Post by Mea on Dec 23, 2015 7:33:46 GMT
Anonymous asked: can symptom severity be different? i have all the impulsive/identity/destructive stuff but the social aspects (such as splitting and bad relationships) seem to be very light and don't affect me as much as the other, personal, things. i feel that this might be used against me to imply that 'its just teenage hormones' when i present all this, is there anything i should say?
Answer: Symptoms and the severity of them vary for each person. Like any other disorder, BPD exists on a spectrum, so people have differently levels of severity for each symptom as well as different ways of expressing them. You don’t even need to have every symptom in order to qualify for a diagnosis, so someone experiencing one symptom you don’t does not mean you can’t have BPD.
If it helps, I also don’t experience splitting very often at all! It’s one of the less severe symptoms for me, and I rarely even experience it.
If you plan on speaking to a professional, just be honest. Explain which symptoms you experience, how badly they affect your life (on a scale of 1 to 10 perhaps) and how you express them. (For example, being impulsive. How impulsive would you describe yourself? What kind of things do you do?) Also explain your thought processes if possible. Instead of, “I have no sense of identity,” explain what that means to you. (For example, “I feel like a chameleon, adapting my personality depending on the people and the situation” or “I keep changing my hair/wardrobe because I can’t figure out which look is really me.”)
-Mea
Answer: Symptoms and the severity of them vary for each person. Like any other disorder, BPD exists on a spectrum, so people have differently levels of severity for each symptom as well as different ways of expressing them. You don’t even need to have every symptom in order to qualify for a diagnosis, so someone experiencing one symptom you don’t does not mean you can’t have BPD.
If it helps, I also don’t experience splitting very often at all! It’s one of the less severe symptoms for me, and I rarely even experience it.
If you plan on speaking to a professional, just be honest. Explain which symptoms you experience, how badly they affect your life (on a scale of 1 to 10 perhaps) and how you express them. (For example, being impulsive. How impulsive would you describe yourself? What kind of things do you do?) Also explain your thought processes if possible. Instead of, “I have no sense of identity,” explain what that means to you. (For example, “I feel like a chameleon, adapting my personality depending on the people and the situation” or “I keep changing my hair/wardrobe because I can’t figure out which look is really me.”)
-Mea
