Basically I don't think I have BPD, that's not to say I don't display some of the tendencies, but to say that overall I have significant contrary symptoms, depressive and polar episodes, social anxiety, limited interpersonal skills and an almost stoic way of seeing the world. I respond to medication extremely well, everyone, and I do mean everyone, in my life is pleased to meet the new me and happy that I'm here.

My life was practically always a roller coaster, but mostly due to external factors. I was a lonely depressed child with very little confidence, however I was also a smart adaptive child with a great imagination which I used to overcome the loneliness and negativity. My adaptions may have not always been positive ones however they kept me going and alive for decades.

I tried quite hard to fit in, to make a way for myself, failing degree's, offending friends, imploding spectacularly. Losing out on jobs and opportunities. I tried, but it never really came off for me. So I'm a social recluse, who lives on the state and to be frank I've spent 20 years trying and failing and learning how to fail and how to excuse failure. I do not like that part of me, I just have to accept it.

I was hospitalized at 35 and during my stay I was a totally different person. The experience of being taken to hospital by police, the realization that I wasn't free to leave. The ward made me a so careful that I second guessed everything. I was a model patient and being so I didn't express myself and didn't display my symptoms at all. This must have been difficult for the staff, as they were given a broken person and saw a mask, a fake me, a truly artificial self. Every moment I was there I was hiding the fact I planned to die.

The psych in hospital refused to medicate from the first 10 mins of speaking to me. Insisted I didn't have a mental illness and went out of his way to inform all the nursing and support staff of this. He established this using some very faulty reasoning. He drew conclusions from things other people had reported on, and was quite determined from our first meeting that he would be right and I would be wrong. I asked for second opinion, but he obstructed that too. I found him ego driven and self righteous. I was there for 29 days.

I cut my wrist wide open the night before I was discharged, I described the sensation as watching a terrible movie, but it was raining outside and so the movie was better than the rain, then the rain stopped and so I just decided to leave. I broke a beam trying to hang myself within 45 mins of leaving hospital, I'd planned to kill myself all along, but said nothing because I really didn't want to be stopped. In retrospect I was fighting hard to stay alive, or I'd certainly be dead already. I'd spent a month confined to the ward and had gotten nowhere though. Practically backward by most standards because the Psych had convinced all the professionals caring for me that I had a personality disorder and there was no evidence of mental illness. My file states that, everyone believes it, even now.

I've since seen another Psych, but not been in his care, he agreed to a trial of medication for my problems, but declined to say what was being medicated, or to contradict the Psych from the hospital. I researched medications and I'm now on fairly moderate dose of anti depressant, anti anxiety and anti psychotic medications which I chose myself and requested. The Psych for the local team of community nurses, who care for me, prescribes them based on my justifications, over time we increased the doses and I think I'm quite lucky not only that the meds work, but that the first ones i tried worked. Some people can spend years playing with medication. In spite of them working so well I'm still told I have no mental illness, one does wonder who that can be.

I'm in therapy. I find therapy frustrating, but it's definitely useful. The therapist is using the principles behind ACT, Mindfulness and meditation to help me. Living in the now, recognizing the moment, etc. But I'm having a difficulty relating to it and the examples don't really synch with my experiences. I can visualize my thoughts and I can act on the visualizations, and it does allow me to control the impact some of my thoughts, feelings and cognition's have on me. But it's not much different from how I usually regulate myself.

I don't have extreme thoughts, not like people describe, sure I get negatives thoughts, question my self, my sanity, my self worth, etc. I have a very ordered mind, a VERY ordered mind and have had one since a young age. My own Buddhist philosophy and Mediation have over the decades hardened me to my suffering, taught me to live with it and to reason through it.

I think abstractly, not in words per se, but in shapes, colors, even smells. I'm slightly synesthetic. I have no narrative voice, there isn't one voice in my mind that guides me or that I would truly call my own. There are many, although calling them voices would be just plain wrong. I regulate them, use them to resolve problems, grind away at my emotions and often set them against one another, to distill a feeling or a thought or memory to only what's truly important. I call this process reduction. My father is schizophrenic, I reckon I tend toward psychosis too, but somehow I rule my mind, my mind doesn't rule me. When I was young my father was diagnosed and it seriously impacted on my life.

I'm autistic, which confuses matters even more, because ultimately it leaves me seeing a rigid world, and limits my understanding of social and interpersonal graces. I see and hear everything, I'm very sensitive to stimuli. I have always been able to think outside the box, inside the box and without the box all at once. I honestly thought everyone could. I'm told this is somewhat unique to me, the parallelization of cognition at a conscious level, hearing, seeing and knowing many of the thoughts of my mind all at once, being able to focus on just some of them, to squelch out others. I recognize now that this is a gift, but for so long I thought myself broken and cursed by it.

My therapist thinks I have CPTSD from abuse as a child. He's very careful about declaring other diagnosis, or contradicting the hospital Psych and I think he is treating me as if I have a personality disorder, because that is what he has been told to do.

I did ask around about the Hospital psych, he's next in line for his bosses job, he has a bad reputation, isn't spoken of highly by his colleagues and controls and manipulates everyone. I guess I was just unlucky that it was his shift when I was sectioned.

What I would like of you, dear reader, is help resolving the issue of BPD. How do I explain to the professionals in my life what I'm thinking and feeling, how do I help them diagnose and treat me?

Thanks for reading this, I realize it's a wall! I hope I have not triggered anyone.

V.