I want to emphasise that the treatment of patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (from now on: BPD or Borderline) is often wrong in the sense that it might be inhuman and completely out of the ordinary. Let's take this treatment in Belgium. As you may know, people with Borderline might hurt themselves, especially by cutting themselves. At the youth clinic in Belgium, the punishment for this kind of behaviour was 3 hours in the isolation cell. Of course, I didn't allow this to happen, so I ran away. And - as you may have guessed or read in one of my earlier posts - they always caught me, and the punishment got even worse: a whole team of muscular men came to catch me, they took me to the isolation cell while I was resisting. I didn't want to stay in the cell, so they strapped me to the bed: feet, waist and hands. I couldn't move a damn muscle! And even then I couldn't calm down, I was so frightened and messed up! So I resisted during this process, which was a sign for them to inject me with all kinds of antipsychotics and tranquillizers.
They took it all away: my youth, my innocence, my dignity. They just didn't know how to handle me. Neither did I. So they had to find something new, a new method to "take care" of Debz, because the process described above happened like... 3 or maybe even 4 times a week. It just wasn't bearable anymore, not for them, nor for me. So they came up with a new concept, the concept of the "secure room". This meant that after lunch and after dinner, they brought me to a room on another ward. This was a ward for adults because at that time the youth clinic didn't have this kind of rooms. In this room everything was attached to the ground or the wall, the wardrobe was locked as well as the bathroom. I had to go in there, take their medicine, called Etumine, a very strong antipsychotic, and I had to spend a few hours in there after lunch and the entire evening and night after dinner. They took it all away...
I couldn't have anything in this room with me that had a cable, for fear that I would kill myself - I had tried to hang myself, twice. So no discman, no radio with cable, nothing. They took it all away. A concerned friend who was extremely worried about me collected batteries among the other patients so that I could have my radio on batteries with me, but the music made me insane. At that time, I listened a lot to Eminem and D12. The weird thing is that I'm listening to Eminem's new CD at this very moment... Anyway, I wasn't myself back then, but I think the meds turned me into a completely different person. I could take a shower, yes, but there had to be a nurse waiting outside the bathroom. They took it all away... My boyfriend could visit me, but only for a short time, half an hour or something. Luckily, he was smart enough to find the window on the outside and we were able to communicate for some more time, because although the window was darkened from the inside, I could see him, he could see me, and we could communicate: he was screaming on the outside, I was writing things on a sheet of paper which he could read. Of course, I couldn't attract the attention, so I had to keep quiet in there. They never discovered :-)
While I'm writing this, I feel bad. I've been feeling bad all day. I was in bed all morning, thinking about this post. I knew I had to write about this topic. Many people have no idea what it is to be locked up for more than 12 hours a day when you haven't done anything wrong, when you're not a criminal, just another lost soul, another psychiatric patient looking for that tiny bit of love and acceptance. If I would be able to count all those lost hours of being locked up, I think I would be shocked. The same counts for my last admission here in the Netherlands. Here, they also took it all away. I thought I was safe here, but that turned out to be an illusion. I've been living in the Netherlands, more exactly in Leiden, for nearly 12 years, and until November 2013, I'd never been in a Dutch isolation cell. However, it happened that I was locked up in there and stripped from my clothes while men were present. Many times. They took it all away: my pride, my dignity, my trust. I lost confidence, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was hopelessly lost, lost in a psychosis, lost in my voices who were giving me orders, who were directing me in the wrong direction. I couldn't do anything about it. I was locked up twice because of selfharm. I still ask myself if that was necessary. It had already happened. I was locked up once while derealising, depersonalising. I ask myself if that was necessary. Why didn't they just bring me to my bedroom? I was locked up a few times because I was blocking the door. I ask myself if they just couldn't have put me in a chair and have told me I had to quit this kind of behaviour or else...
Many times, it was so unfair that they locked me up. And every time, the same pantomime: I was being dragged away, injected with Lorazepam, stripped of all my clothes and wrapped up in blankets. I felt so helpless... They took it all away, every inch of trust, every bit of pride, everything... Last week, there came another tough verdict. Because they think that my personality can't handle it, I won't be able to receive any more therapy. So no therapy to cope with my traumas or to cope with my OCD, no more schema-focused therapy. They are bound to limit themselves to recovery. Recovery? Why? More than ever do I feel the need to work on the traumas in my life: I want EMDR, trauma therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, but no, my psychiatrist and nurse won't risk it. They're too afraid that I will have a relapse. I have the right to ask for a second opinion, but still, they won't do it. I feel lost, more than ever. They don't believe that I can handle it, that my "foundations" are strong enough. And they also believe that there's nothing more to do with the "foundations" of my house. My nurse literally said: "We've tried everything". Alas. The only thing to do is to strenghten the house on the foundations. That is, according to my psychiatrist and my psychiatric nurse. But hey, what about my opinion?! It obviously doesn't count. My nurse told me that, when she sees the amount of meds I have to take to be stable, she sees no other remedy. I'm too vulnerable, and I have to take that into consideration. Go to hell with that stupid vulnerability! I'm sad, I'm angry, I'm disappointed! She says it's normal. At least something that doesn't breach normality...
BPD is a complicated illness. It makes you feel insecure about your each and every move. You don't know whether you're doing things the right way. Not only for yourself, but also - and especially - for others. That makes it so complicated. You'd rather die yourself than hurting somebody else. But that makes that others can take it all away, and sometimes they do. They take it all away. I've written a lot already about BPD, but remember this: we are very emotional, very fragile and extremely vulnerable, although on the outside we sometimes seem to be enormously tough. Still, this is just a matter of keeping up appearances. Last year, when my grandma was seriously ill, I seemed to be the strongest member of the entire family, but deep down inside me, I was fragmented. I was nearly dead myself. I just had to keep up appearances, I couldn't fail my family. I had to be there, for my mom, for my grandfather, for the sake of the entire family. So I did. The cost of it only came months later. People with BPD don't talk easily about their emotions. And that's not because we don't like you or don't trust you. It's just that we like to keep it to ourselves. Usually, we've been through a lot, too much for one person to carry. Think of Atlas, who had to carry the entire world on his shoulders. That's how I sometimes feel. But who will carry my weight when it comes down to that?
I think I'm going for a walk. I need some fresh air. It will do me good. Afterwards, I will post this. Thanks for reading. I hope you will never ever have to deal with BPD in your family. If you have a friend with BPD, be extra gentle with him/her in May, which is Borderline Awareness Month. We all need it!
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