My Struggles with Self Therapy

Yesterday I posted about how I use self help therapy to help with the symptoms of my BPD. It's been a very long 2 year struggle and I'm guessing I have many years of the same to look forward to. This is literally the hardest thing I've ever done. But it's also one of the most rewarding. When I started this, I was on the verge of losing everything I loved. I was miserable and crazy and in turn, I was making every one around me miserable and crazy. But now I lead a semi-normal life. I have a semi-normal marriage. And I even feel semi-normal! For someone with BPD, that's a big achievement!

But it almost didn't happen. The problem with self therapy is the fact that I'm doing this alone. I have no one to support me when I'm struggling, encourage me when I feel like giving up, or celebrate when I hit a milestone. It's just me. The hardest part was getting started. Knowing what was ahead of me made me put it off. And once I finally did start, I ended up sabotaging myself and almost quit.

Like I said before, the book I chose was The Angry Heart by Joseph Santoro. When I got it, I spent two days reading it from cover to cover. As I read through it, I kept alternating between feelings of discouragement and encouragement. I mean, I could actually see myself following the book and getting better. But one of the things it stressed was the need to drag up old childhood memories and work through my feelings about them. To be quite honest, that scared the crap out of me. So I set it aside for a couple weeks.When I picked it up again, I read that I would need a notebook with different sections to use as a journal. So in an effort to put it off a little longer, I opted to make a journal from scratch instead of buying one. Although it really was just an attempt at procrastination, today I'm glad I made it myself. I look at it as a reflection of me. It contains my whole life inside and out.

It was hard at first. I don't know if it's my OCPD or the BPD, but one of them makes me a stickler for rules. I tried to do everything the book said word for word, but I kept worrying that I wasn't doing it right. Was I going too fast? Too slow? Was I doing the exercises correctly? How was I supposed to know when I was ready to move on? There were things I wanted to write in my journal, things in my early adult life that I thought were important, but each section was for specific thoughts or exercises and there wasn't a section for what I wanted to write. So I held it in. Plus I was scared that my husband would read it, so I refused to write the truly awful memories of my childhood (I did this for him. He has a good relationship with my family and I was afraid that would change if he knew the worst of it). I was making improvements, but they were tiny because my fear was holding me back. Then one day I decided there was no point in even trying if I couldn't give it my full effort. I knew I had to either do something to make it work or I had to quit. So I made it work.

I got a lock box to keep my journal private. I really don't think John would have read it, but I had to be sure.
I decided since it was my therapy, I would make the rules. On the front page of my journal I wrote:

"This is my journal. This is my story. I can write whatever I want in it. I'm not going to get into trouble. Nobody will be mad. I will take my time and work at my own pace. I will trust in myself to know when to move on. I can and will do whatever it takes to make myself better"

It may seem silly, but it worked. To me, writing that in my journal made it feel like a rule. It was a rule that gave me permission to do what I needed to do in order to keep going forward. And it was a lot easier once I stopped struggling against myself..

Although I'm proud of how far I've come, I still wish I could attend regular therapy. I wish I could go to group therapy and see with my own eyes that I'm not alone in this struggle. I wish I could go to one on one therapy and be able to open up to someone that could help me. I wish I could get some sort of medication to help regulate the ups and downs. For now that's not possible. But that might change when I move back home. Oh, I wish, I wish!

Personal Responsibility

I get annoyed with people that use BPD as an excuse for their behavior. I know it has a huge effect on our emotions and thoughts, but that doesn't mean we have to let BPD control our emotions and thoughts.

I lived for years using BPD as an excuse for my actions.
"It's not my fault."
"I can't help it."
"Don't blame me."
I let BPD rule my life. I let it make my decisions. I let it control my thoughts and emotions. I didn't even try to change because why should I have to change something that isn't my fault? I did whatever I wanted and then expected people to understand that it was the BPD, not me. Heck, I even expected people to feel sorry for me. And when I finally tried to get therapy and realized that there wasn't any in my area, I gave up. I used that lack of therapy as an excuse to keep acting out.

While writing this, the same words keep running through my mind: weak, irresponsible and selfish. Giving BPD so much control over my life made me weak. Using it as an excuse made me irresponsible. And giving up on finding treatment made me selfish. I never even thought about how this was affecting my husband and my family.

It was by pure chance that I found out about a therapy option most wouldn't even consider for treating borderline personality disorder. Self Help. My first reaction was ridicule. I mean, how the hell could a self help book treat something like BPD? From what I read, it takes years of intense therapy and even that doesn't work for everyone.

But then I took a look at my life. My marriage was a wreck. My arms still had scabs from my latest self harm episode. I had no friends because I drove them all away. I had almost been kicked out of the house because of my last suicide attempt. My emotions were raging out of control and because of that, my behavior was driving away everyone I cared about. I realized that if I didn't figure out a way to control my symptoms, I was going to lose everything. I realized that even though it wasn't my fault that I have BPD, it's still my responsibility to figure out a way to treat it. So even though I didn't put much stock in a self help book actually working, I decided I should at least try it. Besides, it couldn't possibly make my life any worse.


The book I chose was The Angry Heart by Joseph Santoro. After some initial troubles (which I'll write about in later post), I stopped holding myself back. I dug into my past, relived painful memories, and wrote it all down in a special journal. I took an honest look at my current life and implemented the changes needed to make it better. I started with the exercises and repeated them many many times. I worked at my own pace and it was slow-going. But it was working. My head didn't feel as crazy. My marriage was stronger than ever. I stopped self harming and attempting suicide. I even made a few friends. And all thanks to a ridiculous book I thought would be a waste of money.

I took responsibility over my life and my life got better. Although BPD still has a big impact on my thoughts and emotions, I no longer blame it for my behavior. Taking personal responsibility for my actions has made me work even harder at getting better.

This is something every borderline needs to do. Whether we use traditional therapy or self help, we still need to start accepting responsibility for our own actions.