Q. My partner of four years recently died of cirrhosis caused by autoimmune hepatitis. I am trying to make sense of the last year of her life. My question is how would a physical disease such as advanced cirrhosis affect the BPD presentation?
A. Stress makes everything worse. Virtually every symptom will be more intense and dysphoria (anxiety, rage, depression and particularly despair) will intensify.
Q. What I observed is that she became increasingly depressed, despondent, and then moved into a lot of aggression. She began to view me in a very negative light and became quite hostile.
My second question is that about a year and a half before she died she got involved in a “new age” type school where she was engaged in a lot of programming and deprogramming various attributes of herself that she disliked and wanted to be rid of. She appeared to move into chronic states of projection regarding these characteristics and go into PTSD type states. How would a program such as this effect manifestation of BPD? Thank you for your help.
Q. “New Age” means a lot of things to a lot of people. I obviously don’t know what exactly you mean by it in this regard. Many mental health approaches use re-programming, and I enthusiastically support this concept. The motivational speaker Zig Ziglar in my opinion is the best. I strongly recommend reading books like “Your Erroneous Zones” by Wayne Dyer, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, and “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale. For people having enormous spiritual crises due to their problems and what has happened I often recommend “Embraced by the Light” by Betty Eadie – he account of a near death experience is almost always very comforting and gives the reader a sense that everything is really okay and that their suffering may have had a good purpose. I never advocate any religious view, but encourage people to make peace with their spirituality.