I see
I was so relieved when my therapist told me I did not have bpd. Mostly, it was because my father is and I really didn't want to be like him...
I almost wondered if he didn't just tell me that because I was so bothered by the label. But I see you also know people who "exhibit traits" without actually having the disorder.

I am almost done with "The Feminine Mistake" by Leslie Bennetts, and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it's very eye-opening, even for someone who grew up with a working mother. I have always planned a career of my own (I didn't think there was a choice - my mom worked, so it's what I knew), but this book brings up many interesting points in favor of working that I had never considered.

The problem with a lot of diagnosis of BPD is that people may look only at the surface of the person and see a list of behaviors. What are the BPD behaviors? Well, creating crises out of a fear of abandonment. That's so subjective though, how do you define it?
Self injury...Most of my patients engage in this in some form.
Loss of internal self...This is a natural result of rape or sexual abuse anyway.
Alternating patterns of idealizing/devaluing helpers...THIS seems to be the main trait of BPD, the one that most reliably fixes it.
(there are many, many more traits, but let's use these for brevity)

So let's say I have a woman in therapy who has been raped, and as a result she self-injures, she feels empty inside, she experiences overwhelming crisis very frequently, she fears being abandoned by her support (yet she also feels her supporters will eventually discover her low worth and abandon her out of disgust), and her relationships suffer.

Well gee, that sounds like a Borderline! But it ain't. It's a rape victim acting very logically the way a rape victim does during her First and Second stages of RTS. What a lot of therapists fail to do is listen for, absorb, and consider the story she brings with her. They do not allow themselves to be informed by her story. They fail to see these as symptoms of rape's parasitic influence in her soul, and instead they bundle up the loose symptoms and tie them together as "borderline."

Now, I see BPD as a VERY real condition. I am coping with its manifestation in my group therapy at present, in fact. I havce had BPD women begin to strip in therapy in an effort to seduce me; I have had to draw upon legal authorities to halt BPD stalkers; I have received gifts from BPS sufferers and then been roundly punished for failing to show the PRECISELY "correct" display of gratitude (or putting the gift in the wrong place, or not reciprocating with special favors in return), etc.

I have learned this, though: very few women with BPD will be curious about whether they have BPD. I've never had a borderline ask me, "Matt, do you think I could be a Borderline sufferer?"

The problem with a lot of diagnosis of BPD is that people may look only at the surface of the person and see a list of behaviors. What are the BPD behaviors? Well, creating crises out of a fear of abandonment. That's so subjective though, how do you define it?
Self injury...Most of my patients engage in this in some form.
Loss of internal self...This is a natural result of rape or sexual abuse anyway.
Alternating patterns of idealizing/devaluing helpers...THIS seems to be the main trait of BPD, the one that most reliably fixes it.
(there are many, many more traits, but let's use these for brevity)

So let's say I have a woman in therapy who has been raped, and as a result she self-injures, she feels empty inside, she experiences overwhelming crisis very frequently, she fears being abandoned by her support (yet she also feels her supporters will eventually discover her low worth and abandon her out of disgust), and her relationships suffer.

Well gee, that sounds like a Borderline! But it ain't. It's a rape victim acting very logically the way a rape victim does during her First and Second stages of RTS. What a lot of therapists fail to do is listen for, absorb, and consider the story she brings with her. They do not allow themselves to be informed by her story. They fail to see these as symptoms of rape's parasitic influence in her soul, and instead they bundle up the loose symptoms and tie them together as "borderline."

Now, I see BPD as a VERY real condition. I am coping with its manifestation in my group therapy at present, in fact. I have had BPD women begin to strip in therapy in an effort to seduce me; I have had to draw upon legal authorities to halt BPD stalkers; I have received gifts from BPD sufferers and then been roundly punished for failing to show the PRECISELY "correct" display of gratitude (or putting the gift in the wrong place, or not reciprocating with special favors in return), etc.

I have learned this, though: very few women with BPD will be curious about whether they have BPD. I've never had a borderline ask me, "Matt, do you think I could be a Borderline sufferer?"

wow that was a really good explanation.
so most likely the fact that I've been so afraid that I had it is a good case against my having it lol

This comment isn't so much about the books, as the author. Matt, Kaye, Shen, Lucinda, (don't mean to leave anyone out)....each of you have something to say, and you do it beautifully here. Matt, you have published, and your talents are remarkable at a minimum.

This is the mom/Grammy in me, but, I hope you are saving something of each of your writings specifically for your children...all of you, Shen your beautiful artwork, and Kaye.

My father was a technical writer and graphic design person via Civil Service for the Navy. He loved to write and had started a fictional novel (we thought fictional), but died before it was finished. My sister, who is a published poet, 'inherited' his manuscript. But I have one of the PROCEEDINGS magazines he published in a few months before his death. I was proud of what he wrote. I will give it to my son one day.

What I am trying to say here, is, like Matt's 'Where the Red Fern Grows' time with his son, each of us has that moment when the world doesn't matter, but our children do. Someday they'll need those moments.

Someday, they'll treasure painted flowers on a cup, and the times they spent at a table, drinking from that cup, in the company of their Mom.

Didn't mean to go so far off task here, but, savor the moments, and save your works for your children, your grands.....they will cherish them in time.

Courtney E. Martin, author of "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters", is briefly interviewed about body image/digital picture enhancement in Hollywood:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5471524

Oh my, I was about to post this interview!

Couln't find any listed by Empowered at local bookstore, so I got
Perfect Daughters - Adult Daughters of Alcoholics by Robert Ackerman, PhD

I'll have to order the other ones.

I need a good source on finding anger...everything I have found so far is about having too much already!