Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a diagnostic category in the DSM-V and ICD-10/11 that has faced constant criticism from various sectors. Critics argue that the term does more harm than good due to the stigma associated with the label and the way it pathologizes responses to trauma.
Researchers have also questioned the scientific validity of BPD since it shares significant overlap with other diagnostic categories. Many suggest that it is time to retire this label.
In a new article, psychiatrists Roger Mulder and Peter Tyrer present a well-informed case against the scientific validity of BPD and highlight the confusion it causes researchers and the clinical harm it causes service users.
“Twenty years ago, George Vaillant, in a paper titled ‘The Beginning of Wisdom is Never Calling a Patient a Borderline,’ noted that the diagnosis of borderline often reflects the clinician’s emotional state rather than careful assessment,” the authors write. “This was not an isolated opinion, but we argue that little has changed, and borderline, in the context of personality, has now become a detrimental term hindering progress in research and treatment.”
According to the authors, Borderline Personality Disorder emerged as a category during the heyday of psychoanalysis, where it was used to designate cases that fell “on the border” between neurosis and psychosis.
Despite being classified as a personality disorder (PD), the authors argue that the features of BPD do not align with the consensus understanding of other PDs. For instance, “its diagnostic criteria are not enduring personality traits but rather fluctuating symptoms and behaviors.”
They elaborate:
“The triad of unstable mood, erratic relationships, and disturbed behaviour may be readily identifiable but that does not make it a personality disorder; chronic sleep disturbance creates the same symptoms.
A constant and undisputed diagnostic aspect of true personality disturbance is the presence of traits, characteristics reflecting individual function, which are generally stable over time and, when disturbance becomes disorder, are maladaptive. The widely gyrating features of emotional instability do not belong in this paradigm.”
The authors do acknowledge that BPD holds some clinical utility. Its symptoms are easily recognizable in many individuals seeking treatment, common (especially from adolescence onward), and in some cases, it can be reassuring to assign a name to such a complex phenomenon as BPD. However, whether this reassurance benefits the clinician or the individual seeking treatment is a matter of debate.
Interestingly, the authors state that both the DSM and the ICD research committees initially rejected the inclusion of BPD, but the category was ultimately included due to pressure from powerful interest groups. They note, “It is not only Big Pharma that can influence diagnostic practices.”
While BPD may seem sensible when viewed in isolation, problems arise when compared to other disorders. ADHD, bipolar disorder, and other mood disorders share similar symptom profiles, which ultimately confound the diagnostic landscape.
The authors assert that one of the most commonly used justifications for BPD is that it can guide clinicians and individuals seeking treatment toward effective treatment approaches. However, this claim is misleading. Regarding these specific treatments, they state:
“The evidence of their efficacy has been overstated. When the patina of language such as dialectic, mentalization, schema formation, and transference is stripped away, the treatments offered are exactly the same as those offered for general psychological distress and dysfunction, now given an unnecessarily new title, structured clinical management. The methods used to reduce distress are transdiagnostic and apply to all patients.”
They further note that no medications have consistently proven helpful in treating BPD.
The “two largest and best-designed” studies on pharmacological treatment for BPD, involving olanzapine (commonly known as Zyprexa), an antipsychotic, and lamotrigine (commonly known as Lamictal), a mood stabilizer, yielded decisively negative results.
Despite the lack of scientific evidence, “almost all patients with the disorder appear to receive not just one, but many psychotropic drugs for this condition, and several US guidelines continue to recommend drug combinations for the condition.”
Addressing stigma, the authors point out that clinicians are among the “worst offenders” in perpetuating negative stereotypes. They frequently pathologize individuals with this diagnosis, treating them as just “another borderline.” This can lead to inappropriate or even inadequate care, as “emotional instability” is sometimes used as grounds for excluding individuals from treatment.
Such practices can also exacerbate alienation among individuals seeking treatment and contribute to a culture of exclusion for those experiencing symptoms associated with BPD.
Additionally, the authors emphasize that there are numerous reasons why individuals may resist treatment or “distract and annoy the clinician.” Not all of these reasons can, or should, be reduced to pathology.
As alternatives, the authors propose that less severe BPD-like symptoms may benefit from treatments such as less structured group therapy. For individuals with disinhibition and difficulties in social relationships, they recommend highly structured and transparent individual treatment with clear boundaries.
Regarding individuals experiencing identity disturbance and dissociation, they suggest personalized, trauma-focused therapeutic approaches.
Offering distinct treatment options would enable tailoring clinical assistance to each individual rather than continuing to categorize all individuals diagnosed with BPD under one label.
In conclusion, the authors state:
“The diagnosis of borderline, of emotionally unstable, personality disorder is widely and inappropriately used, informs little, creates confusion and uncertainty, and generates tremendous stigma. It has no basis in the scientific study of personality and is used indiscriminately to describe myriad negative interactions in human relationships that have cause far beyond personality function, extending from simple disagreement to total functional breakdown.
Because of its profligate usage and scientific inaccuracy, the management and specific treatment of this group of conditions is severely compromised and has become a major bar to understanding.
Borderline no longer has a place in clinical practice.”
Social researchers often discuss the contextual factors associated with the rise and use of BPD. Psychologist Bethany Morris, previously interviewed for Mad in America, points to the historically misogynistic nature of the disorder, which is overwhelmingly ascribed to women over men—a 75% or 3:1 difference according to one source.
Other research supports the current article, such as the argument that BPD is “really a response to trauma,” that drug treatment is not effective for BPD, and that other forms of treatment, such as psychodynamic therapy, may actually be more effective than what is sometimes considered BPD’s “golden treatment”: Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
Furthermore, researchers have pointed out that cross-culturally, BPD and other PDs are often inappropriately diagnosed, given cultural differences and a general lack of contextual consideration for issues like the effects of colonization and genocide.
Finally, addressing clinical abuse and misdiagnosis, psychiatric survivors have often spoken at length about the harmful effects of being diagnosed with BPD.
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Mulder, R., & Tyrer, P. (2023). Borderline personality disorder: A spurious condition unsupported by science that should be abandoned. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 116(4), 148-150. (Link)
I agree with all of this, but I’d note that a wider lens could be used to make similar arguments about any “disorder” listed in the DSM:
– They are all pathologizing
– The very notion infers that disorders are “things” (nouns) that people “have”, when in fact the evidence is clear (to me anyway) that they are dynamic processes (verbs) that come online as the result of trauma
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“…they are dynamic processes (verbs) that come online as the result of trauma.”
Yes! People are reacting to overwhelming life experiences, not discrete “illnesses” or “disorders”.
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Beware, you’re going to anger all the ex-BFs and ex-GFs who were screwed over by some ex of theirs and now find validation in the fact that their ex-partner was finally “found to have” “Borderline Personality Disorder”.
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I anticipate a flood of them, any minute.
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Whatever happened to seeing individual people and their circumstances and behaviours (and the reasons for it) for what they are than dumping them in the “personality disorder” bin and acting like everyone so labelled is a problem individual rather than the fact that a person ended up with a problem individual and it has nothing do with others so labelled.
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Psychiatry’s “DSM” is what happened.
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And psychiatry is all about “name and blame”.
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So, people diagnosed with BPD are former BFs or GFs of therapitsts?.
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Good article. But why stop at “borderline personality disorder”? The beginning of wisdom would be to dump the entire “DSM”.
The video by Daniel Mackler entitled “Critique of Borderline Personality Disorder by a Former Psychotherapist” scores another bullseye.
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Yes the DSM is worthless and a reflection on the entire profession.
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How does anyone call something based on a book of medicalized gobbledygook a “profession”?
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“Additionally, the authors emphasize that there are numerous reasons why individuals may resist treatment or ‘distract and annoy the clinician.'”
Distract them from what?
This is why this profession of “helpers” will never change. They can’t resist blaming patients for everything. Here the patient is responsible for distracting the clinician from what they’re supposed to focus on…which is the patient. Same old, same old.
I won’t hold my breath for the helping people to come and wipe the borderline label and all the other terrible things they said about me from my medical record so that I could finally get some health care minus the abuse.
Maybe if they want to retire the label they should stop doing studies about how to treat the thing that they made up, the thing that they now write papers on how abusive and unscientific, misogynistic etc. the term is.
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It’s not the client’s responsibility to avoid “distracting and annoying” the clinician. “Resistance” is supposed to be part of the treatment, at least it used to be back when therapists knew what they were doing. If a person is “resisting,” it was supposed to indicate that you’re getting to an issue that needs to be addressed. It’s not a reason to punish the client!
If clients have to act in certain ways to keep the clinician happy, there is no therapy going on. That’s usually what got the client into their problems in the first place!
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In my case, I resisted many things, including but not limited to:
* “Repairing the relationship” and “giving the benefit of the doubt” to an outpatient therapist who had already committed numerous ethical violations and then lied to cover them up.
* Admitting myself to the inpatient ward for what was being described as an “ECT consultation” — after I’d made very clear that I had already undergone ECT, it led me to going from full time employment to being declared permanently disabled, and the psychiatrist had told me, ” You have borderline personality disorder. That’s why the ECT didn’t work.”
* A third thing I resisted was remaining on a high dose of Abilify when I didn’t feel that the abilify was helping me or was needed, as I was not psychotic.
I didn’t know the term akathisia back then, but now I realize that it was also causing me to have akathisia.
* Another thing I resisted was taking three categories of blood pressure meds at high doses when experiencing a hypertensive crisis that I knew had been caused by a trial of parnate, but which the doctors insisted was due to aging. I was also suffering from severe iron-deficiency anemia at the time, and I made several annoying declarations that I needed an iron infusion because I believed my heart was working too hard and that that was raising my blood pressure.
I know that my treatment providers found me highly annoying, willful and non compliant, and the eye rolling and disparaging remarks increased whenever I resisted, but I’m not sure I’d still be around if I’d resisted less than I did.
I agree with commenters who say that the whole DSM should be dumped.
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The whole sham depends on the DSM for its foundation.
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The DSM, (i.e., ‘psychiatry’) is both sham and scam:
SHAM: the DSM is a gimmick used by psychiatry to fool people into accepting ‘diagnosis and treatment’.
SCAM: the DSM is a gimmick used by psychiatry to bill insurance companies for their ‘services’.
Definition for gimmick: a trick or device intended to attract attention or business but has little to no intrinsic value. It is used to make people buy something.
All psychiatric diagnoses are glorified insults, and you don’t help people by insulting them. And it’s clear as day to any sensible person that people react to how others treat them.
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Not to mention, they are based almost 100% on bigotry and social assumptions and have zero foundation in any kind of scientific process. It’s basically rarified name calling.
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Who’s to say “what needs to be addressed” when resistance is often a form of necessary self-preservation?
Anyone who thinks they know what’s best for another is arrogant. And this includes therapists.
