You do not bear the weight and importance that you did before I left.  My breath no longer depends on whether your eyes are on me.  There’s a whiskey burn, an arthritic ache somewhere slightly left of centre-chest, but I finally feel featherlight once again.

That’s pretty much it. Unless something amazing just miraculously comes along from out of nowhere and blindsides me, I’m done with switchhitting for both teams. I can only guess at male logic and reasoning, but I’m guessing my reasons are similar to those as most men when they decide they are sick and tired of trying to find the right woman.

It’s become increasingly clear to me in recent months that the odds of having my ideal relationship structure are almost nonexistent, and the woman I want most likely exists only as a figment of my overactive imagination. I just don’t have the head and heart to keep trying with a gender that confuses and confounds its own just as much as it does the opposite. I guess maybe that’s one of the few upsides to bisexuality… at least I can fall back on the comfort and affection of my guy, instead of reducing to monasticism out of annoyance and frustration. (That’s right - there’s a flipside to everything; twice the potential for romance, twice the potential for heartache.)

Once your diagnosis is determined, they tell you so many things.  What kind of therapy is best.  The right kinds of medication.  How to treat your body.  Stress management techniques and boundary setting skills.  So many things to remember, but most of them common sense.

But there are so many things that don’t tell you… things that fall under “Good to Know”.

They don’t tell you about the days when you wake up and do your best to ignore your own reflection as you step into the shower, where you stand almost motionless for the next ten minutes just wishing the world would stop turning long enough for a few moments of peace.

They don’t tell you about the friends you will lose when you finally break the news that there is, indeed, something not quite right, and that there is a name for it.

They don’t tell you about the moments when, no matter how much other people approve, you’ll stop and question whether you are being an even halfway-decent parent for your children, or if you are doing nothing more than leading them down the very same path to madness.

They don’t tell you about those first few days on medication, when you feel like you’re imploding and as if things could pass right through you if stop breathing for too long.

They don’t tell you about those split seconds when the slightest negativity makes you want to bitchslap every other human being in the world, except maybe  your nearest and dearest.

They don’t tell you about the endless sleepless nights when your brain can’t, or just won’t, shut down…. or even slow down…. enough for you to just close your eyes and dream without nightmares.

I’m starting to wonder if someone should just write a handbook about this stuff.  Sort of like “Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy” was to, well, pregnancy.

There’s a shark shaped fin
In the water of my dreams
An alligator screams from the depths there
I’d swim with you there
I’d swim with you there, yeah yeah

Too much is not enough
Undivide your love
Undivide your love

Borderline Personality Disorder Shows Improvements With Intensive Psychotherapy

An intensive form of talk therapy, known as transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP), can help individuals affected with borderline personality disorder (BPD) by reducing symptoms and improving their social functioning, according to an article in the June issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, a premier psychiatry journal.

BPD, a chronic and disabling condition affecting about 1% of the United States population, has long defied psychologists and psychiatrists seeking to treat the illness. Affecting day-to-day functions, symptoms of the illness include unstable relations with others, pervasive mood instability, chaotic variation in self-image, self-destructive behavior, impulsive behaviors (such as sexual promiscuity, substance abuse, or gambling), and intense, uncontrolled rages.

In the new study, Mark F. Lenzenweger, distinguished professor of psychology at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and colleagues at the Weill College of Medicine, Cornell University, examined three treatments applied to carefully diagnosed BPD patients for a period of one year.

The treatments included dialectical behavior therapy, supportive psychotherapy, and TFP, a specialized psychodynamic form of talk therapy, pioneered by Otto F. Kernberg, a study co-author and professor of psychiatry at Weill-Cornell, that focuses on dominant emotionally charged themes that emerge in the relationship between patient and therapist.

As the patients moved through the yearlong treatments, they were carefully assessed on a wide range of psychiatric symptom and functioning domains, such as depression, anger, social functioning, suicidal behaviors, impulsivity, social adjustment, and various forms of irritability and aggression.

At the end of the year of treatment, a detailed examination of the change revealed that the BPD patients in the TFP treatment showed improvement in ten out of the twelve domains studied.

“The improvements for the TFP patients were not merely statistically reliable, but they represented fairly impressive scientific effects, not just trivial changes,” said Lenzenweger. “TFP not only helped reduced suicidal behaviors, but also seemed particularly helpful in reducing irritability and angry behaviors.”

Kernberg noted, “We are pleased about the progress in the empirical development of a psychoanalytic treatment for borderline patients that focuses on the personality, rather than simply on symptoms, yet also shows improvements in symptoms.”

The study also included dialectical behavior therapy (or DBT), which is a cognitively based therapy. Supportive therapy also has its roots in psychoanalytic methods, but differs substantially from TFP.

“This is the first study to compare DBT, considered by many to be the standard, with two psychodynamic treatments,” said John F. Clarkin, the lead author on the study and professor of clinical psychology at Weill-Cornell.

A major implication of the study is that all three treatments show some effect in alleviating the impact of BPD. The weight of the evidence in the study importantly suggests that TFP and supportive psychotherapy are both viable alternatives to DBT for the treatment of BPD.

“We hope to explore the results of the study further to determine what factors predicted the best outcomes,” said Lenzenweger. “And of course, we hope to use these results to further guide our development of basic studies in the neuroscience and genomics of BPD.”

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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The study was supported, in part, by the Borderline Personality Disorder Research Foundation and the Personality Disorders Institute at the Department of Psychiatry, Weill College of Medicine, Cornell University.

Contact: Gail Glover
Binghamton University

Perhaps it is time to look into this approach.

Oh love, you’re driving me crazy
And I don’t know what to do
Will I throw this all away
For you

3:30 in the morning
Here in front of you
Oh love, what are we to do

Love, do you need me now
‘Cause I’ve let you down
‘Cause I’ve already let you go
And you don’t even know

Oh love, you’ve come from nowhere
And brought me to my knees
And in this place is it hello or good-bye

And I’d kiss your honey lips
Oh, I’d touch your sunlit hair
But these are the weapons that destroy me

Love, do you need me now
‘Cause I’ve let you down
‘Cause I’ve already let you go
And you don’t even know

Love, how I need it now
Love, it won’t let go
I guess you never know
We never know

Love, do you need me now
‘Cause I’ve let you down
‘Cause I’ve already let you go
And you don’t even know

Love, do you need me now
‘Cause I’ve let you down
‘Cause I’ve already let you go
And you don’t even love me anymore
I don’t love anymore…

…what it’s like to be in R.’s shoes right now. To be in his skin, in his brain, watching this entire debacle from his eyes. Sometimes, I try to sit quietly and put myself there. I try to imagine all of this from his perspective.

And all I get is train wreck.

They really should slap a warning label on the stuff. Apparently it has some inexplicably “interesting” side-effects on random people on unforeseeable occasions.