Q. I have BPD and come from a family where my dad was never home because he is a workaholic and my mom was both physically and emotionally abusive. She never told me that she loved me and was not nurturing at all. I have a younger sister who I never got along with as she was my moms baby. We fought constantly. I had an uncle that attempted to molest me but my cousin woke up in the nick of time. I have two children of my own whom I love so much and make sure they get quality nurturing, but due to my illness and BPD my children were taken away from me from DCFS and they now live with their paternal grandparents. I have a lot of anger and resentments within me that need help, but I try to ignore it.
I can relate with others about abandonment. My main problem is attachment to professionals – I have had so many different counselors and at least half of them I have become attached to. When they realize they are in too deep, they leave and I am the one suffering from this feeling of abandonment. The pain is deep and even more so when they will not have closure and/or not allowed to have closure with me. That drives me to want to have contact with them even more. It leaves me feelings all alone, empty and frustrated.
Does anyone else feel this way or have this same issue? What do they do to deal with that? I am looking for any answer I can get.
I am not in any individual therapy at this time, but really need it and no DBT Skills Training team to help me either. I am on medication which consists of Zoloft – 100mg daily and Zyprexa – 2.5mg once a day. My main diagnosis is depression and BPD. I appreciate any input you can give me.
A. Your note is like so many others. I personally did a study comparing Prozac to Zoloft – Prozac was so far more effective that I never recommend it again.
If you do a literature search (Patty may already have this on the Website), Prozac is the only antidepressant to have worked on everyone with the BPD. Zyprexa is a new antipsychotic, it is not as effective in my experience as Risperdal.
The treatment principals remain the same:
1) Get all the correct diagnoses (the BPD is rarely experienced alone)
2) Get all the correct diagnoses treated properly
3) Retrain your brain. While I don’t mean you minimize your suffering and how you learned self defeating defense mechanisms, all that matters is from now on. I see so many borderlines who were abuse victims, and their therapists want them to read book after book about being abused. Let’s get this straight:
a) it was awful and should never have happened
b) the perpetrators were sick themselves
c) it never did make sense and never will make sense
d) you need to learn what you can learn from the past and move on.
e) all that really matters is where you go from here – why relive the traumas?
f) learn how to be a successful and happy person and concentrate on the rest of your life. Zig Ziglar’s tape series is the best thing you can do in this regard
It’s also important to understand that you absolutely positively can have a happy and successful life, but you can’t accomplish it doing what you’ve done before.