My First Breakdown

 

When I am depressed, as I am now and have been for the best part of 6 weeks, my mind often turns to Year 8. I was 13 and had my first breakdown. Eight days into my second year of high school, something flicked a switch inside me and I just couldn’t get out of bed. I just couldn’t face that place again. I was off school for 18 months.

 It’s a time that is clouded in shame for me.

When I think about it now as a grown woman with children of her own I feel sad for the 13 year old girl who lay in bed being berated by family members for being so ‘bad’ and ‘disobedient.’

I was so depressed I literally had trouble speaking – something I’d forgotten about until it happened again a few weeks ago. I remember saying ‘no’ and ‘I can’t’ and wondering what the fuck was wrong with me because I had so many thoughts rushing around my mind but I could barely say a word.

I felt hated, I felt faulty.

I was punished extensively for missing school. I adored my newborn cousin so I was cut off from seeing him. I was cut off from seeing extended family. I was banned from watching tv. I was banned from dessert on the rare occasion we were actually having some. I was threatened to be sent away to an institution for bad girls like me. I made my first feeble attempt at suicide. I was told that I had made my aunt cry for the first time in her life.

I was told not to mention my shameful state to the interstate family when we visited. Similarly, I kept the secret from friends at church.

It seems bizarre to me now that I was able to function on Sundays and go act like everything was normal. But I was so ashamed of my inability to go to school that I did anything and everything I could to minimize the badness I was bringing to my family. The guilt and shame were paralyzing.

So I started to clean the house while the rest of my family were at work/school. I’d make dinner for the family. I’d also homeschool myself through correspondence but that only took up 45 minutes in the morning so the rest of the time I’d clean, cook, and then at 2:45pm I’d sit at the front of the house and wait.

My aunt used to drive past at 2:45pm to go pick up my cousin from preschool. She didn’t know I’d sit and wait to watch her drive past. For the 2 seconds I’d see that white station wagon drive past it felt like I wasn’t alone.

I have written about this time before, and I probably will again. I think one’s first breakdown is somewhat formative! Especially when it is met with punishment, isolation, shaming and lasts for over a year. Fuck.

I think I am exploring it again now because I am once again lost in a confusing darkness, but also because I think I am able to feel the sadness of that time now. I can look at the 13 year old girl and feel sad for her – whereas in the past I really only ever felt embarrassed and defensive.

Now as an adult its my job not only to parent my beautiful children, but to 're-parent' myself. I must meet my pain with understanding and compassion especially when no one else will. I talk about it partly to get this past into the sunshine - shame grows in the dark.

And I continue to take it one day at a time. I am not bad. I am not faulty. I am simply in pain. 

Borderlines: The Battle, The Brain and The Bullshit

What does it mean to have a Borderline Personality Disorder? Well, in short, you don’t know who you are, what you are feeling or what the fuck will happen next. Untreated BPD is like being strapped into a rollercoaster of confusing pain, damaging behaviors and intense but unstable relationships.

Yes, it’s quite the treat.

Moods come and go unpredictably, emotions are experienced stronger and longer, and there is a dizzying assortment of suicidal thoughts, crushing feelings of emptiness and an absence of true identity. All these features are mixed and matched in how they present but overall to be Borderline without treatment is to suffer.

 As far as mental illness goes, you won’t get a more maligned or fatal condition. What a combination - belittled, misunderstood and at significant risk of death.  And really the news doesn’t get much better when you look for treatment. Many therapists simply refuse to take Borderline patients.

Why this discrimination is allowed to exist in the medical community is beyond me but stigma is more powerful that scientific facts.

I am shocked by the bullshit we have to put up with in the treatment community and society at large. The internet is a never ending discovery of different ways to misrepresent, misunderstand and insult people with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Borderlines have up  to 10% increased rate of suicide. That’s how much fun it is to ride this train. Nearly 1 in 10 of us would literally prefer to be dead than breathing.

Yet thanks to ignorance’s inbred cousin stigma, accessing treatment is disturbingly difficult.

A significant component to this problem is a virtually worldwide refusal to diagnose BPD due to its maligned reputation. That’s right because of its image problem professionals don’t diagnose BPD.

In what other medical condition would ignorance override a patient being given a diagnosis of their condition? HIV doesn’t have sunshine and roses branding but that doesn’t stop doctors giving out the diagnosis – thank fuck.

Without the diagnosis how do people get treatment? How do people access information, support groups, specialists?

They don’t.

The mental health community is sitting back and allowing people to suffer and die from a treatable condition.

It’s revolting in this modern age of scientific advancement that BPD is still routinely and falsely associated with manipulative, selfish and deceitful behaviour. I recently heard a psychiatrist comment that if a woman has not cheated on her husband, she cannot be Borderline. What the fuck? I don't recall adultery mentioned in the DSM.

Having poor moral character has as much to do with BPD as passive aggression has to do with breast cancer. Yes you’ll find a Borderline who is a nasty, bitter situation and the odd breast cancer patient who is annoyingly passive aggressive but you’ll find character flaws in all everyone.  

These perceptions are based on smelly old stigma. It's not good enough.

Man kind can manage to get rocks from Mars but somehow we haven’t computed the basic fact that mental illness is not caused or correlated to poor character or personal failing.

Silly old facts tells us its genetics plus environment. That’s all we get in life to determine if we slide through life with barely a bruise or if we grapple throughout the years with an arse-tearingly painful mental anguish.

Oh and while we’re on science, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Borderlines are given an amazing sensitivity for interpersonal dynamics. Once we get professional treatment, Borderlines have a unique capacity for reading social and emotional cues and developing the most loving, passionate relationships.

Borderlines are fucking hardcore. Simple being alive and being Borderline is an achievement in itself. We are at the frontlines of mental and emotional pain, yet we are very loving, affectionate people.

Borderlines who are going undiagnosed and uninformed deserve to know and understand their condition and most of all end the unnecessary suffering. 

When it comes to the official diagnostic checkpoints I personally pride myself on meeting all nine criteria. Yep, I have the platinum package of BPD. Only five is required to get the DSM stamp but there is a sense of satisfaction in hitting a home-run and finding a personality disorder that truly feels like home.

My family of origin was an impressive mix of emotional repression, social anxiety, repressed sexuality, Fundamentalist Christianity, physical abuse and neglect. Mix in a mother with narcissistic personality disorder, and I was always going to come out on the other side with scrambled eggs for psyche.

But they were my environmental factors. I wasn't born with a personality disorder. I was born with heightened sensory and emotional sensitivity.

I recognize in my daughter the markers.  She is extremely sensitive, extremely expressive, distressed easily and for longer than our other kids. She is an 'instant Borderline' - just add invalidation and... bam!

Thankfully she's in an environment that supports, protects and validates her feelings. We adore her unique amazing little self.

Modern mental health is failing a group of people who are vulnerable, in pain and needing help. The vast majority of the industry not only fail to provide treatment but they perpetuate baseless stereotypes and denigrate those suffering the disorder.

BPD IS A MEDICAL CONDITION REQUIRING PROFESSIONAL TREATMENT. 
GET THE FACTS OUT THERE AND STOP DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THE MOST PAINFUL AND POTENTIALLY FATAL CONDITION OF MODERN TIMES.

We need to see the end of ignorant bullshit.