Lived Experience Forum

[BPDSurvivor]

Hi @Ausgirl !

Welcome to the forums! I'm so glad you have found us, and I hope you will find these forums as helpful as I did when I was recovering.

EDs are quite common as a co-morbidity of BPD. I have found that specialists tend to deal with the ED - possibly because it can be seen as most harmful? Hence, there is limited focus on what is causing the ED in the first place (most likely the emotional instability that comes with BPD).

From experience, when the turmoil caused by BPD was focused on and 'treated', the symptoms of ED slowly ceased. 

I'm not sure for you @Ausgirl , but in the past, when something 'bad' happened, and I felt emotionally out of control, the ED patterns increased. Is this the same for you?

As part of treatment, I was taught elements of CBT, DBT and ACT. I found DBT helped me understand my behaviours, while ACT enabled me to accept that which I could not change. However, my main, overarching therapy was MBT (mentalisation-based therapy). I had group therapy and individual therapy each week for over 18 months. As part of this, I had 6 weeks of specialised psychotherapy. Did MBT help? YES, indeed! It was intense therapy, absolutely out of my comfort zone, but it taught me to think in more helpful ways, as well as allow me to practice mentalising (thinking about the way i think). It didn't feel like much was happening over the course of 18 months, but upon completing MBT, I realised my thinking had changed. Through practising mentalisation in group therapy, we learnt to slow-down our emotions so that we gradually increased the time upon feeling and acting (impulsivity reduced).

I'm not saying MBT therapy was 'pleasant', but it did the trick. So any recovery does not feel good (as you have probably already felt). It is about working OUTSIDE our comforts. But if you're ready for it, you'll go a long way.

Also, with the ACT skills and any therapy skills, it is about practise. If you practise these skills when you are 'well', only then will they work when you really need it. So in other words, it's not about just knowing a skill and expecting it to work when you are most triggered etc. I learnt this the hard way.  thought I could be 'good' at it without practice. Boy, was I wrong!

All the best with your recovery @Ausgirl  - it's the best feeling ever!

Hi @NatureLover - thanks for the tag!

Also tagging @Bow @Judi9877 @LostOne71 @MsManaged .

Feel free to go to Raising Awareness of BPD - Flipping the Script - I'm going to add a few resources there. Project Air and Spectrum are running free groups for people with BPD.

BPDSurvivor

[Ausgirl]

@BPDSurvivor Wow, well I don't know how to respond... 

For me they've mainly treated the BPD and not the ED, because for a long time they didn't believe there really was a problem. Don't you just love the system?! (NOT). And yes, like you said, when things are spiralling out of control with the BPD (& C-PTSD), good ol ED comes to the rescue and takes over.

As I mentioned to Jinx, I found ACT to be much better that CBT & DBT (Crap behavioural & diabolical behavioural in my opinion!) but it's just the practising and putting into place that I find difficult. Never tried MBT because it's not been something I've been able to access easily. 

I'm just so exhausted mentally that I'm giving up on recovery. I don't think you can ever be "truly/100% cured". This is based on 24 years in the system.. 

[BPDSurvivor]

Actually, I agree @Ausgirl  with not being 100%. Different people define ‘recovery’ differently. For me, I think recovery takes a lifetime. Although I can now live very successfully with my BPD, I don’t have the confidence to say I am ‘recovered’. I don’t think I ever will be. I’ll just have to wait and see.

It’s great that your BPD was treated over your ED. I guess they knew it was the BPD urges driving the ED maybe? Focusing on the ED first and foremost may be like putting a Band-Aid over an infection but never dealing with the infection. Of course I don’t mean to say your ED is not a real thing! You know your experiences best.

All the best. It can be tiring, but absolutely worth the journey.

BPDSurvivor

[Ausgirl]

@BPDSurvivor 🤬🤬🤬 how was it good that they chose to ignore the ED and not treat it for years?!? 

Sorry all.... I thought things would be different on here, but boy, I was wrong. 

Take care and Goodbye.

[tyme]

Hi @Ausgirl ,

I’m sorry you feel that way about the forums. I believe the above post mentioned treating BPD over ED (not ignoring it?)

You are welcome to visit other parts of the forum also, into those focussing on EDs if you prefer.

You can use the message tags at the bottom to from these ED threads.

tyme

[BPDSurvivor]

Sorry @Ausgirl if I made you feel invalidated in any way. It was not my intention at all. 

