From: alter@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Eric Alter)
Subject: Borderline personality
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 13:44:07 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM Rochester

[long wordy, sometimes pointless note]

I have a friend who was diagnosed with this disorder several years ago (1987 ?).
 She saw professional help for over a year (1987-1988) in Kansas (Mennigers ?)
and after her release, she had been in therapy up until May, 1992.  She has
shown me some books that she has on the above subject and some of the indicators
of this disease.  If it matters, she's 22, almost 23.

I'm looking for indicators of her personality one can expect to appear off and
on.  Specifically, one of the last things she was to work on in therapy was the
subject of men (I guess males in general).  Last year she was a participant in
the "man of the week".  She would meet guys at the bars/work/play/whereever talk
to them alot for about a week, and then abruptly "drop" them and totaly block
them out of her memory (as she describes it).  This went on from around April,
1991 to August, 1991.  It abruptly stopped when she was raped (she was highly
intoxicated and passed out at the time.  I glean that she had low support from
those who were/could have been witnesses [you must have deserved it sort of
thing] and from parents).  She was also raped (forced into non-intercourse
activity) in high school by a boyfriend.

At one point last fall (1991), she went out to the bars/niteclubs and drank
excessively many times.  This went on until spring of this year.  I would get
calls from her when she clearly was drunk and would go out and meet her to take
her home or such.  She would be very incapacitated mentally.  She has a fear of
not hurting men's feelings and this caused a near-rape situation in the center
of a niteclub here (I looked up the Mn law -> 5th degree sexual assault).  At
that point, she had called me, I had gone down to meet her and she had been
talking with a guy (about me).  He was saying "leave him, come with me" stuff
and ended up forcing her to feel him up while I sat on the other side of her
oblivious to what was going on.

She call me many times.  If I don't leave my answering machine on, she thinks
I'm with an ex-gf.  If I do leave it on, many times I get sarcastic messages,
some saying I must be out with my ex.  She'll stop by and drop notes under my
door that refer to my ex.  She talks alot about how much of a bitch she is and
she's never met her and I don't talk about the problems that she/or we had.
She also constantly thinks she's fat (chunky maybe, but very physically strong
and large boned) and is always telling me, jeez, what do you think of me if you
didn't know me or that I wouldn't ever think of talking to her if I didn't
already know her because she's heavy.
I call her and may/may not get ahold of her.  She calls home, gets the msg that
I called and calls me from whereever she is.  She goes out on the town, and if I
happen to show up, which I've done, she gets upset because I hang around with
her (she says she can't meet people [men] when I'm there).  If I go out, she
gets upset because I don't take her.  Yet, last summer when I met her, she would
come out and plop down with us, go look for friends, and come back and sit.  She
would invite herself into our activity saying "what are WE going to do Friday"
or something like that.

She cut's herself.  She learned how to do that while she was institutionalized. 
She quit when I said that I could never go out with someone who did that (she
wouldn't be well).  She stopped for a while and then started again recently. 
She only does this when she's under much stress and suffering from what I coined
"racing brain" syndrome.  Your thoughts race so fast that you get confused and
disoriented.  She also says that she "hears" things.  Sounds to me like she
still isn't well, but when I say that, she gets VERY upset.  This all happend
this spring while she was still in therapy (she stopped going due to no more insurance
from her parents).  I said I would help her as best as I can.  I saw help for a
few weeks and she was worried that I would be "reprogrammed" and wouldn't want
to see her anymore.  She wanted me to go, but I decided to do it for myself. 
One thing that came out of my help was that I can't help her all the time or
whenever she says jump.  This upset her once when I was sleeping and she called
very upset, and needed help.  I said I couldn't do anything (already taken
contacts out and in bed).  She comes up with the statement "you just don't
do/say things like that" when I tell/yell at her to stop cutting, get prof.
help, I can't help you, etc.

Many times, she buys things for me (food/candy, toys, etc) or wants to go
shopping for clothes with me and says get this, they'd look good on you.  She
seems to go overboard doing things for me.  She also grabs me (genitallia) and
messes around.  If I retaliate (sp??), she gets upset.  I do this to in effect
say, don't work me up if you don't want it done to you.  She'll do things and
then expect nothing in return.  When I try to do something for her, she starts
grabbing again saying that she can't be the one that gets anything.  She will
give, but she won't "take".  During one fight, she said that "we [women] must
stick up for ourselves".  I replied that it must be a men against women sort of
thing and she said no.  She's called my ex 2 times now.  The first was to tell
her that we'd slept together (just one of those things that happens), the second
was to say that she can have me.  The latter just happened last night.  She had
no right to call at all.

I think all is going well at times.  We have fun together, we do things, we
talk, etc.  Up out of the blue, she gets very upset and says I don't want to see
you anymore (we aren't officially dating although it looks like we are).

Does any of this point to problems that still exist from the past?  Is it just
insecurity on her part?  What are personality traits of a person who has/had?
borderline personality disorder?  I still think she needs help due to her
self-destructivness (gets very upset, punches her car to the point where I took
her to the hospital late one night for x-rays, punches non-moveable objects)
both physically and mentally.

Can anyone point to other problems that may be extracted from this note (besides
me)?
-- 

E. Alter		alter@rchland.vnet.ibm.com
			Rochester, Mn
Xref: sparky sci.psychology:3676 sci.misc:1597 talk.politics.misc:44406