Borderline Traits

A recent reviewer of my memoir about depression and psychiatry has noted that in describing the emotional mess of my early adult years and on-going struggles with low mood, I ‘courageously come close to defining traits of Borderline Personality Disorder’.

I really don’t mind her saying that- indeed part of me is actually surprised that she is the first person to do so. I purposefully included a description of my difficulty in relationships, mood swings and problems in trusting others alongside a description of similar problems in one of my own patients. I wanted to show not only the variety of ways that people can experience what we commonly call ‘depression’, but also how my own problems mirrored those of my patients, such that there was very little distance between us.

By this time, in my early thirties, I had already had quite a long period of psychodynamic therapy but was still having problems:

 I didn’t know how to begin to contain these frightening feelings when they took hold of me. There were times when I felt low in mood and physically exhausted, as though there was a weight bearing down on my chest, which prevented me from moving. On other occasions, it seemed as though anything and everything was possible. At those times I did seem to lose control and retreat from reality. It was then that the suicidal thoughts would return, although by then usually only fleetingly.

Nevertheless, I recognised only too well the persistent state of emotional chaos that Elizabeth Wurtzel described in her book, Prozac Nation. I particularly empathised with her when she talked about wanting a therapist who could help her to learn to be a grown-up and to show her how to live in a world where the phone company didn’t care that you were too depressed to pay the phone bill.   (From The Other Side Of Silence: A psychiatrist’s memoir of depression)

 I’m well aware that there are features of my personality and behaviour that could well be called ‘borderline traits’ and it’s interesting that no one else has mentioned this. Is it because I am a Professor of Psychiatry? Is this the kind of thing one shouldn’t  say to me?  Most people have been incredibly supportive about my honesty, but others- including one or two mental health professional colleagues, have seemed a little embarrassed by my openness. Some will have been on the receiving end of some of my irritability and anger in the past- which is always much worse when my mood is going down. If so, I can only offer my apologies, but might add that in my experience some mental health services can be less than sufficiently understanding of the emotional problems of those whom they employ.

As time goes by my views are changing, despite having written on the topic of Personality Disorder in the BMJ; and this largely because of my anger at the lack of access to appropriate therapy for people who need and deserve help, rather than abuse. I’ve always been aware that people like me who perhaps have ‘difficult’ personalities (I prefer to think there are also times when I can be very warm, creative and caring too) are often dealt a bad deal by mental health services, when they get depressed. Our difficulties with early attachments both make relationships difficult to cope with, and predispose us to longer periods of more severe depression and anxiety as well. I have considerable sympathy with the view put forward by Peter Tyrer that Borderline Personality Disorder is ‘neither borderline nor a personality disorder’. People given this label describe ‘symptoms’ for which they desperately seek help, and don’t demonstrate persistent and inflexible ‘traits’. Their problems are not necessarily lifelong (which I understand personality traits as being), and they can be helped to change over time.

My mood is still unstable at times, but not to degree it was before I had the right kind of therapy to help me comes to terms both my past with how to survive in the world. I also need medication to stop me from plunging down into prolonged despair- with all the associated physical symptoms of anxiety and depression.

People who have problems with their mood don’t fit into neat boxes. As I’ve argued before, diagnoses have their place in terms of research and predicting likely response to treatment, but they should be used alongside a plan that addresses their main presenting life problems, range of symptoms and underlying aetiological factors that may be maintaining the status quo. Some will call this a formulation, but it’s not simply a psychological one- it addresses all three of the key areas- biological, psychological and social.

We need to design the treatment around the person- looking at what they need, not excluding on the basis of a diagnosis that has become for many, a term of abuse. I know many will still want to use the term ‘borderline’ because it can help get access to the right kind of therapy; but we need to acknowledge that the difficulties some of us have with managing certain aspects of everyday life (without, for me, a little drama on occasions) are simply degrees of the extraordinary diversity of humanity- differences that we should learn to celebrate not abjure.

PS- my husband proofreads my blogs- and says life with me has always been a bit of a roller coaster at times- but he wouldn’t swap me for anything.