Introduction To My Blog Series: Living Successfully With Borderline Personality Disorder & Histrionic Personality Disorder
I was 27 years old when I entered into the realization that there was something wrong with me and one of the original diagnosis was Borderline Personality Disorder, BPD.
I say something wrong with me because I was just not able to manage my life on my own and somehow knew there was something wrong with my mind.
Back then, not a lot was known about this horribly stigmatized disorder because BPD patients were considered impossible to treat or wrongly diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.
Along with BPD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS) were also added to my diagnostic mix.
ADHD was quickly debunked and over the past two decades most professionals leaned towards my having PTSD or a Dissociative Disorder – but something about these disorders never seemed to fit.
Add menopause to the mix and the confusion became even more confusing.
Anxiety
Here are past blogs I’ve written about my struggles with anxiety and what felt like PTSD or DDNOS:
- Managing Anxiety -The Space of No Mind
- Managing Anxiety and the Mind of Choice
- Anxiety – The Antithesis of Personal Connection
- Anxiety & Cannabidiol (CBD) & Exercise
- Trauma, Flashbacks and Dissociative Disorders
- AM I: In a Panic Attack or Trauma Response or Dissociation or Menopause? How Do I Tell The Difference?
My Struggles With Alcoholism
- Mystic Order – Reiki Level IIIA – 21 Day Cleanse – A Miracle Has Happened
- Spiritual Discipline – My Alcohol Addiction – My Story Now
- Personal Development – Cutting the Ties That Bind – Saying Goodbye to Alcohol
- Is Too Much a Choice or Addiction?
- Personal Development – A Wild Woman’s Journey With Drinking and Hedonism While Walking the Spiritual Path
- Personal Development – A Wild Woman’s Slow Transformation Towards Her Best Self
- Reiki Principle For Today – I Will Not Worry
- OYNB – One Year No Beer – This Wild Woman’s Successful Journey of the 28 Day Challenge and Beyond!
- Personal Development – A Wild Woman Walking the Spiritual Path – A Wild Woman Redefined? Absolutely!
- Personal Development – Living Alcohol Free – Musings During Day 78
- Reiki Principle For Today – I Will Do My Work Honestly
- Personal Development – Living An Alcohol Free Life – Year One
- Another Layer
- 365 Days of Sobriety: My Journey and Triggers
- I’m No Longer Ashamed Of Being An Alcoholic
- A Bountiful Bevy Of Sagacious Skills
- A Life Of Sobriety Allows Me Deeper Connection With Family & Friends
- From Domes To Sunflowers – Dogs & Sobriety – While Becoming A Better Self
- The Man Who Reminds Me I Cannot Have Just One Drink
- This Joyful Alcoholic Has Lost Interest In Bar Hopping & Any Type Of Partying
- The Consequences Of Drinking And Driving
- My Favourite People To Be Around
- Proper Mental Health Diagnoses. Feeling Safe. Accepting I Am An Alcoholic.
- Overthinking & The Joys Of Living My Twenty-Four Hour AA Program
- Accepting I Am An Alcoholic
- From Anxiety To Sobriety: My Life Journey From 52 – 56
Present Day
On February 9th, 2022, I had a thorough psychological assessment by a seasoned psychiatrist. At long last, at 52 years old, I was finally properly diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder.
This blog series called Owning and Unraveling Borderline Personality Disorder & Histrionic Personality Disorder is my way of processing and understanding these complex personality disorders and how they manifest, interfere with and enhance my life.
Perhaps, as it has been said to me from friends who have family members with Borderline Personality Disorder, I can help dispel misconceptions and stigmas associated with these mental illnesses.
And hopefully I can shed some light and more personal information on what living with Histrionic Personality Disorder is like as I review each symptom and diagnostic criteria and how they show up (past or present) in my life.
With hope,
Stephanie, 🩵🌻
13 Week Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Group
This year I was on a long waiting list to attend a Zoom 13 Week Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) Group through Community Mental Health and Addictions (CMHA), a Nova Scotia public mental health service.
DBT was created by American psychologist Marsha Lineman, who has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Since my BPD diagnosis in 2022 I have researched and dabbled in DBT hoping it would be helpful.
Yet, I found myself overwhelmed with the extensive content of the therapy and the unlimited DBT information available on the internet.
To describe DBT as a comprehensive therapy is an understatement.
Effective, yes.
A lot of work, yes.
To be worked with and supported by a skilled therapist, absolutely.
Thankfully, after a long wait, I am currently participating in the Zoom 13 Week DBT Group, facilitated by a social worker and psychologist with CMHA.
Is 13 weeks enough?
Yes and no.
