Archive for the ‘A.J.’s BPD Memoir’ Category

I now have a new site where I will be sharing much more about recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. This site will include video, audio, blogs, and coming very soon – excerpts from my up-coming memoir about my recovery from BPD in 1995 and my audio autobiography which is a prelude to the memoir in which I share the impacting and noteworthy aspects of my “borderline years” along with some childhood experiences that were central to all that I had to get through in the therapy that was my process of recovery. There is so much hope for BPD recovery – hope that is being negated by systemic stigma and hidden agendas within many areas of the mental health delivery system these days. What do you need to know more about? Why do so many say you can’t recover from Borderline Personality Disorder? Why do they say that? What is BPD really, anyway? Remember, what you think creates your experience, so be very careful about what you think about what BPD is, how it is treated, who knows what, and what causes it and much more.

There is too much being said these days by too many about all that is negative about Borderline Personality Disorder. Too many people focus too much on the stereotypical, limiting, devaluing, pathologizing of human beings who are living their lives with BPD – in an out-of-balance way. That’s not something entirely pathological at all. It is a reactive-response to unaddressed and unhealed woundedness. People with Borderline Personality Disorder are not all the same. People with BPD, especially in a relational context, exhibit what it means to be human in very intense and polarized ways. Not pathological, but out-of-balance ways.

The traits that psychiatry as used to define Borderline Personality Disorder are human traits. How is it that they took what are human traits and twisted them into a pathology that they named Borderline Personality Disorder and then abandoned anyone diagnosed with it saying that you can’t get better. Can’t get better from what? Being human in intensely polarized ways? Say what?

And to further complicate that reality that people with Borderline Personality Disorder can get well, in the last decade or so, now these (not all but a lot) psychiatrists have created, yes created, what is now known as biopsychiatry. Biopsychiatry, essentially came out of what is not being referred to as “the decade of the brain” – the 1990′s. “Decade of the brain” – what? Did the brain need a decade? What does this mean? What was the focus on the brain about and who was doing the focusing? What was the purpose of this focus? These are important questions to keep in mind when you consider what BPD really is versus what biospsychiatry says it is and what that means for recovery and what that means to the process of actual recovery versus being kept stuck in what psychiatrists and the mental profession continue to claim is such “pathology”.

The “decade of the brain” saw many studies be reported, actually, marketed to the public. Studies that made all sorts of claims about Borderline Personality Disorder, and indeed, mental illness generally, as “brain disorder” or “brain disease”. Do you like science fiction? I personally, don’t really. It’s a lot of fantasy and illusion with high-tech special effects. Oh, wait, rather just like the studies of the “decade of the brain” and beyond. What most people don’t know or realize, unless they question the mass-marketing of supposed study-findings that conclude Borderline Personality Disorder is a “brain disorder” is that these studies were largely funded – if not entirely funded – by Big Pharma, mainly in the United States to begin with. The big money of Big Pharma (pharaceutical companies – drug companies) looked for a more effective way to market their products. That’s what is behind biopsychiatry. A “marriage” of sorts between Big Pharma and its marketing machine and big dollars to advertising in all forms of media meets “mental health professionals” who also want to make more money. Where is the actual mental health consumer/client/patient in this “relationship”?

If you believe that biopsychiatry, which is also known as the “medical model of psychiatry”, has the any proof of their claims – claims that they put across about mental illness as a “brain disorder” to sell drugs to people that actually, in the long run, obfuscate recovery and make it more difficult for people thus meaning they will be more reliant on the drugs and the prescribing mental health professionals – I hope you will think again, do some research and do your best not to get caught up in or trapped in their smoke-and-mirror pseduo-science. A “science”, this “brain disorder” junk they say their “studies” back-up as if it were proof when at best it is only theory, if that, takes your humanity out of the equation. It doesn’t look at you, the mental health consumer/client/patient as a whole person at all. But then, should that be surprising given the fact that the traits they list, for example, in the DSM-IV as “pathological” as “mental illness” as “personality disordered traits” are human traits that they themselves have defined as pathology?

You can recover from Borderline Personality Disorder. I did. What can block your ability to get well and to recover is being fooled by biopsychiatry into believing that you have a “brain disorder” and that only those who create the “illness” can cure it. But can they? NO! Do they even try? NO! That’s right – biopsychiatry, largely backed by, created by, and funded by Big Pharma has a different agenda other than treating people with BPD and mental illness – they are serving themselves, not you!

Sound controversial? Sound crazy? Sound impossible? Well, if you want to know more about where I am coming from with this please do visit my newest site at bpdmemoir.com where I will be talking more about recovery and what kind of thinking supports recovery and what kind of thinking will keep you stuck in the pain of Borderline Personality Disorder.

 

 

I’ll also be speaking to Loved Ones of those with BPD about what types of misinformation you need to pay more attention to so that you have all the information you need to make decisions in your best interest. Many books in the last few years targeted at BPD Loved Ones, BPD Family members, partners, and ex-partners, co-workers, etc., of those with BPD have mislead you also in terms of this “medical model of BPD” that is really not about supporting wellness or recovery and is more about an industry making money and yes, exploiting people’s pain.

