Who actually has HPD? (janey, scarlett1939, miss meow? …)

I will take my anti depressants and other meds and let them kick in. When l feel better l am due to see a psycho dynamic therapist whatever that means. I am also going to carry on posting here. Thanks for listening sorry l don't have more to say today but feeling pretty poorly just now

Wow...sounds like you are getting lots of support. You have a great ex and wonderful sister. I guess we all hit lows in our lives to teach us to become better people. Guess what! All this pain you are in now, will be the worst. You can only move up from here. It will take time, but very worth it in the end. You will have a much better and fullfilling life in the end. A great goal to strive for.

Have faith in that. There are alot of people that love you. You are never alone. You are truly very lucky.

OK!

Masquerade,

It's good to hear you took charge of your life and got some help. Sounds like you are well on your way to really getting after this.

Here are some reflections on your post.

Masquerade wrote:I ...keep crying. I went to peaces completely

Sorry to hear about the troubles this has caused you. Want to fully encourage you to "go with the feelings" however, and by all means look inside. Don't just suffer for no reason - explore! What is in there?

Masquerade wrote:my personality type makes me more vulnerable to certain reactions and symptoms
It seems as if I have a "cluster B personality type"
to use their words "PREDISPOSES ME TO BI-POLAR TYPE REACTIONS AND SYMPTOMS".
I haven't actually been diagnosed with anything

Just an observation - you seem to dread being "diagnosed". Bottom line is you feel bad and want to get on with feeling much better. That will require change. You recognized that you want to change (very good,) but then you sometimes dread being diagnosed or labeled with something bad. Frankly, who cares what the diagnosis is beyond helping you get on a path that will lead you to feeling better! Working on your personality to have a better life is a very good thing.

Beware of terms thrown around in a psych ER. For example bi-polar type reactions strike me as very similar to idolizing /demonizing - in NPD. But bi-polar is a radically different disorder. A psych ER might treat for bi-polar (generally lithium and perhaps anti depressants) just to get through that day because that's the closest thing they saw, and have great drugs right down the hall in the medicine cabinet to treat that. Like a medical ER - they tape you up and get you stable (overnight or over the weekend) so you can see the really good specialists during their normal office hours - M-F (except for golf day and vacations). The psych ER is expert at "stabilization." They do not actually treat personality disorders. That takes regular, consistent therapy, virtually all done on an outpatient basis (either individual or group sessions.)

[Angel!] "Sister" -- thanks for providing such great support for Masquerade. I'm sure this is tough seeing your sister fight with this disorder, but it must be great relief to know she is clearly up for the task, has real experts moving in on it, and has lots of support at home too.

It sounds like home life was ideal in some ways, but had many flaws in others. What's really great is your clear memories and prospective of what home life was like - these will be very helpful in reflecting and then "triangulating" on what may have caused some of the difficulties. By all means feel free to get your own anonymous identity on this bbs and encourage the "BlueEyedSister" to do the same. Sometimes all three looking at home life can pinpoint things that might have been going on, to everyone's benefit.

AngelSister wrote:KNEW IT WAS A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE EVERYTHING CAME TO A HEAD AND SHE WOULD BE FORCED TO CONFRONT THE ISSUES OF HER PAST.

Well, it looks like now is the perfect time to confront those past issues! And it is happening! Remember too, Masquerade will need lots of encouragement and positivity. Family members know each others vulnerabilities, and its way too easy to get under each others skin. You are her bridge to both the past (bad family environment at times) and a bright (more loving and much more well adjusted) future. You know your sister better than any therapist, so be sure to be a great guiding light. Also, you might find an opportunity to drop off some old family baggage too. What the hell, who needs to carry too much of that stuff forward, especially when there is so much great life out there to live! Sometimes just talking through the family dysfunctions can help excise the ghosts. Lets face it, everyone has at least some family issues.

