Break the Silence
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: November 7, 2009
A huge part of creating awareness of mental illness is talking about it. As simple as that sounds, it is often very hard to do, especially for the person who is diagnosed. To keep the movement going, we need to stimulate some buzz marketing. This means street teaming (see Love Is The Cure website for tools), taking part in activism activities (see our VOLTE_face page on Tumblr), and talking about it. It can begin with modest attempts such as bringing it up during conversations with loved ones and those close to you and expanding to grander efforts such as public speaking as facilitated through NAMI’s newest awareness program, In Our Own Voice.
Glenn Close, an Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony award-winning actress elaborates on the stigmatizing effect of silence in a recent article she wrote for the Huffington Post. She even founded BringChange2Mind.org, an organization that inspires people to begin talking openly about mental illness, breaking through the silence and fear. Her organization has gained the support of every major, American mental health organization and numerous others.
Crash and Burn: Relapse Prevention
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: November 4, 2009
We all know how it feels to rebuild our life each time a crisis or high stress load hits us and we regress. I have made leaps of progress before, just to be thrown away by something trivial but triggering.
In addition to talking with your therapist and/or doctor, understanding relapse and making a prevention plan can help. Click here for a free PDF mental health relapse prevention workbook.
Some insights as to my own relapse are as follows:
- Balance is important. Extremes are a hallmark of the borderline so this can be hard.
- Avoiding procrastination is crucial since prioritization and development of time management skills can reduce stress.
- How we deal with life is directly connected to our view of ourselves and our self-adequecy or lack thereof. High levels of self-worth can prevent self-destructive and reactive behavioral cycles.
- Learn dialectical behavioral therapy skills. Groups and therapists specializing in this can be very helpful. You can also buy a DBT workbook at major book retailers such as Barnes & Noble or order online through amazon.com. There are free DBT resources and worksheets in our links as well.
- I have worked to learn my triggers and also self-soothing activities to reduce stress.
- Instead of letting them snowball and complicate, I am learning to address problems when they arise.
Got any tips for relapse prevention? Please share.
My Recovery Journal
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: October 24, 2009
Dear Diary,
I am again rebuilding my life after a rough month. After an apparent bipolar relapse, BPD is a lesser worry as it seems I have bipolar type I. I am on a new medication, Depakote, but I actually feel as though it worsens my symptoms and upsets my stomach so I am returning to the nurse practitioner for some new options soon. Also, I have been trying to get on state-funded behavioral coverage but it has been a slow process especially in the current situation. I am still waiting to get insured as, even if I get back on private insurance, mental health services can be very costly. It’s just another stressor to pile onto my current distress, especially financially. Mental health resources- from my experience- are often unaffordable, ineffective, and overall of a poor quality. I’m very happy I have been enlightened as to hope and some self-help that I can use to semi-compensate for this severe lack of resources and/or access to appropriate resources.
Maybe, The World Is Not Ready For Change
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: October 20, 2009
“Often, I feel the world is not ready for change. I can only do so much to reach out but I feel like I am wasting my time.”
-Stephanie Price
Love Is The Cure/Spliit is the second philanthropic endeavor I have initiated. When I was almost 18 yrs old, in 2006, I was the Ministry Director for Pharos Lounge. The project was to create a positive, safe and fun entertainment venue for young adults and teen peers to socialize – thereby decreasing drug use, depression, loneliness, etc. I ended up doing almost all of the work and it was very difficult to find volunteers among all the supposedly excited fans. This has been the same for all altruistic projects I have participated in. Leaders, bands, etc. were committed and interested in the project but the actual people we were trying to help showed very little interest in our outreach attempts or even giving some kind of feedback. I cancelled the project due to this apathy. It is turning into a similar situation with LITC. I hope the world will be ready to embrace and actually be a part of the change they want to see, at least sometime in my lifetime.
Comments, encouragement, insights, etc. would be greatly appreciated as I am deeply disheartened by this dilemma.
LITC Launches Sleek Mental Health Social Media Site
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: October 18, 2009
Volte-face (vôlt-fäs’, vôl’tə-) is a total change of position, as in policy or opinion; an about-face. VOLTE-face is change. We are a sleek social media aggregation platform set up on Tumblr by Love Is The Cure, where you can talk, share media and art, news, events and resources related to mental illness. We are a bold manifestation of an understated movement to shift public attitudes toward mental illness and empower ourselves as mental health consumers. The focus of this site is on mood disorders such as bipolar, depression and especially borderline personality disorder. Get the ball rolling and chat on our shoutbox or submit your content!
Got any questions, suggestions, complaints or ideas?
My Perspective On What BPD Is
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: October 16, 2009
*Keep in mind that I am NOT a doctor but rather a proactive mental health consumer offering peer-to-peer support and empowerment. (see disclaimer on top right)
It begins with a child. Children have great potential and dream of things they want to do or the person they want to be when they grow up. But it just so happens that their brain chemistry is a bit off balance. They may have too little serotonin or maybe a little too much dopamine. This causes them to be a moody child, prone toward impulsiveness, aggression and unhappiness. When they are upset they are not able to soothe themselves like the other kids their age.
In addition to this biological predisposition they may receive invalidating messages from society and their caregivers. They are told what is acceptable, unacceptable, wrong, right, possible and impossible. The thoughts, standards and expectations of others become embedded in their minds and if they deviate from this, they feel guilt. The child may be told that they are not pretty, capable or good enough. They may be told that it’s not okay to feel angry or depressed. They may be loved for what they do not for who they are. The love they receive may be conditional, meaning they need to earn approval from others in order to satisfy their need to be loved and belong.
