borderline personality disorder

[Jodi01]

Please help. I am in need of a good, strong therapist in the South Jersey/Philly area for BPD..Based on what I've read..I think "I qualify". My life is hell and I make everyone else's(ie husband's) hell. He's leaving, I thought I was bi-polar per my current therapist's diagnosis...but I don't think so. Please, please, help.  



My husband and I also share a business and my world is a mess. I know he needs to move on and I can neither bear it nor function. He(my husband) tells me that I am a "loon" and his therapist says to "get out". My husband then says he'll help me but we will never be man and wife. I seem to be focusing on feeling "kicked to the curb" which paralyzes me in all other facets of my life. I can't stop crying and haven't eaten in days. I cannot believe how pathethic I have become. Please, please help or just shoot me!



Thank you,



Jodi

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

JOdi, the best places to find a therapist are;

1. Your local medical school, department of psychiatry.

2. the online therapy directory at www.psychologytoday.com.



You are sounding quite desperate, so do it today...or if you are really at your wits end, call your emergency hot line number.

[noreaster]

Hi Jodi,

have you tried looking for a therapist on any of these sites?



http://www.borderlinepersonalitytoday.com/main/bpdlist.htm



http://www.palace.net/%7Ellama/psych/programs.html



http://www.bpdcentral.com/resources/therapist/main.shtml



wish you luck

[baskethead]

2 weeks ago I went for my first visit to a shrink...  we talked i cried he tried to understand but i was all over the place.. i was on effexor xr and i am off of it now currently i am not on medication i was diagnosed with OCD, agrophobia, anxietyblack book and read to me symtoms of BPD OMG i couldnt beleive some of the things he was telling me....  i came out here there was old posts on BPD im so glad now.... since i was informed of this i have ben tryin to deal with certain things like my anger my tearfull ness and my self worthlessness and i just cant seem to get a hold of anything

[joeav]

Dear Jodi



first of all, I'm not a professional, maybe a fellow loon.

Do you suppose you first had BPD and then came your problems?

it seems to me like you're shrinking yourself into a diagnosis.

I find myself wondering if all those psych definitions are meant to help the professionals do their jobs by cataloging symptoms, or if there's more to it, or maybe much less.

and I suspect the latter.



Life can get hard, it can get disturbing. Since we don't allow room in our society for people to be disturbed, anything that rises over the comatose level is offered a label, especially when you loose faith in yourself, or loose control. Its up to you if you want to accept that label or not. I think that sometimes we just have to go nuts, or get mad, in order to balance what we're going through.  If you don't think you're entitled to that, if you don't let yourself go and are ashamed to let it out, you'll direct everything unto yourself and loose confidence, faith, your humanity, I don't know, anything you can think of.



What I learnt out of observation, and let the more educated here correct me, is that patients going through therapy we'll hang unto anything in order to not face the thing that's disturbing them, the thing that is really hard for them to deal with. and labeling yourself with a condition and looking for the right pill and a therapist might be a good resort but ultimately might not help you at all, it's just another escape route. we say there's something technically wrong with us and go to a professional to fix it, like a car. there's a condition and a cure. God willing you'll find a good therapist, but that's an IF, and at the end its you that will have to do the work.



Please do seek help, but don't wait for the therapist to fix you or get you bankrupt, change them when they don't seem like the right person, take a vacation, exercise, treat yourself to what ever makes you feel good and like a human being, and mainly vent. let your wonderful husband give you an excuse and kick him in the shins, and when he suggests that it has to do with you being a loon, tell him that you're simply pissed off and kick him again.    By the way, is he seeing a therapist because he's so well balanced?  



remember that without empathy therapists aren't worth they're weight in ****, and thank your husband very much for his diagnosis, but that's not really what his there for, if he thinks he's stronger at the moment then he should be there for you.



Good luck and take courage.

[baskethead]

i was  wondering is it possably to have BPD if you were never sexually abused?.. i have been going to therapy and he is leaning toward BPD, he gave me a book called Lost in the mirror by Richard Moskovitz..  so far  i cant help but notice the biggest abuse factor is sexual... im thinking maybe therapy could be wrong cuz i wanest sexually abused?

[gusisred]

Wow! Who could say more? Evidently you've done your homework on this subject, and I must say I'm impressed. You must have read some articles by Solomon Soho M.D. I read some at www.bipolarworld.com that made me think of some of what you're saying. The world is not allowing us to be individuals. Instead of getting mad, speaking our minds, or just plain old feel bad, we're made to think something is wrong with us and are given meds, because these things are "bad."  What's wrong with having an opionion that may differ from someone else's? It's ok to let it be known. Some of us may just be opinionated, but that's alright too. What about anger? Is that no longer allowed? If something happens that saddens us, is that not a normal reaction? Natural occuring feelings in all of us are being suppressed by meds, turning us into unemotional zombies, learning to just deal with whatever cards life hands us. These may not necessarily be the cards that we are wanting to live with, but we push down the feelings with the " well, whatever" attitude we've been doped into accepting. I've been living in an unhappy marriage, working a job that I hate, providing myself with no source of "me time" or enjoyment, and wonder why my "depression" keeps getting worse. I've wondered why my medication doesn't work. Hello? Medication is not a fairy godmother swishing her magic wand in the air making everything better. Medications help us deal. But is that what we all want. To deal with an unhappy life, the only one given to us? Yes, under certain circumstances, medicine is needed. But then comes the time when we need to take control of our lives and learn that we deserve to be happy and to learn how to do it. For years, I've stifeled the voice inside me that disagreed with the way my life was going. I kept my mouth shut at home, not wanting to start a fight, stayed at an unrewarding job where I was not respected and belittled because I thought there was no other way. I devoted all my time and worries on my family and left no time to myself. Fun? Please tell me what that is? I thought my hopeless feelings, my depression, fatique, and inner emptiness was a disorder. My disorder was my life. How could anyone live this way and not feel depressed? That depression was there to make me take action and change things in my life. It had a purpose. My medicating myself into this robot, I was defeating the whole purpose of my depression. Some depression, like in my case, is not a disorder but a warning signal. Start looking out for yourself. Stand up for yourself. Find ways to make yourself happy. Most of this is directed to the poor woman that you responded to earlier with the self absorbed husband. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe he's your problem. Let him leave and be strong in yourself (dig deep) and I bet a good bit of your problems will be gone also. I found the definition for BPD on the web and thought that was me, until I stopped to think a little deeper. Many things going on in our lives will cause us to act and think a certain way.(especially when you're not getting any support from your husband) When we feel so unsure, so incomplete with so many areas of our lives, it's just natural to want someone to cling to, someone that seems like they "got it together." I think your weakness made your husband feel strong and when he's out there in the real world without you, he'll see how weak he really is. Just a little support goes a long way, if he couldn't give you that, you on your own,will be much stronger in the long run.

[dum]

baskethead, I've read quite some literature on BPD because of a friend. According to what I've read, many BPD sufferers had an unhappy or abusive childhood.  It's not necessarily sexual abuse.  Being ill-treated by one's own parent as a child, for example, can be a root.