AngelSister wrote:SHE HAS NEVER BEEN TAKEN SERIOUSLY BY OUR PARENTS WHO WERE QUITE PATRONIZING TOWARDS HER. SHE WAS NEVER ENCOURAGED TO VOICE OPINIONS OR EVEN LISTENED TO

One thing great about good therapists is they are the very best, highly attentive listeners. So, if there are things to say, by all means, have Masquerade just open up an say them. She will finally feel she is being heard. This alone can be very liberating. You may see a whole new "sister" underneath the "mask". Wow, that could be really fun to discover with her!

AngelSister wrote:AND IS UNSURPRISINGLY CARRYING ON THE PATTERN WITH HER OWN 2 KIDS.

If there wasn't enough reason to get after disorders just for oneself, this is it! Yes, kids will very much benefit from the "termination" of bad family habits. And yes, unchecked they are passed down. This is a wonderful opportunity to prune this stuff right out of the family tree. Best of all, much better ways of dealing with things can be learned, taught and indeed passed down for all future generations. So, the benefits from all the efforts here are indeed large!

AngelSister wrote:LET HER TRUE SELF SHINE OUT, WITH OUR SUPPORT. "

Could not agree more "let her true self shine out" that is exactly the aim of all the effort here.

Couple of notes. Analytic Psychotherapists are pricey and busy so always do lots of your own homework. One area to think about is really great, well written input, including the full, unexpurgated family history. Here is an outstanding input questionnaire (see interview). Could give it to Sis and journal up her results? Might use this as one input to your meeting with the therapist? It would help them get things moving quickly...

http://www.borderlinedisorders.com/ment ... .php#stipo

Second, and this isn't for the faint of heart, below are the specific readings on HPD from the psycho-dynamic psychotherapy reading list section on HPD
http://www.apsa.org/About_Psychoanalysi ... Lists.aspx

A psycho-dynamic therapist has lots of training (tons an tons of reading, plus 1000's of clinical hours practicing under supervision). Sometimes if you read some of their articles directly you can come up to speed communicating things more rapidly. If you hit parts you don't understand just skim over those.

Thanks in advance to both the Masquerade sisters, and best of luck to Masquerade directly. I hope you are feeling much better very soon. And feeling like you are headed to a much brighter and happier future.




Hysterical and histrionic personality and dissociative disorders

Ahktar, S. (1992) Histrionic personality, in Broken Structures: Severe Personality Disorders and Their Treatment, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 249-260.

Gabbard, G.O. (2000) Personality disorders: Hysterical and histrionic, in Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, Third edition, Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, pp. 517-546.

Gabbard, G.O. (2000) Dissociative disorders, in Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, Third edition, Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, pp. 267-298.

Kernberg, O. (1990) Hysterical and histrionic personality disorders, in Aggression in Personality Disorders and Perversion, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 51-66.

MacKinnon, R., Michels, R. (1971) The hysterical patient, in The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice, Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, pp. 110-146.

Shapiro, D. (1965) Hysterical Style, in Neurotic Styles, New York: Basic Books, 108-133.

Wisdom,

I will leave you to help Masquerade. I thought, I would give her a little encouragement while you were gone.

Just wanted you to know, I admire what you are doing for her. She is very brave to face all this. With the support of those that love her, the help she is seeking and you, I am sure she will do fine.

Keep up the great work. Both of you.

OK

okherewego wrote:I will leave you to help Masquerade. I thought, I would give her a little encouragement while you were gone.

okherewego - by all means jump in at any time, your posts are great! I think family issues are particularly tricky to disentangle and rebuild some boundaries that probably -- when kids should have been just kids -- were, at times, too permeable. (just a guess at this point...)

From a kid's prospective everything in your immediate family seems "normal" and "correct" With the help of the two sisters, plus the collective knowledge of everyone on this board, I'll bet we can collectively be of substantial help here getting the normal/healthy stuff isolated from the "not so helpful/didn't do good things for you" family muck.

Plus, we can use all the mental horsepower we can get here creatively translating the "academic material" into things someone fighting HPD can actually relate to. Stuff that reaches them at their current level.

I can suggest more Reflective Thinking and Journaling until I'm blue in the face, but until people try it and see some benefits for themselves its likely to be boring, uninteresting, and perhaps too "isolated" for them. Somehow I wish we could shower lots of attention on the HPDs in a party atmosphere, while moving the ball ahead to get some of this stuff to stick.

