I don't know how I feel about this yet. And I think the psychiatrist might be wrong about it.
Which is interesting because apparently a part of Borderline Personality Disorder is not really knowing how one feels about things (Which is part of the reason that I started this blog hoping that if I thought about things and wrote about them I would be better able to work out how I felt about them).
Also thinking that you don't have BPD.
I might be getting over that second one though, as I read more about it.
For a while now I've tried to be pretty open about my depression. A big part of the reason I try and talk about it so much is because a lot (A LOT) of people tell me that they don't know who else to talk to but they figure, from things I have said, that I might understand somewhat what they are going through.
A LOT.
But anyway. I know a lot of people who are depressed and that has helped me feel way less alone and scared about being depressed. I don't know anyone who has told me they have BPD.
Being diagnosed with a proper bona fide mental illness (not that Depression isn't a real mental illness. Of course it is! I don't know that I ever had an official diagnosis for that though) and being prescribed antipsychotic medication is kind of... weird. On the one hand it's nice to know that I actually really do find it way harder to relate to other humans, and have way less emotional regulation than most people. And most other people can read novels without getting confused about their own identity. I am not imagining that. Good to know I am not actually crazy.
I mean: good to know I am actually crazy.
I have a personality disorder but the past several years I have spent a lot of time working to like myself and my personality and done a really good job of it.
A LOT.
and I think I have done it well enough that if treatment works and I "get better" (whatever that means) and I am different I can like that me too without liking the me now less.
But I don't know for sure.
Being treated for "depression" hasn't really been helpful for me for a long time. Maybe being treated for something else instead will be more effective?
But being treated for a mood disorder seems way less scary and confronting than being treated for a personality disorder.
I am sure that I am not my mood.
I am not sure that I am not my personality.
The psychiatrist might be wrong about it. Psychiatric diagnoses can be hard to nail down, after all, and I've read (although I don't have a source handy) that BPD can be one of the more troublesome ones, with e.g. women being far more likely to be diagnosed with it (in the sense that a man presenting with the same symptoms is more likely to be given a different diagnosis).
ReplyDeleteBut the psychiatrist might also be right about it, and as long as the antipsychotic medication isn't the only or main arm of the treatment (which would be alarming) then, as you say, maybe working on treating something else will lead to you feeling better. I guess that if one of the roots (or branches, whatever, I'm not trying to make a clever metaphor) of the depression you've experienced is something that hasn't been addressed directly or explicitly until now, that might be a reason for its intractability?
I don't have any reason to suppose that I have BPD, but I know other people who do have it. Obviously it's not my place to name them but you're not the only one. :)
Anyway, reminder: I like you a lot! If this BPD diagnosis proves to be a useful way to think about things, then great. I have been trying to say something about "personality disorder" as a concept and relate it to "syndrome" as a concept but it didn't really work out. Anyway, as I understand it treatment for BPD has a lot to do with learning how to do certain things that BPD makes really difficult, and learning them in a way tailored for people who have that extra difficulty, so I really hope that whatever treatment turns out to mean for you it includes having a less awful time!
PS I have weird and ill-defined ideas about "the self" and whatnot but the you that I like has gone through quite a lot of changes in the time I've known her and I'm sure she will continue to do so. <3
This afternoon I realised that this is just a name for a collection of problems, many of which I have.
ReplyDeleteNaming the collection of problems that I have doesn't actually change the problems I have or make them better or worse: it just gives us (me and my doctors) a different approach to treat them all as a part of one "thing" rather than trying to treat a bunch of different things or (as has been the case most of the time: treating one of my problems and ignoring the rest).
So I am not sure if it is important whether or not I "really" have BPD.
For future reference I am happy to be named as a person who has been diagnosed with BPD if any of our mutual acquaintances (or anyone, really) are feeling sad that they don't know anyone else with BPD.
Your collection of problems paragraph is more or less exactly what I was trying to get at in the sentences I gave up on writing because I'm tired and can't make my brain work like I want it to. :D
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