Download PDF Get Me Out of Here My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder by RACHEL REILAND

Sinopsis

Rachel Reiland's courageous struggle with borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a tale that is both harrowing and reassuring, disturbing but sustaining. Her battle is typical yet unique. These paradoxes are like the illness itself. BPD is a disorder characterized by contradictions. Its cure is derived by navigating through the straits of emotional extremes into the tranquil waters of compromise and consolidation.

Get Me Out of Here details Reiland's recovery. Her triumph results from the collaboration with her talented and unconditionally accepting psychiatrist. In the doctor, she found compromise between her desperate childhood fears of abandonment and her adult-derived defenses of self-destructiveness, attacking rage, and nihilism. From the remnants of her frightened, vulnerable childhood (which she labeled “Vulno”) and her “Tough Chick” personae, Reiland fashioned her individual humanity.

Some of this story is typical: early family conflicts, abusive relationships, feelings of insecurity contributing to destructive behaviors such as rage attacks, promiscuity, and anorexia. The extreme behaviors of BPD constitute the high drama in the stories of those who endure its ravages. But Reiland does not focus only on the flamboyance of the symptoms. She also describes the small, intimate nicks and cuts that bleed slowly and painfully, day to day.

Reiland's recovery is, in many ways, atypical. It is attained through an intensive, four-year course of traditional, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, punctuated by several hospitalizations, some lasting for several weeks. Unfortunately, such a treatment program would be unavailable to most patients today. Most hospital psychiatric units are not geared for extended stays of more than a few days, and most insurance will not support this intensive treatment regimen.

Fortunately, Reiland possessed financial support to pay for her care. She also maintained a supportive, loving relationship with her husband and children. And she developed a trusting relationship with an experienced, knowledgeable psychiatrist. Although many sufferers may not share all of these blessings, they can, nevertheless, still achieve the victories she accomplished through the same persistence and courage she demonstrated.

BPD is the monstrous, metastatic malignancy of psychiatry. Most professionals shun patients with this diagnosis, convinced that they are exhausting, hopeless, and often terminal. The sickest, most severely psychotic schizophrenic patient is preferred over one with BPD, because at least there is some feeling of control over the treatment process. Hospitalization and medication can easily and quickly subdue the schizophrenia monster. But BPD symptoms can rage unpredictably, are difficult to control, require months or years to detect improvement, and can overwhelm the vulnerable therapist.

Until recently, a diagnosis of BPD was a label of hopelessness for both the patient and the doctor. With a suicide rate of almost 10 percent and no consistent treatment approaches offered, the prognosis was considered to be poor. However, with developments over the last ten years, such pessimism is no longer warranted.

Refined treatment approaches, such as dialectical behavioral therapy and adapted psychoanalytic techniques, have demonstrated significant effectiveness. Long-term follow-up studies, just now becoming available, illustrate that individuals with BPD can survive and thrive. Recent studies confirm that many borderline symptoms resolve over the years.

Although continuous treatment significantly augments the recovery rate, many patients achieve remission even without therapy. Over time spans ranging from six to fifteen years, as many as three-fourths of all patients with BPD will have resolved symptoms such that they no longer qualify for the BPD diagnosis. These patients would then, within the medical lexicon, be considered cured. Few other chronic medical conditions (e.g., diabetes, emphysema, hypertension, and schizophrenia) can achieve this ultimate level.

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