BPDRecovery.com: Forums

The home page reads:

Welcome to BPDR!

BPDRecovery is a site that focuses on recovering from Borderline Personality Disorder. We are a non-discriminatory website which means that all individuals are welcome - whether you've been formally diagnosed or simply recognize yourself or someone you know in the diagnostic criteria, you are welcome here!

For the sake of clarity, we define "recovery" as "healthy, happy living." The tips, techniques and tools offered in this site are intended for everyone - BPD or NON - and may be able to help you achieve healthy, happy living.

This site was founded in 2001 by a recovered Borderline - Ash - as a result of the ever-increasing need to get the word out that recovery from BPD is possible. It's not easy and it doesn't happen overnight but it is possible! The site is managed by a capable volunteer staff who are committed to furthering the tenets of BPDRecovery.com.

This is a safe arena for those with mental illnesses and disorders (specifically BPD) to share concerns, voice opinions, seek like-minded individuals, work toward recovery, discuss medications and therapy approaches, and explore the impact of their illness(es) have had on their life and the lives of their loved ones. As mentioned, you need not have a formal diagnosis to participate or benefit from the resources offered here. All are welcome.

Regardless of the type of therapy you've chosen or may be considering choosing - psychoanalysis, EMDR, DBT, CBT or something else entirely - this site is here to help you deal with Borderline Personality Disorder issues. As a peer-support group, we offer support, discussion, tips, advice and encouragement.

All visitors are welcome to submit questions via email to ash @ bpdrecovery.com. Please limit your email to 250 words or less; anything longer will not be read due to time contstraints. Due to the volume of inquiries received, we regretfully cannot guarantee a personal, private response but if your query is of a topic which would be beneficial to the masses, it will be published anonymously - along with the response - on the website.

Please click here to read more about what BPDR is all about.

The "here" link at the bottom includes things like:

What Is The Focus of BPDR?

We believe that all treatment plans and recovery paths are unique to each person. Around here, the primary focus is on re-shaping our thoughts and taking responsibility for our actions.

We focus on separating our stuff from other people's so we learn to stand on our own, as unique people with our own sets of beliefs.

We also believe in Don Miguel Ruiz's Four Agreements and have found that they can really help us break our BPD-thought patterns which, in turn, influences the choices we make and the actions we take.

When faced with tough (or even ordinary) situations, we look to the Five Steps to help us make healthier decisions. Practicing these steps (usually after the fact for a while), we begin the process of overwriting the old tapes that play inside our heads.

We build up our tool kit and work with them often enough that we begin to see that the world isn't so black-and-white, that there are shades of grey.

We work very dilligently on shifting our perspective from the all-or-nothing and when we begin to see that we have the right and the ability to challenge our thoughts, we begin to live in that place we call recovery: healthy, happy living.

There is also this section toward the bottom:

While our primary focus is on a cognitive-behaviour-therapy (CBT) style approach, we do not limit participants to adopting - in full or in part - such modality. Members currently participating at the peer support discussion board are following treatment plans revolving around dialectical-behaviour-therapy (DBT), psychoanalysis, transactional analysis and many others.

All seekers of a healthier, happier lifestyle are welcome as long as it is understood that the discussion group forums will remain commited to support with a recovery focus. The Rules of Engagement are a very integral part of the atmosphere of the peer support community. This style or approach can be quite shocking and/or upsetting to persons at the very early stages of their recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder. As such, it is critical to one's success that one is fully aware of what to expect when registering an account for the peer support discussion group forums at BPD Recovery.

It would seem that some folks have felt misled by the first portion, that bit that's "on the front door" if you will. That "all comers are welcome" but that BPDR essentially engages in a bait-and-switch tactic then "forcing" everyone to use CBT.

So I'm asking for feedback on what you think would be a more representative sign to hang on the front door. What exactly should it say? What precisely should be mentioned or avoided?

I think by now I've used up all the analogies I possibly can --

• You can't make an apple pie with lychee fruit.
• Not much point in calling the Plumber's Union to discuss your cat's hairball problems.
• Probably not appropriate to discuss a boil on your butt with your employer (unless your employer is a doctor.)
• Also likely not appropriate to broach the subject of sexual positions while in a threesome with your grandmother.
• A member of Greenpeace isn't going to get very far trying to persuade Exxon to stop drilling for oil.
• Not reasonable to expect to be served a Big Mac when in the drive-thru at Burger King.
• Don't expect a Catholic church to provide you with a Rabbi.

