BPD & Bipolar

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lost_child

Well-Known Member
#1
I was told I had BPD a few years ago, althought the shrink that made this diagnosis saw me about 2/3 times for 15 minutes each time....I've spoken to different counsellors/drug works/alochol workers and all say the same when I've spent hours speaking to them that I fit more into bipolar, then bpd...and that with the right medication to help I can get the bipolar under control, then I wouldn't need to self medicate (both over counter and illegal) and life would seem more manageable (what a joke!)

Does it matter if I'm BPD or Bi-polar, would medication help to stabilise my moods or would it be another pill to pop when I'm already popping pills, and using drugs....


Friends and Family often call me Kerry Katona...my mum says that I'm split personaility which is a completely different story (my first counsellor said the same to me)...

i'm so fuxked up, I don't know if I care about diagnosis..does it matter, will having a dignosis that I feel fits make life bearable, when it doesn't feel bearable!

Will it help to actutally know why my heads like its is, why my moods can be hyper or hypo, why one day i can do somethng and a few days later I remember nothing of it....or even know why I done it when its something I hate!

I'm seriously messed up....all i want at the moment is to go and bang up, and get litres of vodka and be done with this misarable life, this miserable joke of a life.
 

aoeu

Well-Known Member
#2
You can be both at the same time.

Popping the correct pills can do wonders for you. Popping the wrong pills can lead to hell. Illegal drugs and especially alcohol should be avoided.

Unfortunately, BPD isn't especially treatable... But you can go on mood stabilizers and maybe antidepressants too AND OFF ALCOHOL and feel much better about your life.

Please do seek treatment. See your doctor for a referral to another psychiatrist and demand that you go onto mood stabilizers... Even if they think you're borderline, going on mood stabs for a few months won't hurt and may help a great deal.

HOWEVER, it sounds like rapid cycling bipolar. Medication may not help a whole lot in that case. Dark therapy may help. See the link in my signature for details, it has saved my life... Though it can be hard to manage.
 

lost_child

Well-Known Member
#3
I read ur link but not sure I understand what it is..sorry! (i'm extremely thick and have issues understanding alot of things!)

I have tried before to get clean and stay clean of substances but its so difficult as u get no "peace"..there is no middle "man"...one extreme to the other..depression or hyper (like a toddler on E's). I have been this way since I was a child, my mum says that some days I was extremely hyper, wouldn't sit still, wouldn't sleep, would do crazy arse things, would run against walls to break my arm, would run in front of cars to get injured, would seriously injure another person (thankfully I don't do that as much, as I tend to hurt me before I get the chance to hurt someone else and have excluded myself from people to keep them safe from me)...and then I would sleep for 14 hours, and be extermely depressed, take OD's, cut, self induced vomiting, no self esteem, lack of confidence, I would go school but wouldn't remain in the class....I won't even mention what I'm like as an adult, but its got worse not better...but when i'm bouncing and on a high, I don't turn up to appts (what's the point nothing wrong with me..look i'm not depressed i'm on a high!)...I never stay in services, when I'm depressed I do, but when I'm on the other end of the scale I withdrawal from services which I've been told not to, but I do...and I know I do but I don't see it until I'm out of that mood...

See I make no sense, how can anyone understand me, when I make no sense, when i just go blah blah blah

Someone tell me the best way out of this world because I need off, I need out..I need to escape from this thing called me.
 

aoeu

Well-Known Member
#4
You make perfect sense to me. I've been there. Though you seem a lot more destructive than me in the manic phases... But I was 19 by the time they started so I had pretty good self-control to start.

I had to get my bipolar stable before I was able to get off alcohol. But you should still try to at least limit your intake. I've also missed a lot of important medical appointments because of manias, and was misdiagnosed for years because happiness wasn't a symptom in my mind.

Anyhow. As to the dark therapy, the idea is that rapid cycling bipolar disorder is due to your circadian rhythm/internal clock. Your internal clock is set according to BLUE LIGHT entering your eyes - blue light indicates day, no blue light indicates night. Long nights cause depression, short nights cause manias. Then because life hates us, depression causes sleeping long and manias cause sleeping little, causing a nasty cycle until some event or another happens and triggers a switch.

So, the idea behind dark therapy is to keep a fixed day length of 14 hours light, 10 hours dark. When you're sleeping long this is done by setting an alarm. When you're sleeping short you need to cut off access to blue light while awake such that you have a solid 10 hours of sleep+no blue light (so if you sleep 6 hours you need to block blue light for 4 waking hours before or after, with NO BREAK IN BETWEEN). TV and computer screens give really blue light, white lightbulbs give fairly blue light. So you either have to be in total darkness (this is awful), use amber lights (still can't use a computer or watch TV), or get amber sunglasses and block off the edges.

Total darkness for 10 hours a day has been shown to end a manic phase faster than the strongest psychiatric meds, and amber sunglasses for 10 hours a day has arrested my manias and depressions to a large degree (I go manic or depressed a few days every few months, as opposed to several weeks per month before I did before).

What I do is put the sunglasses on every day at 8PM and sleep from 9PM to 6AM... You probably need less sleep than me and get up at a more reasonable time, though.

There is some flexibility that can be had relatively safely. I tend to sleep 9-7 on weekends with no sunglasses, and this doesn't seem to cause problems... You can probably have a couple hours movement on weekends without much risk. You have to see what happens and weigh the risks versus the benefits.

And all this is necessary because rapid cycling bipolar doesn't tend to respond well to medication. I was on a heavy dose of Seroquel and a heavy dose of Epival and I still cycled every month until I did this. Rapid cycling bipolar is defined as having 4 or more total episodes per year.

And I got my incredibly expensive sunglasses from here: https://www.lowbluelights.com/index.asp? Any yellow sunglasses should do, though, but if I have a major episode I fail out of school again which costs $4000 and at least 8 months of life, so $64 for good sunglasses is worth it, and these have the best eye coverage and the most appropriate colour.
 

solutions

Well-Known Member
#5
Hmm. Although I would guess that you are manic-depressive type 2, it's really not the diagnosis that matters, which is what I just said to someone in another thread. In treatment, your symptoms will determine its course, not your diagnosis.
 

aoeu

Well-Known Member
#6
The unimportance of the diagnosis is true in therapy, though for medication it has a large effect - bipolar I should not have antidepressants prescribed due to a large chance of them causing manic phases (this happened to me). Rapid cycling bipolar doesn't respond to meds much at all (happened to me as well) so the distinction there is especially important.

And of course, BPD vs bipolar is meds vs no meds...

And it's important to distinguish between repeated depressed episodes and bipolar disorder... Too many with bipolar are misdiagnosed and treated incorrectly for years. :\

Just some thoughts.
 
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