Borderline Personality Support Group

Do you offer a DBT group?

Yes, but I don't have one at the moment.

Well, I'm not sure group would be a good thing for me. I tend to talk about myself a lot.

Honey, imagine sitting in a room with 5 other people saying ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!..

-That's how I chose her.

I'm Rhiannon. 24, married (circling around the divorce drain) and a mother of two. I was diagnosed with BPD in November of 2009 (along with Cyclothymia/Bipolar II). I'll share some of my story with you.

My children and I were living with my mil at the time. I remember going to work that day. Being there. Picking the kids up from the sitter.. We get home and I just collapsed on the kitchen floor, hysterical, repeating "There is something wrong with me. There is something wrong with me." My mil contacted the hospital to see what she should do while I'm fetal in bed and hysterical still. After being brought to the ER, evaluated and talked with (none of which I remember) I was admitted to the MHU.

It's funny when you look back at your medical records and read "I can't tell if she's manic of it that's her personality." Gives me a chuckle every time.

I spent six days there and ended up re-admitting myself a month later. I've been in the hospital once since then for an intentional overdose and was held on a 24-hour police hold for violence. Good news is, I now have a good team of doctors and therapists on my side.

The reason I say I'm circling the divorce drain is after my diagnosis I went between under-identifying and over-identifying with my disorder. "Nah, there's nothing wrong with me. This is all a hoax" or "I'm never going to get away from this. This disorder is going to ruin my life" - On the outside I was blank.

My husband endured more than a year of this. No emotion. No motivation. No affection. No sexual desires. And he was a trooper about it.

I was put on Seroquel for a stint and it made me violent. He endured that was well. I would go into fits of rage and start throwing punches. Kicking and screaming. Throwing a tantrum like a 3 year old.

It wasn't until January of this year that I got into DBT after being threatened with divorce. DBT has been wonderful and I also have a good psychiatrist who has me on a good medication regiment.

Hey! So if you've gotten this far I applaud you. Like I said, I also suffer from ADHD and I'm like a bouncy ball..

Meds and therapy:

I just completely weaned off of Lamictal after being on for 15 months.

Other than that, I take Lexapro and Resperidal and I seem to be doing ok. I'm on Adderall for ADHD and Klonopin for when it's bad.

I see my therapist weekly- who specializes in behavioral disorders and DBT as well.

Any questions- THIS girl is an open book. The reason I'm here is because journaling the acknowledge or justify your feelings and what else you have to say. That's just a place to get it out. I strive off of feedback and acknowledgement. Just to know that SOMEONE knows what I'm feeling is real and I'm not just complaining through a pen. Hopefully I can find that here.

I've heard pretty much the same thing from mine. It's awful. I can't stay in one place too long.

I'm doing the Codependents Anonymous 12-step program right now too, which is all about learning how to soothe and love yourself and not rely on others to define your worth. My sponsor asked me to write about what was unmanageable in my life, and i've ended up with my own list of symptoms.

What do you guys relate to? From your own experiences, do you think the BDP diagnosis really nails me on the head?

• Desperate need for validation & feedback
• Chronic loneliness & low self worth
• Inconsistent personality & mood
• Ability & desire to impress
• Forcing things to happen by working harder & longer
• Compulsive working, getting carried away in the vision of how good it could be and what a great thing I could do. If I could do something really great, I would finally be loved and all my problems would disappear. Maybe this time ... Over and over again.
• Sense of faking it till I made it; pretending I wasn't desperate or unstable, having it leak out uncontrollably and unpredictably and feeling rejected and abandoned as a result, then hating myself, progressively more.
• Memories of tiny moments that haunt me, causing me to relive the humiliation of the moment with a visceral and physical reaction. Moments that really devastate me emotionally, cutting me down like a reed.
• Progressive shame, embarrassment and exhaustion over the degree of chaos and instability in my life, and the lack of social support I had to help me deal with the chaos. It was so much for so long that it became too embarrassing and awkward to talk about.
• Growing sense of overall humiliation in life from the lack of lasting relationships and professional endeavors. All the starts and stops.
• Alone in these feelings cause no one would OUTWARDLY believe or admit that I could possibly really have problems. People were trying to be supportive by continuing to tell me how brilliant and intelligent and capable and special i was. They didn't realize how alienating these words felt to me because they denied and invalidated the internal experience I was having. "I must be even crazier than I'd thought, for thinking I'm crazy in the first place."
• Most recently, feeling these things while having to keep the face of extraordinary leadership. The ship finally broke in two.
• my whole life seems like a bad memory; i would wipe it out of my brain, but then i'd have no past, no roots, though now i have been describing my past like decapitated limbs floating around inside me. Where's my continuity.

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