I don't want to bog down the front page with sixty-seven paragraphs of explanation but more important to me is that we: a.) are providing realistic and clear expectations of what BPDR is all about and b.) we don't have this argument/discussion time after time to everyone's frustration.

I look forward to constructive suggestions and positive discourse.

Ash: In my opinion, the "sign on the front door" says that all are welcome at BPDR, but many of your posts contradict that statement. What is confusing is not the "Welcome to BPDR" but the way you keep repeating statements in threads such as: "BPDR is a hardware store; if you are looking for nails, fine. If you are looking for a cake, go somewhere else." All of your analogies suggest that all are NOT welcome here. It's confusing.

Maybe you can say something like: "We expect everyone to try to use the tools after a "settling in" period of a few weeks to several months. If you don't find them useful or don't make an attempt to use the tools, it would be best if you seek another support board because you may not get the feedback you want at BPDR."

But you can't really control what people do or don't do away from the board. Also, there are probably enough people posting who DON'T use the tools to support others who also don't use them, or use them in a limited way. If those people aren't disruptive to the board, they have been allowed to stay. I'm thinking of myself and the support I got from others even when I didn't use the tools very much.

So, people DO get support even if they don't use the tools, so you aren't enforcing your "rules." On the one hand, you say it's okay to use any other kind of therapy besides CBT, as long as you are working towards happy, healthy living, but on the other hand, you say that if you aren't using CBT, you're in the wrong store! That's why, to me, the welcome is inconsistant with what you post when you are questioned about the orientation of the board.

I can also see the perspective of: all are welcome. Come on in. And then when they get there, it's: this is a hardware store, not a wal-mart, so conform.

Perhaps it could say: all are welcome, come on in. BUT: we are not counselors. we are not doctors. we are people who have and/or did have bpd. We are people who have learned to use the tools provided here and/or learned to conform to the norms here. We are going to offer you our way, and if you can't conform to the rules we have found to be helpful and/or necessary, you will be notified, and if that continues, you will be ousted.

That's more realistic.

I personally do not find it misleading. This one line says it all: "All seekers of a healthier, happier lifestyle are welcome as long as it is understood that the discussion group forums will remain commited to support with a recovery focus." Perhaps the paragraph that contains this sentence should be closer to the top so it does not give the impression of being "hidden" at the time a person joins BPDR.

This is the full paragraph:


Perhaps the "support with a recovery focus" style can be described in more detail to be sure people know what they are getting themselves into if it is not clear enough already.



There are tools that, when used appropriately, are effective for meeting specific challenges. It could be that a hammer is effective for driving nails into wood while it would not be effective for pulling nails out of drywall (it might take out the nail but it would also take out a big chunk of drywall in the process). If someone is using a hammer to drive in a screw, someone else might suggest they use a screwdriver instead for better results. Sure, the hammer would probably work to bury the screw eventually, but turning the screw would be more effective in reaching the same goal and it would not destroy the screw in the process. I don't think it would be appropriate to say "no hammers allowed" or "no nails allowed" on the door and yet there may be times when a "no hammers" or "no nails" rule would be appropriate to a given situation.

Likewise, having a "no carpenters allowed" rule would make no sense just because a carpenter might arrive with a hammer that could be misused by a plumber. I do believe that the door should be open to all with the expectation that people be willing to try using new tools instead of continuing to bang away with the ones they are most comfortable handling. If a carpenter is using a hammer in an attempt to fix a faucet, that person needs to be directed to the plumbing tools instead. That by no means implys that hammers and those who use them are not welcome, though.

I also see the expectation to conform to behaving in mentally healthy ways as a good thing. If someone is using maladaptive coping skills, then the caring approach would be to help them learn better ways of acting so they do not continue to destroy relationships the rest of their lives. If someone is using a particular type of therapy or some sort of maladaptive defense mechanism as justification for acting in a Borderline manner, then clearly that is not an effective means of therapy for that person. In the case of "inner child" therapy, for example, it seems it can be helpful to some in their recovery while it keeps some others stuck as a victim blaming other people for their problems.

Typically those with the "senior community member" title would be held to a higher expectation and those who are a "community leader" would be held to an even higher expectation. Those who are new are not going to be held to the same standards initially because it takes some getting to know someone before knowing how to best help that person. Once a person is an active part of the community, there might be a shift in the expectation based on what skills they bring with them.



I see the main problem being that when one person is told that using a hammer is not appropriate for a specific task, those who use hammers become defensive and start to question "what is wrong with using a hammer?" and follow it with "am I wrong because I use a hammer myself?" when that is not the intent of the initial redirection.



