BattleBack
Member
A freind of mine recently revealed to me on the phone that he has BPD, though he insists the 'D' part of that be dropped. He doesn't think of himself as having a 'disorder'.
The problem I have with his revelation is that he's self-diagnosing.
Is it considered 'ok' for someone to determine for themselves and in absence of any clinical workup or medical doctors input, just decide they are Bi-Polar and also be right?
I guess I have some angst about him doing this, because I think it takes a trained professional, who understands these things from an academic and experiential perpsective, to make a diagnosis about an individual, not themselves.
When I asked if maybe sometime down the road he'd get a doctors opinion he said,"What for?! I've read all the symptoms on the BPD site and I fit them. Why go pay someone 150 bucks for what I've figured out on my own for free?"
I said,"Well, you're not just Bi-Polar, you're cheap too." :rofl: j/k-ing, I didn't really say that to him.
His medicine is not prescribed. He smokes pot and says that it helps his depression. He doesn't 'wake and bake' or hit the stuff heavy, he says just enough to keep the depression at bay and that it works for him and he feels better using a natural plant than something synthetic that often has to go through a lot of troubleshooting before it's gotten right. I don't pass judgement on people who smoke weed and if he says it helps, so be it. But I had another freind who was BPD and when she smoked pot, it did help her depression - up to a point. Because if she didn't have any the next day - WHOOMP! Down she went.
I wish there were some way I could convince my friend that it would be better to get his own diagnosis confirmed by someone who's ACTUALLY trained and educated to do that! lol
The problem I have with his revelation is that he's self-diagnosing.
Is it considered 'ok' for someone to determine for themselves and in absence of any clinical workup or medical doctors input, just decide they are Bi-Polar and also be right?
I guess I have some angst about him doing this, because I think it takes a trained professional, who understands these things from an academic and experiential perpsective, to make a diagnosis about an individual, not themselves.
When I asked if maybe sometime down the road he'd get a doctors opinion he said,"What for?! I've read all the symptoms on the BPD site and I fit them. Why go pay someone 150 bucks for what I've figured out on my own for free?"
I said,"Well, you're not just Bi-Polar, you're cheap too." :rofl: j/k-ing, I didn't really say that to him.
His medicine is not prescribed. He smokes pot and says that it helps his depression. He doesn't 'wake and bake' or hit the stuff heavy, he says just enough to keep the depression at bay and that it works for him and he feels better using a natural plant than something synthetic that often has to go through a lot of troubleshooting before it's gotten right. I don't pass judgement on people who smoke weed and if he says it helps, so be it. But I had another freind who was BPD and when she smoked pot, it did help her depression - up to a point. Because if she didn't have any the next day - WHOOMP! Down she went.
I wish there were some way I could convince my friend that it would be better to get his own diagnosis confirmed by someone who's ACTUALLY trained and educated to do that! lol
