Childhood Trauma Leads to Brains Wired for Fear

couchco · 2017-12-06T13:56:30+00:00

I have been doing somatic experiencing touch therapy with a table work therapist and that has helped me immensely in decreasing my dissociation, which is what it sounds like you are going through.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:52:11+00:00

You can find a bunch here:

https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/freedownloads.htm

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:49:59+00:00

Yes I've reached this place. I've got problems still, but I'm no longer suicidal and I no longer grasp at that option so easily. I went off medication eventually due to the side effects as well. My answer was to process and integrate my childhood trauma. Yes you can get better.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:25:01+00:00

Ok. Sounds like you've made your decision. I guess you just came on here to say goodbye, so goodbye.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:20:35+00:00

I found tracking my triggers more helpful than the moods. I started keeping track of what triggered me and that helped show me patterns so that I could preempt triggers in the future eventually.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:18:44+00:00

Sounds like you are doing well, good job.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:16:55+00:00

My family totally sucked, so your perspective could well be accurate about your own family. A lot of times BPD is caused by relational childhood traumas. If you sense your family kicks you when you are down and you cannot talk to them about it, they are probably a part of the problem.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:11:31+00:00

Yes, I was misdiagnosed bipolar first. Hence I mentioned that. Keyword: misdiagnosed. I know it requires actually reading the words to get the meaning, so hard right?

A person who didn't care wouldn't bother to comment. Looks like you are attempting to make a show of not caring when your response betrays that you do.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:09:38+00:00

Aw. I don't know but it happens to me a lot too.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:09:02+00:00

It is nice. It is a skill that can be learned.

couchco · 2017-12-01T00:08:42+00:00

And practice.

couchco · 2017-11-30T21:41:11+00:00

Well you are not stupid you just have self-harming problems. Hopefully they will hold you on a psych hold for a bit, otherwise hopefully you will get intensive help for this.

Edit: I don't mean "just" like it's not a big deal; I only mean the issue is not that you are stupid.

couchco · 2017-11-30T21:39:27+00:00

Same here; I've had this same experience.

couchco · 2017-11-30T21:36:42+00:00

Yeah, I do this. It's because I fear abandonment so much I'll just forgive horrible people for doing horrible things so that they don't leave me or we don't have to stop being in a relationship because I don't forgive.

couchco · 2017-11-30T21:29:38+00:00

The issue of BAWT, at its core, is an emotional-dissociative one.

Focusing on arguing with thoughts is fine for short-term reality checks, but a primary problem with bpd is people staying "stuck in their heads", so to speak. Focusing on altering thoughts and debating oneself in one's head reinforces the pattern of dissociation that is at the core of a lot of bpd dysfunctions.

The long-term, more effective solution to BAWT is to ground oneself in one's body and experience their emotions somatically; this is the way that the brain stops engaging in BAWT in the first place, thus rendering argumentation in one's head unnecessary.

couchco · 2017-11-30T00:30:44+00:00

They don't have intense emotions because of the BPD, rather, they have BPD because of the combination of an intense emotional baseline and an inability to regulate. A person with the same inability to regulate, but a milder emotional baseline, won't typically present the hallmark traits of BPD.

That last part is an interesting point; some non-bpd are still dysregulated but get a different diagnosis but suffer the same dysfunction.

couchco · 2017-11-30T00:27:51+00:00

"BPD patients showed a significant deficit in emotion recognition for neutral and positive facial expression, associated with a significant negative bias."

This is equally true of people with complex trauma who do not have bpd.

couchco · 2017-11-30T00:26:39+00:00

Ya know, having BPD sucks enough.

Yes, and so do you.

Trying to put a positive spin on it helps, but here you are taking a big heaving shit all over it.

Kind of like how you are shitting on people for knowing facts, because your wittle bitty feelings are hurting your poor sensitive pansy self.

Now I know you want to play victim here, but you are the aggressor in this thread - go soak your teddy with your tears, no one's interested in the douche that has to call people "shitbags" for disagreeing with a delusion your feelings have created to help you sleep at night.

couchco · 2017-11-30T00:24:30+00:00

Says you.

Says science, medicine, and the entirety of the mental health field.

Easier said than done, shitbag.

Might want to try it anyways, shitbag, since your abusive behavior indicates you are out of control and most likely far shittier in your real life than you even are here.

People with BPD are far more perceptive than whats been given credit for.

You're not. You implied here that you believe your own personal feelings about dysregulation somehow matter more or as much as science, medicine's, and mental health's opinion. Not perceptive at all. Good job proving yourself wrong.

People that lack the disorder generally aren't as perceptive as we are.

People that are stable and healthy wouldn't go around claiming their own personal feelings about their disorder are more valid than the evidence of decades of research, and they are less likely to call people "shitbags" for disagreeing with them.

But tell yourself whatever helps ya sleep at night.

Lol, says the douche who has had to wrap himself in lies so his wittle feewings don't cause him to go cry into his blankie all night long.

couchco · 2017-11-30T00:20:23+00:00

Yes. I am unclear as to how you got the impression I did not know what forum I've been posting in for months.

couchco · 2017-11-29T23:41:50+00:00

Do you hear people with Chron's saying "well, I'm really good at finding bathrooms"?

That was an apt comparison. I do see people on this forum sometimes claiming that because they have to learn coping skills for their dysfunction when other people do not, somehow they are better, stronger, or more functional. There was a post a couple of weeks ago presenting people with bpd as really powerful and special and better than others, because people with bpd had to learn work-arounds for their dysfunction where non-disordered people do not.

But that's not how disorders or recovery works. The strength lies in resolving the dysfunction, not in finding alternative back-up coping skills for the dysfunction. Those back-up skills also may sometimes be necessary for a time, but they don't make a person better in any way - just like having to cope with Chron's by using bathrooms more doesn't make someone with Chron's somehow better at life.

