Tag: Borderline Personality Disorder


Let Her Cry

29
December

I’m not exactly sure how to structure this post because there are so many things I want to talk about, so if it is a little more flighty than usual, then I apologize.

I guess first of all, I should talk about Christmas.  My parents and I had our Christmas meal with Nana on Christmas Eve so that my aunt didn’t have to see me or threaten violence against me.  I cried almost the entire three or four hours that my parents and I were there.  I managed to almost have an asthma attack because of the crying and I messed up my internal system by getting so worked up.  (My temperature shot up, I started getting sick, etc.)  So, it wasn’t all that pleasant.  I felt bad for my grandmother because she’s almost 80 and she’s got a lot of health issues going on, so having to have separate Christmases was tough on her physically and mentally.  (She has a lot of anxiety issues, so this whole situation has upset her quite a bit.)  I also felt bad that I couldn’t even fake a smile or a good mood while we were there.

When my mom talked to Nana about how Christmas Day went with my aunt, uncle, cousin, cousin-in-law, and cousin’s son, she said that it wasn’t a really festive occasion.  Apparently, my cousin’s son went through Nana’s house looking for me and was sad that I wasn’t there to play with him.  I almost cried when my mom told me this.  I missed him, too.  He’s the one person that I have missed every second of this whole non-communication between my aunt and me thing.  He’s just so awesome and thinks differently and is so smart and creative, so being around him is always fun.  I feel like he’s a kindred spirit.

Nana said that my aunt asked how we handled Christmas without them.  When Nana told her that I cried almost the whole time, my aunt said that that was good because I hadn’t made any effort to apologize to her.  Okay, that isn’t true.  First of all, I actually did write a “letter” via Google Docs and sent it through my uncle’s email address with a note for him to please give it to her.  While the apology isn’t a complete acceptance of the alleged wrongs that I’ve been accused of committing, it is an apology for what I did do; a request that she cease this anti-Janet “campaign”; a request that she learn a little bit more about the physical and mental health problems affecting my mom, Nana, and me so that she could understand the context of the posts I write; and questions about why she made comments to my mom suggesting that I should be kicked out of my house, that I was a bad daughter, etc.   Anyway, the apology is the best that she is going to get.  I would’ve sent it to her personally on Facebook but  she blocked me from sending her messages after I sent the message chastising her for not contacting her sister (my mom) after the June 2011 hospitalization or any of the hospitalizations/surgeries.  I can’t do it via the phone (fear/anxiety issues), face-to-face is out of the question, I don’t have her personal email address, and I just don’t think sending a letter is practical.   I would post the apology letter on here, but she doesn’t actually read this site, so it wouldn’t do any good.

On Christmas, I wasn’t just upset about the downfall of that particular relationship.  I was also upset that my maternal grandfather’s only surviving sibling had unfriended me on Facebook, as had one of his kids.  These were two of my favorite people in the family, so being unfriended saddened me.  And part of me wondered if my aunt had anything to do with it.  I hate being paranoid, but it was weird how they unfriended me shortly after she had posted something on each of their walls.  That thought/paranoia, plus the knowledge that she keeps badmouthing me to Nana and (when my mom calls her) my mother, made me very frustrated because some of the key issues with being Borderline are the fear of abandonment/rejection and intense and unstable relationships.  I think anyone who knows me in any way, shape or form could cite any number of examples that I will go to a near breakdown state whenever things change, relationships end or near an end, I start feeling unappreciated, and when I feel alone, unloved, or unwanted. So, when I was crying on Christmas Eve, I was thinking about the familial implosion, possibly killing myself over it, and how I was somehow a horrible human being.  That’s not the kind of thinking that one should have at any time, but it is especially bad during the holidays.  And that thought process and the pain that it caused makes it harder for me to come up with a way to apologize over any of this or keep quiet about how I feel.  I don’t want to excuse my (sometimes) bad behavior, but I want my family to understand where it comes from.

(BTW – When my aunt tried to lay all the blame on me for this, Nana wouldn’t have any of that.  She told her that she [my aunt] was to blame, as well, and that she was the one who wanted the family split up. She’d also told her off on the 23rd when Nana mentioned that she had to fix the table for our lunch and my aunt told her not to worry about it with us because we “weren’t used to eating at a table” anyway. )

Aside from the Christmas tear-fest, I was going to share whatever the results were from my MRI and EEG.  I went to the neurologist’s office yesterday, but (after waiting an hour and a half) I was told that the neurologist had just left to attend to an emergency at one of the hospitals.  In a small way, I was upset over not finding out the answers, but I would rather not know what was wrong with me than know that my neurologist might have wasted time with me that he could’ve spent on someone who was truly in need of his help at that moment.  (And I know that neurologists are not exactly doctors who have soft-fluffy-type emergencies.)  Anyway, my neurologist was supposed to call me sometime later in the day yesterday.  He didn’t.  He still hasn’t called.  I could call them, I guess.  The only thing I do know from the appointment yesterday is that I had lost another 6 pounds, in addition to the ~50 that I’d lost in the last year.