Please don’t let me or my one post stop you from gaining from these forums. I am one person out of the thousands who post on this site.

Once again, I’m sorry for what has happened. I know your BPD is real. I know your ED is real,

BPDSurvivor

[hanami]

Hey there @Ausgirl 

The idea of recovery can be so overwhelming. It's really easy to stick to what we know even if what we 'know' is a very negative place. We can be comfortable there. One of the most helpful articles I've read on recovery is this here . It's a UK website so mentions NHS so ignore that part but the rest of the info and ideas is super good. 

One little step forward at a time is the key to me and not being hard on yourself when you have a bad day. 

Sending hugs,

Hanami 💮

[Bow]

Hey @Ausgirl  I hope your still around and giving the forums another go. I think I understand where you are coming from, where health professionals ignore ED and only want to treat the MH issues. I’ve had many medical complications related to my ED, just last week I was in hospital again and I actually had a good experience with the staff in the psych ward taking my ED serious, but let me tell you it hasn’t always been that way! I had a trip to the emergency room with low potassium, it didn’t change after a drip so the dr said I needed to stay in. But then I was cleared by mental health and the dr changed his mind and said I could go home. Did that mean that my physical health…. My ED was not as important as my mental health?? I was so angry. I cried a whole heap and was rather rude to the unexpected nurses (I did apologise). It’s really sad and unfortunate that medical staff just don’t understand or take EDs seriously unless your so scary thin and nearly dying…. But we all know that folks with ANY kind of ED can get to that place very quickly. 

Im wondering how your feeling about your upcoming appointment tomorrow? 

As hard as it can be and as frustrating as it is, it’s great that you appear to have a good gp and case manager who are working together to best support you. I finally have a great team around me and I feel well supported. Do you have a psychologist? 

Recovery is so hard. And I get the toing and froing!! I so totally get that.  It’s really hard to imagine recovery is possible. Whenever I take some steps towards recovery and living a slightly more ‘normal- whatever that looks like’, my ED gets really really loud and angry and I swing back into restricting and it’s like taking 10 steps backwards. Sometimes it feels like things just get worse but my psychologist assures me that I’m not getting worse. 

Hope your ok and that you’ll give recovery a go 🙂

🎀

[Ausgirl]

@Bow Hey,

Thank you for the message, meant a lot to hear from someone else who 'gets' it.  

I'm so sorry you had that experience in the emergency room, that would've been hard. It would definitely make you feel as if the staff thought you were 'faking' how unwell you were... (I'm guessing you may have felt something kinda like this?)

I recently had a med ward admission for the ED and the staff there 'hated' having a MH patient on the ward. The little snide comments that were made, refusing to talk at all to me when changing the feeds, administering the meds etc, asking the nursing special 'if they were ok with me' and then rolling their eyes etc... I wrote a big list of triggers and ended up handing it to one of the TL one shift because I just couldn't take it any more.  What also really sucks is where I'm based in Australia, there's a statewide portal where all your mental health notes etc is kept. This portal, however, is separate from the medical portal and medical staff can't access it, so whilst in some ways that's a good thing, it also makes it very hard because they would then see that we're not all psychopathic killers etc (and even if we were) we deserve the same amount of respect as any other patient, and not to feel like a burden.

How am I feeling about tomorrow? Well, scared and triggered.  Scared that the GP will trigger and make me shut down and not want to come back again. Also worried that when they see my latest blood results they'll think I'm doing ok (because they were apparently all 'normal' according to CM) when deep down I'm not.

Currently, I don't have a psychologist, they want me to get one but financially it's just not doable, even with the MHCP.  I'd still be out of pocket $70ish dollars each session, so basically, it's a choice of buying food (my entire grocery budget per week) or getting psychological support. Guess which one wins as much as I hate it?! They're looking at doing an NDIS application though, so hopefully, I may be able to get it funded through that as well as dietetics, as one of the peer support workers at the hospital said she gets both of those funded. I do know, however, that NDIS is getting really strict and I've already been knocked back twice because I was "too high functioning".😠  😞  If you don't mind me asking, do you have NDIS? If so, how have you found it?

In regards to recovery- well, I'm just so over it and people not 'getting' how freaking hard it is, so I'm probably gonna give up and let "Pia" (ED voice- named after a real bitch of a nurse in MH) and the rest of them win.

[Ausgirl]

@hanami ty, tried to click on the link but wouldn't open anything??