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I’m assuming the intent of a good and respectful therapist is to help the person before them to free up energy used to protect themselves from past traumatic experiences so they can use it to create a better life in the future, by their own definition, not the therapist’s. It is true that not everyone is prepared at a given time to go there, and such resistance should be respected as a behavior that meets a need for the client, something DBT seems not to recognize at all.
In any case, what I’m pointing out is that “resistance” (which is a word I would never use) has historically been viewed as an indicator of exactly what you said, that the person is feeling it is necessary to protect him/herself from danger. These mechanisms are developed for very real reasons to protect from very real dangers at the time, and one HOPES that therapy becomes a safe place to identify what these mechanisms are (help the person be conscious of them rather than having them be automatic), and for the CLIENT to re-evaluate for him/herself whether and when such approaches remain necessary. This should leave the client with all necessary defense mechanisms intact and usable, but cut down on the times they are used on a knee-jerk reactive basis when not really needed, such as becoming hostile to the butcher because he wears the same had your dad wore all the time and his voice sounds similar so he must be dangerous like your dad, etc. Gaining personal awareness and decision-making power over such responses should leave a person feeling more in control of his/her life in general. That’s the theory anyway, and it appears to have been very successful for the clients whom I worked with.
So the idea that the CLIENT is supposed to somehow abandon any “resistance” and just go along with what the “therapist” says is very, very damaging to the client. It is reinforcing the idea that they were WRONG for judging the past situation as dangerous, that the “authority figure’s” feelings are more important than the client’s, and that the big problem is not that the authority figure was abusive, but that the client wasn’t “understanding” enough of the needs of the authority figure and should try HARDER to repress and undermine any actions they took to feel safer. This is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I’ve found to be truly helpful, which is validating the client for taking necessary actions for self-protection and admiring their courage in doing so.
One of the very first things I did as a counselor/therapist was to help the client validate that the “crazy” things they tended to do were not crazy at all, but made perfect sense to them at some time in the past. I would share that I’ve found it helpful to look at what DOES make sense about the behavior (AKA to what extend DOES it act to protect them) and validate them for coming up with effective “coping mechanisms” for a difficult situation. Only after getting very clear on that point would I propose to the client the possibility that such mechanisms are often used by all of us humans in situations where they aren’t as helpful as their original intended purpose, and that becoming more aware and intentional about them, or even developing some new ones with our adult intelligence and recognition that in many cases the danger is not current, might be a good path to follow.
That gives maybe just a little feeling of how important it is for me to respect whatever behavior the client has come up with to survive in their world. I always assume that ALL their actions have purpose, and the question is only whether these actions continue to serve the purpose they were intended for in the present. I have never intentionally tried to force a person to drop or dismiss any behavior they feel is important to their safety and survival. I have tried to run only based on their own stated desire to change a certain pattern of behavior, and “resistance” is important in recognizing when the actual reason for the behavior is coming to light. Naturally, a person is entitled to hang onto whatever “resistance” they feel they still need. Therapy should only be in service of meeting their own goals, not mine!
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When you go for counseling, you’re stepping off a dock and into the big huge unknown. You wanted help, you had to trust someone, and the one you met with is as complicated as any other human being. Healing begins with a human bond, which can take years of “talk therapy”. You can dump the DSM and the bond will form more quickly. Counseling/psychotherapy needs to take a long walk back from its present mechanistic dry hole.
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KateL,
I’ll bet being treated disrespectfully by “treatment” providers adds to high blood pressure.
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Here is a very profound quote from an abstract, paper is from 1982 but hardly anything changed in practice. First sentence nailed it.
The concept of “resistance” is probably the most elaborate rationalization that therapists employ to explain their treatment failures. When their efforts are frustrated they frequently postulate the existence of internal forces or make causal assignment to a “frustrator,” thus reducing dissonance at the patient’s expense. Spoken or unspoken, the sentiment is: “It is not my own inadequate assessment or faulty diagnosis, nor the limitations of my theories or methods, but instead the patient’s stubbornness, unwillingness, or inability to cooperate that accounts for his or her lack of progress.” At the outset, we would like to underline our view that “resistance” is generally a function of the limitations of our knowledge and methods and the constraints of our personalities. These are the major factors that create difficulty in dealing successfully with the special therapeutic problems individuals bring to our attention.
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Quite so. It is never the fault of the practitioners – the client or the “disorder” is resisting! So how is success ever to be defined, if you can’t fail except as a result of something they have no control over!
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I have a different take on resistance, admiting I am a couch student of the concept:
Resistance is an expression of disagreement, in the particular case, of disagreement of the explanation provided by the analyst.
As far as I remeber resistance was not mere avoidance to “explore” issues, but “confrontation” to explanation of “why” that avoidance was present. I might be wrong, but I am no pro.
As such, agnostically, it coud mean that the explanation is false, is exagerated, undertoned, correct but not explanatory, correct but offensive/inflamatory, or as in the case of some patient’s of the good old Freud damn right criminal, by the standards of today. And certainly, if not illegal, given the mores of those days at least immoral or peccaminous, sinfull simply said.
So, maybe, there is a “touchy” issue “worth” “exploring”, but, honestly, how is the therapist to know without calling the authorities as in the case of “Dora” by Sigmund Freud?. Or some other of his cases where he didn’t call the authorities to mere “suspicions” of criminality?
Just on resistance and duty to secrecy?.
And what of the now to expire cases of abuse in childhood that therapists on the psychodynamic spectrum, see what I did there?, are explained even to a layperson and ignoramus like me are more appropiately handled by the district attourney instead of the “resistance” concept?.
And is resisting resistance a thing?, as the old, over a century ago concept of recurrence does not show that the barber with no barber to trim his beard shows the whole thing is at least suspect?.
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The use of the term “resistance” these days doesn’t mean the same as Freud’s concept. It just means “didn’t get better with our ‘treatment.'” It’s basically a way to blame the client for the failure of the “treatment.” That’s how I read it.
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Hahaha, it used to mean the inverse of conductivity, I think, I was never really good at physics!.
🙂
So, resistance nowadays is not conducive to positive outcomes!.
Such a return to classical electromagnetism, like a circular current of thoughts and ideas, such a magnetic endeavour.
I am amazed Frankestein still does not exist, even if resistance “is alive!, it’s alive!”.
Sorry, I’m just a simpleton. 🙂
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That graphic is so incredibly demeaning. How do they think this is okay? How would they like it if someone made a graphic of behaviors associated with mental health professionals.
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Good point i believe we need a graphic showing therapist behaivor
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How about one where therapists have their eyes closed and their noses in the air?
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Removed for moderation.
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With a few, or lots dollar signs in the “middle”.
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“One picture is worth a thousand words”. This one tells ten-thousand words.
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A graphic of mental health professionals! Great idea! I hope someone does that soon.
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Even the idea that this topic had to be researched – which costs money – when patients with this hopeless, “trash can”, most stigmatized diagnosis have been saying all of this for decades: more proof that patient/ex-patient/survivor voices don’t rate. When we say it, it’s seen as more pathology, delusion, inappropriate anger, failure to practice acceptance. Psychiatry enables society, society enables psychiatry, and the losers in this game are permanently pushed aside, shunned.
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Every society has its scapegoats.
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IMO, anyone who believes in labeling another person with a “personality disorder” is pretty disordered themselves.
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I wish this were true, but I can’t agree. Whether it is society itself or some higher force that demands the we label certain people and reduce their freedom in the name of treatment, the process seems inevitable. Traditionally we drew the line at real criminal behavior. You can’t let someone who just killed or raped somebody just wander around like a “normal” person.
But we obviously need gross reforms which would include actually effective treatments rendered for as short a time period as possible, with professionals who actually know what they are doing and care about the people they are working with. The fact that this seems like an impossible dream doesn’t mean that we should totally give up on it.
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There’s a difference between subjectively calling out someone’s problematic behavior and committing acts of physical and sexual violence.
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There’s a difference between difficult personality traits and acts of rape or murder. And I don’t believe in letting violent people freely walk the streets.
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After careful consideration, I have reached the conclusion that resistance in therapy can be regarded as a means of addressing childhood trauma, or alternatively, acknowledging its existence. Allow me to provide further explanation. If an individual has endured a childhood marked by violence, neglect, and emotional disregard, it is likely that they will resist engaging in relationships that begin with a deficit, reminiscent of their experiences as a child. In situations where two adults come together for a therapeutic service, and the service provider initiates the session by inquiring about the reasons for seeking therapy, the adult client may express a desire to better understand themselves in the presence of others and gain insight into how their trauma continues to impact their life. From the outset, it is important to recognize that in therapy, both the therapist and the client bring their personal histories and traumas, whether they have been processed or not. Consequently, in order to acknowledge the client’s history, they may resist the power that the therapist holds over them, with power being understood as a form of influence. When the client becomes fatigued by this power imbalance and vocalizes their concerns (following a prolonged period of resistance in which the therapist was unable to impose their will upon the client), the client may choose to terminate therapy, gaining a deeper understanding of the immense difficulty they faced as a child in surviving under the greater power wielded by their parents and the community. It is profoundly distressing to subject the client to the therapist’s dominance, rendering them helpless and susceptible to a severe relapse while under the influence of a paid professional. Such an approach extends beyond mere gaslighting. Instead, the client needs to learn how to address power imbalances in order to regain equilibrium. Unfortunately, therapists often fail to facilitate this process of balance, resulting in the emergence of borderline behaviors and name-calling.
By allowing the resistance and the success of the resistance, is exactly th “as if” for both the therapist and the client. Now as things stand, the therapist is operating “as if” where the client is operating under reality. This may be simplifying but at the end, two adults in a room, and one having power of influence over the other without directly saying so but acting regardless is what causes trauma in the first place in most people.
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This is all very well said!
One approach I sometimes used with traumatized clients is to say, “I am guessing you don’t trust me at this point. I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you. You have no idea who I am or whether I’m a safe person, and distrust is very appropriate in such a situation. I’m hoping I can earn your trust over time.” Or something like that. Acknowledging the “rightness” of them being skeptical seemed to give the clients some sense of getting some power back. It always used to bother me when clients were dinged for “not trusting their therapy team.” I always said, “How do you know they can trust the therapy team?”
I wasn’t very popular with a certain kind of therapist…
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I suffered multiple traumas in childhood and I have NEVER Found any therapist that didn’t JUST want to medicate me and NEVER heal the trauma’s. After 17 year’s of trying to get therapy and T. M. S. I’m of the mindset that no one can Help me. I refuse to take medicine that just keeps me in a dah State and I have to be a functioning adult, I’m not crazy I’m just traumatically hurt and don’t know how to properly react to life stressful situation because I was NEVER taught because of the dysfunctionality and trauma as a child and when I have more traumas as an adult they JUST make me feel worthless and I have no friends and My family don’t know how or what to deal with my lonely depression. I wish I could find a therapist that would help me with learning new behaviors without drugs. I’m Smart enough to get it. Please Tell me where to find the Help I need. 5015297614
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I really wish I could refer you to someone! Have you considered support groups for people traumatized in childhood? It hurts my heart to hear that such therapy, which used to be considered at least one of the main approaches, is virtually unavailable to you now.
