Daily Archives: January 21, 2015

I think I am on the mend physically, albeit not as quickly as I’d like. I’m still in pain but it’s down to a five out of ten. Much improved. Still could do without breathing, sneezing, coughing, moving…If I don’t move, I don’t hurt. Logic, eh?

I have had this thorn in my paw for a year or so now ever since the shrink I USED to see tossed out “borderline personality disorder.” I don’t agree, because the similarities between that and bipolar are so similar, you can’t make an accurate call when you’ve spent all of an hour with someone over the course of a year.
All she did by tossing that into the mix is screw my head up some more. Now I think I have a new personality disorder the DSM can add to their next edition. Pseudo bipolarline disorder.
You go through life learning to recognize your own faults. And it gets overwhelming when you take a tally and realize…you are one fucked up puppy.
BUT when you have faith in a person’s ability to change, it makes it seem possible that you’re bent, as opposed to broken, and sometimes things can be bent back into a functional shape.

Counselors and shrinks, with their blanket disorder diagnoses, make you feel like all you can do is change the “bad” behavior. And if you don’t make a blanket change and get it right 100% of the time, then you are still suffering from a personality disorder.
In their infinite educated wisdom where everything MUST fit into a neatly packaged box…
They forget…
You need only exist and experience hardships of life to have a personality “disorder”.
Much like an animal that gets abused or neglected, repeated injury to one’s body or mind results in “disorder”.
I call it fear based on logic.

So what the professionals consider my dysfunction and disorder…I consider battle wounds. The bipolar, depressions, anxieties…Those are chemical misfires. And they do contribute to a disordered personality and mind.
It’s clutter. It’s disorganization. It’s thinking and perception outside “the norm”.
But for there to be a universal norm, we would all have to have the same parents, same genetics, same address, same religion, exact same life experiences.

This all hit me last night when I couldn’t get to sleep because I knew today I’d have to go to the DMV to renew my driver’s license. Formal things make me nervous, always have. It’s one area where I am out of control. I am at the mercy of the powers that be. Last time I renewed, they sprung a surprise written test on me because I’d gotten a seatbelt ticket the year before. I hadn’t picked up a rules of the road book since I was sixteen. Talk about trial by fire.
Because they’d blindsided me once, I went in fearing it could happen again. Not convinced. Just…wary.
Personality disorder?
I don’t think so.
I think my personality is just disordered. Like a messy cluttered closet. You get baggage, it accumulates, it overwhelms.

Do I have any fancy degrees that qualify me to make such “self diagnoses”?
No.
I just live it.
That makes me a foremost expert on my disordered personality. I know what has lead to my disorder. Two working parents, raising my little sister when I was just a kid myself…That would be why I waited until nearing 40 to have a child. I had already raised one and wanted to grow up first.
My fear of rejection? Being taunted daily, mercilessly in school for little more than being outside the rural flannel and denim norm.
Preferring alone to friends? Could stem from overhearing one so called friend say “I only hand out with Niki because no one else will and I feel sorry for her.”
Pessimism? Could relate to spending twelve years in a depressive/manic state, thinking positively yet being proven wrong repeatedly.
My failure to have a successful healthy relationship? Growing up with parents who didn’t like each other and did nothing but have screaming name calling arguments.

If you examine yourself…And I mean, take a long hard look no matter how ugly it is…You will find, your disorders are usually explained by what you have experienced.
It’s not a disorder.
It’s called life.
And aside from fetching the meds that make me stable enough to get through life with my scars…
I’ve lost much faith in the rest of the mental health world.
A general doctor would never see you favoring one leg and assume you have a broken leg. No, they would run tests,x rays, ask questions, do an exam.
Yet shrinks and counselors just administer “accepted” blanket questionairres, act on their own bias, and slap a label on you without even knowing what lies beneath.

Maybe by rejecting that fallacy, I am slowly getting better because I am deferring to my own self knowledge. The stuff they can’t be bothered to weed out.
A dog that gets kicked repeatedly will fear the same from all humans. It could become scared, timid, or go aggressive.
And that’s understandable. It is not slapped with some “neurotic canine disposition disorder”.
So why are people?

Long rambling post, I know.
But my logic is solid.
I went into the whole psychology/psychiatry experience with an open mind and a willingness to accept my own flaws and try to fix them.
But every time a new doc or therapist comes on board, I get slapped with some new diagnosis which negates all the work I’ve done acting on prior diagnoses.
It’s a waste of my time.
It’s a waste of anyone’s time.

If you have a chemical imbalance, meds help. That requires a shrink to prescribe.
But if you have the maturity and self awareness to examine yourself and identify your issues that make life more difficult…Then you can be your own counselor.

A good counselor can help you.
But a bad counselor can make it worse.
I’ve tried. And tried. And tried some more.

I am just going to embrace my dysfunctions. Or what are perceived as dysfunctions.
I’ll work on the stuff that hinders me.
I’ll accept the things that are scars and likely will be issues for the rest of my life.

I will accept myself, warts and all, and not allow anyone, with or without a degree, to invalidate me with their asinine and false labels.

Or I will try. Invalidation leaves its own scars and makes you question yourself.

Maybe it’s time to start questioning the professionals and their methods.

Having a cluttered closet isn’t illegal, isn’t necessarily dysfunctional, and it will not cause the world to burst into flames.
Why should a messy personality be any different?
Food for thought, people.