I have Borderline Personality Disorder.
This week I met my psychiatrist for the first time. I spent just over an hour with her, talking about everything from childhood, relationships, daily life, my highs, lows, and anything else that has impacted my life and the person I am today. For the most part it was me who talked and her who listened. She asked questions and let me take my answers where I needed to. I felt free to express my honest feelings and experiences without judgement, and honestly, that acceptance was more valuable than I realised. I feel validated. She believed me, she listened and took in what I was saying. She wrote six pages of notes as I talked, she read my previous notes - which stated my only issue as social anxiety with depressive disorder - and as I told her that parts of those records weren’t true to what I had said, I hadn’t listened to by the GP who had written that, and she trusted me. I’m still in kind of in shock at that. I’d begun to build up the idea that healthcare professionals saw w