My blog was mentioned the other day in a non BPD forum and the comment was nice and all but what caught my attention is the person who introduced it said “This man claims to have Borderline Personality Disorder” which struck me as rather odd. Why would someone want to pretend that they have a mental disorder and by the way I am pretty sure this type of behavior qualifies you to have a mental health problem. There is nothing cool associated with having a mental health problem and the only reason I can think of someone creating a diagnosis is to seek attention or to possibly freak other people out on some moronic level.
I have had people question my self harm history and more then one dumb soul wanted to know how many scars I have as a way of qualifying my position. Part of the self harm membership I have never figured out is why people count and then post how many times they cut themselves as if there is a certain amount that you need to accomplish in order to be part of the club. Hate to break it to you one cut and a thousand cuts are the same thing in my book if the intent to cause harm was there then you need to get some professional help.
So how can you tell if the person claiming to have whatever disorder actually has it? Beats the heck out of me but I would imagine if you follow the writing for long enough the truth will come out. I read through my own stuff and can tell what mind frame I was in that day whether it be from a high borderline perspective or a low borderline perspective to a pure depression state to somewhere in between whether or not others can I have no idea. By the way this post is from the high end borderline position but my meds should kick in soon so I am hoping I will go back to whatever my normal level is these days.
Had a doctors appointment late this afternoon where I was not happy to find out that my fluctuating mood levels are part of Nardil withdrawal and it will take a couple of months to clear up. This rattled my cage for a bit since I was only on the drug for maybe three and a half months. The doctor forgot to tell me about that before I started to take the med and he says I fail to think long term. The doctor took procedure number one out of the Canadian Mental Health handbook which is if you can’t figure out the problem just keep increasing the dose of their meds and eventually the patient will stop thinking … I mean complaining. The wonderful drug Seroquel has gone from 75mg three times a day to 100mg three times a day so basically another full dose and in a month time “we” will review it again which probably means another increase. I actually like Seroquel for the most part and it does help in many different ways but stupid me did a quick Google search which led to a number of lawyers who are suing the company for apparently it increases the odds of contracting diabetes and for some odd reason the drug manufacture failed to mention that part.
I probably should apologize for this post now as my mind is going a million miles per hour so I should not be adding to this blog but like everything else on this blog this is my reality so I figured I would share. That is kind of funny I started to apologize then took it back which is a very borderline thing to do but mind you I am not suppose to be aware that this is taking place according to the stigma and my doctor for that matter but what do they know. Have a good night.
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Seroquel doesn’t inherently cause diabetes… it is the weight gain some people get that causes the diabetes. So if you don’t gain a bunch of weight, you are probably safe. Good luck… the medication adjustments and concoctions can be intensive and frustrating.
Thank you for the information it is appreciated. I am really careful regarding my weight and exercise so hopefully the diabetes issue never comes into play. Meds are not a lot of fun but unfortunately necessary at the moment.
I am in no sense saying you would want to pretend to have a mental disorder – but I can assure you there is plenty of reasons why someone might want to:
- to escape from problems in their life, if they can convince themselves or others they are mentally ill they might be able to distract themselves from other problems
- to explain problems in their life, some people have a harder time getting by than others and find it hard to understand why, mental illness can serve for them as a comforting “explination” that can make them feel less responsible for their apparant difficulties
- to get sympathy, yes some people do that
- to get someone to talk to at all, I knew a woman who did not have depression but who dragged out her bad feelings in order to get to go to a depression support group because she did not have anyone else in the world willing to talk to her
- to give their lives focus, for some people a disease can be used as a focus point for their lives which even if they don’t have it results in them clinging to the idea that they do because what else would they think about, how else could they define themselves, it serves as an anchor
Just some of the reasons (all of which I relate to, far too much) someone might “want to pretend that they have a mental disorder”
It's called malingering and though rare can be done to get disability or out of prison/lighter sentence. They have tests though so most "fakers" get caught. There's also some that are faking because of mental disorder that's called factitious disorders and some that have like "psychosomatic" illnesses if you will it's called somataform disorders also rare. I know this is an old post but felt the need to respond anyway.