Success Stories?

[lookingforpeas]

I am new to this site and pretty new to the BPD world. My adult daughter is a college student and has been diagnosed with BPD. She is having a difficult time staying in school, making friends, and getting along with family members. She is in therapy which I am hopeful will help. I would love to hear some success stories.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Swimmy55]

Welcome!
 As you read through others' stories here , you will see that success has a different meaning than what the world defines it as.  In my estimation, you already have success in that your daughter is in therapy. That is wonderful  .  She is also in college, another success.   For me, I had to adjust my expectations drastically and each day I journal what went right for that day and those items are successes for me.   Please write back to us as you are able.     

[incadove]

Well - I'm not sure what the meaning of 'success' is, but at least becoming independent or having an independent attitude, and wanting to do the right thing, is a kind of success in my book even if there are still a lot of emotional ups and downs and relationships are not really there.  Its trying to do the right thing, that counts the most for me, I guess.

[Yepanotherone]

Hello there, I used to be a regular poster here and posted frequently, I visit every so often these days I guess my daughter’s journey could be considered a success story
My daughter was 15 when diagnosed with BPD ( following initial diagnoses of bipolar, depression, eating disorder, anxiety and also a diagnosis of Obstructive personality disorder was thrown into the pot at one point.
Between the ages of 15 to 17 and a half, our daughter made our lives a living hell. She went from bad to worse, clocking up 8 ER visits and subsequent hospitalizations in adolescent mental health units, suicide attempts, flunking  at high school ,promiscuous sex And high risk behaviors including  drugs, getting into trouble with the police, daily self harm, self induced seizures with over the counter medication in her efforts to get high, toxic boyfriends, and she literally turned from a family loving girl into someone who couldn’t stand the very air we, her parents and sister breathed .
It was total hell. She was hospitalized pretty much every 2-3 months and was completely out of control. We had so many medication trials with various cocktails of medications, therapists and psychiatrists galore and I basically didn’t sleep for those 2.5 years out of worry that she was going to take her own life or else get herself killed. She would sneak out in the middle of the night to meet strangers for sex and got into some really sticky situations at “ parties “, making horrendous choices . She did not care. She had no intention of living beyond her 18th birthday.
She’s 20 now, she’s been stable for 3 years, hasn’t self harmed in that time ( she was a cutter), she is holding down a job as a server, she did graduate high school eventually but has no plans to go to college yet. She’s smart, beautiful, has a nice boyfriend and is making plans to move in with him at the end of the month.
She’s still very highly strung and very sensitive to anything remotely critical, and she still uses marijuana daily for her anxiety, but doesn’t do any other drugs .
It’s not quite where I thought she would be at this stage in her life; I always presumed she would go to uni and have a professional career as she is incredibly smar, however the success is that all in all, she is stable, happy for the most part, content, making moves towards increasing her independence and she’s alive