So, you've got a personality disorder...

     My name is Katja, I'm 29, and leading a far from normal adult life.  I'm unemployed, living in my parents basement, have zero social life... and... oh, lets see, what else... OH RIGHT!  I have B.P.D., or Borderline Personality disorder.  So I have been known to act crazy sometimes... most of the time... really crazy at times... eh, well I guess it depends on the day really.  I don't know how to handle normal everyday emotional feelings and can be known to take things to such an extreme that I feel the only way out it to end it all.  I think one of the worst parts is being aware (now) of how I'm acting, knowing its not normal, and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

The diagnosis is a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affects, as well as marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. "Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment."  CHECK
   
2. "A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation." CHECK
3. "Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self." CHECK
4. "Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, excessive spending, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving)." CHECK and CHECK
5. "Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself." -sighs- CHECK
6. "Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)." yep CHECK
7. "Chronic feelings of emptiness." CHECK
8. "Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)." CHECK
9. "Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms." and CHECK

     So as you  can see I'm basically the poster child for Borderline Personality Disorder.  I can be described as "deliberately manipulative or difficult", "Overwhelming", or "Qver emotional"  Ever see Fatal Attraction or Girl, Interrupted?  That's me.

     You might be asking yourself how I wound up this way.  And, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately)  I'm at a total loss when it comes to that.  As far as I know people are not born with BPD, it develops in early childhood.  Though symptoms of the disorder don't tend to to show up until the late teens- early twenty's.  The more I learn about the disorder the worse it seems to get... or is it just that I realize I'm acting like a "Borderline" because I now know what the symptoms are?

   Luckily for me, there is no medication and most therapist are unskilled or dismissive of the disorder.  Up until recently a patient with a BPD diagnoses was dreaded and considered a "lost cause"... 

  So there you have it, a small look into why most of the time I act the way I do.  I have been floundering on my own (with the help of books) to overcome my disorder, but most days it dose seem like a "lost cause"