I have found people associated with the domestic abuse or sexual abuse worlds to be much more likely to understand about trauma and approach it differently, in an empowering way. Perhaps a local women’s or domestic abuse helpline has a referral for a therapist who understands how to be helpful in these situations? They may also be a source for peer support groups, where you would at least meet others who have been through what you have (including the incredible rigidity and blindness of the so-called “mental health” services) and might have some support and/or ideas for healing? And maybe make a friend or two and feel a bit less lonely?
I’m much more inclined to recommend peer support these days than therapy, as so many therapists (as you report) have become handmaidens of the psych industry. Anyone starting off with diagnosing and recommending drugs should be immediately eliminated from consideration, and in your case, that sounds like everyone!
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Katherine,
You might find listening to some YouTube videos by Daniel Mackler helpful. He’s a former therapist who has a lot to say about healing from childhood trauma through self-therapy.
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But you know, apparently not, that “line” is actually used by scammers even now.
I heard it decades ago from “merolicos”, the folks peddling false, sometimes harmfull remedies in public “plazas” to the populace in Mexico.
You can translate automatically, from my faulty memory:
“Senoras y senores. Damas y damitas, NO tienen ninguna razon for la cual creerme…”
“Ladies and gentleman. Females and little ladies. You have NO reaon to believe me…”
I heard as much from THOSE scammers decades ago as a little kid.
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I wonder why so many people in the psychiatric industry just exect their clients to trust them. That seems very dangerous to me. Very lacking in self and other awareness. What adult just blindly trusts anyone? That seems to be more an issue than not trusting anyone until one knows their true intentions. I have been shown many in the psychiatric field have intentions that in the end serve them much more than the patients/clients they claim to want to help. I appreciate you calling therapists out.
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Nope. Not well said by either of you as neither of you address the central question: Why have a power imbalance if it causes resistance? Purposely re-creating the dynamics of childhood in therapy is not a good reason as peer support well demonstrates. The truth is there’s no good reason, except to enhance the feelings of power experienced by the therapist, which in turn emboldens the therapist to stamp inappropriate diagnoses on vulnerable people unfairly under the influence of the so-called “therapist”. And “borderline personality disorder” is only one example of why the whole therapy schtick needs to go the way of the dinosaur. So, it sounds to me as though you both need to question yourselves to see if perhaps in some unintended ways you may be favoring the therapist’s position, and if so, why.
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I’m not ‘favoring the therapist’s position,” just describing what has to happen for it to work for the client. I fully acknowledge most “therapy relationships” don’t occur in this way and are mostly destructive or at best do nothing helpful.
And “borderline personality disorder” is a DSM diagnosis and has literally nothing to do with therapy, except as providing an excuse for certain kinds of “therapeutic interventions” that ignore the needs of the “client.”
I engaged in therapy that worked very well for me, and I wouldn’t be who I am without having done so. But I was lucky, very lucky. I’d have to be much MORE lucky today to find such a person, as I see most of those claiming to be “therapists” being guided down the wrong path. You yourself have acknowledged in the past that there are exceptions where people do benefit from a therapist, but we both agree it’s rare and in many cases not even possible. I’m not promoting therapy as a profession. I’m just describing what I see as necessary for it to work. Again, I’ve already agreed and acknowledged that most therapists are incapable of this level of awareness, and that one is just as likely to benefit from talking to someone they know who has some good listening skills. Therapy is a setup for most people, because of the inherent power imbalance and most “therapists'” inability to recognize let alone manage their own needs to heal their own power relationships. Alice Miller had it right.
I hope that clarifies where I’m coming from. Definitely not of the “everybody needs therapy” school of thought!
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Thank goodness.
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Why a lot of things have to be a power imbalances?
Can’t just criminality, scamming, ignorance, prejudice, superstition, pseudoscience be enough?
Why use ill defined and hard to instantiate set of words as “power imbalance”, instead of a more clear, more transparent, more usefull word, more easy to pair with the behaviour word as fraud?.
Why peddling an already not explanatory CREED as power imbalance when pseudoscientific is already available?. Greed is not enough?.
Isn’t that obfuscating for the benefit of the harmers?.
Just calling things the old way, clear enough for everyone to see it, enough?.
Will not using “power imbalance” harm more people than using more accurate words?.
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What about getting justice for people who have been wronged? You realise the “therapy system” and getting psychiatrically categorised with ANYTHING simply makes it harder to get that? The victim can then be accused of insanity by the perpetrator.
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The “therapy system” is built to serve and protect the people who run it and work in it. And whistleblowers are seen as “borderlines”.
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It is true, those clinicians who speak up are either dismissed as kooks or attacked. That’s what drove me out of the field, I couldn’t deal with being “behind enemy lines” all the time! Advocacy ended up being much more up my alley. Could use my skills without helping sustain a system that did so much harm!
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People need advocates, not some therapist’s idiot “diagnoses”.
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Steve, I’m at a point in my life where I want to get involved with advocacy towards systemic reforms of mental health care; I have a lot of lived experience, I’ve read a fair amount of research papers, I’ve got a rudimentary understanding of medicine (trained to be a paramedic once upon a time), and I’m a software engineer by trade — i.e. I’m big on conceptually modeling problems and processes to find solutions.
Interacting with NAMI is no bueno. Any thoughts on were I can be useful? I feel like it would help make my symptoms much easier to live with, knowing that I’m working to make life better for somebody like me in the future.
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Well, I worked first for the Long Term Care Ombudsman program, which provides advocacy for seniors in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and adult foster homes/care homes. This is a US program that exists in every state, and while I was a paid employee, most of the Ombudsmen are volunteers. There are plenty of issues with psych drugs in nursing homes, I can tell you!
Then I worked for 20 years for the Court Appointed Special Advocates program (CASA), sometimes known as the Guardian Ad Litem program. This provides volunteers for kids in foster care who advocate to get them to a safe, permanent home as quickly as possible, and for them to be safe in the meanwhile. The number of kids on psych drugs is beyond comprehension, and the longer they are in the worse it gets! So I found plenty of opportunities there to get into the grill of the psych profession, in an effective way.
Mind Freedom, Inc. is also a more or less worldwide association of advocates for those in the “mental health” system, so the advocacy there is more direct.
There are no doubt other organizations I have not mentioned who do advocacy for those in psych “hospitals” or other “mental health” facilities. You’d have to look around where you live and see what’s happening there.
I’m glad to hear you are ready to take that step! It sounds like you certainly KNOW enough to do a great job – the trick is getting through the insane levels of resistance from the people who should know better, especially the psychiatrists themselves! But it’s worth it when you get a victory. I encourage you to go in that direction!
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Can’t help noticing justice went unaddressed, somehow.
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More on “resistance”: too often there’s a big difference between what should happen in “therapy” and what actually does happen in “therapy”. And imo, this is because any adult, confidential relationship that starts off with a nonsensical “power imbalance” and ends with a stigmatizing “diagnosis” is apt to damage the “client” in ways that the client has every right, reason and responsibility to “resist”, something that in my experience most “therapists” refuse to respectfully acknowledge, except with another erroneous “diagnosis”. And none of this qualifies as “therapy”, imho.
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More on “resistance”: Too often there’s a big difference between what should happen in therapy and what actually happens in therapy. And imo, the reason for this is because any confidential relationship between adults that starts off with an erroneous power imbalance and ends with a stigmatizing diagnosis is apt to damage people in ways everyone has every right, reason, and responsibility to resist, something that in my experience most therapists refuse to acknowledge, except with another so-called “diagnosis” or “disorder”.
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Absolutely true. All depends on the therapist backing away from their one-up power relationship, but that still leaves them in the one-up position, because they get to decide if they want to abuse their power or not.
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That’s why I’m no fan of “psychotherapy”. Too much room for abuse.
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That is the huge glitch. And I don’t even think they bother training new therapists/counselors about this any more. It’s all about the DSM. The odds of getting a helpful counselor have dropped dramatically from when I was in counseling back in 1983. Very few are really up to the job, and an incapable therapist can do a HELL of a lot of damage!!!
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i think lately we focused so much on theory and quick theraphy we forgot its human with a human and what matters most is the essence over the techique, i think over philosophy when training the cliniancs (if there is any) is immature and corrupted
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My view is that a person can’t really be trained to be a good therapist. I agree, it has to do with the essence of the relationship between two people, and techniques or schools of therapy are borderline irrelevant. “Diagnosis” via the DSM is completely irrelevant. It’s not a “cookbook” procedure, it has to do with creating a safe space and respecting the right of the client to decide what is “right” or not and how to define and pursue “improvement” in their own worlds. I’m not sure what they train “therapists” to know these days, but I know they spend a lot of time on the DSM and “brain scans” and neurology, and it seems not very much on what actually helps people grow and develop in their own way.
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I couldn’t agree more.
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“All depends on the therapist backing away from their one-up power relationship…”.
Nope, not gonna happen because the one-up power relationship is what (unconsciously) motivates a lot of people to become therapists in the first place…(in my unapologetically not-so-humble opinion).
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It CAN happen and DOES happen in some cases, but the incentive is to use one’s power for one’s own benefit. And you are right, this motivation is almost always unconscious and therefore very difficult to recognize for the therapist, even if it becomes obvious to their “clients.” Which is why I say you can’t really train someone to be a good therapist. They have to develop an acute awareness of power relationships and their own issues with power and be aware of these at all times when interacting with someone they are trying to assist. I’d say very few therapists ever meet this goal, and in fact, unless I’m wrong about what happens today in “training,” most of them aren’t even aware of it as a problem. So going to a random therapist is, indeed, a very dangerous undertaking. As research shows, your odds are just as good choosing a friend or colleague as someone with a degree.
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Thank you for clarifying where you’re coming from. I understand and agree with you fully. And I’m very thankful you regard “diagnosing” as “basically rarified name calling”, which brings me to the following points…
Good things do happen in therapy in some cases, but that hardly makes up for the fact that so many therapists use their power for their benefit, consciously, unconsciously or both. And it’s beyond unfortunate that modern society conditions people to trust strangers just because said stranger has a degree in this, that or the other thing. But we live in a society that conditions people to outsource their problems to “experts”/strangers trained to commercially exploit what most often are someone’s contextually generated problems. So what sense does it make to expose oneself to someone you don’t know beyond their diploma who has the power to permanently stigmatize/”diagnose” you and is legally obligated to do so? The harm this can cause should never be underestimated, especially with something as stigmatizing as the so-called “personality disorders” of whatever flavor, precisely because it’s supposed to be an integral part of the therapy process, which for many turns out to be the most lasting and damaging part of the entire “therapy process”.
