Ahoy, and a rant...

Found myself writing a marathon rant on a forum today, stopped myself, and am posting it here instead.

The issue at hand was the difficulty of obtaining psychodynamic therapy from the NHS, in particular for those with a diagnosis of BPD. The NHS tend to stick at offering stage one DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) only. Stage one DBT focusses on reducung self-injury and other maladaptive coping techniques. The idea is to make sure people have a basic stability and safety before they go through further therapy (DBT or otherwise). However, they do actually need further therapy to happen, otherwise the underlying problems remain, and you have someone who has basically been taught not to show their distress. It's all part and parcel of the generally dismissive attitude towards those diagnosed BPD from mental health professionals...

And so began my rant:

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"It maks me feel so angry, actually - people turn to them in great need and are treated like they shouldn't make a fuss. It has parallels with the sexist treatment of women over the years - calm down dear, be quiet, please others, have no needs yourself, no opinion and no feelings.

In my opinion, this is closely liked to the BPD diagnosis - I mean, you have a diagnosis that more often than not involves abuse or other traumatic experiences, and yet people diagnosed BPD are treated like they are making a fuss about nothing! "Attention-seeking" is a phrase bandied around. No-one would say to someone yelling for help after being severely physically injured, "You're just attention seeking".

I wonder if it's a collective refusal to face the damage humans to do each other on a personal level? People don't like to think that there is abuse out there, or that the way they themselves act may seriously hurt others, or that the way society is structured may cause problems. Much easier for everyone to blame the victims, and decide they are "overreacting".

In that way I think psychiatry is an abuser. It gaslights people, twists things around to blame them, labels them as deviant from the norm, because their struggles show."

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