Remember I'm really just a seeker of Wisdom here, I don't have all the answers -- but I'm willing to work at it. All others should feel free to jump right in with good suggestions.

We can let the shrink be quarterback and call the main plays. Especially if they are good. Wish we had that Kernberg Interview all wrapped up and in the bag at this point. She could walk into the therapy and probably cut 6 months off her treatment time.

Thanks very much for your thoughts here! By all means keep contributing!

Wisdom,

Sorry I am late in the game of responding. Haven't been on here in some time, and not sure I can play catch up to all of the posts, but will post as I can.

I have not been diagnosed. I went to a "very good" dr once and pretty much laid everything out on the line of what I do, and feelings I have when I do them and hoping for him to say ok, here is what you have and here is what caused it, and here is what we need to work on.

BUT.. that never happened $200 a pop 2 times per week for several weeks and nothing of progress was happening other than what I was makin efforts of myself and my husband agreed I should stop going.

BUT, I found this forum about a year a go when searching for my dad's diagnosis of SPD. I read through the different PDs and I thought OMG... this is totally how I was and some of it I still do although I do a lot of it inwardly with my thinking. Like I really do not believe I'm the most beautiful woman in the world. I honestly don't. I DO however know that I can hold my own in the looks department and based on past experiences I know what I'm capable of with my looks and my personality that seems to draw men in. So I try to be careful more so now that I am a grown married woman than I was when say I was in high school and didn't know what drew them in.

So as far as diagnosis goes, no I don't have one, but I can tell you based on reading thousands of websites about HPD and finding this board, I know what I know and what I've done and I do have the tendencies and traits.

When I first came on this board, I had no idea what I was doing I just jumped in and was like hey I think I'm hpd, every body help fix me now. BUT after a few got offended and bashed me and I sort of stood my ground that I really want to be fixed this isn't just an attention seeking method for me, A handful of people really helped me see the other side of what I had done to people. I already felt bad and sorry for hurting people, but to actually read the stories of the other side, I really come to terms with it is a choice. WE CHOSE our actions. We can't go murder someone and get by with it because we are angry although the anger is what led us to the event. We CHOSE to murder. So same way with HPD, we have walls and feelings of distrust of others, and we FEEL like we are wronged even though we really aren't because NO ONE can admire us 24/7 so for us to turn around and hurt that person because we FEEL they hurt us.

It is all about choices. I"m not 100 percent cured as I don't feel that we can be cured of an altered personality. Our personalities start developing in the womb, but I do know that I can make good choices and I am SO much better off than I was when I was a teen. I was a different breed of woman even as a young girl and didn't know what to do with all the attention I got from boys and men. Now I know my boundaries. I SET the boundaries. I am not a victim and refuse to be. I just keep doing what I gotta do as a wife a mother and a woman.

So hope this helps you.

Edited for privacy reasons

Hey

Thanks for the update. Sounds like she is in very capable hands with lots of love and support. Very good of her husband as well, to be there for her. Great news, for the family unit. I guess she is probably at her lowest, and truely ready to bounce back from there. Our thoughts are with you all. I am sure with the support she is recieving, she will recover. Good for her!!

Has an official diagnosis been made, of what disorder she suffers from?

Keep us posted and all my very best to you all!

masquerade wrote:DOES HAVE A PERSONALITY DISORDER, CYCLOTHMIA AND DEPRESSION.

Hi Masquerade and BlueEyedSister,

Good to hear Masquerade unplugged, and has some time for real reflection and centering.

From the professional working diagnosis looks like the game plan will be some pharmaceuticals along with some self "overhaul".

Depression - treatable with pharmaceuticals for near immediate relief. Get at the underlying issues and see if it's a "from the factory trait" (just the way you were built - so just stay on antidepressants) or if its really psychological - resolve the psych issues and it magically goes away...

PD - OK, not much new here. Would be best to get some real specificity from the experts.

