Summer reading musts
Aug 9 2007 | Comment 1
Thanks so so so much to Jeff Deeney (pictured, tinily), of Phawker fame, for sending me two links. One is to a blog post by a guy who’s coming out of the closet, so to speak, about his Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The other is a link to the related Metafilter comment thread. I wish I could just cut and paste, but that would bring the blog numbers down for the other guy. Think of it as your summer reading assignment:
How do you put a title on something like this?
On living with a mental illness
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
liz | 11:37 AM | Uncategorized
Since you’d love to hear thoughts about this, Liz, I’ll try to provide some. A lot is hinted at in this article with only a little detail provided, but I think some of what the author describes could come about as a result of life experiences rather than any organic brain defect.
The inability to form normal relationships, and the tending to push people away as a defensive reaction, for example. I think I’m a lot like that, actually, and I think it’s mostly related to life experiences. Mainly I just avoid people as much as possible, and I speak very little. Ironically, I think the treatment usually received from the mental health system tends to make people be more like that. All the abuse can make you more inclined to want to push people away.
The dissociation is another story altogether (I always kind of wondered what that word meant, but didn’t want to sound stupid by asking). Anyway, I guess I’m kind of unfamiliar with that. I’m usually not spontaneous enough to be in much danger of being that way. And since he didn’t say what the nine points on the DSM checklist of characteristics were, I can’t comment on that either. Whether or not a person’s anger is for a good reason is often a matter of opinion. I had about five days of almost continuous rage last week, but I think it was mostly for a good reason (which I wrote you about).
So anyway, it seems that maybe some of what he describes might be caused by trauma or other life experience, but perhaps not all of it. As I’ve said before, I think that most people have some psychological problems, and things aren’t always so clear-cut as something like the DSM might have you believe. There seems to always be some subjectivity in most pshchiatric diagnoses, anyway. But I guess finding effective treatments for the problems that cripple people might be more worthwhile than describing them.
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