I'm torn (triggering)

[wi11ow]

Hi
I haven't been here long so please excuse any mistakes I make through ignorance or whatever or if this is too long or triggering.

I've got Borderline, diagnosed officially this year tho my psychiatrist read out my notes from 2000 with the full description she'd written back then. I guess she had her reasons for not telling me then but I wish she had as it may have helped unravel a few of life's mysteries.
It's hard to handle.

I went into therapy soon after. I have major horrible transference issues not with her but with the family therapist I had been seeing for 4 years previously for my son who made an attempt on his life aged 8 at the same time as me. I love her and mourn her every day. She's not dead it's just that my son's okay now so it ended October last year. I hoped therapy would help solve this intense awful grief I hold for her loss from my life, but it hasn't, I just feel worse and worse and it's been over a year.

I cut daily <edit by admin - details deleted> - that at least helps ease the pain and bring a degree of calmness back into my life that before she helped to create.

My problem isn't really the cutting thats just a way of surviving the pain, I just feel torn and I don't know what to do. The therapist I see practices DBT full of rules and I so can't do rules. The cutting is an issue to her and we never seem to get beyond it. Last night I felt she was angry and I know I just feel stuck.

I don't know whether to stay or go - Is she trying to make me leave? Part of me wants to , part of me wants to connect but is scared to in case the same thing happens again. I don't know, I'm really messed up about it. I used to be able to read people but now I even doubt that - sometimes I get it totally wrong.

I just don't know

 

[David Baxter PhD]

DBT is generally considered to be the treatment of choice for borderline personality disorder, primarily because it seems to be much more effective than other treatments.

I'm not sure whether DBT is the issue in this case or just a mismatch or some sort of tension or disconnect between you and the therapist. Have you tried discussing this with the therapist?

If you can't resolve it, you might give some thought to changing therapists. You do need to be comfortable with and have confidence in your therapist. But bear in mind that black-and-white or categorical thinking about relationships is one of the characteristics of BPD. Your therapist cannot be your friend - if that were to happen, she would cease to be useful to you as a therapist. You might also want to discuss that issue with the therapist.

 

[wi11ow]

Thank you so much for replying
I have tried to talk about it but we seem to just endlessly circle what she sees as the issue and what I don't (the cutting), and never cut to the chase of the whole transference issues with the previoux therapist.
I just want to resolve the just about obsessive thoughts I have about the family therapist now not in my life - that I can't seem to get over and move on from. I guess I don't really want to move on because if I do that I'll lose the only aroha that I have ever felt in my life.
It's a no win really but I don't see why DBT has to have so many rules that make it impossible to express yourself even if it is negatively. It seems counterproductive.
Having said that, I know from what I've read it is supposed to really work.
I hate this

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Is trying another therapist an option?