this particular entry is not about complaining or declaring that i have a better way of doing things than the way my nation chooses to solve its problems now [1]. with these words, i put to (digital) paper what has been floating around in my mind for a few years; i aim to point out what i see as logical holes in our consideration of the mentally disenfranchised [2].
i read somewhere that BPD is often prescursed by emotional trauma, like abuse or something. and while my father was certainly a perfectionist, one to crap on my sense of self-worth if i made a blunder or spilled a drink or misacted in some way, i doubt that occasional belittlement - even by a figure central to one's childhood - would cause anything overtly psychologically dysfunctional in a person but a low sense of self-esteem [3].
i have, in light of noting that mental illness appears to claim a particular 'type' of person over all others, always wondered what exactly is it that - provided both subjects were raised in the same environment - inhibits one person's ability to maintain full control of ones mental faculties and reasoning centres, yet does nothing to anothers?
i recently read this one wikibook article thing that inspires me to dissect this into something more understandable to me (the following is an excerpt from the article/book/thing "Dialectical Behavioral Therapy/Borderline Personality Disorder/Bisocial Model" {http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dialectica
BPD results from a biological predisposition to emotional dysregulation combined with certain dysfunctional (invalidating) environments which interact over time. The characteristics of BPD begin developing during childhood because the fundamental inability to regulate emotions is exacerbated by an invalidating environment. The vulnerable child fails to learn how to identify feelings or regulate emotional stimulation. She does not learn to trust her private experience as valid and real. BPD individuals fail to learn how to tolerate emotional distress.
As adults, BPD individuals adopt the characteristics of the invalidating environment in which they grow up. Looking to others for accurate reflections of reality and oversimplifying the ease of solving life’s problems characterize this self-invalidation.
Oversimplification of life’s difficulties leads to unrealistic goals. Those with BPD tend to have an inability to use reward instead of punishment for small steps toward final goals. When they fail to achieve these goals they are filled with self-hate.
part of the reason i believe that certain psychological disorders are in actuality psychochemobiological or neuropsychological or whatever the proper term for it would be, is because of phrases like "high-functioning" and "low-functioning" and the idea of a "disease" that has a "cure" vs. an "illness" that is "managed." when i say bring up such phrases, i don't mean the colloquial (and often incorrect) usage of the terms, but the defined codes under which they are applied in professional circles; sometimes people with mental illness get better - for ever - and sometimes they don't get anything but control, cleverly disguised as a heavensent cure - until the next time they end up in inpatient services, and are made to feel as though they have brought their circumstances upon themselves.
i keep coming back to that question: what separates the "crazies" from the "disaffected?" what is it that causes the formulation of conditions like BPD, where a person's entire worldview - even the reasoning she uses to sort out appropriate responses to stimuli - is shaped by the disorder, and why that mysterious Whatever sows severe illness in one person, but minor neuroses in another?
i can only imagine that there is a factor inherent in the individual's biochemistry that - at best - increases the risk of something going sideways in the person's psychological development. there have already been statements tossed around about "predisposition" to Alcoholism or Addiction, {http://neuroscientificallychallenged.bl
to tie this in with what i was originally rambling about: if it is true that some people relate to psychological disorders unusually because they are either predisposed to be vulnerable to that particular shade of illness (i.e. an inborn tendency toward addictive behaviors) or because they have a gene that hardwires their brains so that psychological dysfunction is - for them - normal (bipolar disorder, other mental illnesses associated with a person's biochemicals or neurons), then why is it that - as explains the article [5] i will quote after this sentence - most clinicians and doctors treat mental disorders as if they are indicative of a particular individual's personal failures, especially brain "software" illnesses like personality disorders? {http://news.thresholds.org/poc/view_doc.p
"Mood swings in the context of borderline personality disorder are thought of as 'software' problems brought on by changes in the patient's perception and appraisal of their social situation. This is in contrast to bipolar disorder patients whose mood swings are thought of as occurring due to brain chemistry problems (e.g., a 'hardware' problem)."
if i understand what i read correctly (and i like to think that i do) then when someone has a genetic defect that causes her brain to process its own chemical regulation incorrectly, which in turn causes her to undergo intense sessions of mania or depression, that's acceptable, and she should be comforted and assisted, but if someone has developed an inability to process and react to stimuli with the degree of reason deemed socially acceptable [6], causing her to undergo intense sessions of existence at varied emotional extremes, that is shameful and stigmatized. how does this make sense?
