Please, Please Help Me

[walker]

I have two issues - s**t seem to be talking about them everywhere, Am so sorry if I am driving you all mad.

First (appologies to Hummm mabbe)

I feel that I want my daignosis confirmed by the psychiatrist, to make it official, to help me begin to accept who I am.

He didnt turn up for my appt last week and I have chickened out of sending a letter because

1 - my therapist said he had discussed with psych who has diff diagnosis - even though he has hardly seen me (therapist defended his view, he is convinced)

2 - because I wont take meds anymore therapist thinks psych wont feel need to see me.

But I still feel I need to make it official from consultant.

Second and this is destroying me -

I just cannot let go of the destructivity in my head.

My poor therapist is trying to do CBT with me, but I just want to cry all the time and keep pouring out the pain.

I have a war raging inside my head which is stopping me making progress. He did say I was moving slowly forward, but today it was even worse. He asks me if I want to get well and I cant answer.

I know I hate living like this ( 6 months ago I wanted to improve my life)

But I just cant let it go, cant turn the voices off, cant make any decisions about anything without another bloody row flaring up inside my head.

I dont do self harm but I want to hurt myself all the time, so I do it mentally.

I am trapped, how can I ever give myself permission to move.

This is almost impossible for me to even express in words, but my head is splitting between right and wrong, past and future, coulds and cants

All I want to do is die and let it all go away, but I cant even manage that because all the couner arguments immediately come rushing in.

Help me please

I feel so trapped and desparate.

[Tray]

hey there

the first thing that i noticed was you have stopped taking the meds, why is that?

i know its shit having to take tabs, but for some they can help, calm you down enbuf to look at the bigger picture, maybe thats what you need?

i feel more stable and able to do things on meds, i dont want them but i need them, just a fact of lifre with me.

u are obv really suffering at the mo, but to be honest, whilst you are feeling like you dont want to get better, no amount of cbt etc is gona help... you have to get your mind back into focus, somehow...

its shit to feel like this, it knocks you about, makes you feel worse, thus making iot seem that there is no hope, just a viscious circle...

i cant suggest anythin, i wish i could, but you have tpo work it throu yourself, only you can tell yourself that things must change, it doesnt matter how much anyone tells you to, its your decision...

i really hope you can stop the thoughts and destruction in your head, if for a little while so you can think a little bit more clearly

[fastfish]

hey walker

a lot of issues there. you sound like you're going through a really rough time it must be so hard. i don't think i've got any answers. I guess i just wanted to comment on the issue you're having with CBT at the moment because I had very similar issues with it. I worked with a cbt therapist for a while and I really didn't get on that well with it. Like you said you just want to cry and get rid of all the pain. CBT is great for behaviours. But what it doesn't do is recognise that we are emotional beings. We are humans so we all feel emotions but on top of that we have BPD so we are even more emotional because we feel them all the more intensely. CBT is a great concept but I believe it ignores our feelings and that's what I found to be a flaw for me to be able to work with it. I have transactional analysis therapy now. I get on with it so well and even recognise some of the progress i've made for myself! I don't find that it's counselling where i just sit and talk and the therapist just smiles and nods. I don't find that it's therapy where we talk about the things I can do to help me stay well like exercising and thought processes etc. It seems to include my entire being. It is about my thoughts, emotions, circumstances and behaviours. And it is also a two way thing. It isn't me sitting there talking at my therapist although of course that is some of it. She works with me. We work together in as equal a way as you're ever gonna get with therapist/client relationships. She gives me feedback she feeds me ideas and works with what I bring and vice versa.

I don't know if any of htat is at all relevant to you. I just felt I wanted to share with your my similar frustrations with CBT as you seem to be having at the moment. YOu're not alone and you WILL get there.

Alice x

[bibiddi]

I dont know what your past involves.

But has anyone ever put you down? made you feel small? useless?

Just wonder if that reflects your thoughts about yourself?

Oh, and listen to Tray.

[hummm_mabbe]

Hullo walker

Hey s'ok u dont need to apologise for nuthen! Imma give u lovez whether u like it or not hell yeh

You said about voices in your head ... do you like HEAR voices? Is it like a duder yabbering in your ear, or do ya mean like yanno when you go out and you think "oo did i leave the gas on?". If ur hearin voices it might be sumthin else ... I dunno what your psych thinks it is .... I had CBT for years and always went back to poop land after a while .. and then they figured out the bippidee (b4 my offical one) and I started having schema, which is desgned for the bippidee. Tis much better and is good for when we get super sad and teary. Where are u based? I think u need a nice schema therapist to give u love and hugz, thats what they do, they are lovely.