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I don’t disagree with anything you said. Except that “diagnoses” are not PART of the “therapy process,” they are the justification for assuming authority over the “clients,” and as such are the opposite of therapeutic. The “diagnoses” are an evil that extends FAR beyond the “treatments” it is used to justify. It starts the process of “othering” and allows people to discriminate and downgrade the “mentally ill” (as they call them) with impunity. If there were no “therapy” at all, the DSM would still be incredibly destructive!
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I’m still confused by this sentence: “…but the incentive is to use one’s power for one’s own benefit.”
Who’s the ‘one’ you’re referring to? Therapist or client? And what does it matter when (most?) “therapy” is constructed to ALWAYS benefit the “therapist”— hence THEIR “diagnoses”.
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I meant the therapist. I have no problem with the client using his/her own power to his/her own benefit.
It matters because it applies to everyone, whether a therapist or not. What you’re saying is most therapists TAKE ADVANTAGE of their one-up power situation. But not all do so, even if it’s tempting. Same is true of humans you meet on the street, though they have less of a natural advantage in the power department, so it’s probably safer. But lots of “regular humans” take every advantage of their power over others and seek to maximize their influence at the expense of the person they are engaged with. It’s not fair to paint ALL therapists with that brush, any more than all humans. There are even psychiatrists here and there who have a heart and understand their power advantage and don’t use it to hurt their clients. Admittedly, not a common experience, but it happens. I had a fantastic therapist who REFUSED to “diagnose” me or interpret anything I said or did, but always put the question back to me. I kind of hated her for it, but it was the right approach, and I was much the better for my 15 months of weekly meetings with her. Worth every penny I spent. So it’s important not to overgeneralize about people we don’t know, just because they have a certain assigned “role” in “the system.” There are and have always been mavericks who do it their own way. I like to think I was one such.
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Thank you for the clarification.
First of all, I know very well there’s lots of “regular humans” who take advantage their power over others and seek to maximize their influence at the expense of the person they are engaged with. And I am NOT saying ALL therapists or psychiatrists take advantage of their clients. What I am saying is this: the “mental health system” is set up in such a way (“power imbalance”, “diagnoses”, exorbitant fees) that incentivizes therapists and psychiatrists TO take advantage of clients AT their most vulnerable, which I believe happens more often than is ever reported. So, in that sense I don’t think I’m overgeneralizing and is why I think it best to err on the side of caution when entering a “therapeutic relationship” because the cards are stacked IN FAVOR OF THE THERAPIST AND NOT THE CLIENT. Simple as that. And the fact that so much luck is required in finding a maverick only supports my viewpoint.
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Can’t disagree with a word of that. The current system makes it as easy as possible to dismiss a client/patent’s concerns, ideas, plans, motivations, etc. and to blame the client for “having the disorder,” and blame “the disorder” for any failure or damage to the client. I think it is much, MUCH harder to find someone today working for the system who is worth seeing than it was back in the 80s when I went. And I was still lucky!
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I’m glad you were lucky. I wish everyone could be. It just bothers me how much “therapy” is lionized these days when it can do so much harm and get away with it.
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I would estimate that 9 out of 10 therapists are either sold out to the system or don’t really know how to be helpful. I was, indeed, very lucky. And this was in the 80s before the DSM III had taken hold. The odds are a lot worse today!
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So glad we can agree on that 🙂
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Isn’t that like requiring for extraordinary human beings to be there when they are needed?. Like mesias…
Instead of the more usefull common way of doing things since the begining of culture?: almost anyone with a pulse will do. 🙂
That’s why we have culture and technique, faulty as it was back then…
Having outliers to do jobs that are to be “applied”, literaly, to almost anyone will not work because in the short term there will be not enough outliers.
And in the long term, there will be not enough people. 🙂
Refining, sophistication, didn’t work for the Mayans, some of them perished because their sophisticated paintings poisoned, literaly, metalically, the well, where ONLY the dominant caste drank water…
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I don’t think mh professionals realize that this having this label doesn’t just open a person up to abuse/discrimination/victim blaming within the system…it opens them up to abuse/discrimination/victim blaming everywhere in society.
Even if a person rejects the label and drops out of treatment (which, conveniently, the treatment providers see as proof that the diagnosis is correct), it’s still on their medical records. Their family and friends may continue to see them through that lens (to the point that everything a person with this label says comes under immediate questioning. If that’s not crazy making, I don’t know what is). Receiving this formal insult from “helping professionals” is, for some, a wound that never heals.
It doesn’t help that we’re constantly subjected to this sort of thing:
“NeverStopRecordingBPD4defense
May 25, 2023 at 12:08 am
Regrettably, it is likely that a lot of the descriptions of absurd and uncharacteristic behavior by therapists in these comments have been filtered by a BPD mind. I have two of them in my life. You can only send the villagers to kill the wolf so many times.”
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It’s sad that everything a mh client says is viewed through a lens of pathology, almost like they’ve committed a crime when all they’re being is human. So, it might be useful to remember your Miranda rights, i.e., “anything you say can and will be used against you” when you happen to be around anyone in the medical field.
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I would say that in case of BPD, everything is explained with it. I guess even rape and being hit by a car is “because BPD” and it is absolutely person’s fault and absolutely never somebody’s else, for example rapist’s or a driver’s. Anything bad done by therapist, like betrayal (trauma)? Of course it can’t be true, it is twisted perception of BPD, bordering psychosis.
Very “sophisticated” gaslighting.
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BPD is a basket diagnosis, it’s the tripitaca of mental disorders not really disorders, but “developmental”, as personality disorders are oppresed on people.
Like schizophrenia for “severe mental illness”, if it doesn’t stay in the first basket, there is another, and then another, and when it doesn’t stay in either, recursion, return to the first now somehow “atypical basket”, a somehow “psychotic” disoder will do. Schizophreniform, schizoaffective, whatever will do, they are ALL related because they fall on a spectrum not otherwise defined, even BPD falls into the “spectrum”. It makes no difference: they are ALL treated with antipsychotics in a “dose” “response” fashion…
If not ADHD, kiddy bipolar, conduct disorder, not antisocial, etc., then, since not labeling, so far, annoys the diagnostician, it must be BPD. Like bipolar for adults, annoyance for the diagnostician is a non-DSM diagnostic criteria that dominates the absence of ALL of them.
So, not an “exclusion” diagnosis, not a biographical symptoms based diagnosis, seriously how could it be?, did Nero really played the lire while Rome burned?. And that has been extensively researched…
More of a: I have no clue, and since I am annoyed and have no clue it must be BPD, for him/her, not for me. I am stable, I am under therapy and/or under psychotropics…
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Borderline Personality Disorder? It sounds like an admission of therapeutic ignorance (well, I know something’s going on, but I’m not really sure what it is).
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“I find them really annoying, so they must be ‘mentally ill.’ Otherwise, it might mean I’m just impatient and judgmental!”
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Impatient? Judgmental? Sounds like “borderline”!
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Ah, the irony! The main reason “professionals” hate “borderlines” so much is that it reminds them of their own failings! I’ve always believed that to be true – EVERYONE can behave in a “borderline” fashion! We just like to pretend it’s someone else and not us!
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Very true. We are quick to judge others for things we don’t like in ourselves. And nothing offends mainstream psych professionals more than threatening their sense of superiority.
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I have a different experience on that:
Some predatory professors of medicine where I did my bachelor in medicine, used indicators of sexual identity “instability” to prey on vulnerable young male adults of a “boyish”, ephebus, appearance for sexual purposes…
And a homophobic professor ranted about it in front of my class of around 30 people!. So, it was not just MY impression. That professor worked, beside THE top university in Mexico, in the second top hospital of the social security hospital in Mexico City…
He ranted for an hour loud and clear about it. He even metioned one of the clica, the guild, of such professors, oddly enough a psychiatrist, died of AIDS complications and might have infected “several” of such, his words, “confused kids”. Literaly he did that, and the professor, the psychiatrist, died of something that could be interpreted in the 90s as AIDS related.
And not only my class knew about it, his compadre, another professor with psychopathic behaviour, knew about his “rant”, he did excuse him for his homophobic remarks after the class, not even a week after it, without me bringing it up.
So, to me, the BPD label, the indicators of “instability”, are used by predatory people for nefarious purposes. I can name names you know…
And there are, or there were at least 30 witnesses of his rant…
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There are problematic people in all facets of life. There are decent individuals, decent individuals who have turned harsh and problematic due to circumstances, malicious individuals who simply are like that naturally, pathological liars and all sorts of people.
We can see each individual for what they are and act accordingly. There is no need of “personality disorders” in “clinical practice” if you want to help out an individual going through problems or even if you want safety from someone who has hurt you.
If you have been wronged by someone, falsely accused of something, use the law, if not possible, use other avenues. Whoever is able to help. Again, the stamping of anyone with a “personality disorder” is not required for any of it.
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“We can see each individual for what they are and act accordingly”
We cannot, some survivors of CSA by church members/institutions have said clearly enough that minors, and I would add even adults, can’t defend themselves, or ourselves, when there is no accoutability and rule of law against people whom the State has almost blind confidence despite all credible testimony and evidence based allegations against them.
The presumptions they, they, can’t do no wrong, they, they know better, and we, we are “sick” is enough to disregard any otherwise credible testimony, even physical evidence to their, their abuse.
So, I disagree, strongly. And I suspect, many survirvors will reasonably agree with me.
And there is a mexican report of sexual abuse in psychiatric institutions against adults, particularly in the state of Puebla. There, oddly enough (!?), are more churches than schools, and more abused psychiatric patients than anywhere else, as far as I understood in Mexico.
Now, how is that coincidence to be explained?.
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“…diagnoses are not PART of the ‘therapy process’, they are the justification for assuming authority over the ‘clients’, and as such are the opposite of therapeutic.”
I understand and agree that “diagnoses” are not part of the therapy process, that “diagnoses” are used to justify assuming authority over “clients” in ways that harm “clients”. What I was trying to say is that doesn’t seem to stop most therapists from letting “diagnoses” dictate the “therapy process”, rather than respecting what a “client” is saying, trying to say, or chooses not to say, i.e., so-called “resistance”. But I deeply appreciate your thoroughly and thoughtfully describing a respectful way of approaching someone who “resists” a therapist’s insensitive probing.
And it’s good knowing you unequivocally acknowledge that “diagnoses” are a lasting evil that sow the seeds of othering, downgrading and discrimination. And imo, no amount of “therapy” can completely undo the damage the “DSM” does singlehandedly, which I think is a deeply disturbing reality.