Oh, I finally had my T4, TSH, LH, and FSH tests done yesterday afternoon, over a month after they were originally ordered.  The woman who did the test asked me if that was my husband in the waiting room.  I silently gagged and told her that that was my father.  She told me she was glad because she had been mad when she thought he was my husband because he should know better than to be with someone so young.  In a way, I understood what she meant, but it was kind of weird to have someone say that kind of stuff.  I mean, she doesn’t know me, so what was she going to say if she had been my husband?  How would she have gotten around her disgust?  And is saying that kind of thing a good idea when you’re sticking a needle into someone?  (It could cause someone to tense up and cause veins to ‘disappear’ in someone who, like me, is a hard-stick.)

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Facebook, Family, FPS-Related, General, Holidays, Mental Health, My Family's Weirder Than Yours Is, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

30 Days of Truths: Day 6

13
March

Today (well, yesterday, but I’m backdating the entry, so it’ll be the right day) is day number 6, which is the day that we discuss:
Day 6: Something you hope you never have to do.

If I said kill a person, would that be too obvious?  Um, how about something else?

I hope that I never have to go back into a psychiatric hospital.  I know that they can be really good places for people who need to be there, and I know that sometimes I probably should be in one.  I don’t want to go back to one ever, though.

The experience when I was 17 was horrible.  I just don’t ever want to relive anything like that ever again.  Even thinking about a possible repeat of that makes my brain start feeling overwhelmed with scary thoughts.

Past Days:
Day 1: Something you hate about yourself
Day 2: Something you love about yourself
Day 3: Something you have to forgive yourself for
Day 4: Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 5: Something you hope to do in your life.

Future Days:
Day 7: Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 8: Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 9: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10: Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11: Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12: Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13: A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days.
Day 14: A hero that has let you down.
Day 15: Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16: Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17: A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18: Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19: What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20: Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21: (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22: Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23: Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24: Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs.
Day 25: The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26: Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27: What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28: What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29: Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30: A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

 

Comment » | 30 Days of Truth, Confessions, memes, Mental Health

Strawberries to the People!

2
October

I know that some of you are new to my blog, and some of you follow me on Tumblr or LiveJournal, but don’t really “know me” or know how long I’ve been blogging. Well, I decided, while looking to see how much of my site got archived over almost 10 years, that I should probably post somethings that may not be known or may have been forgotten. Part of knowing who I am now is knowing who I’ve been.

2002 – My Biography

My name is Janet. I’m an eighteen year old girl from Huntsville, Alabama. I’ve lived here all my life with my mother and father and our various assortment of pets/relatives.

As a child, I was a ballet and tap dancer who longed to be Whitney Houston when she grew up. I worshipped Whitney. She and Michael Jackson were my favorite artists until sometime during middle school. They still are two of my favorites, just not at the very top of my list.

I’m what some would consider to be a ‘teenybopper’. I love *NSYNC. I’ve been to one of their concerts. I’ve also been to concerts for 98 Degrees, Chicago/Doobie Brothers, and Smash Mouth. Of all four, I loved *NSYNC’s the most. They were all good, though. (The 98 Degrees one would’ve been much better if the sound guy had mixed the music properly. He had the bass too high, so it was kinda hard to hear Nick, Drew, and Jeff. You could hear Justin, the drums, and some guitar, though.)

I am a high school drop-out. I dropped out in January 2001, a few weeks before my seventeenth birthday. I am not, by most accounts, an idiot. I was getting all A’s in my Junior year in high school before I got sick. I took my GED test May 14, 2001 and received my letter that I’d passed just a week and a half later. I then enrolled in college at Calhoun Community College.

So why did I drop out? Well, I’m crazy. I’m not joking about this. I seriously am crazy.

I suffered somewhat of a nervous breakdown. I was severely depressed and suicidal. I had panic attacks on a regular basis. I also had some health problems that weren’t psychological–bronchitis, asthma attacks, etc. I couldn’t stay in school and I did what any logical teen would do in this sort of situation…

I dropped out!

How did my parents react? My mother wasn’t too shocked or upset over it. She’d dropped out her Junior year of high school for similar reasons. She understood how I felt and what I was going through. My father, on the other hand, was pretty mad over it, but he knew that he couldn’t stop me. He tried to convince me that what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t believe him, and I’m glad I didn’t.

