Dear vibrant_me:

Three years ago, at 27,  you “got diagnosed with depression, bpd (Borderline Personality Disorder), anxiety”. You had closer information about these diagnoses because you worked in the medical field at the time. You now think that “subconsciously I acted out to the symptoms- because that’s what I told I had”. You responded then to the diagnoses, and to your depression at the time in these ways: “I quit my job, became isolated, no friends”. But you did have a relationship following your diagnoses that ended a few weeks ago, his choice, following many arguments that you believed strained him, and he quit.

I am very familiar with the BPD diagnosis as well as with anxiety and depression from my very personal experience. I view most mental diagnoses/ disorders as something like this: it starts with ongoing fear in childhood and those fears, like rocks going down a hill, gather more and more mud as they roll down the hill, eventually getting stuck along the way down, perhaps, with a particular arrangement of mud that fit this or that diagnosis.

The mud gathered along the way includes all the ways we tried to resolve our own ongoing fear and the damage caused by those ways. The mud includes our dysfunctional living as adults, the harm caused by those ways.

You mentioned learning after the breakup. I hope you continue to learn. Learning motivates me.

anita