Excuse me sir, I'd like to make a retun please

     When God was handing out mental conditions and personality disorders he must have misplaced mine and given me a random pull from the bag.  One of my largest exhibits of Borderline Personality Disorder is a frantic effort to avoid real or imagined abandonment.  Being alone for to long can cause me to loose my seance of existing, or feeling of being real (this is hard to describe but, for me, its kind of like feeling really numb and on the verge of passing out, its like your watching things happen around you but your not actually there. Sometimes I feel as if my heads not attached to my body or like I have no body at all.  I know weird right?  Well I sure think it is!  But it can also be really scary too). 

     Most people crave to have an ounce of solitude for just a little wile, a chance to get away, de-stress, and reflect on life.  I, on the other hand, absolutely loth it.  I feel isolated, left out, and unliked.  When I have a seance of companionship I'll try and do anything I can to avoid loosing it.  So, unfortunately for people I've grown close to, I seem really really needy.  This stems from the fact that I can't seem to distinguish the difference between the temporary absence of someone and someone leaving my life forever.  Even though deep down inside their not, my brain can send out panic and fear signals like someone is dying when they leave me and I can get frantic for them to come back. 

     Unfortunately in my case I have very few friends (none of whom I actually see on a regular basis) and a long distance relationship.  A double whammy in loneliness if you will.  So I tend to float through most days in a blur of feeling lost, alone, not really knowing who I am anymore, and just really confused.  Really really confused.  obviously given that my lover and my friends all live a good distance away from me they do thing with out me, a lot.  And as hard as I try and fight the feeling it makes me feel very disliked and unwanted, I spend my time alone, wile there out, moping and thinking about how much fun they must be having without me, it can get very depressing sometimes...

     The above alone is enough to make me think that I'm a pretty bad fit for having BPD.  Wouldn't you agree?  So I'd like to tell the powers that be, "I want my money (or whatever) back! BPD is not working for me!"  

"Anger is a manifestation of a deeper issue... and that, for me, is based on insecurity, self-esteem and loneliness." ~Naomi Campbell

    

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"