Documenting my journey through the mental health system

“The universe knows. You’re a good person.”

No. The universe doesn’t know of our existence. The universe doesn’t care about our existence even if it could know. Justice is not inherent to anything. According to biocentrism, the universe and all within it might not exist at all till it is observed, similar to the results we get every single time the 2-slit experiment is performed. Collapse of the wave function is only determined by an observer. Therefore, all of reality is rendered by a conscious being, as though we’re in a video game or simulation. More and more physicists see this as a likely scenario. The voices I hear sometimes confirm it to me.

These are some of the things said by group members in IOP that I have a hard time swallowing – things like a universal sense of justice, inherent goodness of people, or even hope for the future. It is like they have a faith, or hope, in something I do not. When I was in the VA psych ward back in 2018, I learned I had a poor prognosis because of the very structure of my brain. I did not, and still do not, believe in much hope. For me, for the world, for the future. I am of a very cynical mind and tend to assume the worst about everything, everyone. This is a paradigm, a framework for how the mind works in the context of the wider environment. My paradigm is dark and hopeless, and this is why the doctor said my prognosis is poor. Such a mindset is not good for depression or trying to recover/live with manic depression.

Do our experiences shape our brains or are they what they are the moment we’re born? I think it’s a little of both – early traumatizing experiences in childhood act as switches in the brain – turning off or on specific genes that manifest in our behavior. In early adulthood, adverse experiences triggered my brain to develop bipolar disorder and PTSD. According to the doctor at the mental hospital, my poor emotion regulation and years of passive suicidal ideation make me a prime borderline diagnosis. I’m still learning what this means for me, and how it looks for me. I’m not afraid of abandonment, I don’t get attached to people I hate (“I hate you, don’t leave me”) and that other weird borderline stuff. Instead my boundaries are rigid and uncompromising in style, my thinking tends to operate in black and white terms, and my labile mood swings leave me reeling even on the best medication regimens.

Over the years, I’ve become jaded, disillusioned. Once upon a time, I used to have hopeful aspirations, goals and ambitions, even a bit of idealism. That started getting sucked out of me around the time I entered grad school, and was especially evident in classes where I was encouraged to be vulnerable, to be soft and sappy. A level of cringe I cannot tolerate. So it was already me, I was who I was, wired how I was wired, even before I lost the practicum and everything else. Everything that went down after that was its own trauma, more negative experiences that shape the brain in negative ways, setting a course for the rest of my life.

Can we rewire our brains? That’s what dialectical behavior therapy aims to accomplish. Dr Black says if borderline is the disease, DBT is the cure. But it takes so much therapy and effort and practice to get better emotion regulation, better distress tolerance, better insight. And I still need to take meds for the anxiety, the mania that wants to creep in, the voices, the suicidal depression…

Today’s IOP was boundaries. I learned through therapy with Dr Black, and class today, that my boundary style is very rigid. They are too hard and strong, I don’t let people in, I am detached, I don’t get into intimate relationships, etc. I am the only one in the group with a rigid boundary style. Theirs are all porous – meaning poor boundaries, people pleasing, difficulty saying no, etc. I don’t have those issues but that’s because my borderline is just different. I am a man with borderline. The gender disparity is stark – 70% of borderline diagnoses are women.

I’m not sure I want to change my boundary style. I’m not interested in a relationship, whether with a man or woman. I have just a few close friends. I will drop a person if they slight me and never look back. But therein lies that black and white mentality – better boundaries would be to not burn the bridge, but to just communicate a desire for reduced or no contact, for example. This is a hard pill to swallow. Why not just burn the bridge and be done with it?

This is what makes DBT so hard. It’s hard to change, it’s hard to want to change, and it’s hard to see fault with ourselves when we’ve been hurt, traumatized, and see danger around every corner. And then in that same breath all the fault lies with you, you are the freak and the drain on everyone’s emotions and mental state, you are the one who just can’t seem to do anything right. It’s fucking hard.