Book Quotes Got Me Thinking

I am currently reading 'All The Bright Places' by Jennifer Niven and it has got me thinking. This page you see here got really personal for me real quick. What's going on in this chapter is the main character Theodore Finch is attending his first group therapy session. He soon realises everyone there feels their labels define them. I myself have been in group therapy sessions and in hospitals when the first question isn't how you are it's simply Name, Age, Diagnosis, Reason For Admission, Voluntary/Sectioned, Been In Hospital Before? Even in settings like that it's all about the label you've been branded with.

A lot of the people surrounding myself tell me I am far to harsh on myself. I blame my BPD on myself. I consider BPD as my label and I have let it define every part of my life from my relationships to college work. This book has got me thinking it shouldn't be that way though. Someone living with a physical condition isn't their Diabetes or Epilepsy etc they are who they have become and are totally separate from their illness or condition. However, a lot of people diagnosed with a mental health condition see themselves as just their illness and nothing more. I think this a factor of both public stigma and negative feelings towards oneself but it doesn't have to be this way.

The thing I have learnt today is you are not your mental illness. Unfortunately, though that mind set is hard to get out of.

What Now?

Sometimes it saddens me to look back and realise I've been searching and receiving help for my Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) for 5 years. I am the age of 19 and I believe no one should have to battle with any mental illness for so long but at such a young age it's heart breaking.

When I was finally allowed to be diagnosed officially, coming up to my 18th birthday, it broke and still breaks my heart to this day that I will live with this label forever. I sit and fear all the life events anyone has growing up and will face during adulthood. I fear my first heartbreak and people passing away. I fear going in for my first day at work or even applying for my first ever real job that will lead to my career. I fear buying a home and falling in love. I fear starting a family. I fear many things and I am only 19 years old. No one should have to live with the fear their mental illness will define their lives but I know mine will because it hasn't stopped in all the years I have suffered.

Then it comes to this. When you have received all the help that is possibly available to you for BPD yet you still relapse and find it hard to cope, what do you do? Right now I'm at that stage. I have tried everything and the NHS have ran out of things to do and say. I have been on many different medications that I now fear due to bad experiences in hospital. I have been hospitalised 3 times for a total of 11 months altogether. I know CBT/DBT therapies like the back of my hand. The only thing left is trauma therapy. I am ready for it now yet there is a huge waiting list and by the sounds of it the NHS are thinking about not referring me because a waiting list exists. What am I meant to do? I refuse to accept this is my life. I refuse to accept things can't improve past the point they have reached. This isn't recovery yet because the NHS have tried everything to them it is.

How do they expect me not to give up on myself when the service formed to help me has done just that, given up on me? I don't understand and I fear I never will.