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hi there,

i'm passant, from egypt. i was diagnosis as borderline personality disorder about 7 years ago. i stopped my therapy about one and a half years ago, and last april my therapy told me that i'm almost racovered.
before she even told me that i really felt that i have made a lot of progress of my condition, but from time to time i really feel that there'as still something wrong, especially that our culture doesn't admit the psychological disorders or psucho patterns. also that i'm a girl, and girls in my culture should be behaving in a specific way to keep their reputation "clean". as you all know that personality disorder, especially borderline go through a lot of relationships in order to find "the love" they dislack. I've been trough a lot of relationships which made my reputation "dirty", as they used to describe me in my community. deep inside me i really feel that i'm a good person, i'm trying to improve myself in all the fields that my life involves. i'm 25 years old, i'm in the last semester of my faculty, i started to have a job 3 mionths ago, i feel i'm on the right track, but my community with its culture, and the point of view how gurls should be behaving really holds me back of proceeding with my dealing with my inner "issues". i really need a community who can support me keep myself on the right track that i'm almost going to achieve. I'm really so glad i found you guys.
Merry christmas everyone & happy holidays

hi there,
i tried to post a reply 2 mins ago, but it wasn't posted, i don't know why.
anyway i'm Passant from Egypt. i was diagnosis as a personality disorder borderline 7 years ago, i'm 25 years old now.
the main target for me to join this site or trying to find anything on the internet about my illness, was because in my oriental culture, and in country we don't admit psychological ill or behaviour. also being a female requires me to behave on special "patterns" so i could be able to keep my reputation "clean". as anyone knows that BPD may be sexually abused, or go through a lot of relationships, which according to my country didn't leave me reputation "clean" at all.
i feel that i'm now almost on the right track, but having those ideas and beliefs arround kinda slow me down, or pulls me back again.
i really need people who could support me not to loose what i've till now achieved, as i think i've achieved really a lot, and feel that i'm almost recovered, and really don't wanna loose that.
i really appreciate what you provide here by supporting such an illness, where people appear to be fine, when they are really suffering inside and can't find out what's really going on.

Merry Christmas everyone and happy holidays

Welcome to BPDR!

I admit that I don't know much about Egyptian culture so it's possible that my suggestions might be wrong or inappropriate for your culture. My main suggestion is somewhat contrary to the overall goal and focus of recovery work. I think the big thing we try to learn in BPD recovery work is to learn from the past and trust that the future will not be the same as the present. If we feel awful now, we trust that the feeling is temporary and we will feel better in the future. Oftentimes, in the midst of borderline, we forget the past - we forget the things we have done to other people, we forget what we promised in the past, we forget the tools we learned and practiced - we just act on instinct, oftentimes impulsively.

So when it comes to dealing with the perceptions of others and their judgments of our reputations (which come from our past actions), I tend to think that it is best to actually "live in the moment" and say to ourselves "This is who I am now, I had a chance to define who I wanted to be so whoever I was and whatever I did in the past is behind me now. It cannot be changed; I can only do my best NOW and do everything I can to hold my head high, use my tools and prove them wrong about me."

Like I say, I don't know if this would work in your culture or not but I think it worked pretty well for me and many of the folks I know. We accept that we did some "bad" things in the past and we just always "do our best" as part of the Four Agreements. After all, we cannot change anyone else's mind or opinion of us so worrying about it and living in the fear of that shadow will not help our own recovery efforts.

Welcome to BPDR.