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Accepting a psychiatric diagnosis is like a religious conversion. It’s an adjustment in cosmology, with all its accompanying high priests, sacred texts, and stories of religion. And I am, for better or worse, an instant convert.

Kiera Van Gelder

Accepting a psychiatric diagnosis is like a religious conversion. It’s an adjustment in cosmology, with all its accompanying high priests, sacred texts, and stories of religion. And I am, for better or worse, an instant convert.

Kiera Van Gelder
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So at family gatherings… I try to stick to the acceptable script. Indeed, I discover that the less I say, the happier everyone seems to be with me. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off as a paraplegic or afflicted by some tragic form of cancer. The invisibility and periodicity of my disorder, along with how often I border on normalcy, allows them to evade my need for their understanding. And because our most enduring family heirloom is avoidance and denial of pain and suffering, I don’t need much prompting to shut myself down in their presence.
Kiera Van Gelder
An inner ease spreads inside me. Such is the power of acceptance and understanding from other people, the power of validation
Kiera Van Gelder
I've grown up with an ethic, call it a part, that insists I hide my pain at all costs. As I talk, I feel this pain leaking out—not just the core symptom of BPD, but all the years of being blamed or ignored for my condition, and all the years I've blamed others for how I am. It's the pain of being told I was too needy even as could never get the help I needed.
Kiera Van Gelder
For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned—and in this case branded with a label no one would ever choose to wear.
Kiera Van Gelder
All the skills from DBT glom together, a mass of acronyms without any meaning. I pull out the DBT books and paw through the pages. Something has to help. Then I find these words: 'The lives of suicidal, borderline individuals are unbearable as they currently being lived.
Kiera Van Gelder
I need them to be aware and present with me in the midst of the storm, not just tell me what to do.
Kiera Van Gelder
In the life cycle of an intense emotion, if it isn't acted upon, it eventually peaks and then decreases. But as Dr. Linehan explains, people with BPD have a different physiological experience with this process because of three key biological vulnerabilities (1993a): First, we're highly sensitive to emotional stimuli (meaning we experience social dynamics, the environment, and our own inner states with an acuteness similar to having exposed nerve endings). Second, we respond more intensely and much more quickly, than other people. And third, we don't 'come down' from our emotions for a long time. One the nerves have been touched, the sensations keep peaking. Shock waves of emotion that might pass through others in minutes keep cresting in us for hours, sometimes days.
Kiera Van Gelder
We need this help from the outside because we don't know how to to do this for ourselves. We start with a deep deficit—a chasm really—when it comes to understanding and being tolerant of ourselves, and that's even before we go forth to do battle with the rest of the world. As soon as someone judges, criticizes, dismisses, or ignores, the cycle of pain and reactivity ramps up, compounded by shame, remorse, and rejection. The act of validation, simply saying, 'I can see things from your perspective,' can short-circuit that emotional detour.
Kiera Van Gelder
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