I thinkie that u need more loven input .. I dont think it sounds like they are really hearin you ... mabbe when you see them you feel so angry and wanna shout at them, and a lot of these guyz cant take it, they arent trained to know what to do with the bippidee peepulz and how much love we need ... and they see us as a pain in the azz

I eventually figured that if I wanted to get better I had to run my own show. Yeh. I am the PT Barnum of my own damn recovery cuz mostly the NHS arent very good (sorry NHS peepulz just my experience, you are still ovely too and i want to give you hugz but only when you start giving us all space hoppers and pink earmuffs) with bippidee, and this is recgnised. Even my psych said that today - most peepulz cannot handle it and dont know what to do. If it were me, I would go find a schema therapist and spend some time in private therapy for BPD ... once you begin to feel a bit more stable, then go back and talk to the psych, but right now Im not so sure they are helping. To say "dont you want to get better?" kinna misses the point, as most peepul will with the bippidee.

I always say - if u wanna get better, you gotta go private. I will spend any amount of money on getting better .. I can make it all back when Im better

Thats me though, I wanna say the magic thing to make u feel better, really I do, I dont want my friendiez feeling horrid

Ross

[walker]

That is interesting, never had that.

I like my therapist, was very lucky to get him 1 to 1 with only a few weeks wait, and we get on well.

He has worked in mental health for years and is a nurse. He makes me feel cared for and he lets me bawl.

But I am in such a mess and he is ultimately there to help me make progress.

I think what I am doing - although not intentionally - is destroying the theraputic relationship so that it is forced to stop, before they decide to take it away anyway. I dont know, but that is my current theory - particularly bearing in mind how I felt utterly suicidal when I thought I was going to lose him a few weeks ago.

Just in such a mess

[hummm_mabbe]

That is interesting, never had that.

I like my therapist, was very lucky to get him 1 to 1 with only a few weeks wait, and we get on well.

He has worked in mental health for years and is a nurse. He makes me feel cared for and he lets me bawl.

But I am in such a mess and he is ultimately there to help me make progress.

I think what I am doing - although not intentionally - is destroying the theraputic relationship so that it is forced to stop, before they decide to take it away anyway. I dont know, but that is my current theory - particularly bearing in mind how I felt utterly suicidal when I thought I was going to lose him a few weeks ago.

Just in such a mess

awwz hey yeah that is the bippidee right there, we get soo attached to peepul that are caring to us ... im soo glad he is kindly. I know totally what you mean about thinking you will lose him, that is the bippidee comin out too ... it can feel so unstable in the NHS too. It is good you have found him, cuz what you need the most is LOVING helpies. Tis more important in some ways than the actual lhelpie - it must be loving for the bippidee to get better. This psych duder better not be thinkin of takin him away, id he is thinkin that then he needs his professional azz kicken with wellie boots.

[hummm_mabbe]

oh heyz I know this is all a bit feckin Mr Professor type shet .. yeah I am a nerdlinger .. but this is a linkie to the scientamiffic study they did to see how good schema therapy is for the bippidee. They cured 50% of folks, another 25% had their symptomallies reduced lots, and the other 25% had to remain in therapy. So thats like a 3/4 chance of gettin much much better No other therapy can claim that of the bippidee

New Hope for an “Untreatable” Mental Illness: Schema Therapy Fosters Full Recovery For Many Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder

http://www.schematherapy.com/id316.htm

[Tray]

ah the old pushin people away before you get close so that you dont feel abandoned/unwanted etc cause you have got rid of them before that...

how many times have i done that lol

i am so typical BPD, pushing away to validate i aint good enuf to have them in my life, crying when they leave cause it makes me realise i aint good enuf to have them in my life...

its crap

[hummm_mabbe]

ah the old pushin people away before you get close so that you dont feel abandoned/unwanted etc cause you have got rid of them before that...

how many times have i done that lol

i am so typical BPD, pushing away to validate i aint good enuf to have them in my life, crying when they leave cause it makes me realise i aint good enuf to have them in my life...

its crap

This thing is prolly the pooest bippidee thing. Its like we need love but are soo scared to lose it we screw it up b4 it happens

"I love you! Fuck off!"

Yeh, we are cute

Rossie

[walker]

Thank you all for your kindness.

Thanks Ross - will look into schema, but I am opposite end of country to you.

The thing is, I am not a self harmer, and havent been abused, so I havent been making the mental health team jump about until recently.

I have felt inadequate and unloved for as long as I can remember.

I have never fulfilled my dreams - apart from my two beautiful children, - I have always had a terror of being alone - have spent 22 years in a marriage that I have felt was wrong from day 1, but could never leave.

Have always felt wrong and not nown who I am.

This is the worst I have been in about 11 years and in between I have done a second degree and taught for 8 years.

SO people think I am fine - thin I have achieved things, but I feel empty and completely trapped.

I know you guys cant do this for me, but I cant do it for myself.

So I am being mega pathetic.