Yes, to have this opportunity.
No, because the number of specific skills taught within each section along with the in-depth weekly homework is intense!
DBT is broken down into 4 sections:
- Mindfulness
- Distress Tolerance
- Emotional Regulation
- Interpersonal Effectiveness
This DBT group is not talk therapy.
It teaches life skills.
A sorta highly advanced version of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
The detailed homework assigned each week allows group members to apply the skills taught to our specific BPD issues. We discuss the homework at the next group, but not in-depth. Any personal issues are directed to be discussed with our individual therapists.
According to DBT, the goals of skills training is to learn how to change your own behaviours, emotions, and thoughts that are linked to problems in living and are causing misery and distress.
One of the facilitators mentioned that DBT needs to be studied as it is taught, and I agree.
Therefore, to help me process I am going to blog about the skills taught in this group.
As mentioned, DBT is content heavy, so this blog will focus on Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills.
I am outlining the basic DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills taught to us.
I certainly won’t remember all these skills, but I can come back to this blog to refresh my memory instead of getting overwhelmed when I read through the group’s DBT skills booklet.
Honestly between working the 12 Steps for my alcoholism and learning these comprehensive DBT skills for my BPD, my brain feels a bit numb. Overwhelmed with so many recovery tools.
As well, based on my own research, I realize how much DBT information is found throughout the Internet.
Perhaps this blog might be helpful for someone who sorta thinks like me.
S, 🌻
Outline – 13 Week Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills
Mindfulness & Distress Tolerance Skills
Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills
DBT – Skills Thermometer – A DBT Skills Anchor Chart
DBT & Mindfulness Skills
Goals of Mindfulness Practice:
- Reduce suffering & increase happiness
- Increase control of my mind
- Experience reality as it is
Core Mindfulness Skills:
- Wise Mind: States of Mind:
- Reasonable Mind
- Wise Mind
- Emotional Mind
- WHAT Skills:
- Observing
- Describing
- Participating
- HOW Skills:
- Non-judgementally
- One-Mindfully
- Effectively – Play by the rules
- Act as skillfully as I can in the situation I am in – not the situation I wish I was in;
- not the one that is fair;
- not the one that is more comfortable – the actual situation I am in.
Focused Mindfulness Skills
Nonjudgmental
How to Practice Being NonJudgemental:
- Describe the facts (more information in Emotional Regulation)
- Imagine a person you are angry with.
- Bring to mind what the person has done that has caused so much anger.
- Try to become that person, seeing life from that person’s point of view.
- Imagine that person’s feelings, thoughts, fears, hopes, and wishes.
- Imagine that person’s history and what has happened in his or her history.
- Imagine understanding that person.
- This is cultivating compassion.
Practicing Effectiveness
- Observe when I feel angry or frustrated with someone, ask myself, “Is this effective?”
- Give up wanting to be right and switch to being effective.
- Notice willfulness in myself, ask myself, “Is this effective?”
- Drop willfulness, and practice acting effectively instead. Notice the difference.
- Willfulness – practice willing hands
Half Smile Willing Hands
Half-Smiling Willing Hands tells my body there isn’t a threat.
- Half -Smile
- Relax my face
- A half-smile is slightly upturned lips with a relaxed face
- Adopt a serene facial expression
- My face communicates to my brain
- My body connects to my mind
- Willing Hands
- Either standing, sitting or lying down
- Hands are turned outward, palms up and fingers relaxed
- My hands communicate to my brain
- My body connects to my mind
To me, this dolphin is a beautiful example of Half-Smile Willing Hands with her sweet face and outward pectoral fins.
DBT & Distress Tolerance
Distress Tolerance is about crisis management.
My struggle with Distress Tolerance was understanding what exactly defines a crisis?
A crisis is high stress and is unique for every person.
A crisis is when I am in emotional mind and in jeopardy of making a situation worse.
