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hypnoticpoison
94,122 M Marching Ahead 8
PathStep 12 Compassion hearts643 Forum posts1 Forum upvotes3 Current upvotes3 Age GroupAdult Last activeOctober, 2023 Member sinceSeptember 2, 2015
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To B or not to B(orderline) and a tale of self-diagnosing
Personality Disorders Support / by hypnoticpoison
Last post
 February 26th, 2020
...See more I have diagnosed myself almost five years ago after a failed attempt at therapy. I am 24 now, soon-to-be doctor, and I am writing this fueled by anger caused by some recent events. I have always had a melancholic nature and even though everybody went through their 'sad' phases through high school, it started to feel like there was something more. Teachers who got to know me and spent more time with me have asked questions regarding my wellbeing. So, I started reading - articles, scientific papers, books - and I was pretty sure I was depressed, and not just going through the normal things that come with the teenage years. Fast-forward to the first year of med school, things had gotten worse, I ended up in therapy, but that only lasted for a couple of sessions since my parents cut me off since 'my problems were only in my head'. Raging, I started looking for answers again. I like to think that everything happens for a reason and I need that reason for things to make sense, and it felt like more than depression. I took a proper psychiatry book I found in the library and started reading. When I found BPD, things clicked in my head. That was it. That was the reason. Things made sense. It was so terribly obvious. Years went on, more downs than ups, and I had encountered a therapist at a conference. He struck me as an incredibly knowledgeable and experienced professional, I admired the way he talked and I felt that we might be on similar wavelengths, so I built up the courage to contact him and give therapy another try. During all these years, the fact that I have diagnosed myself had been haunting me and I knew I somehow needed the validation of a professional since I was not yet a doctor. This person that I ended up admiring a lot after a talk at a conference, someone I have given all my hopes and my last drops of energy to, told me that he strongly believes that I do NOT most likely suffer from BPD, but that I'm just rather hysteric. The past almost five years of my life have been invalidated after a therapy session and made me feel like an impostor. I did not agree with him and I have since stopped seeing him, but I need to take into consideration some factors. He is a terribly experienced clinical therapist, but he belongs to the old school, and anyone who has read about BPD knows about its history and how it's been perceived throughout the past half of a century. He dismissed my diagnosis based on the fact that I do not physically self-harm, more specifically because my wrists are not covered by scars, self-harm being one of the nine criteria of BPD, while someone only needs to meet five of them, and I actually meet the remaining eight. The self-harming criterion includes suicidal ideation, so I partially meet that one as well, but I never got to argue about that because my whole existence had been dismissed by his experience. I have been meaning to write here for quite some time now, but I ended up thinking it would be a silly thing. What triggered me to finally do it? Anger, frustration and despair caused by recent events in my life. I know this is not the place to get a diagnosis or any treatment, and I know the limitations of this website. I guess I'm wondering if anyone has had trouble with their diagnosis as well. During my days as a listener, I have encountered some who self-diagnosed as well, and some have even mentioned having trouble talking about and explaining their issues to the mental health professionals that they were seeing because of this heightened self-awareness, which after just a bit of research, actually turned out to be some kind of a trend or trait in the BPD world. This heightened self-awareness made them seem lucid, aware of their issues and capable of handling them, so professionals underestimated the seriousness of their situation. I am going through a difficult time and I cannot 'see' into the future, which makes me think that my subconscious thinks I am not going have one and that I'll take the 'classic BPD way out' eventually, and my periods of crisis have gotten harder and harder to pull myself out of. I do not have a support system, nor anyone to talk to, nor the will to reach out to professional help again (at least not until I find someone more open-minded and who belongs to a different school of psychology or psychiatry).
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