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Well, that’s certainly true, and that’s why I’m very distrustful of anyone coming out of current “psychology” or “mental health” training. I believe they focus a huge amount of time on DSM diagnoses and very little on actual ways to improve one’s own awareness and emotional availability to the clients, or actually helping to discover and evaluate what the CLIENT thinks is helpful and desirable. It’s very arrogant and disempowering, the opposite of what is actually helpful!
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It has some good people, but the practice is so repulsive I think one has to be “disordered” to like working in it.
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Being a good person in a destructive system still contributes to supporting the destructive system. That’s why I’m not a counselor any more!
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Thank you for saying that being a good person in a destructive system still contributes to supporting the destructive system, because sometimes I wonder if calling out the “therapy system” is helpful if someone doesn’t know there are other ways to help themselves.
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That is and was my impression of the whole mental field.
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I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, not by my psychiatrist, but by my therapist. Someone who was paid (by my insurance) to talk to me and give me counsel.
I acted on the so-called BPD symptoms (the “splitting” or ‘black and white’ thinking, the emotional outbursts) because I was convinced that I lacked perspective and self-control. That there was a sickness in my brain.
Living in New York like I do is enough to drive anyone crazy, especially when you come from a rough environment and have ambitions to be much more than what your GENES (ethnicity, phenotype, heredity and blood relations) and your MEMES (religion, language, cultural background) tell you you are or should be.
The psychiatrist that I did have prescribed me Topamax, which is an anti-epileptic that is being marketed as an antipsychotic. For people who are photosensitive and prone to seizures Topamax works to mitigate the brain’s reaction to visual stimuli like strobe lights and flashing colors. Imagine what this pill could do to a person who is relatively healthy but is forced to take it everyday.
In my psychiatrist’s words this medication was supposed to “mentally slow” me, which it did. I became more agitated, had trouble articulating, processing information, and forming complex thoughts and problem solving. It cost me a union job because I couldn’t think clearly. All of this so that I could be “cured” of BPD.
My greatest therapy has been time and my desire to improve physically (I have weaned off most animal products), emotionally (I have had to disown every relative except my mother), and financially (I stopped letting petty workplace nonsense get in the way of me earning a living).
Imagine getting blamed for having a personality disorder when the so-called normal people you come across, including your flesh and blood, have nothing on their minds but making their coin (whichever way they can, like street dealers, small business tyrants, and psych charlatans do), preaching about their skydaddies, and talking about what insipid program they saw on television last night. Completely absorbed in delusions and their own self-interests.
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Rich,
Congratulations for identifying and removing the people and things in your life that give you grief, which is the best therapy of all, imo. And there’s clearly not a damn thing “disordered” about you. In fact, your miles ahead of most people.
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“I acted on the so-called BPD symptoms (the “splitting” or ‘black and white’ thinking, the emotional outbursts) because I was convinced that I lacked perspective and self-control. That there was a sickness in my brain.”
Rich,
I did the same thing. The power of suggestion, coming from someone who society considers an authority/expert, plus the addition of prescribed drugs that make it harder to think straight, is hard to overcome. I would bet this happens to a lot of people. (I also started telling everyone I met that I had BPD and explaining to them what it was if they had never heard of it before. I felt it was my responsibility to warn people about me).
I really relate to everything you’ve said here. Glad you got away before they could do more damage.
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Anyone who meets you is lucky, KateL.
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Thank you, Birdsong 🙂
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You’re most welcome, KateL.
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You’re most welcome, KateL 🙂
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There’s a difference between black and white thinking and following your gut. But from my experience a lot of therapists can’t distinguish between the two, which is strange since they preach so much nuance.
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Dogworld says, “…but at the end, two adults in a room, and one having power of influence over the other without directly saying so but acting regardless is what causes trauma in the first place in most people.”
Undoubtedly. And I think this also explains how therapy for the most part is actually something most therapists use to unconsciously act out their repetition compulsions on vulnerable people, aka “clients”, which is great for therapists, but not for clients, because at the end, clients are the only ones labeled/diagnosed/stigmatized/traumatized, and on top of that expected to pay a fee which is borderline crazy if you ask me.
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Agree. Your comment describes why I was against therapy for my struggle. Why pay someone to add to the issues and emotions you’re already struggling with? For me resistance wasn’t about someone getting to an issue I needed to deal with but didn’t want to. It was about a therapist or someone imposing their views and giving advise when they really don’t understand the problem I was struggling with. Often the advise and what the “client” is pressured to do, is bad advise. When you try to assist but don’t understand, you’re are just guessing at what would be helpful. You’re going to guess wrong. You’re going to bring your own unresolved issues to therapy. The lack of understanding of how life experiences impacts an individual means that psychiatry looks at every problem in mood, thought, and behavior as dysfunction or disease. I don’t see any progress in the MH field until that changes.
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I always came from the belief that any advice or evaluation of what the client ought to do or ought to have done is counter to any effort to help. It’s nobody else’s job to tell the client what to think about their situation or what to do about it. Of course, I understand that most therapists these days don’t seem to hold that view. More’s the pity.
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Christine,
You beautifully state what I’ve been trying to say about “therapy” and “resistance” to “therapy” for a long time, which is that most therapists and psychiatrists (imo) don’t know what they’re doing because most (imo) unconsciously bring their own unresolved issues to “therapy” — which makes them no different than most people — and also explains why I’ve always wondered about people who (most of the time) believe in name-calling for a living…
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Agree, The mental health field overhypes their treatments and knowledge. Psychotherapy amounts to a particular person, with a particular perspective, based on their own baggage, evaluating your struggle. The therapist says I know what I’m doing trust me which should be false advertising. Unfortunately people are pressured or even court ordered to accept treatments that are often harming them. I consider myself lucky that I was able to avoid that.
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In my experience, talking with people who have nothing to gain monetarily (i.e., “professionally”) are not only more trustworthy, but actually know what they’re talking about!
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Steve, Obviously there are a lot of different opinions about how therapy should be done. My point is that the treatment is largely ineffective because the treatment is preceding an understanding of the problem. The results is a lot of harmful treatments. I believe psychological problem could be understood but the field isn’t putting their focus in the right area. They don’t make use of or take seriously information that can be provided by people experiencing or have experienced a serious psychological problem. I recently saw a film on some women who recovered from schizophrenia. They provided insight on the condition and how they healed. I’ve seen a film on a women with DID who provided important information on how her condition developed. Psychiatry needs to see the commonality across people with these conditions. It needs to look at what causes the conditions, what aggravates or heals them, because there is considerable commonality. There can be unique characteristics to each psychological problem and still be a universal reason why they develop. But psychiatry thinks it can figure it out by studying neurons.
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I agree 100%! I always counted on my clients alone to provide whatever useful information was in play. THEY are the only ones who really know what’s going on or what might help! But that’s the opposite of the mainstream view. The DSM itself admits it doesn’t even bother to attempt to evaluate cause. What’s the point of a “diagnosis” that doesn’t try to identify what the actual problem is!
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I don’t mean on individual therapy although of course one should listen in individual therapy. I mean for the field of psychology to increase its knowledge overall on what circumstances cause psychological trauma, it’s impact and what support is needed for someone to heal. Not only isn’t there enough effort to understand how serious psychological problems can develop under normal function. By “normal function” I mean there isn’t an abnormality in genetics, biology or reaction. But it seems like there’s a push back against studying it from that angle. Psychiatry is very invested in theories of biology, genetics or dysfunction. In every thing I read, there is a statement, that psychological problems are in part genetic, biological and predisposed in certain individuals, sometimes initiated by trauma. Trauma alone will not cause one. Psychiatry will say what trauma is and if what you experienced doesn’t fit our category, you have a mental illness unrelated to trauma. Psychiatry hasn’t proven that serious psychological problems always have a genetic, biological basis leading to some people being predispose. So why is this view always stated as fact.
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That view is always stated as fact because psychiatry believes its own lies. And lies are all it has going for it because psychiatry has yet to prove its own “facts”.
The fact is trauma means different things to different people and is experienced differently in different people for any number of reasons/facts. It’s sort of like humor: some people have a funny bone, and some people don’t. But I wouldn’t call those who don’t have a funny bone “mentally ill”.
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Some people are born more sensitive (“reactive”) than others. And unfortunately, psychiatry sees it as “illness”.
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@Christine Burnett,
Could you kindly provide the title of the film in which a woman experiences recovery from schizophrenia? I am genuinely interested in further exploring this condition.
I would like to share a captivating article pertaining to this subject. The article discusses the condition and highlights the intriguing aspect of a patient who, despite lacking any prior knowledge or training in quantum physics, has made notable claims in the field. The patient provides visual representations and formulas, although they are not a trained physicist. The article presents information about the patient that exhibits a condescending tone towards their personhood and complete utter dismissal of how could a person like this could think like that to support “grandiosity” diagnosis. My curiosity led me to search for the formula online to assess its accuracy, which yielded an interesting finding. Remarkably, the patient’s assertions were nearly similar. Although I am not an expert in this field, I cannot verify the complete accuracy of the claims; however, I find it intriguing that an untrained individual would make similar claims to what is already known even to draw exactly what they are saying. It is worth noting that one could argue the patient simply looked up and memorized the information, but that would contradict the characteristics of schizophrenia. Additionally, the article mentions that the patient has an IQ of 86 and is extremely “non-functioning”. Overall, this article presents a fascinating read for anyone interested in the subject.
Here is the link:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3013287/
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I don’t know if psychiatrists wrote everything correctly as the person said, but fission is meaningless.
This is not quantum physics, it is nuclear physics at very basic (highs school) level, but without any math.
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My head is spinning.
Somehow the journal article is amazingly based and also totally oblivious. It goes hard critiquing the usage of BPD as a diagnosis, and the associated experiences of patients and behaviors of providers. It calls out the fact that the providers are the greatest source of stigma — something I’ve been saying for years to anyone who would listen.
But somehow the article gives the impression that the issue is localized to just this one diagnosis, and that none of the dynamics they’ve described can be generalized to other people receiving mental health services.
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Most psychic distress and/or negative behavior comes from unrecognized feelings of overwhelm, i.e. “trauma”.
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The subject of this article is the borderline personality diagnosis. There are other articles and personal histories that address the stigma of other diagnoses or of any mental illness diagnosis or interaction with the mental health care system.
The borderline diagnosis carries way more stigma than almost any other diagnosis and leads to more extreme abuse in certain settings. Perhaps this is why the authors singled it out in this article.
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True, it particularizes the whole field without explictly aknowledging the WHOLE field sufers the same problems.
And that might sound dishnoest, and therefore demerits the claims made by the article at least on account of intellectual dishonesty, at least as reviewed in this MIA article.
