A BPD Brief, Good Reading

In exploring the various websites on BPD, I found a wonderful resource booklet at the National Education Alliance for BPD's website. You can view the PDF for free here.

"This 20-page pamphlet offers an introductory overview of borderline personality disorder, explaining the DSM criteria, origins, course, self-harm behavior, and current status of treatment. This edition is a revision of the 2001 version of the A BPD Brief. It is the hope of the author and committees that worked on the revision that the pamphlet will be of service to those seeking basic information and treatment providers who need to explain the diagnosis to clients and families."

My First Book Review: The BPD Survival Guide by Chapman, Gratz

As a BPD sufferer, I know it can be daunting to find accurate information on this disorder. The internet and mass media are ripe with misinformation and stigma. Even some very well known books (such as Stop Walking on Eggshells) paint a very negative, and I feel damaging, portrait of what it means to live with Borderline Personality Disorder. I feel it is paramount to anyone's recovery to find accurate and compassionate information on their illness, regardless of diagnosis, be it BPD or breast cancer.

And with such a belief, I began my search for some books that provided just that.

I spent quite a while online looking up various texts and the reader's comments on them, and have selected 3 so far that I felt would be good places to start. I will be reading them all over the course of this month and providing my take and insights into each of them, as well as what I found to be useful, and what I think wasn't so useful.

The first book I read was The Borderline Personality Survival Guide by Chapman & Gratz.

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was just what it says, a guide to BPD. I found it full of accurate, useful information about what the disorder is (and isn't), detailed descriptions of symptoms and short accounts, course of the illness itself, and treatment options and resources. All of this is presented in clear, easy to understand language with compassion and even a little humor. I read this book in two days and have dog-eared, highlighted, and flagged it to death already. I would recommend this to anyone with BPD themselves or a BPD loved one.

However, I would recommend skipping to the second half of the book if you are looking for treatment options, tips and resources, as the first half of the book is dedicated to explaining BPD itself. Some may find this a tad tedious, especially if you're rather well informed about BPD, but for those just starting out and seeking to understand, it is valuable information to have on hand.

My diagnosis: A must have reference for those living with BPD and their loved ones.

I've Decided to Keep On

I had started this blog a while back, but I don't think I was really ready to begin with what keeping this blog would mean and entail. I was still having many difficulties and was very lost as to what I was going to do so far as my recovery. It was like starting a journey without a road map. However, I feel that, even though my map is still a little foggy and incomplete, I'm ready to do this.

Many of you out there are likely in the same place, or have been there in the past. It can be a daunting and confusing place to be in. Perhaps you've just been diagnosed and don't know where to begin, or perhaps you're only beginning to sspect something is wrong. Where ever you're at, I invite you to follow my personal journey through recovery as I document the methods I am working with and my progress, as well as practical tips that I have found useful in my struggles.

I remind you, however, that I am not a professional. I am only someone going through some things that you yourself may be going through as well. I can only share what experience has taught me. I strongly urge you to seek treatment if you have, or suspect you have, any kind of mental illness or other emotional issues. There is help and hope out there.

To Be Aware Is To Be Alive

These words are on a To Do List hanging on my fridge, written in my boyfriend's angular chicken scratch. It's a saying from his work (he works as a chemical dependency counselor at a prison) and he said he thought of me when he'd heard it. I wasn't really sure how I felt about that, or how I really feel about his growing penchant to 'therapy' me. I guess he's only trying to help me the only way he really knows how. I don't think it's him really, I think it's my general distaste for really any form of therapy from anybody.

I get this almost knee-jerk reaction where I want to chock any advice even remotely 'therapy-ish' right into the bullshit pile. Maybe it came from spending my teens getting force fed the kind of advice you find in fortune cookies from doctors who couldn't tell me what was wring with me. Alright, so maybe that sounded a little bitter.

Still, annoyed as it might make me, I keep finding myself reading over that stupid little phrase as I walk past the fridge or get myself a soda.

'To be aware...'

What does that even really mean?

I've rolled it around in my brain since yesterday, when it took up residence on my fridge like some stain I can't get rid of. How can someone not be aware? Well, I guess there's always denial, but I'm not in it....am I? And just what am I supposed to be aware of? My surroundings? Myself?My feelings?

Well, that made any rolling that idea was doing come to a rather screeching halt. My feelings have never been anything I wanted to be aware of. And perhaps that was the crux of it.

I wasn't mad at being advised or 'therapy-ized'. I wasn't upset that my boyfriend felt that I needed to be, because honestly, I know I'm still recovering and struggle with a lot of things. It upset me because I knew the truth in it, and knew that recovery meant being aware and being aware meant feeling things I didn't want to and have never wanted to.

Well shit.

It's not as if I don't want to get over the things I struggle with, and it's not as if I haven't made amazing progress thus far. I suppose sometimes I just get scared of having to face the harder things, the scary things.

I'm still afraid to stop running and really feel it all. I'm angry that I have to go through all this shit to get better. I resent the unfairness of even having these kind of things to deal with. Even now, I'm hating writing out how I actually feel. It's so much easier to be angry than to be hurt. Being angry feels safer, stronger somehow.

Yet, I know in that still rational place that it solves nothing to run away. Running is a way to survive and exist, sure, but feeling...being aware...I guess that really is being alive.

So I Thought About It...

So I was lying awake a couple of nights ago, doing what I suppose anyone does when they lie awake at 3-am. Think. 

And my thoughts wandered to the conversation I had had with my future fiancee, who works as a counselor at a drug recovery center that treats inmates. He's a believer in self-exploration. In writing and expression for healing. Honestly, I agree. I find that in writing the things I am feeling or struggling with, I am better able to handle them, visualize them and conceptualize them, and to find solutions and put the problem away, so to speak. 

And so came the birth of this idea. 

What if I kept a journal regularly? Well, that sounded pretty good, I thought to myself, and yet, I wasn't satisfied somehow. I wasn't sure why really, but as I lie there, letting my thoughts ferment in my mind, I began to feel like I had more to offer with my words and ideas than what they could ever accomplish sitting on a shelf between the bindings of a beat up composition notebook. 

The more I considered it, the more I felt like I wanted to give something, share something, SAY something. 

I wanted to help others like me. 

I'm reminded of two of some of my very favorite quotes. One is from a graduation speech turned song by the name of Everyone's Free To Wear Sunscreen. The quote reads:

"Advice is a form of nostalgia; dispensing it is a way of 
fishing the past 
from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly 
parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth." - Eveyone's Free To Wear Sunscreen, Baz Lurhmann 

Maybe that's some of it. A way to make something out of my life's experiences, to somehow take the ugliness of my past and use it in a way that benefits the world. Or maybe I'm just an idealist.

The other quote comes from a Kimya Dawson song, Loose Lips. If you saw Juno (and who hasn't?) you might remember it.  The quote reads:

"And ask you what you think because your thoughts and words are powerful." -Loose Lips, Kimya Dawson

I truly believe that, and in a round about way I guess that's why I decided to start this blog. 

I can only hope that this blog will do that. Reach someone, touch someone, or maybe just be a guide for myself. Whatever it becomes, I know that this idea is one that will push me and stretch me, but I guess that's the only way we really grow, isn't it?