Topic Tuesday// Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Week 2022: 'See The Person'// Tues 27th September 2022 7-8:30PM AEST

[BPDSurvivor]

Hey @M_P90 ,

Thanks for posting. 

You have raised some very common issues with the BPD label. 

To me, having the label meant I could access supports I may otherwise not have been able to access. It was also somewhat liberating to know that all my behaviours had a name or reason to them.

On the other hand, the BPD label is not liked my many clinicians....unfortunately. As soon as they see/hear BPD, they sort of have a generalised 'approach' to them. ie. 'leave them, they are only attention seekers', 'don't waste your time'.

[TideisTurning]

Time to get our discussion started: For @Alex_Spectrum What treatments are available for Borderline Personality Disorder?  

& for @BPDSurvivor & anyone else who'd like to answer; What have your experiences with treatment for BPD been like? Which have you found most effective for you? 

[BPDSurvivor]

You're quite right @Millieme ,

Many see the label but forget to 'see the person'. 

Hence, I have found that the most helpful approach to myself (as someone with BPD), is to see me as a holistic person rather than the sum of my behaviours/misbehaviours.

I understand my ugly self can sometimes be set off like a beast, but as another member has mentioned in the past, it 'beauty and the beast' - there's beauty somewhere there - it just takes people to help them find it 🙂

[Former-Member]

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[Kimb]

Thank you

[M_P90]

Thanks, appreciate your perspective. Diagnosis is so often a gateway to services. From my perspective as a "complex client" (would really love to be simple), I've accessed more from my eating disorder diagnosis. The Medicare ED-MHCP has allowed me to have ongoing therapy (up to 40 sessions) a year without going broke. Why doesn't BPD open to similar support? It hasn't had as much utility to me, besides getting into private hospital DBT program .

[Fluttershy1]

@BPDSurvivor @Alex_Spectrum - 

I have a few questions- 

how do you deal with people being judgemental about BPD to you and telling you that your faking it. 

How do you find a right psychologist that knows about BPD and is willing to support you. 

How do you deal with the stigma around BPD? 

How do you deal with being taken to hospital and not getting taken seriously about BPD and all of that? 

[Fluttershy1]

Hi @Former-Member @TideisTurning 

[Alex_Spectrum]

Great question @TideisTurning Treatment for BPD generally involves medium to long-term therapy. There are a number of empirically validated treatments that we know help people with BPD including but not limited to Mentalization Based Therapy, (MBT), Dialectic Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Schema Focused Therapy (SFT), Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP).

I work in the MBT clinic at Spectrum. MBT therapy involves helping people better understand their minds and their mental states and to help them to try to better understand others. More information on MBT can be found here, Mentalization-based therapy (MBT) (tavistockandportman.nhs.uk)

I think an important message to take away about treatment is that the specific modality used is not necessarily what is most important. What’s more important is that it is delivered by a clinician who is interested in working with BPD and they are competent in the model with which they are working.   

[BPDSurvivor]

Gday @AT67 ,

Thank you for joining us tonight.

For the better part of me, sometimes it was not only about receiving a diagnosis, but more so around working with whatever is NOT working for an individual.

When you consider all the traits of BPD, everybody, to some extent possess each of these traits - the difference with BPD is whether it affects one's functioning in life. 

A therapist can work with any aspect of behaviour (whether BPD-specific or not) e.g. emotional dysregulation, fear of abandonment, black/white thinking.

Hope this sort of answers your question. In other words, work with the 'problem' behaviours as opposed to solely seeking a label...