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BPD Complex ptsd vs. bpd

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Axis II disorders, when accurate and correctly diagnosed, are just scary.
That is true @anthony but there is a stigmatization out there as therapists frequently want to keep away from BPD if they can help it. Some other Axis II disorders are well known for having positive outcomes in treatment, whereas BPD is seen as a difficult type of person to treat. In my experience and research, BPD is often referred to as the 'worst' because you can't 'lock them away' as they do with many other Axis II disordered here, but many don't know how to help and when they don't know how to help they trigger off with some pretty difficult to handle responses. I am meaning no disrespect to those with BPD, I just wish that effective treatment was available. To me, if the treatment by and large isn't effective then those 'who be the powers that are' don't have a proper understanding of the root cause. Thus we come back to square one. Is it because they are not seeing the complex nature of trauma that may be involved with some BPD patients?
 
@shimmerz,
I'm not quite sure why you're so adverse to medication originally designed to help other disorders. When you get right down to it, nothing was created solely for PTSD. Many people with PTSD take antipsychotics and find them to be quite helpful. I have taken small doses of antipsychotics to help curb my obsessive thinking, as I have no issues with psychosis. Heart meds are used for anxiety as well (as example of another cross-over). I know you are sensitive to one type of medication, but are you perhaps cutting yourself off to other types of medications simply by saying "they are made for other disorders and therefore not for me", even though you haven't even tried them?
 
Sorry @Solara I am not adverse to medications at all if they are effective. What I do know is that I don't have BiPolar. So prescribing me a drug for BiPolar is not a direction I am willing to go in. I was put on an antipsychotic at one time and went downhill after one pill. Immediately. The SSRI's well, I tried many of them and the response I got from people I knew were that they were not good for me.

What I do know is that the medications my doctor had put me on were good for me and I wasn't willing to be put onto something that would rock the boat. I am able to function and get therapy and take things in and am healing. I am not going to mess with that. I was not at all trying to put across that certain medications are not good for others but I know what was best for me. I am most certainly sorry if I offended you. That was not my intention at all.
 
@shimmerz,
Perhaps do your research? Antipsychotics weren't originally developed for bipolar. They were originally developed for schizophrenia. (L-dopa, anyone?) Then they found use for bipolar disorder, then for PTSD, anxiety, and depression.
 
Sorry @Solara, I am not sure if I have hit a nerve with you and am sorry if I have but I am having a difficult time understanding what I have said that has offended you. I will offer up my apologies again but if you can't be more specific or if I can't understand what this is about I suggest we leave this alone for now. How does that sound to you?
 
@Butterflywings can you post here the diagnostic criterion that your psychiatrist uses please? Also, if you could get the associated documentation used that helps them align to that diagnosis, I would honestly like to read it here.

She uses Judith Hermann's work if that helps? Beyond that, I plan to ask her at my next appointment anyway purely for my own sake because I'm interested in her thoughts about what symptoms she thinks I should focus on to get better.
 
That is true @anthony but there is a stigmatization out there as therapists frequently want to keep away from BPD if they can help it. Some other Axis II disorders are well known for having positive outcomes in treatment, whereas BPD is seen as a difficult type of person to treat. In my experience and research, BPD is often referred to as the 'worst' because you can't 'lock them away' as they do with many other Axis II disordered here, but many don't know how to help and when they don't know how to help they trigger off with some pretty difficult to handle responses. I am meaning no disrespect to those with BPD, I just wish that effective treatment was available. To me, if the treatment by and large isn't effective then those 'who be the powers that are' don't have a proper understanding of the root cause. Thus we come back to square one. Is it because they are not seeing the complex nature of trauma that may be involved with some BPD patients?