And somewhat true that BPD is the most egregious example, the epitome, of the mental field cackomamie.
BPD is the queen of the nonsense of the non-“brain” based mental disorders, but of personality based fakery diagnoses…
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Now doctors — including psychiatrists — are claiming something called moral injury, and the New York Times is taking it seriously. Because they hurt too many patients? Ruined too many lives? Now they want sympathy.
I barely survived what I went through in the mental health system and no doctor of any specialty helped me to survive the incredible physical challenges I was left with because of psychiatric drugging. Instead, they just piled on and chalked it up to my so-called mental illness. They get none of my sympathy. As it is my life expectancy is much lower than it would have been had I never encountered any of these people.
The Moral Crisis of America’s Doctors
The Moral Crisis of America’s Doctors https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/magazine/doctors-moral-crises.html?unlocked_article_code=9gPVznz9B0A1yFS9FMsEkZtN8qwcRiAlufPRhmpW4Wv1WSWsphzXtP9BXjoYQ0nbhrjMI1Flh5IvthGhmh8A0uLGuNoTsUO4bs0kvrBfvnCpBHv-tgLI1l7vqr5X5UOQmWBN0OAqLkisxQDqYTIIjaN86P4qgYHQ4tJrPDrdkVL_A338KqzmxgKYcEaSZ_7aPSX3iD07qfTEc7HgsCGvBFtVihFCvl-MM8rM_5AVsSdQ9kqaSwe44_LmIVnOUkG131OHW6oQFdT6ksUtXun5V52RBBHo1HFflF4i_BgXq2eNeR3pXkdBUtH2yuHJpS9Tbu3WdzMrc7oYtsMl8t6b&smid=nytcore-android-share
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Wait, now the PSYCHIATRISTS are claiming “moral injury?” I suppose it DOES inflict “moral injury” of some sort if you’re constantly claiming to help people and yet so often make no improvements or make their lives agonizingly worse? Perhaps it’s time for a “Truth and reconciliation” circle as they ran in South Africa to help heal the “moral injuries” of the Apartheid regime? Do they expect us to feel sorry for them that their failures don’t feel very good to them???
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Steve,
Yes, I think they want sympathy (the article was about all doctors), but they want it from the general public, the media, and the people who are as rich and important as they are, or more rich and important than they are.
As far as the people on the bottom rungs — the people who have been most injured by the health care system (the poor, the disabled or otherwise marginalized, the iatrogenically harmed, the ones they dubbed “mentally ill”) — I think they want those people to die or just remain silent and invisible. We are to accept all of the blame and to understand what a huge burden and disappointment we’ve always been. This comment summed it up:
“Doctor here. Corporate medicine is bad yes. But unfortunately a huge source of moral injury are our own patients.
Patients often treat their bodies poorly and blame the doctors that they won’t listen to.
Want every test ordered and blame the doctor
for the bill. Then they come to NYT and write the comments you see here. Just think, would you want your loved one to face the people writing comments here?”
So far, that comment has 26 up votes.
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That does kind of sum it up. That kind of thinking is even more destructive in psychiatry, because blaming the victim is the most overtly damaging thing you can do to a traumatized person.
If this guy hates and resents his own patients so badly, he needs to find another profession!
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Saddly no, this “abstract” practitioner would be in the field that uses, needs the practitioner more.
It would be like arguing that chicken is not the prefered meat, on account of some intanglible that makes it “bad”. Pork might be in China, but everywhere else, I think it is chicken.
The market has spoken and practitioners are in the field because their peers and the whole of society as an aggregate wants them to be there.
To harm, eventually, for everyone else. Just like chicken…
They are not that smart enough to evade the whole of society if it were to see the perniciousness of their “work”. And since society can see and probably “cares”, I can only conclude society wants them there.
They are no accident, no “special” and certainly not smart, they are usefull for society’s goals. Just like chicken…
As police abusers, crooked politicians, etc., counterintuitively they serve a purpose valued by society, against it’s own legitimate, long terms interests. Like chickens…
Society is not smart, indivuals are, but society is not: we keep putting people in positions of power and authority that we would not put in charge of taking care of our chickens.
And they are not even foxes, foxes are smart, they are cunning and can survive only on… mice… even in the tundra. They need no society to exploit society itlself!. They can live on the outskirts and be photographed on Downing street often enough…
They can’t aspire to that if society didn’t cover them in chickens cloaks… the practitioners that is, foxes and chickens can live on their own with little conflict outside society, oddly enough.
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I listened to the NYT article. It complained about the privatization of medical care and says doctor are not able to provide the care they want to because of profit requirements. The “moral injury” is about not being able to do what the physician feel they should morally do. The suit is about stopping profit over care. Actually, I do feel all the push towards for profit agencies providing care does lead to worse care. Money is made through less staff and treating patients in ways that provide the most profit.
Psychiatry has another problem. They haven’t figure out what they are treating.
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Hahaha!!! So true! But they have NO problem making up imaginary “diagnoses”!
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The article makes doctors sound like the ultimate victims. They should try being a patient with life-threatening injuries caused by psychiatric drugs, being laughed at by all the doctors around. I have no sympathy. Yeah, they might be stressed — they sure know how to take it out on people beneath them who have even less power, who have zero power.
And then their friends, the psychiatrists, diagnose them with moral injury while everyone beneath them having an identical reaction to modern society gets diagnosed as mentally ill.
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I agree. It’s worst for someone with a life-threatening injury to be treated badly than the stress a workers experiences. Nevertheless such emphasis on profit adds to the problem.
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I have the suspicion some practitioners actually end their lives short because they know, from experience, not from their rhetoric, that what follows after their “treatment resistant depression”, moral injury, whatever is either and lobotomy or ECT.
And they know, they would end up disabled.
And therefore, better to leave now willingly, than end up like many of their victims: homeless, disabled or permantly institutionalized.
Not shame or guilt, or admittance of failure, but fear of what should come next, according to their rhetoric.
But, when a practitioner ends it’s life short, it’s moral injury, the too heavy too high responsability job, not enough support…
But when it’s one of their victims, it’s genetic, it’s biological, it’s a chemical imbalance, it’s lack of insight, “if only he or she would be compliant”.
Duolingo, for them it’s tragic and understandable, for us, we are deffective. “If only they could realize how cool is this side of normality”. “If only they took their pills as prescribed and pay their dues…”
And they, I suspect, know better: that’s why they jump the ship to excuses and justifications of THEIR peers.
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Good observation, KateL.
Definition for Moral Injury: psychological and spiritual harm that occurs when one’s core values are violated or betrayed
Psychiatric diagnoses cause moral injury, all 265 (and counting) of them.
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“..its diagnostic criteria are not enduring personality traits but rather fluctuating symptoms and behaviors.”
I have always believed this was true. A close friend of mine began the process of seeking help for her ongoing mental health issues. She was hospitalized twice & needed continuous therapy after being released.
A local clinic submitted her the series of “personality” questions. I can’t remember the name of the questionnaire but it contains around 500 questions.
The clinic brought her back in to review results from the questionnaire. Their diagnosis was Borderline Personality Disorder. Then, they sent her on her way. She was told if she had depression, anxiety disorder, or bipolar disorder she would of been able to receive treatment.
I remember like it was yesterday how devastating it was that they basically said “sorry” & “Next!”
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And probably, if after sometime they re-applied the test, your close friend would have come either normal, bipolar, depressed or anxious.
Those diagnoses have the instability of BPD…
As far as I remember and understand personality tests, ALL of them, are as stable as BPD is imputed to be.
Like horoscope personality descriptions and predictions.
One way, to me, to infer that, is that it is always the same test, the same questions, that could be remembered, even if years or months ago.
One cannot take a personality test that is not somehow rememberable, even if rephrased…
And as surveys research shows people like above many things to be consistent. Even if proven wrong: there are “cognitive science”, uggh, explanations that show that empirically.
And people, humans, love and crave and fall pray to “priming”, answering almost ALLWAYS A in first question, B in second, etc., just because they answered that the first time around. No one likes to look “crazy” unstable…
And as a psychopathic colleague of mine joked to me: “you wouldn’t answer you LIKED to torture little animals when you were a kid, would you?”. What gave him the permission to ask me that?, I was his boss…
And he had psychopathic behaviours: he caused misery to another human by lying to him in front of me that lasted years, years, just from a single lie when his victims was looking for career advice.
How did he graduate not only from med school, but as an specialist?. Easy: he was the son of a prominent specialist in his field of specialization…
And, to my disbelief, since I was the reputed “decent, honest” “leader”, I was the fellow at fault for the lies of my psychopatic colleage!. The victim, a foreigner, was more acrimonious to me than to him!.
So those tests are not only fakeable despite their “control” questions, they have no relationship to anything real called “personality”, they are easy prey to common human empirically proven biases that because they lack scientific explanation, in full honesty, experimentally, cannot be controlled for.
So, they are pseudoscientic. No matter how many fancy empirical explantions are put forth to their replicabilty and consistency over time in a single individual or in populations, assuming, there is STILL no scientific model to explain why they should be that way.
Like astrology: no explanation why it should work. And despite all empirical evidence against both astrology and personality testing, because people profit from peddling, they are used against the unwary.
Sorry…
Aware I argued for personality testing consistency, but, empirically, as far as I remeber, practically one day it coul be BPD, another normal, bipolar, depressed or anxious, etc.
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In OPINIONS OF PERSONALITY DISORDER EXPERTS REGARDING THE DSM-IV PERSONALITY DISORDERS CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM Journal of Personality Disorders, 21(5), 536–551, 2007; of 537 experts, only 31.3% wanted the term, “Borderline Personality Disorder,” retained in the DSM-V. However just few weeks prior to the final vote of the APA approval of DSM-5, the Board ot Trustees decided to retain all the traditional and poorly validated PD’s unaltered and relegate the new section on the highly research Personality Traits to the back of the book (bus) as an “Alternative Model”.
Additionally, Mood Temperaments such as the historical and clinically validated Cyclothymia would assume higher position in a diagnostic hierarchy before personality disorders or ADHD are considered. See: Cyclothymia, the Quintessential Mood Temperament: Ignored or Forgotten? Part III: Differentiating Cyclothymia and BPD and Treatment Considerations. in Psychiatrtic Times. H. Yost
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How about a “personality disorder” for the people who think up “personality disorders”?
