Doom Diagnosis

Posted by fxckfeelings on March 15, 2012

People often think the worst kind of craziness leaves you dazed, confused, and mumbling to yourself on the subway, but the truth is that there’s another kind of craziness that’s even worse. With that kind of crazy, you’re still aware of the date, can name the President, and keep a bank account, but you feel broken by the deliberate malice of those you should be able to trust. It feels like a legitimate reaction to life and individual people rather than an illness, but illness it is, and people who have it and those who love them must accept it as such if they’re to get any kind of protection at all from its corrosive effect on relationships and hope. Otherwise, everyone involved will end up feeling as isolated and scared as the ailing, mumbling subway-dwellers.
–Dr. Lastname

My psychiatrist recently told me he thought I was a borderline character disorder, which I know, from looking it up, means I’m an angry, destructive person who is probably not going to get better. What was also upsetting was the fact that the description of a borderline character disorder fit me, because I’ve always had trouble keeping relationships and I tend to cut myself and do other self-destructive things when I’m feeling low, which is most of the time. My goal is to feel better, and now I feel hopeless. The question is, am I really hopeless?

The fact that you’re asking that question, instead of hating the evil system of mental health clinicians for destroying your self-esteem by giving you a vicious label, shows that you’re not as hopeless as you think.

You have a good ability to see things positively and clearly, even when your feelings are entirely negative. That’s essential to managing the temperament and habits of a borderline personality (or almost any negative personality trait). That and admitting you have a problem in the first place.

It’s true, some mental health clinicians use the word “borderline” to describe those people who are most likely to hurt themselves and then sue everyone who made them do it, particularly parents and therapists, while sharing gripping, compulsively viral accounts of their victimization with anyone who will listen via every medium available.

As a result, the term carries more stigma (among those who are aware of its meaning) than almost any other type of mental illness. It carries even more freight than the diagnosis of schizophrenia because, in addition to implying “really crazy,” it also connotes “nasty, needy and dangerous.”

In fact, however, there are many people who have those negative urges but also have the will, values, and perspective to keep them in check, and they make good use of many different kinds of therapy and are very decent people. Indeed, to have dark feelings and act decently is a much greater personal, moral achievement than it is for a nice guy to act like a nice guy.

The moment you are able to talk openly about the phenomenon of self-destructive urges, you will find that more people than you think have similar problems. Many of them can give you good ideas about how to manage those urges while remaining in touch with your self-respect and optimism. In addition, your respect for them will increase your respect for yourself.

Of course, DBT (Dialectic Behavior Therapy), as we’ve said elsewhere, is the perfect behavioral/philosophical treatment for those who own up to dark impulses and want to manage them. It offers a curriculum of positive exercises and thought-habits lifted from the best part of almost every religion. It is not for those who wish to share raw feelings (which, of course, we wouldn’t recommend, anyway), but for those who wish to acknowledge and manage those feelings.

It may hurt to embrace the borderline label, but it pays off in the long run. Take your new diagnosis as an opportunity for defying shame and accepting what you can’t control. You’ve always had these feelings, the only difference now is that they have a name, and with that, the potential for management, and, perhaps, some relief.

STATEMENT:
“I often feel unbearably angry and hopeless, and my first instinct is to find some authentic means for self-expression. I’ve come to believe, however, that I am not the sum of my feelings and that I can be the person I want to be by remembering what I value and defending those values, regardless of how I feel. “

My husband has been crazy-jealous of me for the past 6 months. He sees a shrink, who tells him he has a bipolar mood disorder and gives him medication, but it seems to make no difference. I try to get him to talk, but whenever he opens his mouth, all he can do is tell me how much I’ve hurt him, referring to anything negative I’ve ever said or done, all of which is mounting up because I’m so frustrated. He’s threatened me a few times, nothing serious. I can’t stand living like this, it’s ruining my health. My goal is to get him to see that he’s killing our marriage.

When you love someone who’s crazy, you can’t help wanting to talk him into sanity. The sane part of your mind knows that it’s not possible, because you’re not the only person who’s tried and failed. Meanwhile, your crazy loved one has all the reason in the world to try to be sane but can’t do it. Every attempt at reason leaves both parties more angry and frustrated than before.

We often compare mental illness to demonic possession, but maybe it would be easier if we just changed our grammar and talked about someone as having craziness, like having an illness, rather than being crazy.

That would imply that the person who loves you is in there somewhere and that the forces that make him act crazy are impersonal and having nothing to do with who he is; they’re just illness. He has the illness as much as the illness has him.

You’ll make yourself crazy if you can’t accept your helplessness. You can’t bring him back, though he may come back, and f you try to bring him back, you’re asking him to do something he can’t. That cycle of anger and frustration eventually gets dangerous.

Convince yourself that, far from causing his pain, you’ve been a good wife in a horrible situation. Remind yourself that you’re not responsible for changing his mind or making him better. Then, with whatever confidence comes from knowing you’ve done the right thing, let him know the jealousy subject is dead.

Give yourself the right to avoid any topic you think is destructive. Then show him, by your tone and body language, that you will not join in any unhealthy discussion and there’s no way he or anyone else can make you feel guilty about it (regardless of how you really feel, of course).

With practice, your boundary will protect you from exhausting struggles and assaults on your self-esteem. With luck, you’ll still be together when he recovers. Until then, accept he has the crazy, and don’t catch it yourself.

STATEMENT:
“I feel worn down by endless accusations, but I believe in my own perceptions and I’m proud of what I’ve done as a wife. It kills me not to be able to help him, but I will help him more by talking with confidence and hope about superficial topics than by allowing intimate conversations to open the floodgates on crazy, nasty thinking.”