I now have a new site where I will be sharing much more about recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. This site will include video, audio, blogs, and coming very soon – excerpts from my up-coming memoir about my recovery from BPD in 1995 and my audio autobiography which is a prelude to the memoir in which I share the impacting and noteworthy aspects of my “borderline years” along with some childhood experiences that were central to all that I had to get through in the therapy that was my process of recovery. There is so much hope for BPD recovery – hope that is being negated by systemic stigma and hidden agendas within many areas of the mental health delivery system these days. What do you need to know more about? Why do so many say you can’t recover from Borderline Personality Disorder? Why do they say that? What is BPD really, anyway? Remember, what you think creates your experience, so be very careful about what you think about what BPD is, how it is treated, who knows what, and what causes it and much more.
There is too much being said these days by too many about all that is negative about Borderline Personality Disorder. Too many people focus too much on the stereotypical, limiting, devaluing, pathologizing of human beings who are living their lives with BPD – in an out-of-balance way. That’s not something entirely pathological at all. It is a reactive-response to unaddressed and unhealed woundedness. People with Borderline Personality Disorder are not all the same. People with BPD, especially in a relational context, exhibit what it means to be human in very intense and polarized ways. Not pathological, but out-of-balance ways.
The traits that psychiatry as used to define Borderline Personality Disorder are human traits. How is it that they took what are human traits and twisted them into a pathology that they named Borderline Personality Disorder and then abandoned anyone diagnosed with it saying that you can’t get better. Can’t get better from what? Being human in intensely polarized ways? Say what?
And to further complicate that reality that people with Borderline Personality Disorder can get well, in the last decade or so, now these (not all but a lot) psychiatrists have created, yes created, what is now known as biopsychiatry. Biopsychiatry, essentially came out of what is not being referred to as “the decade of the brain” – the 1990’s. “Decade of the brain” – what? Did the brain need a decade? What does this mean? What was the focus on the brain about and who was doing the focusing? What was the purpose of this focus? These are important questions to keep in mind when you consider what BPD really is versus what biospsychiatry says it is and what that means for recovery and what that means to the process of actual recovery versus being kept stuck in what psychiatrists and the mental profession continue to claim is such “pathology”.
The “decade of the brain” saw many studies be reported, actually, marketed to the public. Studies that made all sorts of claims about Borderline Personality Disorder, and indeed, mental illness generally, as “brain disorder” or “brain disease”. Do you like science fiction? I personally, don’t really. It’s a lot of fantasy and illusion with high-tech special effects. Oh, wait, rather just like the studies of the “decade of the brain” and beyond. What most people don’t know or realize, unless they question the mass-marketing of supposed study-findings that conclude Borderline Personality Disorder is a “brain disorder” is that these studies were largely funded – if not entirely funded – by Big Pharma, mainly in the United States to begin with. The big money of Big Pharma (pharaceutical companies – drug companies) looked for a more effective way to market their products. That’s what is behind biopsychiatry. A “marriage” of sorts between Big Pharma and its marketing machine and big dollars to advertising in all forms of media meets “mental health professionals” who also want to make more money. Where is the actual mental health consumer/client/patient in this “relationship”?
If you believe that biopsychiatry, which is also known as the “medical model of psychiatry”, has the any proof of their claims – claims that they put across about mental illness as a “brain disorder” to sell drugs to people that actually, in the long run, obfuscate recovery and make it more difficult for people thus meaning they will be more reliant on the drugs and the prescribing mental health professionals – I hope you will think again, do some research and do your best not to get caught up in or trapped in their smoke-and-mirror pseduo-science. A “science”, this “brain disorder” junk they say their “studies” back-up as if it were proof when at best it is only theory, if that, takes your humanity out of the equation. It doesn’t look at you, the mental health consumer/client/patient as a whole person at all. But then, should that be surprising given the fact that the traits they list, for example, in the DSM-IV as “pathological” as “mental illness” as “personality disordered traits” are human traits that they themselves have defined as pathology?
You can recover from Borderline Personality Disorder. I did. What can block your ability to get well and to recover is being fooled by biopsychiatry into believing that you have a “brain disorder” and that only those who create the “illness” can cure it. But can they? NO! Do they even try? NO! That’s right – biopsychiatry, largely backed by, created by, and funded by Big Pharma has a different agenda other than treating people with BPD and mental illness – they are serving themselves, not you!
Sound controversial? Sound crazy? Sound impossible? Well, if you want to know more about where I am coming from with this please do visit my newest site at bpdmemoir.com where I will be talking more about recovery and what kind of thinking supports recovery and what kind of thinking will keep you stuck in the pain of Borderline Personality Disorder.
I’ll also be speaking to Loved Ones of those with BPD about what types of misinformation you need to pay more attention to so that you have all the information you need to make decisions in your best interest. Many books in the last few years targeted at BPD Loved Ones, BPD Family members, partners, and ex-partners, co-workers, etc., of those with BPD have mislead you also in terms of this “medical model of BPD” that is really not about supporting wellness or recovery and is more about an industry making money and yes, exploiting people’s pain.
© A.J. Mahari, December 21, 2010 – All rights reserved.
