So Ren and I are putting together a zine that’s all about navigating life when you’re living with mental illness(es). The focus isn’t so much on self care or non-traditional treatment methods. Instead, we’re looking for practical advice, the stuff you wish someone had been around to tell you so you didn’t have to learn the hard way. Artwork is also welcome! Note: you must be someone w/ mental illness in order to submit either writing or art.
Possible topics include:
-how to ask for help
-being a college student
-recognizing bad therapists, finding good therapists
-preventing self destructive behavior
-dealing with unsupportive family members
-finding & securing employment
-developing healthy coping mechanisms
-dating
-finding supportive, good friends
-trusting your instincts when you struggle w/ delusions
-dealing with anti-psychiatry attitudes when you rely on medication
Please send submissions to miadvicezine@hellokitty.com by July 15th 2013. We are aiming for a publishing date of August 30th.
Please limit submissions to 1000 words or less!
This is a brand new group - please join!!! I am hoping to form a group of BPDs and others that would like to meet weekly to study & discuss DBT skills and improve our lives together, one step at a time. Each meeting we will study a specific skill from ‘The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook’, discuss, and share our experiences. It is preferred that members are in therapy, but not necessary. It is not required that you have been diagnosed with BPD. My hope is for this group to supplement our individual therapies, and make us all feel less alone. I want us to have a support network that we can reach out to & work towards recovery with. I am not a mental health professional. I am a recently diagnosed BPD who is determined to recover.
First meeting is NEXT WEDNESDAY (1/5), and meetings happen every Wednesday thereafter.
This is a great opportunity to meet other people in the Boston area who are living with BPD-spectrum mental health issues and to practice DBT skills together! Please signal boost!
—
Judith Herman, “Trauma and Recovery” (via lavenderlabia)
aka borderline personality disorder
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(via youarenotyou)
Stuff I have finally been starting to sort out the past few months after several years of PTSD and what’s now being labelled BPD. & writing about exactly this for my zine (plus with race) (always race).
(via readnfight)
(Source: psychologicalsnippets, via readnfight)
Anonymous asked: Thanks for running this blog. Fringe audience member here - a friend of a BL person and somebody sharing certain personality traits with BL people - but one benefiting from the blog nonetheless. Wishing all the mods happiness and good fortune in 2013! -Beast of the Sea
Thank you! <3
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Abuse and the inability to exist « Speaking when the world sleeps (via superherotoranse)
i did a little shake-tear when i read this
(via askouija)
this 100% explains everything.
(via borderline-babe)
wow owwow wow wow wow fuck i am crying
(via youarenotyou)
(via littlelostdragon)
“Turn Your Pain Into Plans” from Doodle Alley (found after creeping through Charlie’s facebook feed)
The text of this comic reads:
I find that the most painful places for me to be are the places for which I have no hope of leaving. Whether it’s a mundane pain or a profound pain, its effect on me is always tripled by the thought that I might have to live in it forever. What helps me most when I find myself in this place is turning my pain into plans. Having a plan is the difference between despair and hope. A plan inscribes a path out of the pain for you to follow. Though it may not immediately change your circumstances…it will change your perspective. It lets you know that this struggle is not a dead-end and it is only an obstacle. You are not stuck inside, you are only going THROUGH. So turn your pain into plans!
And it’s amazing; [borderline people’s] ability to take care of someone else, to give the right answer of what you would do for that person, is very different from what they would do for themselves. Because my belief—and I’m sure it’s not only my belief—is that the borderline patient really essentially inside feels unlovable. Feels like there’s something missing, that they’re not worthy of love. And so they tend to seek out people who validate that—and if they do find someone who doesn’t validate that, they try to sabotage that relationship to keep that myth alive.
…And while that idea saved them—in their childhood or their youth or infancy—it is now actually killing them.
"— Ivan Spielbergtalks about treating borderline people in the video “A Look at Borderline Personality Disorder - Part 2”
Anon asked:
I’m interested in pursuing some kind of therapy that is more psychoanalytic than DBT. I take issue with several of the assumptions of DBT (on metaphysical grounds) and because of that, I wouldn’t be able to make myself benefit from DBT. Has anyone here had any kind of psychoanalytic or psychodynamic therapy for BPD?
Anonymous asked: Hey. I think your blog might help me reframe "I am borderline and therefore I am a crazy abusive manipulative treatment-resistant fairy-tale witch of legend THIS IS THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD I COULD POSSIBLY BE!!!" as "I am borderline and therefore I can help positively represent a severely stigmatized and demonized (often in misogynist terms) group of people." That's probably good! I have other things to say but ask boxes are small and I should sleep. I will try to keep reading this blog.
:D
We’re glad to hear it!
-Devyn
