Stigma Via Health Professionals

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I wasn’t expecting it from this source.  Actually I had seen this particular health professional about five times and had decided that she knew her stuff.  What’s more, I had decided that she was responding to what I was saying to the extent that I felt comfortable with her.  A big thing.

But I admit I had forgotten a brief moment in my first appointment with her when she responded to something I said with “you haven’t got a mental illness“.

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Almost Too Sensitive For The Regular World

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Think Black and White
“Image courtesy of [anankkml] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”.

I’ve borrowed my title from a good friend.  She struggles like me and when she suggested we were both “almost too sensitive for the regular world“, I finally had the words that I hadn’t been able to find.  How do I fit into this regular world when so much of it grates so painfully against my raw skin?

Lines and Colours

In my mind, I am normal. This is because I live with me twenty-four seven (OK, not always twenty-four seven because some of those hours I am asleep).

I have BPD. In the past, I never realised that I feel emotions more easily, more deeply, and for longer than others do. I thought the intensity of my emotions was normal. Turns out, it’s not. I read somewhere that in non-BPD people an emotion typically fires for 12 seconds. In BPD’ers it can last up to 20 percent longer. BPD’ers emotions also repeatedly re-fire, or re-live, or recur, however you want to say it, so emotional reactions occur for even longer. I do. I go over and over and over the emotions, pinging from one to another like a steel ball in a pinball machine.

Helping to Break Stigma

When I received the job offer a few weeks ago I thought it over for a few days before excitedly accepting. My new manager arranged that she would send me some paperwork to fill out, and the next week we would meet so I could have a look around one of the branch practices I would be working in.

When I’d quit my previous job a few weeks ago I never expected to land on my feet. My parents were terrified that I had no long term prospects and I was just going to be a temp nurse.

Onwards & Upwards

As a person with more than her fair share of mental health problems, I find it really difficult to maintain relationships, mainly friendships (I don’t trust people enough for any other kind!).

I always put this down to perhaps I’m a horrible person. I seem to go through friends like nobodies business and always blame myself when the friendship falls apart.

Since my diagnosis with Borderline Personality Disorder (or Emotional Dysregulation Disorder, whatever you want to call it), researching the illness and the way other sufferers perceive the world has helped me realise that I’m not entirely to blame and it is my point of view of things that is askew.

I Am Not OK, But That Is OK

I’ve been wondering recently (as always) why I am the way I am.

I’ve been trying to come up with an explanation.

It feels like I can’t help these ways.  I think the way I think because of all that I am, and all that has happened.  I feel like I use it as an excuse, but am I allowed to feel that way?

Back in hospital

* Talk of self-harm and suicide *

So here I am, I’ve been back in the hospital for just under two weeks.

The BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), depression, insomnia and anxiety is extremely venemous. I can’t start to explain the turmoil I am going through. The constant death wishes, then the wanting to live moments. I am all over the place.

Dissociative Identity Disorder, Splitting and Marmite

When I joined Canvas I had just “come out” as having other personalities.  I’ve been researching them a lot, because I don’t understand why I do this, and research is helping me understand, so I would like to share, especially as there isn’t a lot of first hand experience out there.

I have two others who I consider different personalities to my own. One is called Charlotte, the other is Jack.  I also have the real me.  The real me who you might know as Sailor, but everyone in the “real world” knows as Carrie.