 

 

? A.J. Mahari, December 21, 2010 – All rights reserved.

A.J. Mahari first heard those three words, Borderline Personality Disorder, in the dark ages of “treatment”, in 1975. At a time when most mental health professionals deemed Borderline Personality Disorder untreatable and spared little time in banishing those diagnosed with it. Borderline Personality Disorder were three key words that would profoundly effect her life that, at the time, seemed screamingly-quiet words that meant nothing and that quickly faded into an obscurity that mirrored her own lostness.

It all began again in August of 1975, when at the age of 17, I physically left behind my family’s crazy dysfunction. Out into the world I plunged like a child diving into an ocean of life who didn’t understand that she had no idea how to swim. Drowning before I was aware of it. Lost before I knew it. So sure of all that I was unsure of. So oblivious to all that I lacked. Clueless. Clueless but feeling free.

Freedom at last, I thought back then. Freedom like a stone. A stone that I would push up the same few feet of my first mountain for 12 years only to have it roll back. Daily pushing the stone up a few feet. Daily having that stone roll back over me, knocking me off the mountain, flat on my emotional back. Day after day reality was obfuscated by my pretentious, swaggering, inverted display of courage. A courage that had at its core the helplessness of a terrorized child. A courage that wasn’t anything more than a narcissistic over-compensation for what was intolerable and vulnerable weakness – an extreme emotional sensitivity so easily shaken to its core.

I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in what could be considered the dark ages of what that really meant. It was 1975 and I was just a few months short of my 18th birthday. I wanted to see a social worker at a local hospital, where I had seen a few before. This time, instead of being given an appointment I was first referred by the out-patient psychiatry department to a psychiatrist in the hospital. I had a short but intense history at this hospital. Most of my history with this hospital unfolded and was documented in the emergency department where I was frequently brought in by ambulance for what was suspected to be a neurological problem. There were also numerous visits that resulted from sports injuries and my burgeoning self-harm practices.

I had no idea why I was being told to go and see this doctor. Up until that time, I was able to get an appointment with a social worker in the out-patient mental health clinic without incident.

This is where it was all about to begin again. “It” was something I had absolutely no understanding about. “It” had a lot to do with how I experienced relating. Relating that really was only barely real within a more narrow context of the lack of it really. A lack of connection. An approach-avoidance dilemma that had a been a theme in my life all of my life.

“It” was about to begin again courtesy of my experience with the first psychiatrist I ever saw. A psychiatrist that I only saw this one time, at his request, not at my seeking him out. Just this one time – just long enough to be summoned and dismissed before I knew what hit me. “It” began again there. “It” began again there in a way that mirrored my lack of relationship with my parents. I had been invited in only to be pushed out. So unclear to me, yet so familiar. Abandonment. Rejection. Invalidation. That psychiatrist would remind me so much of my father. “It” was all just beginning again. “It” was intensifying in a much more pervasive and palpable way than “it” had ever unfolded before.

He was about to give me my first experience with the stigma of mental illness, generally, and Borderline Personality Disorder, specifically. He threw those three words at me with disgust, “You have, Borderline Personality Disorder“. He literally threw my already thick hospital file toward me in an arching fashion and it crashed onto the round table that sat between us with a body-jarring thud. He seemed to garner some pleasure from his provoking display of both punitive power and judgment. He was angry. He was aggressive. He wasn’t kind or caring. He announced that they, meaning, I guess, every mental health professional in that entire hospital couldn’t help me. He inferred I should just go away. I remember thinking, he doesn’t even know me, how could he treat me this way. What had I done to deserve this?

He may not have known me. However from my hospital (out-patient) records he obviously knew more about “me” than I did. I didn’t know much about who I was or how others experienced me. I didn’t know that then, but, that would be become painfully obvious years later.

That was my introduction to a diagnosis not really sought, not professionally given or communicated. That was my introduction to systemic rejection, systemic abandonment, systemic invalidation, and it devastated me. It was devastating in a bland and rather numb way. I was angry as hell but I didn’t really feel much. I wanted to punch his lights out. I remember literally sitting on my hands. I was full of rage. His judgment challenged me inside. It was like he had rung some proverbial bell that I felt compelled to answer. I immediately felt agitated. I had this massive adrenalin rush that I knew would be futile and dangerous to answer. Still my body began to shake. I held my breath. I was reacting to his dismissal of me. I didn’t really understand or care much about what he’d just told me. How could I? There was no explanation. I had no understanding of what he had just told me. In some ways I knew way more than I was aware of. In other ways, I was clueless.

It was the summer of 1975. I was a month away from starting College having just escaped my abusive and dysfunctional family that summer at the age of 17. I had no idea who I was or what I was supposed to do or how to function or relate to people. All I really knew was I wasn’t ever going to know me if I lived with them – my family.