"A personality disorder is a very rigid pattern of inner experience and outward behavior. The pattern extends across most of the person’s interactions, continues for many years, and differs from the experiences and behaviors usually expected of people. The rigid traits of people with a personality disorder often result in unpleasant experiences, which may cause psychological pain and social or occupational difficulties. Personality disorders typically become recognizable in adolescence or early adulthood, although some start during childhood (APA, 1994).
Personality disorders may disrupt many aspects of a person’s life and may also bring pain to others. They are among the most difficult psychological disorders to treat. Many sufferers are not even aware of their personality problems, and they fail to trace their difficulties to their rigid style of thinking and behaving. It has been estimated that between 4 and 15 percent of all adults may have a personality disorder (Link, 1997; APA, 1994)."
so declares the wikibooks article titled "A Textbook On Recovery Psychology/Unit 2/Ch3Personality Disorders," {http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_Textbook
one could contrast this historic refusal to understand (or even to seek out, in some instances) the underlying causes in the development of a personality disorder to the worldwide race to "cure" Autistic people of their natural brain biochemistry. explains the fact sheet at autism-help.org (empasis always my own):
"A genetic basis for autism has definitely been established and at this stage it appears that multiple genes may be responsible. There is currently no genetic test that can be done to detect autism.
There is much much research and discussion on possible environmental causes that could affect brain development, and many researchers believe that the causes of Autism Spectrum Disorders will prove to be an interplay of genes and environmental causes. It is theorized that these multiple “causes” interact with each other in subtle and complex ways, and would thus explain the wide range of differing outcomes and behaviors in each individual. ... Another non-medical view is that there is no one condition called autism. This view was put forward by autistic author Donna Williams. She presents a holistic model called autism as a fruit salad model and demonstrated how the severity of someone's autism could be linked to their degree of co-morbid communication, sensory-perceptual, gut/immune, neurological integration, mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders a person inherited or developed, coupled with cognitive and learning style differences and unusual personality trait collections"
until hollywood endorsed Autism, it was considered similar to retardation, and is still linked to Dennis Hoffman and to little kids screaming and bashing their heads into walls, as a survey of my own conduction discovered [7]. few other mental disorders could be so lucky as to have the muddled alliegence of a community on the outside of the Autistic one, clamoring to be let in so those well-meaning but ignorant outsiders can "cure" the Aspies (nickname the Autistic Spectrum community has cheerfully foisted upon its members with Asperger's Syndrome). and yes, that is fortune: most of the mentally ill are shuffled off to asylums or thrown in hospitals until they agree to be corralled into 'proper' modes of behaviour [8].circling around yet again, i iterate: how can we decide that the mentally ill - those who are truly afflicted, and not the "high-functioning"elite simply prone to breaking from societal norms when stressed - are responsible for their own foibles when we are increasingly being handed proof that there is something larger involved in the entire affair than just people behaving badly? this calls for research. and when i say "research" i do mean the gathering of properly explained and understood information from the subjects themselves, via ethnomediology {http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/CURRIC/s
[1] i will not hesitate to say that i totally am the most fantastic and capable person ever and should undoubtedly be elected Ruler Of The Universe, however
[2] how's that for a politically doublespoken euphemism?
[3] which isn't really a symptom of dysfunction in itself so much as a burden born upon anyone who has ever been made to feel as if her best effort achieved less than what it should have been able to, regardless of whether or not she could have actually achieved more than she did. nevertheless: digression
[4] not to say that the individual is damaged from birth, though i suppose the theory is that the brain is, which is why i don't know how else i would explain away how scientists have made the connection
[5] written by two people with the letters "PhD" after their names, by the way. here's hoping that's indicative of a doctorate degree in psychology, as opposed to my dad's master's degree in engineering.
[6] or, in some cases, simply with the only reaction that has been deemed acceptable in those circumstances.
[7] that sort of image was what 44% of the people i surveyed thought of when i mentioned Autism. classy.
[8] but that is a rant about the foolishness of touting some so-called social norm and shunning anyone who might possibly deviate from it as eeeevil or hopelessly deranged, and therefore quite off-topic, as is my anger about the public's attempt to "cure" Autism, the way they wanted to erradicate left-handedness and any form of sexual expression that wouldn't fit in the 1950s vanilla lifestyle of rich, white, and oppressive.
and yes, i say that as a middle-class white girl barely hurtling over 20 years of life, with virtually no experience outside of my parents' income bracket, not including my intellectual and emotional ennui or that week i spent homeless.
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