Levels of Borderline Functioning
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: October 13, 2009
In a recent post, I discussed the classification of borderlines into categories of functioning. I was not previously supportive of this as a useful practice. However, after an insightful comment from Randi Kreger, I am more inclined to support this terminology. Below was her explanation of what a high functioning versus a low functioning borderline looks like:
I took a look at the original post you were commenting on, Stephanie, and your post.
There is a great deal of misunderstanding about high and low functioning, which is why I changed the terms in my new book, The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New Tools and Techniques to Stop Walking on Eggshells, to “Conventional,” “Invisible.” and “BPs with Overlapping Characteristics,” which probably describes most people.
There are four dimensions that comprise the three categories:
* Techniques used to deal with emotional pain
* Willingness to seek mental health services
* The type of comorbid disorders
* The level of functioning
Two Differences Between BPD and Bipolar
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: October 11, 2009
Differences between borderline personality disorder (BPD) and bipolar disorder is an issue of great controversy, confusion and frustration in the mental health field. As a follow-up post to a previous post, comparing the two disorders, I will proceed to further discuss two features that separate these disorders. In her book, The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder, Randi Kreger, clears some of the smoke by sharing some rather interesting insights:
According to Dr. Friedel, director of the BPD program at the Virginia Commonwealth University, there are two main differences between BPD and bipoar disorder:
- People with BPD cycle much more quickly, often several types a day.
- The moods in people with BPD are more dependent, positively or negatively, on what’s going on in their life at the moment.
Help Support Love Is The Cure
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: October 2, 2009
Sorry, This Job Is Not For You
Posted by: Editorial Assistant on: September 30, 2009
As I am working on my quest of discovering who I am, I realize that some of the employment opportunities I seek will never be available to me. Why? Because, like you, I am borderline.
If you have considered going to school to enter the fields of social work, criminal justice, corrections, teaching, counseling, medicine, geriatrics, ect., you may find that these opportunities are not available to you.
Many jobs require an intense psychological evaluation. Jobs that entail working with children, dealing with corrections or counseling services require such an evaluation. You can also guarantee that most jobs falling within the human resources category will also require an evaluation.
10 Coping Skills for BPD
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: September 28, 2009
Developing better coping skills is key in taming your BPD. The disorder is infamous for it’s self destructive episodes, as emotions are often intense and overwhelming. As we all know, having a borderline episode is no fun and About.com BPD expert, Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, arrived just in time to help us brave the storm.
I’m sure you’ve been told you need to handle stress differently; but how exactly should you cope? The following article sheds some light on several new coping skills you can develop. My favorites include riding it out, taking a nice hot shower and playing some upbeat tunes. Don’t just limit yourself to the following list, ask your therapist about other proactive coping skills you can adopt.
10 Healthy Coping Skills for Borderline Personality Disorder
By Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, About.com
Updated March 24, 2009When you are having an intense emotion, it can be hard to know what to do. Unfortunately, many people with BPD turn to unhealthy behaviors in an attempt to cope with emotional pain (e.g., self-harm, substance use, or aggression). Want to replace unhealthy habits with new, healthier skills? Try some of the coping skills listed below.
1. Play Music
Play music that creates an emotion that is the opposite of the one you are struggling with. For example, if you are feeling very sad, play happy, upbeat music. If you are feeling anxious, play slow, relaxing music.2. Do Something
Engage in a highly engaging activity. Television or computer activities do not count here — these are too passive. Instead, take a walk, dance, clean your house, or do some other activity that gets you engaged and distracts you from your current emotions. .
Is “High Functioning” A Load Of Nonsense?
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: September 25, 2009
- In: Like OMG
- 26 Comments
In a post on the Anything To Stop The Pain blog, the term “high functioning borderline” was explored. I will admit to use of the term and, until now, I thought it was legitimate. Upon being enlightened by this article, I have realized that not only is this term incorrect but it can actually hinder growth. The author of the post does an excellent job of explaining the fallacy of using this term. It’s not to say that borderlines cannot function well or recover, but rather that the spectrum of functioning is not as broad as it appears.
Although all borderlines are different and the severity of their disorder can vary a bit, the use of the term “high functioning” can lead a person to an unrealistic satisfaction with their current mental condition. They may feel that they are well enough to postpone treatment or any sort of change in their behavior. Denial is often a problem for people with mental illness and describing yourself as “high functioning” can perpetuate this denial.
Every borderline needs to focus on treatment and improving their quality of life. The term “high functioning” should be avoided since it can make a person believe that there are no problems to be addressed when there actually are.
The Myth of the High-Functioning Borderline
Today’s subject is the Myth of the High-Functioning Borderline. I have been scouring the research on BPD to find out if anyone in the research or therapeutic community uses this term or concept high-functioning versus low-functioning Borderline. I have yet to find any author in either the research community or therapeutic community reference this concept. It crops up in the support community (in “Stop Walking on Eggshells” and on both bpd411.org and bpdcentral.com). It also crops up in the “cross-over” community (see more later) but only in a sarcastic way. The idea of high vs. low-functioning BPD doesn’t seem to hold much weight in any other community than the support community.
Help Us Research BPD!
Posted by: Stephanie Price on: September 24, 2009
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