I only see a person's therapy choices challenged when they are not effective. It is when the choices a person makes are not giving them the results they seek that they ask for feedback. If someone were to report that asking "the Why of the Why" five times minimum was giving them positive results, who would argue with that? However, when someone states that they have been seeking the answer to the "Why of the Why" question for 20 years, one concludes that they are finally looking for a better way to address their mental health and it seems appropriate to offer a person some more effective tools to use in their recovery.

Yea, well, after 5 posts, I can say that I didn't have any anything to add. Arguments or critiques don't make a bit of difference to someone who is out of answers.

Wondering, do you believe that I have said or tried to do that? That it is my goal or intention to control what people do or don't do away from BPDR?

It's the disruption that becomes a distraction. If it's not disruptive, you're right - it's fine.

It's when someone becomes demanding and entitled to a forum specifically devoted to their tools/modalities that the analogies get trudged out.

It's when a small group of people insists on having S/CL support for their tools/modalities because they feel neglected or ignored that it becomes disruptive.

It's when someone gets defiant and beligerant about not using and not supporting the tenets of the community that my ire gets provoked.

How rude is that?! To come to a web-space that's completely free of charge and use that very free space as a soapbox to tell us how wrong we are for not doing things your way?! How rude and galling! (I'm not suggesting you've done this, Wondering. In fact, I would say it's been a few years since this has happened and that person is long gone.)

No, Ash. I do not think you want to control what people do away from the board. I think you LIKE when people practice the tools away from the board. That's the whole idea. I just meant that no one can force people to use the tools, so how can you know when someone is on the board for the "wrong reasons" and should go somewhere else?

My main point was that it seems like you are saying one thing in the introduction/welcome to the board, and another when questioned about it, as I wrote. But Denim made it clearer when she said that you only object when the person's methods are ineffective. Is that true?

Ash: We obviously cross-posted. Thanks for clarifying.

There are oh-so-many things I find objectionable but I won't bore you with all those details because we could be here til next Friday! LOL

Suffice it to say that yes, I do find it objectionable to watch someone lather-rinse-repeat without forward progress over a period of time. If someone says "I've been using this type of therapy for twenty years" that says "very limited, if any, forward progress" to me. If someone does ABC day after day after day for months or years right in front of the entire BPDR community and ABC isn't terribly healthy or forward-moving in nature, I do find it objectionable because it implies that BPDR is condoning stagnation.

Things don't have to always have to be forward moving. We all need to take breaks, I know that. And each person's break threshhold and timing is going to be different. When we enter the realm of "years" of limited forward movement, I do think it's a problem. It's either the modality being used or the person's readiness to move forward at that stage of their life. Regardless, I do envision BPDR as a place for people to continually move forward and the beauty of that concept is that the forward movement never has to stop. There's not really a defined End Point. There's no stopping!

As for liking people to practice the tools away from the board, yeah - that's the best way to learn them to the point that they become the new "standard operating procedure." Through repetition, the old negative self-talk auto-self-destruct tapes are overwritten. If someone only uses the tools every third day whenever they wander here to BPDR, they may as well not have even bothered reading what they're about for all the good they'll do.

If someone's not yet ready to absorb the tools or recognize the simple brilliance of Ruiz's Agreements or whatever, that's cool - they're not ready. I was there myself once upon a time. I heard of the Agreements a good six months before I was ready to embrace them as a lifestyle choice. I had more work to do before I was ready for the Tool-Using Stage of my recovery. Up until that point, I too would have balked at the idea of using them repetitively, focusing on them, embracing them on a regular basis. I wasn't ready. And that's where "BPDR isn't for everybody, some people aren't ready to be here" comes from.

I know a lot of folks think I'm being mean, harsh, dismissive, etc. when I say things like that. I get it but I can't do anything about it, really. It can take someone years to come around to saying "I wasn't ready to be here when I first got here" where, a third-party observer can spot it instantly and say "You're really not ready to be here."

It's a judgment call, yes, I know. There's power wrapped up in there for me to say "You're not ready to be here, go and come back when you're more ready." I don't know that it's wrong to use the power and I think that there is a lot of subjectivity when it comes to describing that as use or misuse. I think those who view it as misuse are those who fall into the "not ready" category. And I think those that ARE ready and are dedicated to moving forward are glad that the power is used on occasion - to clear the board of distractions to that forward movement focus.

Rambling again, sorry. Really need to get some work done but there's such good stuff being discussed, it's hard to pull away! LOL

Seems to me, everyone is welcome, but everything isn't.