I hate it when people take their lives, it fills me with sadness and pain. And yet it is the only way I feel I can go - but I cant do it because of my children and parents.

Why am I doing this to myself?

[fastfish]

i think i always miss the point of what people are wanting. i'm sorry that i never post anything helpful. i try maybe i should stop.

[walker]

Very useful, Fastfish, I am glad it isnt just me who is struggling with CBT.

It seems that both transactional and schema seem a bit more emotion based.

Ironic really - CBT bases itself around feelings and changing them but doesnt seem to allow for being totally being messed up by them.

Why is this so painful? Living in a self made prison

[hummm_mabbe]

The thing is, I am not a self harmer, and havent been abused, so I havent been making the mental health team jump about until recently.

You dont 'need' either of these to have bippidee. There are 9 thingies you might have, and if you have 5 of them you are a bippidee. Sexual abuse isnt one of them, its just that a lot of poor folkies with the bippidee do have that ... but if your CMHT is basing their diagnosis on that, then they are living in 1973. Does the psych wear flares?

Nooes CBT isnt good for the bippidee, for exactly the reason you said - first of all we need to have our emotionabubbles sothed and helpied. Thats what schema does. It has some CBT type stuff much much later, but the whole first part of it is soothing the hurties and getting some love hooked up to your hearty part. That takes a long time, then later the CBT bits will work, but not before.

This is the exact reason why schema was developed - cuz CBT doesnt help the bippidees right off the bat. Schema was custom built to treat the bippidees. There are qualified schematists all over the UK. I am gunna email the schema peepulz and find out where they all are and post it oh yeh oh yeh I am in helpie mode!

Hey youz, big cuddles and small bunny rabbits nuzzling your cheek

[walker]

Ross - I meant thought voices not actual voices. Perhaps if I actually heard them I would try and make them shut up.

You guys are so bloody brilliant.

[hummm_mabbe]

Ross - I meant thought voices not actual voices. Perhaps if I actually heard them I would try and make them shut up.

You guys are so bloody brilliant.

whee we think ur the bling side of sooooooopa too!

I dunno how quick those peepulz will respond with the schema listie, I will let u know when it pings into my boxie box. They are in New York and they certify the therapists, who have to be like super super qualified and experienced before they are even allowed to say the word schema, or they get beaten up with space hoppers.

[walker]

have been reading about schema - it sounds like a more compassionate version of cbt.

found a book on amazon - for therapists - am tempted to buy one for my therapist!

I know he recognises the difficulties I am having, but if I cant engage, he cannot help me and I shall lose him.

Then I will be alone again, back in my world, shut away with no one who understands.

I just want someone to care about me for who I am, but I dont know who I am any more.

I am a mess of contradiction, every second about everything.

How long can I go on like this.

[fucktheworld]

Walker,

There is nothing more painful than to be in the midst of the swing you are experiencing. Everything, e v e r y t h i n g in your life, except your children-parents, has, at best, a fuzzy significance. Now you know, that what you have been feeling inside all your life is this 'thing', your autopilot won't kick in. The mask is off and what you think you see you can't bear.

I hear your fists hitting the table, the frustration. Your autopilot has worked well, you have managed this life... Go to work, get through the day, take the next class, go home, be a mom, be a wife, and get up and do it the next day. And do it for years. You haven't floundered all over and picked up a bunch of habits that need cognitive behavioral therapy to fix. In fact, with your experience, and how you have felt on the inside vs how you have acted on the outside, you have already been doing this for a long time.

I think the suggestions for other types of therapy are right on because you are now experiencing overwhelming emotions. You are unable to get control of your emotions and autopilot isn't kicking in and running your life. You've had a look at the stranger inside you and you are terrified. It isn't hate it is fear. In reality you have discovered she is completely and totally fragile. You can't control her, sooth her, help her, and she is taking control of the show. And it isn't like a dual personality thing but you see you, how you really feel, and you can't push her away anymore.

You need a healing, loving therapy that will help you accept that this center of you can heal. You can get used to this emotional being you have rejected. You can move past your anger about it, the helplessness you feel with the right kind of therapy. The meds will help with this to keep you out of the low lows, the level of frustration you feel right now. Give yourself a break here walker. Once you let yourself accept her- you, then you can start to heal. Schema is that type of therapy.

it is ok to be frustrated - it is you crying out to you --I'm a mess, I want your attention, and I want help

:mellow:

[walker]

it is like I want to hurt her, kill her and yet I cant let her go.

My therapist asked who it is I am frightened of losing. I began to write about the child who was too loud, too excitable, too emotional, but as I wrote she became me - we are entwined within eachother.

For years I have been dumping all the blame on my parents - good loving parents - that made me feel bad, wrong, because I got angry, loud, jealous, wanted to show off, desparately wanted someone to accept me, to love me as I was.

