Just diagnosed with BPD

Hi @TG1108 ,

Welcome to the forums! It's great you can reach out.

BPD is a slow moving illness - both to develop and recover from. It often starts in late teenage, early adulthood.

Recovery is very possible (I've proved it), but takes total commitment, effort and time.

Medication can aid recovery in terms of symptoms, but does not cure BPD. BPD treatments involve talking therapies to help change unhelpful thinking habits. Therapies include DBT, ACT, MBT. I've completed 18 months of MBT - weekly individual and group sessions. It was HARD work. However, totally worth it.

Feel free to join us at Raising Awareness of BPD - Flipping the Script . If you have any questions, ask away.

BPDSurvivor

Hi @TG1108

Welcome to the forums and thank you for sharing with us. I understand your frustration and hope you find the forums to be a safe and informative place.

Rosie93

I am new to this as well ... In the past, I have rung Lifeline, but this is the first time I have joined a forum !

I have Bipolar Mood Disorder - but that is pretty well managed, I think. I am my wife's carer and she has Schizo-Affective disorder but her main struggle is with Type II Diabetes.

There are a lot of myths about Borderline Personality Disorder and I concur with @BPDSurvivor . You can recover, I have met 2 young women this year that have. I think that the self-help industry has perpetuated a lot of the myths and pseudo-psychology books that thrive on a dramatic catchy title to reel you in so you buy the book. I went looking online for a book recently and was confused why I found books that were discussing BPD and NPD together as if it was the same illness.

It wasn't until my 3rd hospitalisations when there were a lot of people on the ward with the condition that I saw a much broader cross section. BPD is an illness in and of itself irregardless of trauma. Compared to other illnesses researchers are now saying if you had to get any mental illness get Borderline, it is more treatable than a lot of others.

Where it is very unfair is the cost of treatment.

I was out of touch with Clinical Psychologists for only 4 years and I was shocked how much it costs now.

DBT can be done through private hospitals as an outpatient but when I was in there the program was 6months and booked out.

I was linked in with a mental health program in my Primary Health Network when I left hospital and my Peer Support Worker at the time told me that my PHN was offering free DBT courses. I asked out of curiosity how many places were funded and if my memory is correct she said 10. I lived in the most densely populated PHN there would have to be somewhere between 1-2 million people in that catchment. Apparently a lot of PHN's don't offer it, it depends what their health focus is. I think there are some that you never hear about unless you know the right person. I thought she said Beyond Blue were also running them...but I am unclear if that is true.

It's a very slow process of recovery but you can recover,

C.

Secondly, some Primary Health Networks offer 'Recovery Colleges' for free if you live in that area. Central and South Eastern Sydney have one, and so does Westerns and South Sydney.....I think other areas do too.

I think it is free for people who have MI and also their carers.

They are run by someone with a mental illness and also someone who does not have one but convenes the classes.

They cover all sorts of topics and it can be a way to dip your toe in with combating social anxiety with a group of people that wont judge you.

C.

@Corny ,

I totally agree with you. BPD is one of the most treatable illnesses because it is one where the individual can take full control of 'changing their story'. It's not the meds which change you, but sheer determination and hard work.

@TG1108 @Luandlil @Canoe @Former-Member

@BPDSurvivor being in hospital for such a long time, and then meeting people in the community really was a big eye opener for me and debunked a lot of myths.

What a lot of people don't want to admit is that stigma, misinformation etc not only comes from society and healthy people that are blissfully ignorant, it also comes from patients.

It is a lot of patients that perpetuate these myths because they are embarrassed that they have a mental illness and they are embarrassed that they are on a psych ward. They latch onto internal narratives that make them feel less of a social outcast.

I also learnt in hospital that group therapy is not for me for this very reason. I can't cope with any tension and start shaking if there are raised voices, death stares of just locking of horns between patients. I think a lot of this comes from patients who have experiences of trauma/neglect and patients that haven't. Some would say in group that they have 'childhood-PTSD' (BPD) and this would completely invalidate the other patients that have BPD with no history of trauma and neglect. Even people with PTSD would say the only reason they are on a psych ward is because 'this and this and then this and then that happened to me'......they would get so defensive if you gentle suggested there were probably a few reasons we were here. I don't think like that at all, there is something physically different and wrong with us. It is a physical illness. Not everyone ends up like us.

BPD is an illness in and of itself just like Bipolar disorder is.

But yeah, the unfairness and inequity is in access and cost of treatment,

Cheers,

Corn dog.