My name is Lori and I am a 38 year old Female. I am a survivor.

I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder between 10-15 years ago. For me, the most helpful part of treatment was learning how to maintain relationships without sexualizing them. It helped me to learn about different levels of intimacy, the difference between sex and intimacy, and about healthy friendships. The turning point for me is when I gave up some of my defenses in favor of trusting my therapist. Grounding and people to play the mother and father role for me in absence of my parents was very important also. Otherwise I projected those relationships onto people who didn't wish to be placed in that role. The difficulty of surviving Borderline Personality disorder is in escaping the stigma of the mental illness and the way that we sabotage and re-traumatize ourselves in order to keep ourselves in a PTSD sort of chaotic state. The positive rewards of mental health have to outweigh the negative rewards of chaos. If borderlines can allow ourselves happiness, then that is a true blessing.

I am partnered in a lesbian relationship. I have a very stable family life now.

Symptoms: Most of those mentioned in the diagnostic criteria, self injury, depression, overeating, recovering sex addict, paranoid delusions at times, suicidal fantasies (recovered from that). I also use to have a problem with compulsive thoughts or fantasies that I didn't want in my head. I have learned how to stop those. I've had a lot of cognitive therapy and psychotherapy.

My email is: kathyhandlorih@msn.com