Borderline Personality Disorder??

[peekaboo]

[glow=red,2,300]Does anyone know anything about the Borderline Personality Disorder or have taken any medication for it...I looked it up a few days ago and it sounds alot like what I've been going through I would like to get treated for it and what not but am a little no very shy about talking to a doctor about it..any opinions or advice would be greatly appreciated ;D[/glow]

[HybridMoment]

I really have little credibility when it comes to diagnosing personality disorders, but from what I've ever read about them Borderline would be the one I would least likely associate with a shy person.

People diagnosed with Borderline usually have bad behavior- drinking a lot, using drugs, gambling, shoplifting, promiscuity, threats of suicide. Now you may have these symptoms, or some of the other symptoms associated with it, but it's fairly easy for someone to think they have a disorder just from reading about it when some of the symptoms could fit a lot of people.

If you still are not sure, maybe you could ask someone who knows you and who you trust to see if you fit the descpription to get another point of view before seeing a doctor about it.

[kipper]

One of my closest friends has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Over the 10 years I've known her, she's also been diagnosed as bipolar, obbsessive-compulsive, multiple personanlity, schitzophrenic, etc... This just goes to show you how difficult it is for even professionals to diagnose people's problems. Everybody's mind is different and there is no way to directly get into somebody's else's head and see what's really going on. Two people can have identicle symptoms for compleatly different reasons. And to make it even harder sometimes we hide things from ourselves as much as or even more than we do from other's.

Borderline Personality Disorder can look alot like Multiple Personality Disorder from the outside. As I understand it multiple personality's are caused by extreamly traumatic events in a person's childhood. Getting violently raped, watching a parent die a horrible gory death, serriously fucked up stuff like that. The child's mind cannot in any way cope with what's happened to the point that even the memory can cause them to lose their mind. So the personality splits in order to hide or burry the experience from itself.

I think that Borderline Personality Disorder is developed when a person dwells on a "normal" bad experience (parent dies, bad bullying, etc..) to the point that it becomes traumatic. The person never moves past the sadness, anger, or whatever to the next stages of acceptance. Eventually so much negative emotion is attached to the event that the person forces themself to just "move on" and try not to think about it any more. This sets up a nasty pattern of not dealing with certain emotions that happens over and over and can turn a person's memory's into a minefield.

A person with Multiple Personality's for the most part has no memory of the original event, while a Borderline Personality has the memory but is constantly fighting an inner battle to deny it.

I'm not a psychologist. I could be totally wrong about this stuff. but this is the way I've come to understand it from knowing my friend and from the few times we've talked about it.

[shypsychologyguy]

borderline people seek out security through relationships . They mistake neutral gestures for attraction and develope obsessions. My abnormal psych book refers to it as intense fluctiations in mood , self image and realationships. some of them feel unreal or nonexhistant so relationships help them see that they exhist. for that same reason they sometimes cut their wrists. An extreme example of the disorder is depicted by the movie Fatal Attraction. If you think you have it you need to get help because this is a serious disorder and the sooner you resolve it the less likely other ilnesses and hurt will come.

[shypsychologyguy]

I would like to get treated for it and what not but am a little no very shy about talking to a doctor about it..any opinions or advice would be greatly appreciated ;D[/glow][/color][/quote]

It would be best to talk to a specialist in your case. A genral M.D. can perscribe helpful drugs but without other forms of therapy the drugs will just mask temporaily the disorder. Most MDs. have a limited education in psychology usually a few general psych classes. Its the same for Psychiatrists because they major in pre-med and then have a residency in psychiatry . Psychologists are more specialized and are less likely to perscribe/ recommend drugs .

