BPDFamily.com

Hi...
My name is Steven and I'm from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

My 20 year old daughter was recently diagnosed with traits of BPD. For the past 3 years she was in frequent counselling for depression but despite all these counselling her condition worsen. We then decided to seek treatment from a Psychiatrist and she was prescribed  an anti-depressant and an anti-psychotic pill.

Despite these medication, her condition did not improve. My wife and me had been suffering for years coping with our daughter's severe mood swings daily. Lately she started self harm by beating her head with anything she could lay hands on and start talking about suicide.

Recently, she self-diagnose and told her psychiatrist that she thinks she had BPD. It was the first time we heard about BPD and it just dawn on us as to why she was so resistant to conventional counselling all these years. We immediately start looking for a DBT counsellor and was lucky to find one. She happens to be the only trained DBT counsellor in Malaysia. We had done 6 sessions of DBT with her and we are already seeing some improvement in her condition.

At the same time, my wife and me are also receiving counselling from her. Learning mindfulness and validation skills do help us communicate better with our daughter. We were introduced to this site with the hope that we can learn from others and share our experience with other families who had suffered as much as we did. We hope to start a family support group in Malaysia eventually and that will be the first BPD family support group in Malaysia.

Thank you for listening.

Hi Steven, you are doing the right thing in getting a therapist that specializes in BPD, unfortunately not all therapist know how to handle this disorder effectively. Hopefully they will start dialectal behavior therapy right away because this is crucial for your daughter. My daughter was treated with a host of different meds and they did not work for her just made her more lethargic and unmotivated and that continued the spiral down. Healthy alternatives like meditation, healthy eating, destressing methods work. Having your daughter volunteer somewhere where she feels she is helping someone else also works, because some BPD people are highly sensitive and emotional. Having a feeling of self worth is important. BPD people tend to miss read situations and become paranoid so a therapist has to help them to process what their brain may think. My daughter suffered greatly and used to say she did not like her brain. They will self medicate (drugs, alcohol, pills) to dull the parts of their brain they don't like. Again a bad spiral. They won't understand why they feel this way and why they are different and blame others. They will tell you intensive therapy is needed. Probably at the beginning more is needed but make sure its talk therapy and not "take this med" True BPD need to learn how to think and process differently. Meds can't fix this. They help if other disorders are present, bipolar or schizophrenia. Antidepressants are helpful is major depressive disorder. Get her started on the DBT book and have her try some of the worksheets, this is the most effective. It will help her to understand herself.
As for you and your wife...stay healthy yourself, set clear boundaries, don't explain, don't argue, tell her you love her.