Everyone is welcome in the hardware store. The person wanting a cake is welcome. Pestering the staff to sell her a cake would not be welcome. It's the action that's the problem.

Ash's analogies don't mean people are unwelcome. They mean that people should go to a place that has what they want. If they want something BPDR doesn't provide, they should look for it elsewhere. Not because they aren't welcome. Simply because we don't have it here. They might be able to buy themselves a cake pan and cooking utensils, but that's as far as it goes. For cake ingredients or a baked cake, one has to go elsewhere. And BPDR, like the hardware store, doesn't provide everything. For one person, it may be the answer, for another, part of the answer, and for another, nothing at all.

I understand telling someone to look for what they want elsewhere can sometimes come accross as unwelcoming, either from the wording or from what the listener brings to it. Still, the basic idea has nothing to do with being welcoming or not. It's a helpful suggestion.

I guess this is a bit off topic as I'm not directly commenting on the "front door" message. But I don't think I'm really getting that far off topic in responding to the particular idea expressed her that this responds to.

i think the problem comes when someone wants to force another.

ie...i want the cake and i want it now. !

with differing views, most can all work together to make a beautiful cake. most all i have seen are perfectly harmonius.

the problem comes with lack of respect for anothers view. "mine is right, no, mine is!" type. there is no reason, as long as someone is moving forward in their time frame of acceptance, they all can be right and useful.

one will heal and change when one is ready. my T has drummed that into me when i get frustrated and say why cant i SEE THIS? i have to be ready at my own time. and i see the results, as forcing a time frame on someone will result in someone digging in their heels and stopping. they must be ready for that lightbulb, for that next step. here is where support comes in.

i see some here just hate the fact of repetitive behaviors. that is because it takes a long time, sometimes, to finish healing that need for it. each time it gets shorter, smaller, and less helpful until one day its need is gone and one has completed that step or level of healing. it just is how it is. a behavior wont go away in one instant. that behavior fills a need, negative yes, maladjusted certainly, but it is the only WAY at the time the person knows to try to fill that need. once the need is healed, the behavior stops. but this takes time, and work.

as my T said not just talk the talk but walk the walk. meaning FEEL it. and this is dependent on each of us time tables to do that. until we are ready to feel it. which will come..in its own time.

i think the bottom line is simply mutual respect. there is no reason to argue certain beliefs. each works for each of us, and that is what counts. i respect anothers view, i hope they respect mine. in no way do i ever try to say mine is the right way and theirs isnt. i dont want another telling me that either.

just mutual respect. "so, your making a cake? here is the pans, and over there (search engines) is the flour and stuff. then you do the work and make it"

how about something along the lines of..."here is what this board has found very useful,indeed essential. (ie,,tools section and books and ideas) it is not the total answer for everyone, but it is a map to helping each of us find our answer. as long as things are worded respectfully, we each can walk our own path here with others to support us emotionally as we do it and share their stories and experiences".

This says it all!

Here is my question, and what I am truly confused about....

There are people here who blatantly critique and claim to never use most of the tools, yet they aren't being told they aren't ready to be here. I am confused as to why one person who just wanders in is being "jumped" to conform, when some people who have been here for years aren't being confronted because they aren't using the tools, and they are outright denying that they agree with them at all.

Do you think it's your stuff that you are reacting to his "entitlement" issue in this way? I also noticed in the other thread that you said it bothered you that he came in and exclaimed "I am an inverted narcissist!", whereas, I would expect things like this from newbies, but I don't think it would cause me to react by pinning him down and forcing the tools on him (although I can remember when someone here did raise that reaction from me). If someone came in crying and moaning, they wouldn't get the same reaction. It seems it depends on what problems one has as to how they are going to be treated upon arrival... and I am thinking perhaps you might feel threatened by him?

Nm the post before this. I did not read your explanation to wondering saying, "If it's not disruptive, then I look over it if they aren't using the tools." I suppose my judgment differs from yours. Do you think our issues sometimes color our judgments?

The home page has been updated. I am hopeful that all the feedback provided here has been addressed. If you don't feel that something you offered was addressed, please let me know.

I glanced at the Home Page briefly and noticed that this paragraph is repeated:



It also seems like CBT and various therapies were mentioned in several locations on the page so it might help to move some paragraphs around so the narrative flows a bit smoother. As I said, I just glanced through it quickly and these things caught my eye - I might notice more if I were to spend more time looking at it from an editing point of view.