Posted by Survivor on August 9, 2001, at 1:46:19
In reply to Re: let me restate... » sillygrrl, posted by Mitch on August 7, 2001, at 9:21:16
I think BPD is one of those variable labels like the Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Disorder/Grand Hysteria sequence that get revised regularly. These revisions aren't necessarily based on any new understanding of the conditions, but seem to be more related to changes in the jargon of the treatment community.
I've never heard of BPD referred to as a subset of ADHD, although that doesn't surprise me. It does seem to share ADHD's impulse control problems and inappropriate disinhibition - I'm speaking as an off-the-scale ADHD adult who takes *massive* doses of medication to control my symptoms here - but is far more complex with its aggressive, hostile, and sometimes paranoid aspects. I've heard it diagnosed as a temporal lobe dysfunction rather than a psychiatric disorder, but aren't a lot of these problems based in the temporal lobe?
It isn't unusual to find an angry, defensive, somewhat dissociative adult grow out of an abusive childhood spent trying to survive mentally ill parents. Toss in some sexual and/or physical abuse, and I wonder if the behavior that results is actually a new disorder of some kind or simply the understandable outcome of a highly dangerous, uncontrollable childhood.
Sometimes I think the experts are too quick to diagnose or discover a new pathology in situations where the behavior makes a lot of sense when you look at the background of the people who are suffering from it. Raised by wolves, we learn to respond with equally vicious attitudes and behaviors in attempts to defend ourselves from unpredictable and unjustified attacks. Unfortunately, these behaviors that are self-defensive in our formative years don't translate well into outside social situations. Isn't that a problem with adjusting to perceived threats in the outside world that can be helped through learning new social patterns more than an organic brain dysfunction or other pathology?
Learning to ease up on ourselves is probably the first step toward letting go of the expectation that everyone and everything else in the world poses an immediate threat to you, long after you've left the circumstances where, in fact, almost everything did. Maybe BPD is much closer to PTSD than any other recognized disorder when it grows out of such disordered surroundings, if a psychiatric diagnosis is desired. Maybe it is closer to the truth to classify it instead as a residual socially maladaptive behavior problem.
> Well those are some of the current *traits* of having that disorder. I thought that it was some form of subset of bipolar or subset of ADHD. Given that sexual abuse occurs more often to women than men in their childhood and that a high number of BPD people were abused makes me wonder if it is a combination of bipolar genetics combined with the psycho-social trauma of abuse as a child (sexual and physical PTSD if you will). That might account for a lot of the traits commonly associated with it even *cruelty* that you mentioned.
>
> Mitch
poster:Survivor
thread:71466
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