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Ambiguity is the greatest threat
In 2009, I attended the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ISSPD) in New York. Dr. Glen Gabbard, MD, a psychiatrist and clinician that treats people with Borderline Personality Disorder (#BPD). About halfway through his presentation, Dr. Gabbard said: “Ambiguity is the greatest threat.” He was speaking in the context of a clinician treating someone with BPD. Many studies have show that people with BPD react to neutral facial expressions as if the person is angry. People with BPD interpret neutral faces as angry. I once saw a woman with BPD view a picture of a neutral face and she said, “He’s angry with me.” Dr. Gabbard was suggesting to…
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Removing stigma of ‘mental illness’
When you hear the word “psychiatric hospital,”what do you think of? Do you think of a place for insane people who pose a danger to themselves and everyone around them? Removing stigma of ‘mental illness’ By Kevin Doerzman, kevin.doerzman@iowastatedaily.com | Posted: Thursday, April 18, 2013 12:00 am When you hear the word “psychiatric hospital,”what do you think of? Do you think of a place for insane people who pose a danger to themselves and everyone around them? I’ve been to one, and it’s anything but that. It’s a place to get the necessary help in time of crisis. When I share that with people I’ve become comfortable with, they get…
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Getting to know you – the essence of supporting someone with BPD
In the documentary “Back from the Edge” Dr. Marsha Linehan (the DBT inventor) says: “you can actually define borderline personality disorder as the ‘I don’t fit in’ disorder.” In the past few days I have been thinking about this concept quite a bit. I believe that this is the core of living with and loving a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The core is for the loved ones to make sense of the other person, based on the borderline’s feelings, thoughts, motivations and beliefs (even if these beliefs are not aligned with the environment). Too many times the loved ones, family members and partners of those with borderline personality disorder,…
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I Want To Kill You Before There Is A Chance That You’ll Break My Heart
I love him enough to want him dead. I’ve never giving my heart to anyone before and wasn’t really intending to do so ever. My plan was to plan the perfect life and live it… I didn’t really know about all the feelings I was ‘supposed’ to have for a partner. When I learned about this feeling and the vulnerability of love, I realize that it’s a dangerous game. I don’t want to play. Bon: Interesting article from a woman with BPD… I Want To Kill You Before There Is A Chance That You’ll Break My Heart (link) Posted August 14th, 2010 at 3:33AM I love him enough to want…
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5th Anniversary of ATSTP List and Some Support for Non-BPDs
Today is the 5th anniversary of the Anything to Stop the Pain support list. After over 50,000 messages and 600+ members, it is still going strong. The ATSTP list is offered for free to non-BPDs. In honor of this momentous occasion, I will clip a response from me to a list member. Any personal details have been removed. The only thing blog readers need to know is that this man’s wife has been diagnosed with BPD and is asking him for a divorce. We also have a couple of recovered borderlines on this list and they are a valuable resource (as is noted here): I believe that there is no…
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Amazing new study on BPD from Science Magazine
Someone forwarded this information to me this morning…. Science, an extraordinarily selective and highly prestigious publication, includes a report, “The Rupture and Repair of Cooperation in Borderline Personality Disorder,” by Brooks King-Casas and five collaborators (including Peter Fonagy) in its August 8th issue. The editors of Science felt this innovative research was of such potential importance that they provided almost two full of Science’s limited pages for a commentary, “Trust Me on This. Borderline personality disorder is associated with abnormal activity in a brain region associated with monitoring trust in relationships,” by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg. The Brooks King-Casas, et al paper in Science is another indicator of innovative, significant research with…