But I was unacceptable t them. They wanted a quiet little girl who would not draw atention to herself.

It is weird - I have felt so violently about that especially while my depression was at its worst in May/June

But over the past few weeks, the depressive cloud has lifted - things have begun to matter - and I have turned the torture in on myself.

Perhaps I am no longer depressed at all - but just hanging on to as much bad feeling as I can muster.

I think that is true - I am frightened of feeling well because I want to hide from life

I am being a pathetic coward

[fucktheworld]

The anger is active, not passive depression. You're mad. You should be ok, but you are not...dammit. This little child inside you, that wasn't validated, you feel the same stuff toward as your role models did..unaccepted. But it is you.

You don't have to yell it from the mountain tops that you never felt validated by them, good enough, made right. You don't have to be a bad, ungrateful child and trash your parents. You can write it off to they didn't know any better and focus on you. How did you feel? Did you feel not good enough? You can feel anger at how much this child felt alone, not why, but what is.

Or who cares where it came from. This kid felt unacceptable. It was not ok to be you.

:(

[walker]

Cant sleep so thought I would come bac here, - hoping someone is out in the ether.

Yes that makes so much sense ftw,

I am absolutely raging inside my head - exploding with anger.

I keep thinking that the depression is going, appear happier to everyone, able to function a bit easier - SO must just be making it up

But You are right, I am f*****g furious.

Have been lying in bed thinking about the last week.

1 - decided maybe psychiatrist actually refused to see me because of my meds attitude, and James covered for him (therapist)

2 - asking to change CPN has drawn attention to me being difficult and lost me another support even though I couldnt talk to her.

3 - James was more detached this week an it was like speaking to a bloody robot. I thought he cared, but it is like he only has set responses and when I start having hyterics about something it is like there is no one there.

4 - beginning to wonder if I will never get anywhere unless I agree to meds - but now James is saying they are less use with BPD

5 - Think I demand a meeting with psych just to get a diagnosis.

6 - cant work like this

Think I will just call James tomorrow and quit CBT. I have so much emotion crashing through my head that I cant concentrate. I cant make decisions about hardly anything - even like shall I put washing here or there or leave it !!!! everything causes a battle in my brain.

James was trying to get me to CBT the incident with my GP.

OK could say what I thought, could pin point a few moods, but rating them?? HA

What a bloody joke

Oh I was 100% angry, but maybe that is an over reaction - say 50% but that doesnt sound significant enough and he will think I wasnt angry so lets change it again..............................................I cant do it, I just end up picking a number out of the air and lying.

But I cant lie either

I am in a mess

I dont know what to do next

Think I will just quit - go back to work - and wait for the inevitable to happen, hoping it happens sooner rather than later. Wait until I brea into a million little pieces and the stupid psych sees how I really feel.

[ann51]

It sounds like you need to have a good talk with James. I have found medication can help with crises. I don't know if this is good advice; please let us know how things go. It's awful when you're in a mess with treatment; I've been there.

[walker]

feel like it is a mess of my own making

that it is all my fault

I make it bad

I chose to keep feeling like this

but in reality am not sure how much choice I actually have.

My choices are all bound into the sickness

[fucktheworld]

walker,

The reason I am an advocate of meds is because of nights like tonight. I don't think your anger is unfounded but because you got lists of things grinding at you. It could make it less awful.

What you keep saying is maybe you should just forget everything and go back to work, you appear ok to everyone. The choices here are not one or the other but somewhere inbetween, you know that. It is not quit everything or do nothing.

My understanding of CBT is that does address emotional healing but it is also designed to help with issues like -- what is my first thought when I have an extreme emotion. Well my first thought is to use drugs, drive crazy, hit someone, bash my head in the wall, sleep with someone, not eat, go off, su...and CBT helps with changing some of those behavioral reactions to stress...ie. helping the emotional healing process.

Your reaction to these extreme emotions is to go back to work, mine would be to quit the fucking job.

Take a deep breath and pull some oxygen into your belly and relax. The middle is the goal. Talk to your therapist and discuss CBT and ask him if you could focus on the healing aspects. Your first thought is not to tear up your whole life but to shut up and get on with it. That approach isn't going to work anymore. You are raging, crazy ass mad at everyone, not sleeping -- mind racing -- can't get a handle on it. Meds take off this edge so you can get through this...it isn't a choice between lethargic and exploding...but steady and raging.

I wish I had a magic answer.

:(

[walker]

S**t night

am going to try and speak to James (therapist)

Am scared at how he will respond, but I am in a mess and need help.

Dont have a CPN any longer as mine is on holiday and have asked for a new one because couldnt relate to her.

Cant have a new one until other one returns from holiday.

So no support

Feel isolated again

James is only around til tomorrow and they dont always give him my messages.

I'm scared