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 what they wanted to see, diagnosed something vaguely similar to what you described, gave you pills and sent you on your way. So to have her fully listen and try to understand exactly what I was saying and what I meant was beyond what I had expected for this appointment. I know, the bar was low.

It almost feels that just having a mental health professional understand my struggle and recognise something isn’t right, went a long way in me getting some of the validation that I so desperately crave. The diagnosis itself she seemed hesitant to give, initially. She explained about the associated stigma and how some people prefer not to be labelled and then others are happier knowing there is a name for their struggle. I wanted to know, to understand and feel a sense of belonging to others who have similar struggles, and so she gave me the diagnosis. Borderline Personality Disorder. 

For close to two years, I have believed borderline personality disorder was a likely possibility, and in that time I have alternated between feeling like I need a diagnosis for it to be real, and being satisfied that I knew within myself what was wrong so who cared what a doctor who had only seen me for an hour thought?! But still, having her say she believed I fit the criteria of borderline, gave me such a sense of relief. I felt instantly more at ease that I was no longer stuck in the never ending cycle of ‘it’s just anxiety, try meditation, go for a walk and drink herbal tea’.

She then discussed treatment options, stating again how some people prefer one thing over another. I was being given options. Choices. I have control of my own mental healthcare. We discussed therapy and decided that before going down that route I would try mood stabilisers to hopefully steady my moods, and then I could tackle therapy. I’m not ready for that yet. She openly told me that there was a long waiting list for the type of therapy I would benefit from. Again, she wasn’t brushing over the reality of my disorder, or full of false promises, something GP’s had done to me since I began reaching out for help with my mental health.

I left the appointment with a little bit of a spring in my step in comparison to the way I nervously walked in. I had just been validated in a way I didn’t even know I needed. She listened to me, didn’t judge me, and then gave me options for treatment. 

It’s taken me two years to get this appointment I so desperately needed. I still can’t quite believe it’s finally happened, I had almost given up hope in the NHS system, on recovery and on life. I took my first mood stabiliser last night and I’ll be continuing to take them until my next appointment in two months time.

Thank you for reading! To see daily updates, my twitter is @emilyviolettx.