Dear Niyata:

I am very familiar with the BPD diagnosis, although not as a professional. I went to your past postings to look for any sign of such and found none. Instead I found evidence not fitting the diagnosis. For example,  two months ago you wrote: “i don’t wanna go back and explain him that i got hurt because i really don’t wanna engage in a conversation with a person who hurts me”-

A BPD fitting person does want to “engage in a conversation with a person who hurts (them)”! Not only does the person wants to, but the person feels compelled to, just has to. And not only is the BPD-diagnosis fitting person Has-To, the person does more than having a conversation- an aggressive, dramatic, extreme expressions is more like it, with violence, threats of violence and such.

No, no, Niyata. Everyone fits some of the features appearing in the hundreds and hundreds of mental diagnoses. Each diagnosis is a specific combination of symptoms. We all experience individual symptoms appearing in all those diagnoses.

* A pleasure reading from you, anytime!

anita

Dear Niyata

(Heyyyyy to you too!)

I want to read your last post with a fresh brain, tomorrow morning (10 hours or so). Will reply then.

anita

Dear Niyata:

You listed/ mentioned: mood swings, twice cutting/once drinking cleaning solution before age 25, cheated o boyfriends before age 30,  identifying with movie actors abused in movies, getting angry when told how to do things “properly”, your friend often says ‘don’t get mad’ before bringing up a difficult topic regarding work, being the sweetest person when not angry but suddenly getting very angry, being haunted by your past.

* Regarding the diagnostic criteria according to the DMS 4, you need “five (or more) of the following (criteria)” listed. From your post, I don’t see the following criteria being satisfied: “(1) frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment”, “(2) a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation” (where you see a person as extremely wonderful followed by seeing same person, soon after and with no apparent reason, as most despicable and such), “(3)identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self”, “(4) impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)”,   “(5) recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior” (three incidents before the age of 25 may not qualify you if after 25 you haven’t made such efforts or threatened suicide),  “(7) chronic feelings of emptiness”, (9) transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.”

Maybe you fit: “(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)” and “(8) inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)”

So you may fit two out of nine criteria and you need five or more. Notice: “affective (emotional) instability” refers to extreme instability; everyone is unstable, no one feels the same all day, every day. Notice: regarding anger, the criteria is about expressing the anger, not just feeling it. So you may not satisfy these either.

Regarding the DSM, mental disorder diagnoses: these stem from simple core injuries, a child being abused, neglected, scared and alone. Symptoms develop over time. It is like a snow ball, let’s say, rolling down the hill. The original ball is that original anxiety (relating, in your case to being “a victim of abuse”). As the ball rolls down the hill (as you go through life, not healing), it gathers more and more snow (symptoms). Not only the symptoms (behaviors) have to be managed and eliminated, over time, but the core issues have to be healed.

No one is born with a BPD diagnosis. No one is born that huge snow ball down the hill. No one is even born as a small snowball before it gets down the hill. We are born as a pure, white snow flake, is what I say.

The diagnoses are of very limited value: to manage symptoms before healing core issues. They are also useful for doctors and therapists to bill insurance companies. This is all the usefulness I know of.

My answer to the question in the title of your thread: “Do I have BPD or is it just anger?”- It is just anger. The past does haunt us because it is recorded in the brain at the present time. Rational understanding of the past does not eliminate that recording because it is not only Thoughts about the past that are recorded in our brain via neurological pathways, but also emotions. Thoughts+Emotions are intertwined in multiple connections between nerve cells in our brains.

Healing is a slow process of undoing those pathways, and you are in that process since the age of 25, you wrote, “25 when i realized i am a victim of abuse and started working on my issues”

Anger is a powerful emotion in those pathways. If you manage the expression of your anger, so you are not abusive to others, and if you become mindful (pay ongoing attention) to how you sound when angry, maybe you can change your voice when angry. You can also take time out before responding angrily to evaluate the situation first. Anger does have a place in our healthy experience and behavior, and is not to be eliminated altogether. It should lead to assertiveness which is necessary for healthy relationships.

anita