Ceke, what have you found most helpful in your journey of healing from BPD? I, like many I think, find this population difficult to treat and deal with, and I'd be curious what YOU found helpful (and yes, I'm aware of the treatment options for cluster B/BPD patients but wanted to hear from a patient themselves).
For me personally I found consistency, stability and appropriate empathy really helped. By that I mean consistency in the way my therapists (I had two, one female psychologist, one male, when my symptoms were still at their most active) responded to me - so unlike growing up with my rather unstable mother, I knew whatever I said or did in session it would elicit a consistent response ~ stability in the way I knew I could rely on them to be there for me when I needed it, but within set boundaries at the same time ~ and appropriate empathy to recognise that when I was engaging in negative thought processes or behaviours I wasn't made to feel like a bad person because of that, it would be bought to my attention, and we'd explore what might be behind it, but again always in a way that put an emphasis on the symptomology not on me as a person (if that makes sense). Also having someone model, quote/unquote, a "normal" range of emotions and interpersonal type behaviours definitely helped a lot as well (and still does).
I think the biggest thing though when dealing with Borderline patients is to try and understand that most of us are not necessarily acting out on purpose just to be pains in the ar%e; it's more that we don't really know any different because of the behaviour that was modelled for us growing up, or the sorts of messages we received in our formative years often being so out of whack. I remember saying in another thread on here a while back that being borderline is kind of like repeatedly hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, because that's the only tool you've been shown how to use, and then wondering why you're walking around with a splitting headache all the time.
Just to give an example based on my own experience with BPD, being able to regulate my emotions (although I am thousand times better at it than I was back in my 20's) is something I do still struggle with from time to time. At my worst I can either appear very cold and disconnected, or I can do a complete 180 and be totally losing my **** and having a screaming meltdown (although thankfully both these scenarios have diminished in frequency, and are continuing to do so, with ongoing work in therapy). Anyway when it comes to regulating emotions the fact is I was never really shown or taught how to actually do that, and what I was shown and taught was completely messed up. Without going into all of the nitty gritty details, growing up I watched my Mother dealing with her emotions by either pitching a total fit at the drop of a hat, threatening to harm herself , exaggerating illnesses (she did a great dying swan routine) or using her go to coping mechanism which was to starve herself for weeks on end and then spend the next few weeks binge eating her way through the fridge and cupboards ~ My Dad, whilst he was a lot more stable than my Mother ever was, tended to deal with his emotions by drinking heavily and compulsively gambling ~ And when it came to me I very quickly learnt that being anything other than a smiling Pollyanna (by daring to show or express basic human emotions such as sadness, disappointment, anger, and so on, for example) more often than not ended up leading to my being on the receiving end of a rather painful and traumatising punishment. So dealing with the expression of emotions for me came to mean you either threw a tantrum, engaged in manipulative and attention seeking behaviour, abused your body, drank (or in my case 'drugged') yourself into a near stupor, or just pretended you had not emotions at all. That's how I behaved, because that's what I was taught, and if (and when) I acted out in therapy it wasn't because I was necessarily trying to be a complete b!tch or that I purposefully wanted to be manipulative, I quite literally just didn't know any other way to be at that time. That's where you need to be able to empathise, whilst still maintaining that sense of consistency and stability and trying to teach or show the patient that there are healthier alternatives to what they were taught in the past.
