When I found out my clinical psychologist barracked for the Fremantle Dockers, I could not have been more surprised than if she’d pushed up the arm of her shirt to reveal a Southern Cross tattoo.  In Australia AFL Aussie Rules football and the Southern Cross is as Australian to us as baseball and the Stars and Stripes is to Americans.

So just how well do we know our therapists?  Not very well at all, I think we’d be surprised if we got to know them well, after all isn’t it the not-knowing mystique about them that is so alluring?  The only reason I know she loves football and sits on a cold concrete bench in the middle of winter braving the elements and waving a purple, red and green scarf is because I once saw a sticker on the back of her car.  She did tell me that she also has active facebook and twitter accounts.

I had imagined her more as an arty-farty literati museum and art gallery type (aren’t all psychologists) and not a footy and facebook fan.  It is cognitively dissonant to think of her screaming for her team whilst updating her status rather than reading esoteric poetry with glasses perched on the end of her nose and a crocheted rug over her lap in front of a roaring fire.  Or standing up holding an artists palette in front of a canvas and painting an award winning piece of abstract art, or perhaps reading Hemingway or Dickens (and actually enjoying them), or stitching a complicated intricately patterned tapestry, or better still, writing long wordy articles for peer reviewed psychology journals and avidly writing the self-help book she has been planning to ever since I met her (which is now 15 years and counting – and no book in sight). 

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I wanted my first-born son to get a PhD and instead he decided to get a tattoo.  I was horrified.  I told this man-child, who not only towers above me but is also turning 18 next month, that the answer was an emphatic no.  Under no circumstances would he ever be allowed to defile his body.  It was a slap in the face of motherhood for me.

I have two boys and a girl and they are so different from each other that one of our close friends remarked in jest that they must have had different fathers.  No, they didn’t but as any mother will tell you, no two children are alike.  My youngest son is academically inclined and my daughter is a qualified chef and her boyfriend is studying for his Masters degree.

I value education above all else and my family are more than aware of this. What mother doesn’t want the best for her children and I saw higher education, good manners and strong standards as part of being the best.  A tattoo is a symbol of rebellion and defiance and I would be ashamed of having a son with a tattoo.  Tattoos have no place in my perfect family.

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For someone was has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, it can take a long time to recover from the anaphylactic shock of raging, damaging emotions that are coursing through our blood when we experience an attack on ourselves.  During this time many physical symptoms of post-rage illness are experienced and this I like to call “mental influenza.”

Even though one can have much insight into the “who, what, where, when, why and how” of the scope, breadth and dimension of these rageful feelings and/or attacks you can still be left with the shocking after effects of the toxic flooding of your system; the blackness and physical feelings that leave you with a sense of vertigo, numbness, breathlessness and weakness, the sensation of lightheadedness and giddiness where you think you are going to pass out.  These feelings simply don’t diminish as quickly as they should and days later they can still be hanging around at the same intensity level as when they first happened. 

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One of the nine symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling one’s temper.  It has been written many times that these symptoms seem to lessen or even disappear when middle age comes around, but my thoughts are sometimes they just get driven underground as we get older.  Sufferers of BPD can still feel these intense, angry feelings, they are just better controlled, especially the ones who have had therapy or worked on their issues.  It takes much mindfulness to get through emotionally intense experiences without having a meltdown.

I have learned over the many years of my therapy that although I am no longer the angry, rageful person I used to be, I can still surprise myself by having a one-off major brain-snap when conditions are ripe or the planets are misaligned.  Most of the time I control my outward actions; in fact I cannot remember the last time I lost my temper completely.  Mindfulness training, CBT, Buddhism, meditation, yoga and bush and lake walking has given me much peace of mind – but does a leopard truly change its spots or have they just faded away or changed shape?

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I have two older women in my life who have both had a major influence over me.  One is my mother, the woman who gave biological life to me; and the other is my therapist, the woman who assisted in my spiritual birth, growth and maturation.

My mother loves me.  She cooks me dinner, buys me Christmas presents, takes me shopping, goes on bike rides and walks around lakes with me, swaps family photos, lends me books and CDs and takes me across town to the doctors where she has to wait for two hours before taking me out to lunch and paying for me.  My therapist is very fond of me and I pay her $150 for a 55 minute structured conversation during which she very kindly makes me a cup of tea.

I can ring my mother any time of the day or night and speak to her for as long as I want.  I can visit her any time; I do not have to make an appointment, where I am the three o’clock slotted in between the 2pm and the 4pm.  I can ring my therapist any time as well, as long as it is not too often, within business hours, and for a very brief period of time.

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Sometimes, the smallest things in life can cause the greatest pain and physical reaction.  A bee’s sting is almost invisible to the naked eye and yet can easily kill someone when they have an allergic reaction.  A mere critical stinging comment can just as easily send a person suffering Borderline Personality Disorder into “emotional anaphylactic shock.”