My teachers weren’t exactly shocked. Many of my teachers from middle school and a few from high school thought that I would do better out of high school than in high school. They said high school wasn’t exactly my “thing”. They said I’d do much better in college.

My “psychiatrist” (he was a physician’s assistant of a psychiatrist) at the time wasn’t very happy over it. He didn’t think it was best for me, but he also thought I was sexually frustrated because I slept all the time. I was sleeping all the time because the idiot had me on 50mg of Paxil, 40mg of Celexa, 5mg Zyprexa, and .5mg Xanax twice a day. He never listened to me, so I never really trusted how he felt about the situation.

So, he got me an appointment with a therapist…the wonderful Lilian. She inspired me to switch psychiatrists and to try to get ahold of my life. (Lilian is truly an angel in my life.)

I switched psychiatrists just in time. My mom thought I needed to be hospitalized at this point in time (May 11, 2001) and she was right. Five days after my first appointment with my latest psychiatrist, I was hospitalized and put on suicide watch. I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder at this point in time and my meds got completely switched. The hospital was okay. I didn’t like it much. I had a run-in with a sadomasochistic nurse who liked seeing me in pain from lice treatments that you must put in ALL of the hair on your body. Some of the staff was rude to me because I cried a lot. (Hello! I was depressed–unlike many of the people in there.) My “therapist” at the hospital, Steve, gave me a hard time because of my diagnosis. I was said to have an attitude problem because I was sarcastic and because I screamed and cried whenever I was upset. When I told him that I felt like my father ignored me sometimes, he told me that he didn’t blame him. If he had to live with such a drama queen, he would’ve ignored me, too. That really slashed any self-esteem I had. On May 20, I was released.

I’m very opinionated. I always have been and I always will be. I’m a bit argumentative, and I do have a bad attitude sometimes. That doesn’t really mesh with some people and their original opinions of me. People tend to believe that they can walk all over me, and for the most part, they can. If I get sick of being walked all over, though, I will bite back. I come from two parents who are very outspoken, but not outgoing. This is part of why I’m opinionated and part of why I’m shy. I typically do not initiate conversations and, in a group, I tend to shy away from any attention at all. I try to be nice to everyone, but that doesn’t mean it works.

I’m usually mis-labelled by people, including my friends. According to my friends, I am the “nicest girl in the world” and “very quiet and shy”. According to them, I should “never change.” According to my ‘enemies’, I’m a “cancer” and I “demand too much.” I “exagerrate about everything and have no friends.” They also tend to think that I’m a “fucking psycho”, which I don’t appreciate.

The truth of the matter?

I try to be nice, because I want people to like me. Sometimes I suck up and I suck up too much. Then, I start feeling emotionally torn between loyalty and being true to myself. In the end, I have to live with myself and I don’t have to live with other people, so sometimes my opinions bubble out and offend these people. I am quiet. If a pin were to drop in a quiet room, it would be louder than my voice. I am shy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have tons to say. I am very demanding and I will admit that. I want people to do things my way and I feel hurt when they don’t. My feelings get hurt easily. I do exagerrate some things, but I don’t really lie. I’m very manipulative. I also have lots of friends. I may not always feel close to them and sometimes, I’m too depressed to be near them. Sometimes, I may seem selfish and for the most part, I probably am. I’m also the girl who was crying on Christmas 2001 because she couldn’t give the excess food to the millions of Afghans who are hungry.

No one has really ever understood what it’s like to be me. I cry about too many things, but I don’t always cry at the appropriate times. Sometimes I feel like I’m two different people, because one is outspoken and the other is shy and cowers in the corner. Sometimes my brain races so fast that I can’t think. By the time I grab a thought for my conscious mind, my brain has lost it in a jumble of other thoughts. I hate that I have to take so many medicines to survive, but after you’ve been sick since infancy, you accept it as a fact of life. I hate being so poor that I can’t wear designer clothes, but being considered rich by those who live in the projects–and actually have the designer clothes. I hate the way I look. I’ve been fat since I was a child and have always been ridiculed for it. I hate that. I hate how I have to endure so much crap from people. I hate how I’ve had friends who make fun of other fat people, but then say that I’m so pretty or that they would never make fun of me. I question whether anyone has ever truly been honest with me. I mean, I’ve been lied to so many times that I can’t trust anyone. I hate that my parents don’t trust me because they think I’m gonna go into ‘slice and dice’ mode on my skin. I feel like I walk a very fine line between sanity and insanity (blends of neurosis and psychosis). I never know when I’ll fall back into the insanity, but I know I can never be sane. I can never be free of the demons that hold me in their grip and force me to live a painful existence.

