treatment), I've only told her *part* of the truth because I wanted her to like me. Shocking, I know. I do plan to be fully honet (hopefully) because otherwise I know I will never get better.

Until I meet with her, does anyone with HPD have tips on how to deal with the anxiety I described? What (healthy) coping mechanisms do you use?

I don't have HPD (I do have some traits but these are not my dominant PD traits), but because I'm attached to someone who does I've learned a whole lot about it.

Take what I write with some caution but, as far as my thinking goes, having a straight on approach (trying to directly oppose your drives 24/7 all year long) may not be the wisest approach. I'll deeply admire any HPD who can go on like this for some time because of a higher ideal (and this ability is necessary for being able to build the most beautiful kind of relationship, committing to a single other being), but, as an overall approach to getting better, I think it's not the best way to go.

if you read Confucius, you'll learn to get where you want by construing the path of least resistance. I think for a person with HPD, this translates into building a small but extremely healthy, mature, self-aware and genuinely caring social circle around themselves, by not exposing themselves to environments that would ruin them, and having strict living rules and routines (biology). Attention is a bit like a drug, and so is anything you've learned will provide you some. The more you get of any drug, the more you are addicted. And some ways you get it are hurting you in the fashion of a vicious spiral.

I would advise that you learn about yourself and all facets of HPD as much as possible as to be able to construe the life you want without exposing your weaknesses. That you cut contact with anyone unhealthy in your life and that you be extremely selective with new people you let in. That you construe a very healthy routine including good exercise and fixed long night-time sleep. That you eat in a healthy way and expose yourself to natural daylight for long periods every day, and that you get some sun on your skin at least once a week.

If you have the occasion and an amazing person in your life who you love and who loves you back more than anything, maybe go out in nature for a month or so, or sailing on a boat, only the two of you. By getting out of society for some time, you'll see like a severance from the drug society feeds into you.

This is just the beginning. But it may be a good beginning to something very beautiful.