A Letter to The Doctor of an Ex Suspected of Having Borderline Personality Disorder
Submitted for this site by "Joanne"
Dear Dr ***********
I’m writing regarding Philip ******* of *********
Hostel (**** ****** Avenue) who I believe is your
patient and under a psychiatrist at ***********
Surgery. I’m writing because Phil has serious mental
problems and I know he hasn’t been entirely
forthcoming with your psychiatrist about certain
things (Phil told me as much) and I believe that in
such circumstances the psychiatrist can consult with
the family / partner of the patient.
I thought it might interest you to know that Phil is a
wife-beater. I was assaulted by Phil on Thursday the
22nd of September and my injuries (black eye, split
lip, bruises) were recorded at ******************
Hospital on the 23rd of September. This was about the
eighth time I was violently assaulted by Phil but it
was the first time I approached the police or sought
medical attention because this time he marked me much
worse than he ever had before and I had tried to leave
him about eight times and he told me he was going to
kill me if I went through with it. The only way I
managed to get rid of him was by moving house without
telling him. That’s why I can’t come in to speak to
the psychiatrist about him in person.
I believe that Phil is seriously mentally ill. He has
a very tenuous sense of self (his personality changes
markedly according to who he’s talking to at the
time). He’s paranoid, pathologically jealous and he
has psychotic episodes where he becomes violent, his
speech makes no sense and he remembers things that
never happened.
For example when he’s having an episode he gets very
offended at me using the word “you” in any context
(eg. if I said “what do you think?”) because
apparently the word “you” means the exact same thing
as “bastard” and he had me looking it up in the
dictionary he was that convinced. (Needless to say I
only looked it up to humour him). Then I said “So you
want me to refer to you in the third person?” and he
said “So who’s this third person then?”
He said I’d slept with nine people on one day, “Yes
you did. You admitted it”. Needless to say that’s
complete nonsense. He said I’d cheated on him with
the entire bar staff of ***************** including a
gay lad and the barmaids. Once he saw someone in the
pub looking at his phone and laughing so he thought
the guy “obviously” had naked pictures of me on his
phone. He told me that clouds are made out of smoke
and before there were human beings there were no such
thing as clouds.
Phil is extraordinarily manipulative. He would never
believe I’d been where I said I’d been. If I went to
the dentist, he wouldn’t believe I’d been to the
dentist. If I went for an interview, he wouldn’t
believe I’d been for an interview. If I went to town
and went to a few shops he thought I’d obviously been
in town having sex with someone else. I had to
remember every shop I went in, in what order and keep
the receipts then he’d say things like “so where were
you last Tuesday at 3.00” which was obviously
impossible to remember. It was getting to the point
where it wasn’t worth going out on my own anymore (I
don’t mean like for a night out, I mean to the shops)
because of the endless accusations that followed. I
believe this was his aim and that’s why I call him
manipulative.
He also accused me of sneaking people into the house
to have sex with if I ever stayed in on my own. He
would come storming in shouting “Where is he?” and
saying that the duvets were on the bed in a different
order than when he left (I don’t honestly know if they
were or weren’t. If they were all crumpled up then I
made the bed, the first thing I did is throw them on
the floor so they probably did end up back on in a
different order.) Once he came storming in and said
“That umbrella was there and now it’s there [about six
inches to the left of where it was before]. Why??”
and I’d end up thinking “Yeah, why?”
He’d go through my phone up to three times in half an
hour (when there had been no calls subsequent to the
last time he looked) and go through the call register
going “who’s this then, who’s this then?” for calls
that were to plain mobile phone numbers, from months
ago, which he’d probably made himself.
It was like he randomly accused me of cheating on him
and the onus was on me to prove that things that never
happened, never happened i.e. account for the 24 hours
in a day when I wasn’t cheating on him.
Phil is extraordinarily demanding. He had no notion
of giving me any space or privacy and seemed to see
any boundaries I had (regarding privacy etc) as a
challenge for him to try to batter them down.
He seemed fairly normal then moved himself in (to all
intents and purposes) after one date, was in love with
me after two days, had hit me within a week and
threatened to kill me when I tried to leave him.
On day 3 at 9am I asked him to give me some space (I
had asked a number of times) and he said “space,
right, I’ll give you some space” then was back at 11am
with his mate and a load of tins of lager, treating my
house like a pub. It took a month before he slept one
night at the hostel and I never heard the end of that
with him accusing me of what I supposedly got up to
the night he spent away. Out of the six months we
went out together he slept at my flat every night
except perhaps five nights in all.
After day 3 every time I mentioned the Space word he
said “right you can have all the space you want then”
and threatened to leave me which I would have been
delighted with on the face of it, only every time we
“broke up” he came back threatening to kill me and
saying things like “you think I’m violent now? You’ve
never seen me violent.”
The whole situation was contrived to make me spend 24
hours a day with him and the noose kept getting
tighter.