Cyclothymic - a "loosey-goosey" term if I've every heard one! Not sure if this "label" really tells anyone anything definitive. Term is based on "cycloid" - a personality type characterized by wide fluctuation in mood within the normal range. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cycloid_f.gif

So, you are a moody person with a wide range of emotions that you can feel? There are plenty of people who suffer from "flat emotions" all the time, where job #1 on the couch would be to "open them up to experience their own feeling more". So, you are moody at times? Is this bad? (Ever meet actors, artists and creatives??? Having feelings is not a crime! It's what makes us human with all the richness that entails.)

If the label Cyclothymic is to be applied, push them for the full rational - preferably all written out and explained in at least a page or more of detail, on the Psychiatrist's letterhead. (So you can go over and over and reflect...) I'm thinking to myself, Cyclothymic - is this even a problem or actually, a benefit?

Suggest more drill down. Always feel free to personally reject any label applied to you if it just doesn't feel right (yes, that what I said....feel right! lol!

(Of course always be open, listen intently, reflect, and be eager to learn something new about yourself too. )

Here is what some very astute Italians wrote on cyclothymia. But, first, recall that Italians as an entire culture are not known for boring, flat emotions!

Source: CIA The World Factbook 2007 wrote:
Affective Communication - An important aspect of Italian culture is the openly expressed thoughts and feelings common to most Italians. Emotions tend to flow easily in this culture with large hand gestures and close personal contact frequently found during Italian conversations. As a result, Italians are often guided by their feelings and in business situations this is important to remember, as establishing solid relationships based on trust are a vital for successful business negotiations.

So, when three Italian MDs are talking about cyclothemia, they are not talking about momma occasionally having a minor hissy fit in kitchen, and letting everyone else in the house know it!

J Affect Disord. 2003 Jan;73(1-2):87-98.
The role of cyclothymia in atypical depression: toward a data-based reconceptualization of the borderline-bipolar II connection.
Perugi G, Toni C, Travierso MC, Akiskal HS.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pisa, Via Roma 67, 56100, Pisa, Italy.

Atypical Depression Diagnostic Scale (ADDS)
Hopkins Symptoms Check-list (HSCL-90)
Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD)

comorbidity
panic disorder with agoraphobia
alcohol abuse
bulimia nervosa

borderline personality traits/disorder
dependent personality traits/disorder

ADDS
maximum reactivity of mood
interpersonal sensitivity
functional impairment
avoidance of relationships
other rejection avoidance

HSCL-90
interpersonal sensitivity
phobic anxiety
paranoid ideation
psychoticism.

Of course, to a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, that's all smacks of early childhood issues that might be worked through.

Again, personality type characterized by wide fluctuation in mood within the normal range sounds like everything is eminently treatable, and the burden will fall on the person to just battle themselves right through this. Just identify where these feelings may be percolating up from (likely early childhood issues) and with that new source knowledge install within yourself a hyper-aware early warning system that will alert you sooner when one of your emo triggers has been pulled. From there learn to self sooth and to self regulate just a bit better. Fine tuning really.

All without becoming too flat or boring!

We are routing for you!!!

The sad thing is that she might really be hpd and the insurance will not cover such a disorder. So that is why alot of this disorder is starting to fall by the wayside of everyday life and explain why there is such a low percentage of people with hpd.... Money and the feminist movement? Just some stuff I have found with my hpd battle. Once a person is listed as having it then the insurance company might label the hpd as having a preexisting condition even if they are depressed or suicidal, in need of a hospital stay for lets say $20,000.00 like what Masquerade might be going through right now. So if you want to have the hospital stay covered then you come up with stuff that is listed by insurance such as "Cyclothymic".

The psychology part of health care is a real joke when it comes to getting help for the real cause because it is all govenored by money and politics which sucks.

A simular situation happened to me with my ex wife and the CHARGABLE diagnosis was depression? The doctor even stated that there is nothing that my insurance would cover and would have to be billed 100% out of my pocket, stated by her with a serious look like, "you get it right"....So anything ever looked at would be charged, described and viewed as "Just depression. This was after the Doctor told my wife that she had hpd? Sad really