Borderline Personality Disorder

They changed my diagnosis today. Or I should say added to my diagnosis. Borderline Personality Disorder. That's my Axis II diagnosis from my last post. It's tough to hear, tough to take in. I just feel kind of numb right now. And yet there is a part of me that is relieved. There is more than just depression going on that is making things so very difficult, and always has made things so difficult and so unresponsive to treatment. Maybe now we can treat and heal the wound instead of just putting a bandaid on the cut. I feel silly, I feel embarrassed. I feel small. Borderline Personality Disorder has such a yucky social stigma. I feel like it's still in the baby stages of being accepted, like where depression once was. Colleen was telling me that personality disorders start in childhood, as your personality is developing and you're watching others, particularly your family, and how they act and react and what you get or don't get from them. And sometimes when you're not getting what you need you develop your own methods to compensate, which are ok and work at that time, but then as you grow and mature into society, they aren't as effective or as accepted as they once were. Because personality disorders develop in childhood they're not generally diagnosed until adulthood, when you've seemingly failed to adapt to society.

One of the symptoms of BPD is intense fear of abandoment. This is the one I struggle with the most I think, at least right now. I've known for a long time abandonment is at the heart of all these problems. Feelings of abandonment growing up, of being all alone; not necessarily physically abandoned, but emotionally abandoned. So learning how to parent and take care of myself. And now I am deathly afraid of people abandoning me. I don't get close to people so they don't have a chance to hurt me. Or I'll abandon the relationship first before there's a chance the other person can abandon me. I can see how this has been happening for years. I have close friendships or relationships and one little thing happens and that's it for me. It's scary and it hurts.

I'll write an informational post about Borderline Personality Disorder later. Today is just about feeling and recognizing and facing the new and scary diagnosis and what it means for the future. I don't have to like it right now, but it still is what it is. And there is hope in being able to treat the disorder effectively which will at the same time treat my depression more effectively. That I can be ok with.