Disorders and Recovery

I initially rejected my diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder with Psychosis and Bulimia, ignorant and afraid of the stigma attached to the words “Personality Disorder,”, “Eating Disorder,” and “Psychotic” . Then, I quickly came to understand why a psychiatrist had suggested I met the diagnostic criteria. In fact, as a crisis patient at the time, I was experiencing every symptomatic trait listed to a severe degree. As such, I soon came to identify very strongly with my disorders, taking comfort in the ability to explain away most of feelings and behaviors.

Consequently, I felt totally defined by my disorders. I didn’t just have BPD, MDD, Bulimia; I was all of them. 

I was a borderline — a walking, talking mental illness and nothing more. 
I was a depressive and psychotic person — a common, known by all and hearing all voices around my body, telling this and that, doing this and that. 
I was Bulimic — a severely disgusting, terrifying and stigmatized illness. 

Looking back, with every crystal-clear hindsight, I see that this is what held me back from recovery. This certainty that I had nothing but my mental illness stopped me from working to get better because I truly believed that whatever recovery would look like would render me a shell of a person. It would remove me of my diagnosis and therefore remove me of who I was. So, I was uncooperative. I was a difficult patient, resistant to treatment, unwilling to put the effort in when I was put into various services.

Until I got warded, and being treated in the Hospital, kinda changes me a bit, about how I saw recovery is. But recovery isn't always a pretty, lovely road. I know and I believe it is hard, since relapses could happen on the way of the journey. 

I saw progress, slowly but surely. I no longer had the same fiery temper. I am improving. The severity of my disorders symptoms is reducing and I deal with other issues simultaneously, like a terrible trauma I had experienced in childhood. But, I'm still holding back. I'm still unstable, my moods too intense to tolerate, and I couldn’t seem to put in place the coping mechanisms FPs were teaching me because, deep down in the back of my mind, I wasn’t ready to let go of what I thought defined me. I couldn’t see the person I would be if I tried to stabilize my disorders.

Deciding to try recovery anyway was terrifying. I had no idea who I would be if I crossed that bridge but I decided I had to do it regardless, because I had to try a life that wasn’t marked by intense, frightening, ever-changing moods. With a lot of trepidation, I let my FPs show me how to cope with the hurricane in my mind and I let myself become undone because that is what therapy does – it unravels you. It slowly burns away the walls you put up so that you have to build up again from the ground upwards. I still believed there would be no foundation to do this from but what I found instead took me by surprise.

I am not my diagnosis. I am not a “borderline,” “Depressed” “Psychotic” and “Bulimic”. I am a person with interests and feelings and behaviors that cannot be explained away by a journal article. I laid down bricks with cement in therapy and rebuilt myself. My destiny is not set by my mental health and I am and will be so much more than the confines of my disorders. Getting to a point where I can say this has been harder than I could ever imagine but it has also been so worth it. I am a better person now than I have ever been and I will continue to work and improve myself indefinitely because I owe that to myself. I will always be grateful to FPs, whose gave me the tools to get here because I now know myself better than I ever have because of them. Therapy is tumultuous and incredibly hard at times, but the rewards greatly outweigh the hardships and I am so proud to say that I may have Disorders, and I may always have BPD, MDD, Bulimia but it does not and never will define me.

wiltedrose.s xx