Posted on September 2, 2008
Filed Under Health, Journal, Recovery, mental illness |
Well as most of you know it has been a while since I have last posted something on here and there is good reason for that and that is because as of lately I have been dealing with a lot of stuff due to my mental health and I have been trying to deal with my personal life and my marriage.
So as of recently I have been hearing from my doctors and my case management team about how my mental status is and how it is affecting me in all aspects of my life and the biggest thing it is affecting is my behavior.
For many years most of you know that I have dealt with an addiction to drugs and alcohol. I also was using that time during my life to mask all of the symptoms of my mental illness and the feelings and behaviors that came along with that. So some people in the medical field in my case seem to think that I have not fully grown up and am up to date with where I should be age wise and behavior wise.
That is where title of this post comes in.
As of the last couple of months I have realized that I have a really big anger problem and that I don’t have the tools to deal with it like most people do. Last week was a perfect example of this and long story short I got so angry that I blacked out after reaching a certain point with my anger and all coping skills went out the window and I don’t remember very much from the incident except a few visions here and there. I have had this happen before I think but was never aware of what was actually happening until as of lately. Now this is where the Borderline Personality Disorder stuff comes into play.
Now after realizing that this might be a real problem for me to deal with my case manager has introduced me to this therapy that helps people with Borderline Personality Disorder, because there is no medication that can help people with this problem. This therapy is called DBT which stands for Dialectic Behavior Therapy.
From what I have heard and what I have been told is that this therapy is very extensive and must be followed in a certain way and through several modules. These modules are broken up over a 17 month process and each module is approximately 7 weeks long. It is also something that you must make a commitment too and you can’t miss any session which is recommended but you have up to 3 absences that you can have until they discharge you from the therapy.
The therapy is for suicidal people who don’t want to feel like that anymore and who want to make a change in their life. It has a 100% success rate if followed and done correctly. For whatever reason it may be, some people that deal with mental illness and are dual diagnosis patients.
Patients tend to have some traumatic events happen in their life and for whatever the reason the body tends to do it’s best to try to protect itself from the event by masking it through drug dependence and all the drugs do are just a mask for all of your feelings and especially behaviors that your body should going through at the time of growing up in your adolescence and your body should match your behaviors but for some the drug use and masking goes a little overboard and pulls the body along with no adult behaviors being evident.
So where the therapy comes in is it helps the patient to find ways to use his or her behaviors in an approiate manner and using coping skills finding out how to deal with anger and hostility in a positive manner.
As it stands now I am in the process of learning all that I can about this very new therapy in the mental health field and try to make a right decision on whether or not I should take part in this therapy.
So please keep checking back on new information on this subject as I come to a decision on whether or not I should make a go at this and see if it really has a 100% success rate. At this point I am still a little sceptical.
If you found this article helpful, please share it with others.
One Response to “DBT Therapy And Borderline Personality Disorder”
Leave a Reply
This site is dedicated to people dealing with mental illnesses, people dealing with addictions,and tips on staying clean and sober.
thanks so much for the info, i thought you were writing about me, funny how mental illness is alike in so many ways..maybe treatment will be too.