Hi @Former-Member ,

 When you said chaos was normal, it reminded me of the time when Covid hit. Everyone was frantic and anxious. I remember my psychologist asking how I was with the covid situation. I said, ‘at least people now know how I feel everyday!’ Chaos and anxiety was my everyday life!

Im so glad to hear you are ready for support. Meds don’t ‘cure’ BPD - it needs talking therapies. Meds aid the anxiety, depression etc that may come with BPD, but it can ‘fix’ it.

 This is how I see it. It’s taken your entire lifetime to built the neural pathways in your brain to think and react a certain way. Therapy then needs you to build new pathways in your brain to help you think in more helpful ways. This essentially means BPD therapy is about changing your brain - it surely is!

i honestly feel like I have a new brain.

If I told you what my former BPD life was like, no one (not even myself) would believe what I am today. I’m absolutely in awe that I can be so high functioning now. My interpersonal skills far exceed those of my colleagues. At work, I’m in leadership, and I am always sent the most challenging staff to coach and mentor. It is so rewarding.

I have a much better relationship with my family. I understand them and they now understand me. My self harm has completely ceased. It’s onwards and upwards now!

Oh, and I read somewhere about Spectrum? Yes, Spectrum is Victoria’s only personality disorder (BPD) specialist. They work with the top specialists all over the world to provide the most effective evidence-based treatments for BPD. It is through the public mental health system.

Only issue is, which I never knew, it is extremely extremely difficult to get in. To this day, I don’t know how I got in. Hence people are not often referrred there. Think about it: if one group therapy lasts min 18 months and each group has a maximum of 8 people, there’s not many that can go through the therapy in one year. 

I guess you never know unless you try.

I know people rant on about the public mental health system, but I couldn’t thank them more. I’ve only ever been in public mental health. It’s been so effective for me. But is also means I was extremely acute and unwell with regular involuntary hospitalisations.

Just keep going @Former-Member - it’s worth it for both you and your dear son.