Goals of Distress Tolerance:
- Survive crisis situations
- without making them worse
- Accept reality
- replace suffering and being “Stuck” with ordinary pain into the possibility of moving forward
- Become free
- of having to satisfy the demands of my own desires, urges, and intense emotions
Core Distress Tolerance Skills:
- STOP Skill
- Stop
- Take a breath
- Observe
- Proceed Mindfully
- TIP Skills: Changing Body Temperature
- Tip the temperature with cold water
- Intense exercise
- Paced breathing
- Paired Muscle Relaxation
- Effective Rethinking and Paired Relaxation
- Distracting; Self-Soothing; Improving the Moment
- Distracting with Wise Mind – ACCEPTS
- Activities
- Contributing
- Comparisons
- Emotions
- pushing Away
- other Thoughts
- Sensations
- Make sure with Distracting to check intention and set time limit
- Self-soothing – Five Senses:
- Vision
- Hearing
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch
- Body Scan Meditation – step-by-step
- Improving the moment with – IMPROVE
- Imagery
- Meaning
- Prayer
- Relaxing
- One thing in the moment
- brief Vacation
- self-Encouragement with rethinking the situation (This too shall pass)
- Sensory awareness – step-by-step
- Distracting with Wise Mind – ACCEPTS
- Reality Acceptance Skills
- Radical Acceptance
- Turning the Mind
- Willingness
- Half-Smiling and Willing Hands
- Allowing the Mind – Mindfulness of current thoughts
Focused Distress Tolerance Skills
Effective Rethinking and Paired Relaxation
- Rethink the situation into new meaning
- in a way that counteracts the thoughts and interpretations producing stress and distressing emotions.
- As I rethink the situation, write down as many effective thoughts as I can to replace the stressful thoughts.
- Effective self-statement (breathing in) paired with relaxation (breathing out… so relax…)
- It’s not that important (breathing in)…so…relax…(breathing out)
- I may not like this, but I can definitely stand it (breathing in)…so…relax…(breathing out)
- I need to concentrate and not make myself uptight (breathing in)…so…relax…(breathing out)
- I’m in control (breathing in)…so…relax…(breathing out)
Practicing Radical Acceptance
- Practice Opposite Action (more about this in Emotional Regulation).
- List all behaviours I would do if I did accept all the facts.
- Then act as if I have already accepted the facts.
- Engage in the behaviours that I would do if I really had accepted what seems unacceptable.
- Cope Ahead (more about this in Emotional Regulation) with events that seem unacceptable.
- Imagine (in my mind’s eye) believing what I don’t want to accept.
- Rehearse in my mind what I would do if I accepted what seems unacceptable.
Turning The Mind
- Turning the Mind is like facing a fork in the road:
- You have to turn your mind toward the acceptance road
- and turn your mind away from the road of rejecting reality
- Turning the mind is choosing to accept.
- The choice to accept does not itself equal acceptance, it just puts you on the path.
Willingness
Examples of what WILLFULNESS is:
- Willfulness is REFUSING TO TOLERATE the moment
- Willfulness is REFUSING TO MAKE CHANGES that are needed
- Willfulness is GIVING UP
- Willfulness is the OPPOSITE OF “DOING WHAT WORKS”
- Willfulness is trying to FIX EVERY SITUATION
- Willfulness is insisting on BEING IN CONTROL
- Willfulness is ATTACHMENT TO “ME, ME, ME” and “what I want right now!”
When I am feeling willful – ask myself – “What is the threat?”
Willingness is DOING JUST WHAT IS NEEDED:
- In each situation
- Wholeheartedly, without dragging my feet.
- Willingness is acting from my Wise Mind
- Willingness is picking my battles
Mindfulness of Current Thoughts
Practicing mindfulness of thoughts with Opposite Action (more about this in Emotional Regulation):
- Imagine what I would do if I stopped believing everything I think
- Rehearse in my mind the things I would do if I did not view my thoughts as facts
Quick Links To The Blogs In This Series Living Successfully With BPD & HPD:
Borderline Personality Disorder
Forget Everything I’ve Said – I’ve Borderline Personality Disorder & Histrionic Personality Disorder
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Introduction to Symptoms & Causes
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Strong Opinions & Identity Crisis
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Not PTSD – It’s Emotions – Borderline Style
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Empathic Abilities & Intentional Interventions
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Overlapping Symptoms & What Type Of & How BPD Am I?
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Starting EMDR – Creating New Pathways To Calm
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – The Pros and Cons of Medical THC & CBD
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Gratitude For A Wild & Crazy Life
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Behind My Mona Lisa Smile – What BPD Feels Like For Me
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – The Hulk Uses Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Coping With The Inner Critic
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Unstable & Fragile Identities
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Highlights Of DBT’s Emotional Regulation Skills
Living With Borderline Personality Disorder – Highlights Of DBT’s Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills
Living With Borderline Personally Disorder – DBT – Skills Thermometer – A DBT Skills Anchor Chart
Histrionic Personality Disorder
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – Introduction & Symptoms & Diagnostic Criteria
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – Shallow, Changeable Emotions
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – Assumed Intimacy With Others
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – Hypersensitivity To Criticism
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – Manipulative Behaviour
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – Sexually Provocative Behaviour
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – A Compulsive Desire For Attention
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – Preoccupation With Appearance
Living With Histrionic Personality Disorder – Suggestible & Easily Influenced
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