"MY" Personality Disorder.....

I posted this mostly for education, as it seems to be a well written article. I was diagnosed being "borderline" almost 2 years ago during my "first" suicide attempt. I tend to agree because I do these same things, and thats why I can't be in a relationship. I think its better if I just stay alone... so I don't bother or hurt anyone else.. .. besides, most people don't like drama, especially the type I have.
I'm jealous, possessive, and insecure, and it will be quite a while before I can overcome these things. The one man that was most understanding of my depression, never tried to understand why I was jealous, possessive and insecure, he only seemed to understand, that he didn't like me being that way, and I'm sure it helped drive him away...

I got this from my liveandworkwell.com website, and I'd link to it, but you have to be a member to read it... so enjoy:



Borderline Personality Disorders
By HopkinsHealth, providing consumer health information from the Johns Hopkins University and Health System. Updated June 2004.
Last Reviewed: December 2004



Borderline Personality Disorders

What is it?
Symptoms and signs
Treatment
Prognosis


What is it?
Borderline personality disorder is theorized to originate in early childhood experiences of significant loss, profoundly unstable attachment to parental figures, trauma, abuse or deprivation. More than half of all patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder claim to have been physically or sexually abused as children. Estimated to occur in 2 percent to 3 percent of the population, it is a common personality disorder.

If you have a borderline personality disorder, you are constantly trying to ward off panic over real or imagined abandonment. As a result, your behavior may be impulsive and erratic, your moods volatile and your relationships stormy and intense.

You are likely to alternate between frantic efforts to hold on to the people you care for, and, in an attempt to avoid feelings of loss, discounting these same loved ones. To avert feelings of loneliness you might surround yourself with people, despite the fact that you may not get along with them. Stressful circumstances, especially within relationships, usually worsen symptoms.

Because people with borderline personality disorders have extremely fragile identities and self-esteem, they tend to be highly sensitive to social rejection or acceptance. If you have this disorder, you will feel, even when you are in a relationship, essentially isolated and lonely. Whenever you are threatened by impending loss, separation or abandonment, you may react with sudden rage, devaluation or paranoid accusations. It is not uncommon for people with borderline personality disorders to have difficulty controlling their impulses and to use alcohol, drugs, bingeing, self-mutilation or suicidal actions to ward off feelings of isolation and abandonment.

Symptoms and signs

A pattern of unstable relationships that alternates between idealizing and devaluing the other
Precarious sense of self
Wide mood swings
Intense anger
Angry and violent outbursts
Panic over separation or loss
Chronic feelings of emptiness.
Treatment of personality disorders
The fact that personality disorders develop early and are, in fact, the natural way people tend to operate and define themselves complicates the treatment picture. For treatment to be effective, it must address a person's basic, ingrained behavioral patterns, attitudes, relationship styles and functional capacities. Although in most cases, personality disorders are responsive over time to psychotherapy, changing these durable habits of thought, feeling and behavior requires extensive and repetitive examination, evaluation and relearning.

For example, long-term individual psychotherapy can be extremely helpful for those with borderline personality disorders. However, given their difficulties with relationships, the course of therapy is often volatile and uneven. Therapy must weather the intense feelings, demands for care and repeated crises that the individual brings to the process. Even then, the individual with borderline personality disorder is likely to devalue the therapy and therapist and often abruptly and angrily end treatment. In these cases, therapy may take at least five years.

Psychotherapy and, in some cases, psychoanalysis can be impressively effective. Many types of talk therapy that take a more here-and-now approach are also equally effective with personality disorders. In addition to the use of traditional psychotherapy to treat personality disorders, other therapeutic strategies, including cognitive-behavioral techniques and family and group therapy, have proved useful. For example, when a person has a dependent personality disorder, assertiveness training and group therapy may help increase her social self-confidence, encourage autonomy and provide the forum in which she can examine her self-denigrating thoughts and behavior. With schizotypal disorders, psyscho-educational methods, along with supportive psychotherapy, can help the individual develop more appropriate social skills.

The use of medication in treating personality disordered patients varies, but in many instances, is quite effective, especially when used in conjunction with psychotherapy. Furthermore, often the case that a person with a personality disorder comes into therapy reporting feelings of depression, anxiety or certain physical complaints. In those instances, such psychiatric disorders will also be addressed with appropriate medications. Sometimes, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—paroxetine (Paxil), fluoxetine (Prozac) sertraline (Zoloft), fluvoxamine (Luvox) and escitalopram (Lexapro)— may diminish impulsiveness, the tendency to worry and depressed mood in people with personality disorders who do not have other diagnosable psychiatric disorders.

Sometimes, especially during a crisis, suicidal threats or acting out, an individual with a personality disorder may need short-term care. Also, when severe personality disorders persist or when a person's home life cannot provide the support and structure he needs, a specialized therapeutic community can furnish the firm structure, close supervision, immediate confrontation in response to inappropriate behavior, group meetings with peers and a structured work program to foster vocational skills. This is often necessary when a person has an anti-social personality disorder.

Prognosis
Fairly good. Studies show that since personality traits are enduring characteristics, personality disorders tend to persist over the years. However, some seem to burn out, others get better. It is likely that through life experience, a person learns to modify the basic aspects of his personality and avoid relationships that don't work. For example, a person with an anti-social or borderline personality disorder can learn to curb his more impulsive and socially unacceptable behaviors over time.

With treatment, the prognosis improves, especially when an individual seeks out treatment on her own, cooperates with the treatment and takes responsibility for her problems. People can learn to modify the expression of these traits through effort and the resulting change in their behavior can reduce their vulnerability to circumstance. On the other hand, when a person projects his difficulties onto his environment, denies responsibility, and claims that he is powerless to correct his own problems, treatment tends to be less effective.

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