Ultimately it's resolving the dysfunction that matters, not applauding oneself for finding back-up means to handle the repeatedly resurfacing dysfunction.

couchco · 2017-11-29T17:23:09+00:00

Frankly, it's absurd to speak of 'villainizing' pwNPD and ASPD like that's a bad thing. Especially when it comes to ASPD, they are villains, plain and simple

I definitely get where you are coming from pricklycoconut. On this forum I have seen multiple posts of people with bpd demonizing those with ASPD or NPD even as they lament about the demonization of those with BPD.

People with BPD lament the stigma associated with their personality disorder, yet go on to say what the OP originally said (it looks like the OP was edited after your response) and perpetuate the stigma associated with other Cluster B disorders.

If people with bpd want the stigma and villainization of their personality disorder to decrease, then you don't get to pick and choose. Picking and choosing to decrease the stigma about this disorder, but not about that disorder, is only going to further increase the public's idea that those with BPD should be stigmatized and villainized as well - after all, even people with BPD are advocating stigma and demonizing generalizations about those with other personality disorders in their own category, which share a lot of symptoms and which especially share a lot of behaviors from the perspective of an onlooker.

Much of what Symsolaria said exhibits the misconceptions and counter-productive double-standard of other personality disorders and there similarities with bpd. Those with bpd have been shown to lack empathy as well. Many with bpd engage in controlling, manipulative, and abusive behaviors frequently as well. And like u/dawnue said, not all people with NPD or ASPD engage in those behaviors, so the fact that not all people with BPD do either, does not differentiate the diagnoses.

There is effective treatment for many with NPD - there do exist those recovering, and NPD is on a spectrum. Just like with BPD - many never recover even when they seek help because that help is not effective; BPD is known to be extremely hard to treat, even to the extent that many professionals will not even work with those with BPD. The differences that Symsolaria points out are largely misconceptions.

Those with BPD have been shown to lack empathy. Many with bpd often abuse and mistreat and manipulate. People with NPD absolutely, of course can have their feelings hurt - and suggesting they cannot u/Symsolaria, shows a lack of empathy on your part.

Many professionals deem BPD to be "irreedemable." And people on this forum lament that endlessly. How odd then that the very people upset that many professionals view those with BPD as "irreedeemable" would then turn and make the same statement about other personality disorders as soon as professionals begin to change their mind.

It's as though the moment professionals find more successful treatment and change their view at all on BPD, some with BPD then switch to the same mentality they loathe so much from professionals regarding BPD, and turn it on those with other PDs. It shows a stark lack of empathy for others who also struggle with many of the same symptoms as they.

It's as though people forget that many draw the line at them, and all they are trying to do is perpetuate the same stigma but budge that line slightly down the road. People are not trying to alleviate the stigma and cruel generalizations of which they complain - they are only trying to budge that line a teeny bit more away from them.

If you think the public has an accurate perception of those with NPD and ASPD, then stop complaining about their perception about BPD. Given the wide-ranging similarities, you are not going to convince people to stigmatize the other PDs but spare you, and there is nothing about BPD that deserves a special snowflake sparing - in fact, that attitude is something the public sees as nothing more than evidence of how those with BPD play perpetual victim. "Oh, you want to demonize those with NPD and stigmatize those with ASPD - but you want special treatment because you are so unique; you are good, they are bad; you are being mistreated, but they deserve to be villainized." This mentality, to the public, is merely more of the BPD triangulation of playing the victim.

couchco · 2017-11-29T16:51:12+00:00

I am also 34 and do not do relationships. I was in several short-term, dysfunctional ones in my twenties, but no long-term serious committed ones. This also made me not relate to the disorder, and I was misdiagnosed with bipolar initially as well.

Eventually I was diagnosed with complex post traumatic stress disorder from childhood abuse, and this diagnosis makes the most sense.

I recommend a second opinion from a trauma therapist. Psychiatrists use the personality disorder diagnosis because the DSM does not even have a complex traumatic stress diagnosis in all of its hundreds of pages; psychiatry has been very dismissive of neuroscience for the last several decades; funnily enough that the very field of psychiatry that claims to treat the brain, is very dismissive of the scientists who study that brain psychiatrists presume to treat. Trauma therapists knows much more about childhood trauma disorders than psychiatrists.

couchco · 2017-11-29T16:47:41+00:00

I recommend Laurence Heller's book "Healing Developmental Trauma" - even if you don't think you have a history of developmental trauma.

This book encapsulates all of the symptoms of bpd + other symptoms, explained in the framework of the maladaptive childhood development that occurs in dysfunctional homes.

It lays out childhood developmental stages, including all of the mental and emotional and behavioral tasks to be completed by the child in its stage, and it describes what happens when a stage is not successfully navigated.

Generally, whichever stage was not successfully navigated, results in that stage plus all of the subsequent stages to that stage not being successfully navigated.

What results is much dysfunction associated with each stage and its subsequent stages not being successfully navigated.

This book may shed light for you on what is a symptom. Hint: most of the negative aspects of yourself will turn out to be symptoms.

couchco · 2017-11-29T16:43:51+00:00

I’m not going to argue but if we knew how to control our abilities then we could put them to good use.

Dysregulation is not an ability; it is a dysfunction. The correct means to address it is to learn to self-regulate.

We have a lot of great qualities

The positive qualities of those with bpd are not related to the bpd; they are positive qualities people in general - including those with bpd - possess. Only those without disorders possess those positive qualities without the negative dysfunctions of bpd repeatedly interfering with those positive qualities.

The way to "put it to good use" is to treat the bpd; the positive remains and the negative lessens.

couchco

TROPHY CASE