Posted by fallsfall on February 3, 2004, at 18:26:41
In reply to How to tell someone about diagnosis, posted by gardenergirl on February 2, 2004, at 21:01:44
My therapist went down the list of BPD symptoms and told me which ones she thought I had. She presented the whole thing in an informative way - and I appreciated that because I am someone who wants to know what is going on. (I had just gotten out of the hospital, and had been seeing her for about 6 months at the time)
I went to a bookstore to find some information on BPD, and found Linehan's books. Those books were very comforting to me. I'm not a typical Borderline (I'm not impulsive, and I don't show anger - though I'm beginning to learn that I have it even if I don't show it).I do split (all the time), and I have major "self" issues - and those seem to me to be the basic building blocks of BPD. I could really relate to her descriptions of invalidation. This made me feel much more comfortable. I had felt like I had a problem that was different from everybody else's (I wasn't even "normal" among the mentally ill). Reading her books made me feel that finally somebody understood me. That gave me hope that someone could help me.
I attended 6 months of DBT Skill training (and that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't found Linehan's books and brought them to my therapist). It was helpful (though I was probably more proficient than many group members are to start - at least in some areas).
For me the diagnosis gave me an anchor. Something to research and understand. Hope that people were working on understanding what treatments work and don't work for us.
My current therapist doesn't think I'm Borderline. We haven't talked about what he thinks my diagnosis is. He's talking about how it might not be in my best interest to do so much "research". If he's right, then even though the diagnosis made me feel better, it might not have been truly in my best interest to know it. This issue is still up for debate.
When I was looking for a new therapist, I did a bunch of interviews. I would start the interview telling them that I was BPD, but not typical and explain what I did and didn't have that fit with BPD. One reason I did this was that I wanted to know right away if they were scared of a BPD patient. If they were, I knew we would never work well together. So, I used my BPD diagnosis as a useful tool for myself.
poster:fallsfall
thread:308679
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040131/msgs/309018.html