Those three words, Borderline Personality Disorder, were not known then, as they are today. There was no internet. There wasn’t the plethora of books that are out there now. The words though they seemed to be thrown at me in some punishing and rejecting way really meant nothing to me. I had no way to find out what they meant. I didn’t even ask. I didn’t ask the doctor and I didn’t ask anyone else. Though I knew rage well, there were these long periods of quiet desperate suffering deep inside. The times when I felt so far away from any reaction inside. Times when it felt as if I had just curled up into a fetal position somewhere deep inside.

I was lost. I didn’t exist. I was too busy just trying to survive all that I had no skills to cope with to even stop to consider what those three words meant. I quickly and intensely vacillated between feeling four years old and feeling so tough that no one could get the better of me. I was competently-incompetent. Living in a world of illusion and delusion that was for me, my reality.

Where “it” all began again was also the place where “it” was again going to escape the “me” that I wasn’t.

For the next 12 years of my life I wouldn’t ever again think of those three words. I didn’t ever hear those words spoken to me despite seeing numerous therapists over this period of time. I was always a seeker. I continued to seek. Problem was I had no clue as to what it was I was seeking after. I was in search of answers to questions that I hadn’t yet even contemplated. Life in the dark. Life in the bright-light of an enduring darkness.

There was no connection in those 12 years, for me, between those three words and my intense lostness and incredible emotional suffering. Nothing, nothing, existed, really, nothing other than an abandoned and disconnected free-floating anxiety that was the partner of my rage.

Blindly I went on. Somehow, I went on. Failing miserably. Lost. Disconnected. Alienated. Lonely. Feeling the incredible pain of numbness. A searing lack of sensation that alternated with an abundance of sensations, terrifying sensations played out in my body in most distressing ways.

Blindly I went on dysfunctioning my way, in circles, through what should have been one of the most wonderful and exciting times of my life – my 20′s. Gone. Lost. Lost to three words that had no meaning or context to me. There wasn’t any information. There wasn’t any help. There wasn’t any support. There wasn’t any enduring connectedness. There wasn’t any sense of direction. There wasn’t any stable sense of identity for me.

For the next 12 years of my life I saw one mental health professional after another, too many to tally really. Surely, those three words were following me around on paper? No one ever mentioned them again to me in those years. All that seeking. 12 years worth of seeking in circles. Seeking in the dark. Being kept in the dark. A dark most familiar. And yet a dark that was often, at times, also equally most suddenly strange.

Darkness that held both the coldest-warmth and the warmest-cold of significant-insignificance within the lostness of a self aborted. An aborted self that in its own death was fighting for its life.

The dark ages of Borderline Personality Disorder ushered in my failure to transition successfully through yet another stage of life development. I remained, oblivious that I was, a frustrated and wounded child in search of a mother.

? A.J. Mahari, and Phoenix Rising Publications – May 8, 2010 – All rights reserved.

My Up-coming Memoir about My Life with Borderline Personality Disorder and my Recovery From It

I am currently writing a memoir about my recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. In this memoir I will be sharing relevant experiences from my life, from childhood through to adulthood, from the making of me – the borderline, to the healing of me – the now non borderline – therapy experiences and lessons – authentic self found – no longer borderline. I will also outline and identify the stages of my recovery and talk about what recovery is, looks like, how it I define it and what it means.

It has been an incredible journey for me thus far. I think that my memoir will be a valuable and hopefully inspiring, maybe even helpful read for both those who have Borderline Personality Disorder and those who love or care (or who have loved or cared about) someone with BPD.

I believe that the universal themed main messages of my memoir may well be of help and inspiration to any reader with any challenge. One does not have to be directly associated with BPD to relate to my story of recovery and triumph over adversity. Each one of us faces adversity, at times, in our lives that truly isn’t, in many ways, that different from my experience. Above and beyond the details of life experience there is truly is the universal ways in which we are all inter-connected and in which we have more in common than we often pay attention to.

You can stay up-dated about when my memoir will be available for purchase and read up-coming excerpts by going to: ajmahari.ca where I will have a video up with some more information about my memoir and why I am writing it.

I hope that you will check my website for excerpts and videos about my memoir and put your name on the list for notification as to when it will be available.

From a friend of A.J. Mahari’s:

“A.J. Mahari’s up-coming memoir about her recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder, like everything that A.J. writes, will feature her most insightful and wise honesty. A.J. will not pull punches in the telling of her story. She will lay it all out for the reader. Mahari’s unique voice as a woman who had 2 parents with BPD, as woman who had BPD, as a woman who has recovered from BPD, and as a woman who had a relationship six years after her recovery from BPD with someone with BPD, and subsequently as a woman now living her life in what is commonly referred to as the “non borderline” role will touch and inspire you.

A.J. Mahari took the lemons of her life experience and her own choices as she freely admits in her memoir that were the foundation of so much of her painful and seemingly purposeless (at the time)journey and definitely made them into a most inspiring and educational lemonade. A rich brand of lemonade made up of incredible healing and recovery through her learning so many of life’s challenging lessons on the road to her recovery. A lemonade that sustains her today. A lemonade that more than just a metaphor is a attitude of gratitude Mahari chose to live from and that she continues to nurture in her life to this day.”  — J.T. Brewster

 

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