Posted by yellowbird01 on January 13, 2009, at 19:03:36
I have a T who apparently loves labels/diagnoses. I love my T to death, aside from this one thing. Borderline personality disorder seems to be a favorite diagnoses of hers (went to an inservice? I dont know). My other clinicians in the past have disagreed with the diagnosis for the most part, but just today my T brought it up again and referred to "my personality disorder". In the same discussion, she talked about challenging negative/irrational thoughts. The thing is, BPD doesnt feel to me like exactly a "positive" diagnosis. Quite the opposite. The focus on "me and my personality disorder" really tears my self esteem to shreds... and it was bad enough to begin with. It makes me doubt my own feelings and my own judgment in everything in my life. I know I'm not perfect and I can be negative and even irrational... if everything was perfect, I wouldnt be in therapy. But to insist that my issues with being labeled this way are irrational and just me being negative just feels wrong to me. It hurts my trust in my T as well. I think many rational people would react badly to it. I'm not crazy.
Does anyone have any advice? I plan to talk to T about this, but I've done it before and I dont think she truly understands how hurtful the label can be. I think she's hearing what I'm saying about it through the lens of me being "borderline". Otherwise, she's wonderful. I just cant keep seeing her if she's going to push this again. It just destroys me.
poster:yellowbird01
thread:873850
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090109/msgs/873850.html