When it comes to recovering from BPD most people feel it will never happen. After all, there are hundreds of videos and articles telling you that BPD is incurable and that many therapists won’t bother treating people with it. OK, so BPD is something you will probably have to live with for the rest of your life, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it control a single day of your life! Even if you are lucky enough to have one-on-one sessions with a therapist, they can’t hold your hand for the rest of your life. At some point, everyone with any sort of mental health disorder will have to learn to deal with it on their own. Wheater or not you wish to learn to live with your BPD, severe depression or terrible anxiety is really up to you and no one else…
You might think that intro was a little harsh, but consider for a moment the life of a trapeze artist. There has to be a point in their training when they don’t have a safety rope, they don’t have someone helping them and teaching them, yet trapeze artists at some point in their lives go on to perform the walk of death without a harness, without a safety net and with a real, genuine fear of death! Just imagine for a moment how scared and nervous they might feel! The good news is you don’t have to achieve this death-defying trick, all you have to do is get on with your life.
There is no easy way to tell anyone this and it is even harder when the client is sat a few feet away from me. But at some point in any therapeutic guidance, there has to be a point when the therapist reminds the client that recovery is a choice and nothing more. Yes, if you choose to try and get more control over your thoughts and emotions it really is a matter of learning how to do just that and we have already gone over many of those said methods! Should you feel totally in control of your life already after just 27 weeks of self-help therapy? No! But you should be considering whether or not you are ready to get better, whether or not you are ready to choose to feel better. No one else can make that choice for you, it’s up to you.
Don’t get me wrong here, there are many factors when it comes to people recovering from any mental health disorder. Some of them could be mental and many others could be environmental and those need to be addressed before truly choosing wheater or not to feel better and more in control of yourself. But I have personally seen children and adults recover from the most heinous of lives and yet, they go on to live semi-normal lives. Many of them will still have bad days and good days, but they made that conscious session to not let those things control them. They moved on from their pasts, they have jobs and families and happy relationships.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have been through, within you is the capacity and ability to feel better. Never allow yourself to feel depressed about never being cured of your BPD! Instead, you should remind yourself that you are in control of your mind and body, not anyone else. If you choose to smile you will smile. If you choose not to lash out at someone then you can indeed stop it because you are not anyone’s puppet. Just try and take one day at a time and make that choice to feel better and be a better version of yourself. If you can’t that day simply wait for the next one and the next one until you can.
This Week’s Homework: This week I would like you to stand in front of a mirror and if you don’t like seeing yourself in the mirror, just make sure you can see your feet or your hand in it. Then, I want you to wiggle whatever you can see. If you can see your face, pull funny faces, if you can only see your hands wiggle them around for a short while. Once you have done that, I want you to consider what you have just done. You consciously controlled your own body and turned simple thoughts into actions. No one else did it for you, no one else is pulling your stings or indeed moving those things for you. Inside of you is the power to control your own mind, body and soul. So maybe it is time to take back some control.