5 comments » | Calhoun, Confessions, Family, Foster Sibling, FPS-Related, Friends, Internet, memes, Pre-College Years, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special, Who I Was - Past

The Case for Insanity

18
March

As most people probably know, I have been diagnosed with multitudes of mental health problems over the years. In the words of Jem: “A self-confessed loony!” I have blogged for many years about these problems, but if you’ve noticed recently, the posts about my present mental health have dropped off. This is not due to fear of backlash, or anything about what others think of me. Honestly, I really could not care less about what others feel about my mental health or my obsession with my insanity. It’s not because I feel shame over it…well, not exactly.

You see, the thing I’ve felt bad about recently is that, for around a year, my mental health has been getting more and more stable. With every physical ailment that befalls me, my mental health seems to get better. Being crazy was something I knew would always be there. When I started lithium at 17, I knew I was in it for the long-haul, and that felt kind of safe. That gave me a sense of true identity.

Yes, I know who I am, but part of how I identify myself and how I differentiate my life from the lives of others is in my innate sense of having no earthly clue if what I’m seeing or feeling is real. The lack of sanity had always given me a sense of purpose. I didn’t try to use it as an excuse for bad behaviors, but I did think of it as my reason for being me.

Most people who suffer from mental illness say that they would rejoice if they woke up with a reprieve. (I do not think this is ever going to be a permanent shift in how my mind/body works.) I always knew if it was gone, then there would be something off about me. Coping with the world is different when you no longer see or hear things that aren’t there, or when you don’t go into a depressive streak or a “manic” streak. Admittedly, I still have my OCD and my tendency to have an internal bitchfest (BPD) whenever someone pisses me off, but they’re both a lot better than they used to be.

I miss being the stark raving nut. I want to be me again. Now, if you want to take away a health issue, then please get rid of the physical problems. I don’t like them. I don’t enjoy pain, an odd thing to say for a “former” cutter. I don’t like the constant stream of new doctors and new tests. I don’t like having different meds tested on me, each one causing my body to find some new way of saying, “Are you fucking trying to poison me, bitch? Um, no.” At least if I still have to react physically to drugs, then give me the normal reactions. Don’t give me the reaction that is on the back of the bottom paragraph in the tiniest font size known to mankind in a face no one can read that say, “In Janet, this drug will cause the following extremely unusual reactions:”, which lead to me calling the doctors and the pharmacist to trouble-shoot my medication regimen, which now consists of Flonase and Effexor. Temporarily, due to the surgery, I’m on Clindamycin, saline nose spray, Phenergan, and Darvocet. (This regimen for surgery recovery was something I had to trouble-shoot with the nurse when the surgery was being scheduled due to my allergies to antibiotics, anti-psychotics, and pain relievers.)

1 comment » | General

The More That Is Said

15
February

Today (Sunday) it was revealed that Amy Bishop was a suspect in an attempted bombing. This was after yesterday’s statement that she killed her younger brother in 1986. People are still trying to say that this was a woman who plotted this whole thing out with malice of intent. I really am starting to doubt whether that’s even possible, given the reported reasoning behind the prior two events, and the reported reason for this particular event.

I honestly think that she has Borderline Personality Disorder and some sort of psychotic or depersonalization disorder. I know, I’m not allowed to actually diagnose her, since I never received a degree in a social work or psychology field. However, I did do training in social work, and had I not been kept from graduating, I might have a licensed Master’s degree in Social Work, with the ability to tell you what the crap was really wrong with this woman.

So, why do I think that she’s a Borderline? I’ve italicized the things that I think she’s exhibited.

From Google Health:

Borderline personality disorder is a condition in which a person makes impulsive actions, and has an unstable mood and chaotic relationships.

From the National Institute of Mental Health:

While a person with depression or bipolar disorder typically endures the same mood for weeks, a person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last only hours, or at most a day. These may be associated with episodes of impulsive aggression, self-injury, and drug or alcohol abuse. Distortions in cognition and sense of self can lead to frequent changes in long-term goals, career plans, jobs, friendships, gender identity, and values. Sometimes people with BPD view themselves as fundamentally bad, or unworthy. They may feel unfairly misunderstood or mistreated, bored, empty, and have little idea who they are. Such symptoms are most acute when people with BPD feel isolated and lacking in social support, and may result in frantic efforts to avoid being alone.