When a person has a life-threatening reaction to the poison from a bee sting, an ambulance is called and the person is taken to hospital where they receive treatment for their illness as well as respect and dignity but when someone suffering an emotional reaction to life circumstances presents at emergency, they are sometimes treated with rejection, intolerance and disdain.  People can die from a bee sting and Borderlines can “die” from their own personal rage and self-hatred.  If you present at emergency with a swollen face and throat unable to breathe with all your body organs shutting down, is some doctor or nurse going to say, “OMG, it’s a tiny bee sting, how bad can that be, look at you, get over yourself,” like they sometimes do when Borderlines present at hospital with similar symptoms.

Yet both types of people are in much pain and danger. 

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At last, someone who is giving Borderline Personality Disorder a new image, a new spin, a positive focus and dispelling all of the myths surrounding this socially constructed disorder.  Thank you, Marsha Linehan, for coming out of the closet.  What a breath of fresh air you are!

I have read Marsha’s book on Dialectical Behavioural Therapy and since then I have been recommending this type of one on one therapy, based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, radical acceptance, Buddhist meditative practice and mindfulness with the adjunct of group therapy and inter-session therapist phone-calls, to many people.  It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is life beyond this subjective, patronizing, ineffective, degrading and destructive diagnosis, generally given out by the psychiatric industry. 

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There’s nothing like a good wallow in the confluence of the sticky mud and muck of our past history and current circumstances.  It’s familiar territory for me whenever personal emotional disaster strikes and I dive head-first and bury myself in the warm, dark underbelly of self-hatred, self-sabotage and sometimes self-destruction.  I slither and slide, turning cartwheels and backflips until I am so immersed in the experience there is almost nothing that can draw me back up to the surface again.

At this point I need instant validation of my pain and suffering.  I think we all do.  The reason for the suffering, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by others is immaterial.  For me to be told my suffering is valid and reasonable gives me the invigorating courage to draw myself up out of the murky depths to my full height and start to soldier on.  When someone witnesses my story of pain, abandonment and rejection, the underworld does not feel as enticing as it did beforehand and I start to reflect from an observing ego level or a perspective of emotional distance, that this is old familiar stuff.  I’ve been here before and I’ve let go and moved on many times.  In fact I’ve even managed to transcend the situation several times before descending back into chaos again when life goes pear-shaped.

Reflection, meditation and sometimes just mere background pondering leads me to being able to rise above the situation and see it for what it is; something that happened in the past when significant others let me down.  Nothing on earth, not even Superman can turn back the world and change what happened back in 1975.  I have to live with that history, incorporate and integrate it permanently into my being.  I am not the sum total of what happened to me.  No-one is ever that.  What happened is a mere small part of who I am.  It does not reflect my strengths or my achievements.  It does not define who I am.  It does not make me a victim.  It is simply a minor part of my lived experience.

My therapist once said (and I bit her head off for saying this at the time) that “the past is in the past and the future is what counts.”  When I am in transcendence what she says makes perfect, logical, rational sense and I can see her point of view.  When I am reflective I can ponder on this past -v- present -v- future conundrum without crying and wailing and making myself emotionally ill.  When I am wallowing in self-pity I need support, warmth and comfort.  When I have this safety and security, I can start to see myself not as the centre of the Universe, but as a part of humanity like everyone else.

Perhaps if someone had reached out to me back in 1975, I would not have mental health issues.  But then I would have missed out on this vast, multi-dimensional experience with all its highs and lows, tragedies and triumphs.  Without excessive wallowing, reflection and transcendence I would not be who I am.  I feel a deeper, closer, more compassionate stance towards people, animals, trees and plants.  Because of my situation I have always valued Planet Earth.  But I had to learn with much daring and difficulty how to value myself and my life experience.   

I am valued by the Western Australian Mental Health Commission because I am paid to work as a peer worker to use my lived experience of recovery in the hope that my story will inspire and motivate others who are on the same journey, but at this moment, traveling on a different section. 

Picture:  http://www.allfreevectors.com/Free-Vector-Pig-in-Mud-4-1992.html

Six years ago I was officially diagnosed by a psychiatrist in a psychiatric hospital as having…drum roll please…BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER.  He said it to me in the same way he would announce he had a plague of rats infest his kitchen, discovered I had a sexually transmitted disease or that he had just found out I supported Tea Party candidate Sarah Palin.  It was delivered with revulsion, disgust and contempt.

Today I proudly come out of the BPD closet and out myself as having one of the most reviled and hated personality disorders ever constructed by the most esteemed and eminent fundamentalist gentlemen writers of the Psychiatric Bible the DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

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PLEASE TWITTER AND FACEBOOK THIS TO OTHER AUSTRALIANS

In Perth, Western Australia this week, Psychologist Ben Mullings and myself talked about the Medicare Better Access Initiative mental health issues on ABC720 Perth radio on Monday 30th May, 2011. It was about our campaign to get the government to reverse its decision to cut the number of Medicare rebated sessions from 12-18 sessions to 6-10 sessions.  Here is the link:

http://blogs.abc.net.au/wa/2011/05/rebates-reduced-for-mental-health-services.html?site=perth&program=720_afternoons

Please see below for our Australian GetUp Action campaign you can vote on (these are the people responsible for the above picture), the petition you can sign, the facebook page you can join, the media release and our first (but not last) piece of publicity.   I have added links if you wish to send emails to Federal and State politicians to protest against these cuts which come into effect 1^st November, 2011.

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