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Well Birdsong, there is one, and it’s called Déformation Professionnelle. Essentially, any occupational training imparts both a sense and mastery and a certain obliviousness to what that mastery cost-namely other ways of perceiving the world. Dewey referred to this professional deformation as “occupational psychosis”, and Thorstein Veblen as “trained incapacity” (my personal favorites of many like monikers). When I read comments like Hunter Yost or Michael J Scott, et al (as opposed to the comments from the 10 mental health professionals in Daniela Sieff’s remarkable book, “Understanding and Healing Emotional Trauma”) or read the inexhaustible personal accounts of the incomprehensible care and treatment depicted here on MIA (my thoughts now revolving around Donna Carolyn Roy) and elsewhere, I recognize the particular and salient trained incapacity and occupational psychosis of the “mental health professional”, as fulfilling its institutional obligations…
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Thank you so much Kevin. It’s good knowing there’s actually a way to describe the insanity within the “mental health” profession. And thank you for mentioning “Understanding and Healing Emotional Trauma” by Daniela Sieff. It sounds like a fascinating book!
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Your most welcome Birdsong! You can find this book in an online PDF! This book is, IMO, one of the most generous and comprehensive books on human development and trauma as I’ve ever read-and I’ve read a few!
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“…other ways of perceiving the world…”
Love how that sounds. Too bad so many psych pros get caught up in diagnoses, though. But occupational psychosis and trained incapacity tell the whole story.
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That’s such a beautifull description. I can’t disagree, honestly.
But it leaves out the explanation of why that psychosis, incapacity or deformation is not a formal diagnosis.
Clearly, the institutional obligation of scientific bodies is to recognize evidence, proof and research without much prejudice. Even if it takes decades to do so…
So, certainly, institutional capture, ironically, can’t explain why the NIMH or the APA has not recognized Veblen’s research that’s close to 100yrs old?, when it touches, budges or overturns, even now, their “state of the art”.
So, are institutions psychotic, deformed or unable?.
Why physics, chemistry and biology are not?.
Even string theory lasted “only” close to thirty years.
Certainly physicists, chemists, biologists, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists should, accordingly to the underlinings of psychosis, incapacity or deformation, behave “identically”, ceteris paribus?.
Or is it that people already with psychosis, incapacity or deformation, as per your rhetoric, extending the line, the argument, to prove or disprove, join fields that are precisely riddled with psychosis, incapacity or deformation, and therefore are, and were, unable or unwilling to become real “pinocchios”?.
Instead of whatever they are, not pejoratatively, but argumentatively.
So, maybe, they were always like that, just, no one would admit it thus…
Might not be the training, but the wood, like Pinochio. Only a miracle would have turned that into the human flesh of a physicist, a chemist or a biologist.
Let alone a Mathematician.
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So, Einstein, Heinseberg, Bohr, Cantor, Gauss, Godel, Pauling, Feynman, etc., euphemistically reincarnated into Lieberman, Frances, Montcrieff, or god forbids Vallejo, Ewen Cameron, Sargant or Hare?.
Or were those two, dicotomous mutually exclusive categories born from different wood?. And therefore one set choose science and the other, well, harmfull pseudoscience?.
They somehow split into Kaku, Penrose, Hawking, Gilbert Strang, Susskind, Weinberg vs, well, the contributors to the DSM?.
Like a single seed gave a bad fruit and a really good one just because psychosis, incapacity or deformation is part of “Higher” education?.
Like the fruit of the Claudiuses in Graves’ novel?.
Lets get “cereal”…
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Too bad patients don’t get a vote. My vote would be cast for “BPD isn’t real”.
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When I experienced depression during the pandemic I was unable to see my regular psychiatric NP because she closed her office. My PCP did not feel comfortable stepping in and prescribing in her place. So I went to a local University hospital ER to ask for a prescription for an antidepressant or access to a doctor who could do that for me. I told them I was not suicidal, not a danger to myself or others. But the longer I waited in the ER with the danger of COVID lurking everywhere, the angrier I got. I knew they could at least take me to one of the ER “booths” like they were doing for other patients. After 11 hours they took my cell phone and shoe laces and belt and stuck me in a small room with a huge male nurse to “guard” me. They said they were going to put me in the psychiatric ward. I complained to anyone who would listen that my family needed to be notified. I needed my phone to call them, or access to a hospital phone, and finally said I would call the police and say it was tantamount to kidnapping to hold me against my will. Because I had already said I was no danger to myself or others. They said if I called the police they would have the police section me and hold me there against my will. Yet there I sat for another 2 hours. Still no phone. They transferred me to the psychiatric unit and I asked for release AMA (against medical advice) and was told to sit still until the next day. They kept a camera trained on me, which was further harassment. No one would listen. The next day a young doctor and assistant asked me basic questions about my depression and talked to me about my history for no more than 15 minutes, whereupon they discharged me to go home. They refused to prescribe an antidepressant unless I agreed to stay in the unit for a week for observation. I left without it. The next day, I looked at my online health portal and they had diagnosed me with Borderline Personality Disorder. WHAT? Talking with me a few minutes, hearing my controlled anger (no cursing, nothing untoward) about being kept there they had decided that was enough to qualify me for the BPD diagnosis. Now that is on my permanent record. The cost for this less than 24-hr hospital visit was $10,000.
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Many doctors and therapists automatically use the “borderline” label for people who refuse to follow their orders in order to protect themselves from lawsuits since that label has so many negative connotations that discredit the “patient”.
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I’m so sorry you were treated this way. How awful. What happened to you is a textbook case of how the “health care system” (I can’t believe we still call it that) penalizes and punishes patients for having health needs. Sometimes (often?) the borderline diagnosis is nothing more than a way to anyone who points at the huge flaws in the system. They are masters at blame shifting.
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Maybe saying, perhaps spontaneously, you were not “suicidal” and not a danger to others or yourself in their eyes told them you were a “recurrent” psychiatric patient that perhaps was resistant to therapy?.
And that, without further alternative diagnosis, in their mind, made the diagnosis of BPD almost certain?. Despicably so in my mind.
But it reminds me, over 30yrs ago, hysteria was stll used to inject women of around “middle-age”, 96 proof ethanol for external use in the “buttocks”, when they came to the ER with complaints that could not be diagnosed by the “competent” physicians at the ER. Sometimes week after week, or month after month, maybe every few months…
Not even by the “liason” psychiatrist could diagnose accurately, he, he, merely corrected the diagnosis to: somatoform disorder. And profligately used benzos instead of ethanol in the buttocks. Less immediate pain, but perhaps, somewhat also sedative and worsely addictive, disregarding the dosage difference of 96 proof ethanol vs 0.25 mg alprazolam.
And following their rhetoric not my belief, without “somatic” complaints, nowadays would not be diagnosed, hence the BPD label use.
Sorry what they did to you and how they treated you. Misogyny, without claiming specifically, was prevalent then, as is now, even from other females.
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Interestingly, the authors state that both the DSM and the ICD research committees initially rejected the inclusion of BPD, but the category was ultimately included due to pressure from powerful interest groups. They note, “It is not only Big Pharma that can influence diagnostic practices.”
Well, I, for one, would love to know more about these powerful interest groups. So powerful that they can’t be named?
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Maybe the NAMI?. Or the other APA, the psychological APA?.
The personality test manufacturers?, or their lobby if they have one?. Maybe a “creator” of a BPD test?.
Those tests do cost lots of money in single units, since they can’t, per the intelectual property laws be photocopied nor copied. And it’s a monopoly.
The infamous, or famous, Mr. Hare, the psychiatrist that specializes in “psychopathy”, apparently, per his detractors is lawsuit prone and vociferous because his “psychopathy test” is so expensive AND profitable.
Despite having no evidence, even after his decades research into the “biology” and “brain abnormalities” in “psychopaths”.
Really, no biological marker has survive the test of time on that one. The brain shrinkage and inability to see emotional facial expressions on others at best explains a tiny fraction of psychopathic behaviour, as far as know, remeber and undestand. Lame me…
Oh, I do hope MIA doesn’t chicken out of this comment, Mr. Hare has fame that apparently is deserved, as far as I know, as opinion retold, for a profit motive.
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“Twitter Files” journalist Michael Shellenberger is convinced that the elites who are controlling the “censorship industrial complex” all have “Cluster B” psychiatric disorders.
I hope someone informs him about the connections between psychiatry and totalitarianism.
From his Twitter:
Michael Shellenberger
@shellenberger
“The elite bureaucracies are run by people who exhibit the behaviors of people diagnosed with “Cluster B” personality disorders, including entitlement, grandiosity, black/white thinking, obsessive attention-seeking, impaired sense of reality, and lack of empathy.”
Cluster B Characteristics
Entitlement & Grandiosity
Splitting (Dichotomous Thinking)
Obsessive Attention-Seeking (Narcissistic Supply)
Emotional Dysregulation/Mood Lability
Impaired Reality Testing (Fantasy)
Gaslighting
Lack of Empathy (for “oppressors”)
Excessive Empathy (for “victims”)
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[Duplicate comment]
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He should’ve started with psychiatry first, which is all “Cluster B”.
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Yes. I think Shellenberger is unclear on the concept of what psychiatry is and how it has always been used to silence and oppress people.
I believe even Julian Assange was smeared with some kind of psychiatric diagnosis.
Someone should show Shellenberger the graphic attached to this article and ask him if he thinks the powerful people running the “elite bureaucracies” behind the “censorship industrial complex” would stand for this sort of treatment. Obviously not. Only a group of people with little to no power (i.e. those who actually receive borderline personality diagnoses) would be subject to this level of humiliation.
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You’d think someone as “educated” as Shellenberger would know that psychiatry has long been used as a tool to smear people. But it does prove that being educated doesn’t make you insightful.
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As far as I found out reading about it, Mr. A’s diagnosis, if at all, was not know.
One of his close colleages and former admirator, later detractor, made a narrative that because Mr A. was so fond of calling everyone else borderline schizophrenic, Mr A. was probably diagnosed thus. I think he, his detractor, pepered “projection” in his bio, but I am not confident he did, I might be misremembering
But, he didn’t wrote it that clear, it took for me some inference.
Personally, reading at least two of his biographies and some other books and articles touching on his “behaviour”, even at least one of his books, oh, my memory, I don’t think he has anything “mental” at all.
But after lock up in the embassy and incarceration for years and the uncertainty of his fate, maybe some carceral drugging, I’d be guessing. Just the isolation in a “maximum” can cause harm…
As far as I remember he had a somewhat dificult childhood, and as a maverick, a behaviour that is prone to be labeled BPD, despite evidence to the contrary: he apparently was admitedly, AFIR, promiscous, but he persisted in his hacking and exposure efforts to make any claim of “significant” and “disabling” instability patently ridiculous.
But, there is apparent agreement he could be despotic, insensitive and “borderline”, euphemistically, criminal against females.
He, as far as I know was never sentenced on that, despite credible testimony against him, for various reasons. In the hacking world he is not alone on that one, there is another more solidly “exposed” case that was removed from the internet almost a decade ago because the victims exposed it to prevent harm to other females, aware of the difficulties and career harms of prosecution against this other famous “hacker”*, not Mr. A, of course.