People with BPD often have highly unstable patterns of social relationships. While they can develop intense but stormy attachments, their attitudes towards family, friends, and loved ones may suddenly shift from idealization (great admiration and love) to devaluation (intense anger and dislike). Thus, they may form an immediate attachment and idealize the other person, but when a slight separation or conflict occurs, they switch unexpectedly to the other extreme and angrily accuse the other person of not caring for them at all. Even with family members, individuals with BPD are highly sensitive to rejection, reacting with anger and distress to such mild separations as a vacation, a business trip, or a sudden change in plans. These fears of abandonment seem to be related to difficulties feeling emotionally connected to important persons when they are physically absent, leaving the individual with BPD feeling lost and perhaps worthless. Suicide threats and attempts may occur along with anger at perceived abandonment and disappointments.

People with BPD exhibit other impulsive behaviors, such as excessive spending, binge eating and risky sex. BPD often occurs together with other psychiatric problems, particularly bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and other personality disorders.

Two psychoanalysts, Gunderson and Kolb, have said the following should be considered:

  1. Affect: chronic/major depression, helplessness, worthlessness, guilt, anger, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, emptiness
  2. Cognition: odd thinking, unusual perceptions, nondelusional paranoia, quasipsychosis
  3. Impulse action patterns: substance abuse/dependence, sexual deviance, manipulative suicide gestures, other impulsive behaviors
  4. Interpersonal relationships: intolerance of aloneness, abadonment, engulfment, annihilation fears, counterdependencey, stormy relationships, manipulativeness, deprendency, devaluation, masochism/sadism, demandingness, entitlement

The DIB-R is the most influential and best-known “test” for diagnosing BPD. Use of it has led researchers to identify four behavior patterns they consider peculiar to BPD: abandonment, engulfment, annihilation fears; demandingness and entitlement; treatment regressions; and ability to arouse inappropriately close or hostile treatment relationships.

Borderlines, according to Marsha Linehand, “are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.”

When she appeared on camera saying that the shootings didn’t happen and her colleagues weren;’t dead, this screams of dissociation. She may not remember what happened.

Many of her students had described her as witty, which is a common attribute of BPD.

As for the psychosis that I think she may have, it just seems that there is an underlying part of her personality. People have said she was disorganized, which is common with BPD, but the extent to which she was disorganized seems to indicate a psychotic disorder.

Of course, keep in mind that I am not a professional. My only experience is my 3 years in a Social Work program, which included looking into the DSM and at the reasons for Human Behavior, as well as my own personal experiences being crazy and growing up around a bunch of “nuts”, who have problems with psychotic behavior, BPD, anti-social personalities (sociopaths), explosive anger, PTSD, anxiety, etc. I am fairly certain that she is not a sociopath. Strangely, sociopaths are pretty obvious when I see them, and she doesn’t seem to be that type of person. She seems to be more of the “I’m hurting” type, which would indicate more of a Borderline issue.

Comment » | Alabama Weirdness, General, How I Met Your Neighbors (aka An Overactive Imagination), Mental Health, National Weirdness, UAH, World Weirdness

Anger Issues?

6
May

I found out a gem of a comment that my (former) psychiatrist wrote in my chart after my first visit with him. Apparently, in that one session where he was supposed to do a quite long and intensive psychiatric evaluation, he spent 5 minutes with me and determined I had anger issues and severe anxiety. Given that I have a pretty good memory of the session, since this was before I was on Risperdal, all I can really recall is me giving a brief rundown of how bad my depressive symptoms were, telling him I needed a better anti-psychotic, and that I was wanting to come off of the Depakote since I had gained so much weight on it. He had put me on Effexor and Risperdal, then told me I could come off the Depakote because I was “on too much medicine”. (I was on the Depakote, Klonopin, Effexor, and Risperdal.) He then sent me on my way, only billing for a med check.

According to my therapist, in the next session he claimed to do a psych evaluation, which is crap because he never spends more than 5 minutes with me. He always tells me I’m on too much medicine. He ignores me when I tell him which symptoms are worse, and tries to get me to up my Klonopin, even though I’ve told him that I can no longer take it because it knocks me out. (Besides that, I don’t feel I need it because I haven’t had a full-blown panic attack in almost a year.)

He also said that I had the symptoms for Borderline Personality Disorder (which I had previously been diagnosed for, but I did not tell him I was experiencing any of the symptoms for it at the time of any of the appointments) and I guess this is his justification for not paying attention to my ACTUAL problems. Ugh. I didn’t really have any anger issues towards him until I found out about him going through my old parts of my chart to come up with his present diagnosis. Hasn’t he ever heard of actually doing the work himself? Yes, it takes a while to do a psych eval, but it was in his schedule and he would have been somewhat compensated for it.

2 comments » | Mental Health, Rants

     

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