I know that it’s dangerous for a layperson to
self-diagnose or attempt to diagnose people around
them however I am personally convinced Phil has
Borderline Personality Disorder, as he meets most of
the DSM IV diagnostic criteria.
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined
abandonment.
Phil had me trapped in that situation by telling me
he was going to kill me if I left him. Also if I
tried to spend any time away from him he would start
accusing me of things and him accusing me of things
was always the first step before a physical attack.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal
relationships characterized by alternating between
extremes of idealization and devaluation.
After two days I was the “love of his life” and “the
best thing that ever happened to him” He barely knew
me. And he’d go from that to screaming abuse at me,
accusing me of outlandish things and physically
attacking me.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently
unstable self-image or sense of self.
I thought this was a very odd characteristic in him
before I had ever heard of BPD. If someone were to
say to me “What’s Phil like?” I’d hardly know how to
answer and that’s why going out with him was so
disorienting. He’s like a non-person who doesn’t have
a personality so much as a series of actions and words
that have no predictability. Living with him was just
like a series of events with no consistency or rhyme
or reason (it’s hard to explain) and I still couldn’t
make sense of it for about a month and a half after I
left him until I found out about BPD.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are
potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex,
substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
Obviously alcoholism and refusing to eat for days on
end. He also told me that he’s also a former heroin
addict, cocaine addict and gambling addict.
5. Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats,
or self-mutilating behaviour.
He told me he had a history of suicidal behaviour.
I had to fetch him off the cliffs once because he was
going to jump. The night after, someone had to talk
him down off the roof of the cabin lift shaft. One
time he cut his hand with a knife when he was having a
psychotic episode and he was in his room at the hostel
talking to his dead son (who he could see there
talking back to him.)
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)
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty
controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper,
constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
Phil would rant and scream and hurl abuse at me for
hours on end. He tried to strangle me on about seven
occasions. He’s punched me, kicked me and slammed me
into the floor. He also regularly gets into fights at
the hostel and the pub and it’s like he scarcely knows
what the fight was about, himself. Once, he punched a
guy at the pub and every time he told me about it he
had a different justification, one excuse being that
the guy was playing pool and he set the triangle up
wrong.
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or
severe dissociative symptoms.
His paranoia regarding me supposedly cheating on him
and the fact he “couldn’t remember” assaulting me, or
his memory of it was severely warped. For example the
time he slammed me into the floor he could remember me
lying on the floor but thought I was lying on the
floor trying to put a CD into the computer (???).
Once he had me by the throat, pinned against the wall,
then punched the wall about an inch from my head. He
couldn’t remember having me by the throat but
remembered punching the wall “because it was either
that or punching you” so he could remember what his
right hand was doing but couldn’t remember what his
left hand was doing at the same time.
I’m sorry this letter is so long. It’s difficult to
outline six months of chaos in a letter. I hope this
information might help you or more particularly him.
In spite of the fact Phil’s extremely manipulative I
don’t think manipulative’s quite the right word
because for one thing I doubt he had the intelligence
to plan all that. It seems like his “manipulative”
behaviour was some weird, twisted defence mechanism to
stop me from leaving him.
Phil can’t stand to be on his own. If he’s on his own
he starts bouncing off the walls and this can trigger
an “episode”. When he’s having a fully-fledged BPD
rage I don’t think he knows what he’s doing anyway.
One other thing is I don’t know if you think that his
alcoholism can account for all of that behaviour. I
believe that alcoholism and BPD can coexist and I saw
a quote from an AA spokesman saying the difference
between alcoholics and BPD’s is that BPD’s were the
ones that consistently fail at AA. Phil’s AA diary is
behind the bar at ******* Bar and he says that one of
his three ex-wives got him committed into a big rehab
place in London (Springfields?) for six months and the
day he came out he got a taxi right to the pub and
told his ex-wife to pick him up there. (Then again
Phil has a number of these dodgy stories where
everything’s a little bit too colourful. He also told
me he stole a police car with its lights going.)
I’m just offering my opinion. I’m not arrogant enough
to try to tell you your job. In my heart I’m 100%
convinced Phil has BPD as so many websites etc seem to
describe his behaviour exactly. It seems, to me, like
Phil’s a textbook BPD.
I wish I could come in and talk to his psychiatrist
about this but for my own safety I can’t go anywhere
near ****** Avenue. If you want to ask me anything
you can email (******************) or my mobile number
is ************. I probably won’t answer if I see a
******** area code or withheld number.
1. I’ve not got around to changing my phone number yet
and I’m still getting a lot of missed calls off Phil
and
2. the police advised me to move out of the area and
cut off all contact with anyone in *********
but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you.
In spite of what Phil’s done, to let him go through
his life without a proper diagnosis and thus proper
treatment that would be inhumane.
Thank you for your time.
Joanne
Non-Borderline Main Page
as of January 3, 2006
Last up-dated January 3, 2006
