Stuck In Limbo

Many have wondered over the years if I've considered a proper course of counselling or therapy, especially since my Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis.

DBT therapy is the gold standard for BPD. Amazingly, there is a resource outside of Vancouver that is specifically for people like me.

Here's their costs. 

Now, please understand I am in no way crying poor when I post this but it is incredibly expensive for proper BPD treatment because it is supposed to be:

Two one on one sessions a week.

One group therapy session a week.

For 24 weeks (6 group therapy sessions in each of 4 modules)

So, per month, that's $1280 for one on one and $400 for group each month. Nearly $1700 for therapy per month for nearly 6 months. A little over $10,000 and that does not include sessions after group therapy to maintain and continue to work the program, anywhere from 2 per week to one every two weeks or so.

There's no way I can get funding even remotely like this through the government for this without getting institutionalized as an immediate long term danger to myself or others. Hell, as it is, I get one 5 minute phone call with my psychiatrist every three months to monitor my medications. 

Again, I'm not angry about all this. There's no way the government can afford to fund long term DBT therapy for every person with BPD in the province, estimated to be between 1% and 2% or 75,000 people give or take a few. That'd be an investment of $750,000,000 not to mention there aren't enough practitioners of DBT to cover the 75,000 patients.

So myself and those like me function as best we can, holding down jobs when possible and trying not to be too large a burden on others. Most of us going about our lives hiding who we are or how we feel, even from medical professionals due to the enormous stigma that goes with a BPD diagnosis. I've been told by many others to never reveal in an emergency room that you have a BPD diagnosis due to the alterations in treatment you will receive, particularly if you're having a mental health crisis and even more particularly if you're a woman.

My last gambling counsellor I had was trained in DBT and confirmed two things for me during our 8 or so sessions: that my presumptive BPD diagnosis I recieved 8 years ago at the Surrey Memorial ER was correct and that I use substances and behaviours to self medicate and numb my emotions so I can handle the overwhelming waves that come over me. My first was food, then alcohol, then food all as a teen, then alcohol again for many years and finally gambling, which put me in my current position. I had thought for years I used these things due to my anxiety and depression and I was a little correct in that respect but the idea that I need to slow down my mind and emotions makes much more sense over the course of my life.

At 50, there's little hope I'll ever have the chance to get better. I've done free group DBT therapy through Fraser Health a couple times but without the one on one to supplement all the work I was doing, it was largely unsuccessful. I've gone through the recommended DBT workbook twice now to no avail. I am better at recognizing my black and white thinking and try hard to embrace the idea of radical-honesty but that's pretty much all that's stuck with me. That radical-honesty thing is why I write and share like this. It needs to come out of me sometimes, the frustration of having a disease which destroys my relationships one by one until I'm all alone, which is the most ironic part of all this because the intense fear of abandonment is one of the nine traits of BPD. So my fear of being alone, causes me to push away from people until I'm all alone.

Last year I made friends with someone with BPD through group therapy. We talked a lot, met up once and everything was great. Then she asked me about soulmates one day. I said I didn't think I'd ever met mine, not realizing why she was asking. She never spoke to me again because I'd inadvertently triggered her fear of abandonment and she had to push me away. It was about this time last year that happened actually. Maybe that's why all this has been on my mind today.

I always feel alone in this because of how isolating it all is. People can kinda understand depression. People think they understand anxiety, but I promise they don't. But BPD...without specific training, we are a scary mystery to nearly the entire world. About 18 months ago, a friend told me something they may not even remember because they'd been drinking. They had BPD too. They function pretty well and are quite close and loving to all their friends and family, in a way I've never been able to be. I treasure that gift they gave me that day because it shows me that even if there's little hope for me, that's not true for all of us. I've never told them that because I don't want to "out" them if they don't remember saying it to me, so I keep it to myself as a little reminder that hits me when I'm at my weakest and most vulnerable.

Like today.