[anonomie]

I am a therapist and I can tell you that BPD is believed to be caused by a number of things and has a number of theoretical explanations. In my experience with BPD there's USUALLy some big trauma that the person has experienced or some really rocky, dysfunctional family situations that are not always traceable to one specific cause (e.g. not always someone to blame). For instance I had a BPD case some time ago where the client had a drug addict for a mom and a schizophrenic father. Anyway, she likely developed BPD due to problems in how she attached/bonded to her parents. If something disrupts how a person bonds to their parents (primarily mother), then the possibility for a personality disorder like BPD arises. They spend their lives looking for a "parent-like" figures in their lives because they didn't have "good enough" parenting. They never received the message that they were fundamentally good as a human being through nurturing/bonding. Therefore it creates some unconscious, sometimes conscious low self esteem and beliefs that they are not good enough to have healthy relationships or a stable, fulfilling life. Borderline personalities are characterized by drama...this is a KEY factor in their lives. They need the drama and for others to buy into their "victimhood" in order to feel bonded and whole. As soon as someone decides not to play into their drama...they split (usually by erupting in rage, making the other person the enemy, e.g. all or nothing thinking that makes the person all bad or all good).
In addition, borderline personalities have problems controlling their impulses and therefore engage in high risk behavior like unsafe, random sex, etc etc. This is why many BPD's go unidentified...many times their symptoms resemble manic/bipolar depression.
The other belief about why borderline personalities develop is that borderline people raise borderline children. They tend to use other people to meet the neeeds their parents didn't fulfill for them, so the kid(s) they have get used to fulfill these needs. The kid becomes borderline because their borderline mother is unpredictable and will split and be angry and rejecting if they don't do what the mother wants. The kid never learns to be a person in their own right and learns to constantly read people around them for cues of acceptance to avoid the rage their borderline moms would push on them for not making mom happy. This makes the person emotionally empty. An example of this is that I've noticed many borderlines will adopt a pupet-like phrase of, "well, I did X just like Johnny told me to," I did Y just like Tina said..." They're empty, so they have no core sense of self from which TRUE GENUINE opinions develop. This also keeps them from accepting responsibility for their eradic, dangerous, impulsive behavior.
Anyway, there's a lot of REALLY interesting dynamics in the disorder, but I hope some of what I said above makes sense enough that you can see how it's sort of not what your problems are but WHY you have the problems or issues you have. Some people who go through trauma don't develop borderline personality disorder, while others do.
I will agree with one of the above posters and say that you should never self-diagnose and know that diagnoses are not set in stone. In the same way that medical diagnoses can be wrong, so can mental health diagnoses.
Also, I don't know you, but the fact that you're REFLECTING on yourself is not a characteristic borderline trait. Some borderlines can self-reflect better than others, but not in a genuine, heart-felt way and this is because they're so empty inside. You may just be shy and have some depressive tendencies...maybe along the lines of bipolar depression, so as STRICTLY an example I had a client in the past who was shy and somewhat impulsive in some areas. I diagnosed the person with an adjustment disorder (to cover for the shyness), and bipolar depression. So...I give that example to help you see that there's OPTIONS and possibilities. I will STRONGLY encourage you to see a professional on your own, and just ease your anxiety to knwo that YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE FUNDAMENTALLY SCREWED UP TO SEE A PSYCHIATRIST OR THERAPIST...most therapists have seen a counselor at some point in their lives...emotional health is like physical health. You wouldn't go for years with a bleeding arm, you'd do something about it...but it's funny how people get so much more hesitant about emotional health. You can hurt both physically and emotionally and both need to be attended to. All the best to you. ;D

[anonomie]

Oh,
and to answer your question about taking the jump to see a therapist...there's a number of ways to do it, but if I were as worried as you seem to be from your original post...I would simply tell the therapist that I came for X issue or what not and then let them know that you'd be interested in knowing their assessment or diagnosis of you...this is important since some therapists do not diagnose, they only assess, so ask which one the therapist does and then decide which one you really want.
A diagnosis is an established set of criteria describing a disorder (as you discovered with BPD)
an Assessment is a narrative of how the therapist views the set of issues you've presented in relation to both inter and intra psychic variables and can include environmental stressors such as a change in jobs, a divorce, etc., etc. Hope that helps, and I'm so excited for you! Entering a therapeutic relationship can be such an awesome experience! All the best!