A couple days ago I read “The Borderline and the Buddha: My Recovery From Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating”.
Some parts of it really resonated with me, and I understood her feeling of floating along, barely making it, and not feeling like she belonged. I also understood her frustration at years of therapy, lists of meds, multiple hospital stays, and how she only seemed to going in cycles of being good for a little bit and then completely drowning in self destructive behaviors and issues. I’m 28. I’ve been diagnosed and on medications since I was 14. I barely remember being “normal”, and I don’t know if I ever really was. Even if I do remember it, it was the normal of childhood and adolescence, not being an adult. I have never been a healthy adult. This made having my own goals really difficult because I really didn’t know how I was supposed to feel, or even what it felt like to feel happy for very long. The last 7 months, I had been doing a lot better. My moods kind of sort of evened out, even if they stayed more on the sad side, and I was able to do more outside of my home. I even got a job. Then, like the pattern seems to dictate, I self-destructed and drank.
“With other psychiatric illnesses, getting rid of symptoms means you’re more or less back to ‘yourself’. But what if you simply don’t have a solid self to return to — if the way you ARE is seen as basically broken? And what if you can’t conceive of ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ because pain and loneliness are all you remember”?
-The Borderline and The Buddha by Kiera Van Gelder
I did just receive the personality disorder diagnosis within the last couple of months. I was kind of lazy about doing my DBT workbooks and haven’t really asked my therapist to focus on DBT. Well, that ends now. DBT is one of the best treatments for BPD. I need to learn it and practice it in every day life, otherwise I will spend the rest of my life like I have been doing. I am going to start going to SMART meetings more often, and ask my therapist to focus on DBT. I have reached out to a previous counselor and she is being amazing and is being supportive. I have restarted my Wellness Recovery Action Plan, because I also did that sort of half assed a year ago and it sat unused.
Learn from this and move forward. I am not quite willing to become a Buddhist, yet, though.
If anybody has info on support groups that focus on DBT or BPD, let me know! I’ve done some research, but haven’t found any that I think would be structured enough to help! Also, if you have BPD and have gotten treatment, or have worked through it, send me a private email. I’d like to pick your brain 😉
Optimism and Caffeine 