Years before the MeToo movement, those hackers were really smart, courageous, sympathetic, organized and united. I will always admire them without actually knowing them. And without minimizing the difficulties, the barriers the actual Metooers did faced. Just, for me, honor, were honor is due: they started the MeToo years before it actually started.
Just, they erased the narratives from the internet, according to their wishes, plan and execution. Maybe some of us in the community are actually willing, if appropiate, to remember, honor it and retell it. Without names, I have difficulties with anomia after all…
And he, Mr. A., was, apparently, AFIR, always consistently, hehe, grandiose about his persona. So, no instability there either.
With all appreciation, admiration and respect to Mr. Assange, whom I don’t know and never met, merely I am retelling what has been written about him, without diagnosing him.
And for the purposes, hypothetically, to show the BPD label is bogus, demonstrably so given achievement and consistency, you know, the negatives, the they should not be there if BPD was a real thing.
*I can’t name names in respect of those colleage hackers, tinkerers, that exposed so bravely, wisely and kindly their harm for no other motive than to prevent harm to other members of OUR, OUR, community. I mention it to honor their wishes and keep their intent: preventing harm, alive, somehow. I hope, they, even if disagreeing can understand that. After all the Chaos Conference Club gathering has been restarted after a long, too long hiatus!.
I ask sympathy, understanding and transigence from the MIA moderators: the cause of my parabole seems appropiate beyond this post. Not many people know female hackers made their MeToo years before the actual MeToo. Honor and recognition were it is due. If not when, since that has passed and probably forgotten…
Oh, oh, the victims never put their names, they used initials, and as any hacker SHOULD do, probably randomly chosen, by the ISIS computer, as in Archer…
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https://pastebin.com/Xsn4vkSN
For what I know of Mr. A’s psychobable “diagnosis”.
Which is probably BPD “related”.
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“Twenty years ago, George Vaillant, in a paper titled ‘The Beginning of Wisdom is Never Calling a Patient a Borderline,’ noted that the diagnosis of borderline often reflects the clinician’s emotional state rather than careful assessment,”
“Clinicians are among the “worst offenders” in perpetuating negative stereotypes. They frequently pathologize individuals with this diagnosis, treating them as just “another borderline.”
I have a niece who was misdiagnosed for decades only to find out that she has BPD two years ago- she is now 40. She also shows a dependent/co-dependent personality disorder but vastly underestimates what is actually required to address it. Her therapist said there is no therapy unless she does her “homework” which consists of reading “Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook” but my niece does not take it as seriously as she should. In fact, her very disorder impairs her from the patience needed to sit still and read with undivided attention and I seriously question that workbook. She was also told her disorder was genetic and now she thinks that it’s irremediable hence most likely the reason why she is not serious about getting better. Her present therapist visits have become more of a formality than real psychotherapeutic work- and a costly one at that! She’s been in therapy -off and on-for 2 years for BPD but very little to show for it. She’s diligent going to therapy believing that, any day now, she will be free from her disorders if she just follows the guidelines from her therapist. But this blind faith does not allow her to see she did the same thing with her previous therapists that misdiagnosed her. I’m really at my wits end here. The way things are going, she will end up with more years of therapy with nothing to show for it and another bitter fallout with her family and husband who has problems of his own. I can’t tell her that her therapy is worthless even though it is. More importantly, she’s co-dependent with her husband as she harshly judges him that he’s not in therapy as she is. By the manner in which he behaves, I believe her husband has traits of Schizoid personality and my niece does not even know what it means if I told her. They’ve have had joint psychotherapy for years but apparently these psychotherapists were not able to discover his Schizoid behavior and so my niece has no idea who she’s dealing with. She goes into bouts of sobbing and angst because he shows no emotions, empathy, or remorse and has no inclination for therapy. It pains me to see that she wasted decades of her life being misdiagnosed and here she is again with more therapy but nothing transformative coming out of it. If my niece really knew who her husband really is she would have left him long ago but they feed off each other in unhealthy ways and her therapist is clueless about it. No doubt, they will have another fallout and worse that the previous ones.
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Hi, I was loosely diagnosed a few years ago with BPD. I attended DBT. I thought it was strange that the other patients all had been addicted to hard drugs. They set you up and build a case against you with that long questionnaire you have to fill out daily about if you got mad that day or smoked a cig or had a glass of wine, etc. I also found it odd that I was strongly encouraged to phone my therapist whenever I felt upset. When I did, the therapist always said that she couldn’t talk because she needed to be “present” with her child, and then they billed insurance for a phone call. I finally got wise to this scary program and told them I didn’t have insurance to pay for it. They offered it for free and kept hounding me until I finally blocked the therapist that was feeding me the DBT hogwash. I later checked and even she abandoned that corrupt evil program. I am so glad I dodged that bullet! They use this program in jails and prisons and its mandatory in some situations people find themselves in. Horrible and scary
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Wow, given the number of removed comments I venture to guess BPD is a hot potato that offends everyone who has direct experience of the BPD label use, ex the labelers. They might have already have that against anyone.
Given that somehow, or somewhat, spite against the sufferer is the trigger, the motive for the label, I am not suprised.
Hate beggets hate, simple as that. Even from the most heart warm chaps. 🙂
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I have been misdiagnosed with BPD. Not in a “I am in denial” way. I genuinely do not fit the DSM 5 criteria.
I am sure some people have genuine symptoms of BPD.
In my opinion MOST people who have a diagnosis of BPD do not actually have it.
Borderline Personality Disorder has become the “catch all” for psych workers who diagnose when they have no idea what is going on with someone, especially if that someone is a female.
Females slapped with a BPD diagnosis from a clueless psych worker is the new scourge of the psych industry. Lazy, clueless, uncaring psychiatrists etc. put this stigmatizing label on many female clients, just because they are too unwilling or lacking in ability/intelligence to actually figure out what is bothering them. Like the ADHD craze for male children, BPD has become the new go to for adult females.
Females who show emotions and get angry are not Borderline. Most females who are hurting, confused, scared, traumatized etc do not have BPD. To me BPD feels very much like a “bad girl” shaming diagnosis. A middle finger from the bitter person who is angry they cannot figure you out or refuse to. Again, some people genuinely have BPD. Psych workers just need to stop misdiagnosing it in everyone they cannot figure out and stereotype. Stereotyping of females needs to stop in psychiatry.
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How would you know who genuinely “has” BPD?
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I bc genuinely have BPD. I have been to doctor after doctor. I have been tested and tested. I went for 20 years being told that I was schizoaffective, then the diagnosis changed to bipolar, then the diagnosis changed to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Finally, it got changed to me being an actual person with borderline personality disorder. Now, I will explain how it presents itself. I get bored easily, especially when someone is trying to teach me what I already know. That caused a lot of problems in school for me. I hate to be alone. I don’t just dislike it. I absolutely hate being alone. I have a fear of being abandoned. When my partner goes to work, I am gripped by the actual fear that he will abandon me and never come back. I know that is completely irrational, but it is a debilitating fear. I search for every reason, and I am good at finding reasons to leave first. The main rationale or lack thereof is simple. If I leave first, I won’t be abandoned. That is true, I will then become the one that abandons, and that makes me feel like I would then turn into the monster that I am afraid of, and that is not right either. I have a brain that will not stop thinking. Ever. My brain doesn’t just process thoughts and goes back to the automatic processes quietly. I am always thinking. The thoughts usually race so pinning down an actual thought would be like trying to stop an Amtrak train in a split nano second. My thoughts jump from one subject to another and back like it is normal. For me, this is normal. Emotions, now these things, I wish I never had. I can’t control my emotions. I try. I do practice at this. I can’t control my emotions. I cry a lot. I don’t know why I am crying. I have no reason to cry. However, I start crying like I have lost my best friend or my mind. If I get angry, well, that is where it takes a really weird turn. Imagine having a ball of rage growing in the pit of your stomach. It keeps growing, it grows more and more. Then it starts to move up to my chest, my shoulders, then it hits my head and I blow up worse than Mount Vesuvius. I am left with a whole volcanic eruption of anger and at the same time begging to not be abandoned. I can’t stand you! I hate you! Don’t abandon me. Please don’t leave me alone with me. At the end of that, I look like a true lunatic. Five minutes later, I don’t remember what happened. Only bits and pieces of it. Then I am back to the same as I was before Mount Anger decided to pop up and blow its shit show all over the place. I then return to the person who would and will do anything to make people happy so I don’t get abandoned. When I was 17 my sister died in a tragic accident, in my heart and mind, I know these things can happen. She didn’t plan to die. For years, I was angry with her because she abandoned me. I am self destructive and self sabotaging my own dreams. I am very impulsive as well. If you ask me anything about myself, I don’t have an answer. Why? Because I do not know nor do I understand myself. I have been told by every psychologist and psychiatrist that their services do not serve me. They see no actual way to help me. They usually sum it up like this, “Ma’am, I feel like you need to be seen by someone else. I don’t think I am doing any good for you”. I get this speech directly after the doctor or therapist pulls my personality out in a session of therapy. Can you imagine most of what I have explained so far being an every day battle? I am my worst enemy. How is there a treatment when my problem is my personality? How, can you, those of whom are trained heavily in your field, actually say that my disorder needs to be taken out because you don’t agree with it. This question is strictly for psychiatrists, is it because you can’t get paid to prescribe a certain medication because there is not a true medication or a pill form of a bandaid to make me better? You get the kickbacks from certain companies, affiliate marketing big pharma style. As for the therapists? I know that treatment is not very pleasant for you as well as people like me. Sometimes, it can be dangerous. Any mental disorder could have a sense of danger. Yes, we can be very abrasive with our attitudes. Do we deserve to be blacklisted from therapy because we need a professional? Then get the same speech from a professional, I guess a more professional professional. Most of us don’t have many true friends, probably grew up thinking our family hated us. Most of us don’t even speak to our families. A lot of us have tried to off ourselves because there is no way out, nir a reprieve from ourselves! I have tried 13 times. Something always happens to where I am caught right before I get to the other side. Then some wonder doctor brings me back to this side. He has no idea of the war I hate having inside me all the time. I don’t like to talk about it because, yes, it seems insane. Most of us can walk into a room and within a minute, we are great at feeling when someone’s mood is good, bad, indifferent. Especially when someone is a danger. We have a stigma and that is something I will try to end or at least lessen. We are usually the nicest, chaotic, self sabotaging, living people on earth. But we dont deserve treatment because pills don’t work. Talking doesn’t help unless it is in that moment or we have no recollection of it. Most of us have actual huge chunks missing from our memories because our brain decided to block those memories. Sorry for taking so much time, I will step down off my soapbox now. Please take into consideration what I have explained. Try to live a day like I do every single day of my life. Thank you for your patience.
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