Blogs
It is important to know how to relax. Relaxation exercises can help treat symptoms of borderline personality disorder. More Than Borderline's Becky Oberg explains why relaxation is important and shares a few examples of how to do so.
You can be thankful in spite of a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD). It all comes down to a matter of perspective. Are you thankful for the little things, or do you even notice? Are you taking much of what you have to be thankful for for granted? What are you thankful for?
I was almost looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. We had a pretty uneventful holiday planned--Bob would be at his father's house until Saturday evening, and my large, loud extended family had opted for a smaller gathering on Saturday (just my parents, siblings, and assorted nieces).
Until Bob caught wind of this plan, and asked to come home early so he could go to his grandparents' house with us. And then I discovered it was not to be an intimate gathering (or as "intimate" as it gets with four siblings, their spouses, and 7 grandchildren); it would be the whole family--aunts, uncles, ad nauseum--totalling 28 people.
Sex is a basic human drive. We want to eat. We want to sleep. And we want to have sex. These are the things that bring us pleasure in life. Almost everything boils down to those three things.
But unfortunately, bipolar disorder and bipolar medication can affect all three. Bipolar disorder and its associated medication can make you eat. Or make you not eat. It can make you sleep. Or it can make you not sleep. And it can affect your sex life the same way.
But for some reason, doctors often take the effect on your sex life least seriously.
You are sitting in your psychiatrist's office. The office is large. Her desk sits in the corner near the window. The blinds are always closed. The halogen lights seem much too bright--they hurt your eyes. Eyes that constantly threaten to close, and you wish you were back home where it is safe and dark. Back home where you can pretend there is nothing wrong. But there is: that is why you are sitting across from your doctor, across the small oval table. You glance at the stagnant art and your heart races. Your hands sweat. Your mind moves too quickly and then not fast enough.
I'm having a bit of trouble leaving the rules of my marriage behind me. You see, when I was married, I was to be forever less than him. My job was to focus my energies on making him seem and look better - more capable, responsible, trustworthy... It was my job to prop him up to the outside world. He was a poster-board life-size cut-out, smiling and looking grand, and I was the plain cardboard stand sticking in his rear, supporting him.
Thanksgiving is a special time when family members, spread far and wide across this great land of ours, unite under one roof to dine, catch up, and recall exactly why it is they are so careful to avoid one another the rest of the year.
Those of us strangely blessed with mental illnesses of various descriptions are especially vulnerable, since these allegedly cheerful events feel more like crime scene reconstructions where the horrors that sent us running down the path to Cookoopantsatopolis are revisited endlessly.
Seated at the table, any progress made in therapy over the past year seems to magically melt away. Before long we find ourselves reclaiming emotional baggage we’re desperate to abandon. No matter how far we’ve progressed in life, there, seated in front of that defenseless avian carcass, we’re seven again; and it ain’t pretty.
Small wonder so many of us cringe as we witness the approach of Thanksgiving, contemplating the event with a dread one might reserve for dentistry without anesthesia.
It's easy to get into the habit of not addressing your needs when you have anxiety. I'm yet to meet someone dealing with anxiety who doesn't know 200 ways to say "I'm fine" to paint a rosy picture of life. But treating anxiety is about understanding your reality, not what a perfect reality might be or the reality Jo Normal experiences.
My name is Dan Hoeweler, and if you were to meet me in person, I would seem like your average eccentric artist. I am in many ways undeniably ordinary. I live in a house with my cat Mr Giggles, who I deeply love. I have many friends and work as a janitor at an amusement park, and have been there for three years now without incident. I, with the help of my family, have been purchasing and renovating houses together during the winter time. I blend in fairly well in most situations, and if you were to talk to me you might find me somewhat intelligent and charming.
When your child has a psychiatric illness, your plate fills rather quickly--psychiatrist appointments, therapist appointments, IEP meetings, trips to the pharmacy and the never-ending juggling of prescription medications. But there are other things crowding the china--things like medication side effects--we may have no idea how to handle, even if we feel we've "mastered" all there is to know about our child's diagnosis.
Children with mental illness experience myriad side effects that create even more problems for them and their parents; one in particular has hit us the hardest. In our house, the most persistent medication side effect is bedwetting. And it's driving us all crazy.
Where do we go from here? Most of the family thinks just to let her hit bottom and then if she reaches out to help any we can. Some want to just keep paying her bills and just let her sit in the house with no responsibilities. Never been on medication and impossible to get to her when she refuses to talk to ANYONE.
Help.
On the day we agreed to videochat to make things less awkward IRL she woke up with a migraine so we rescheduled to the day after, I made sure to assure her that it was okay and to take her time. Later that day, in the late evening we had a nice chat but suddenly she stopped replying, even though nothing had happened. The day after I texted her good morning and said I hope she was feeling a little better. she wouldn't open my texts.
A couple days after I sent her a longer text saying that even though I had only known her for a short time I care a lot for her and would like to know how she are doing, telling her I'm there for her, assuring her I'm not going anywhere even though things might not be very easy. She wouldn't open it.
A week later I sent a text saying not to feel bad about not answering and that I will be there when she is able to answer again. It's been two weeks since this and she still hasn't opened my texts. She hasn't been active at all.
I don't know what else I can do. I assumed she might have fallen into a depression. I have tried to just not think about it anymore, and I haven't that much but when I do it sort of kills me inside...