Shimmerz the thing is BPD isn't as untreatable as many therapists have claimed in the past (and the general public believed). A few years ago (2010 I think?) Australia published guidelines on the treatment of BPD. There are plenty of relatively effective treatments out there - DBT being one. CBT has been shown to be of good use (not quite as good as DBT but still useful) and actually medications have been shown to be effective too depending on what the person's presenting symptoms are. I mean I know first hand what a difference tegretol for example made in my exhusband's life (when he would stay on it for any length of time). If a person with BPD is most effected by dysphoria, antidepressants are good. For mood swings, the anti epilepsy mood stabilisers are good. For sudden short rages, antipsychotics are good. etc....

The thing is, there has been such a stigma around BPD for so long, and so many people misdiagnosed as having BPD, many therapists remain unaware of the treatment guidelines that list the effective treatments for BPD. BPD is actually an awful lot easier to treat than other axis II disorders such as the developmental disorders (I have a family full of aspies and autistic spectrum disorder is not easy to treat at all if a person didn't get early intervention as a child).

The reason so many people BPD is hard to treat is actually because so many people who are difficult to treat get labelled as borderline so it's assumed all those with borderline and then hard to treat - if you remove all those people who have been labelled as borderline because they are hard to treat who really aren't borderline, those who really are borderline suddenly become a lot easier to treat. And simply because of so many people with depression, bipolar, PTSD and other Axis 1 disorders who have been wrongly labelled as borderline who have been given what was previously thought of the "correct" treatment for BPD (ie told to just go away when suicidal as to not "give into their manipulative behaivour" when they were suicidal not being manipulative), denied access to medications they desperately needed for their Axis 1 disorders, when these people naturally got worse not better when given "BPD treatment", in the minds of uneducated therapists, this backed up their belief that "BPD is untreatable". ie they chose to believe BPD was untreatable rather than admit they were giving their clients the wrong treatments.

When someone is accurately diagnosed as having BPD and given the properly researched treatments available, the treatments are actually quite effective in most sufferers.
 
Shimmerz the thing is BPD isn't as untreatable as many therapists have claimed in the past (and the general public believed). .

Oh I absolutely agree with you @Butterflywings. But as stated in the video posted in one of the recent posts here (might even be this one) therapists generally do not want to treat people with BPD. By BPD I mean borderline personality disorder not BiPolar Disorder. It and the people that are diagnosed with it suffer greatly as many people do not want to treat them due to outdated beliefs.
 
Shimmerz you've hit the nail on the head. And it saddens me that some therapists still think that way. (I spent the last two weeks working with an absolute jerk who does - then again he also said stuff like if someone had come in after a serious OD that next time they should just jump off a building instead so he doesn't have to "waste his time" on them. I got to work with him again in a few months and not looking forward to it).

I know my exhusband will never get help for his BPD purely because of how he was treated when he did try to get help. Which is a shame, because for a while there, when he had a psych who believed he could be helped, he was getting medication and therapy and he was an entirely different person. Then stuff happened, he got a different psych, bad stuff happened, he refused to see any psych or take any med and his life fell apart and has never been the same since. It's really sad. Especially when he was getting effective treatment.

So yeah... I wish I could point all the remaining ignorant therapists out there to the guidelines for treatment of BPD that lists treatments and how effective they are and the order in which they should be attempted etc...
 
She uses Judith Hermann's work if that helps? Beyond that, I plan to ask her at my next appointment anyway purely for my own sake because I'm interested in her thoughts about what symptoms she thinks I should focus on to get better.
Cool... would love to see a copy of all documentation she used for that diagnosis on you. There is also specific documentation that accompanies each diagnosis which gives further criterion on whether the diagnosis can be used, when it should be used, outlines specifics for each symptom requirement uniquely, so forth. I hope she can give you all this... it should be about 3 - 6 pages in all, normally.
 
Cool... would love to see a copy of all documentation she used for that diagnosis on you. There is also specific documentation that accompanies each diagnosis which gives further criterion on whether the diagnosis can be used, when it should be used, outlines specifics for each symptom requirement uniquely, so forth. I hope she can give you all this... it should be about 3 - 6 pages in all, normally.

Me too. Only because I want to know what she sees as my presenting symptoms to build my personal trust in her. Unfortunately I don't have another appointment with her for a month.
 
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