Mental disorders: Thoughts on a whatever something or other

I suppose I could start in plainer English discussing who I am as a layman not trained in psychoanalytic language, and if so will revert to the language that I do use when discussing anything worth discussing: half academic and half wit (indistinguishable at times from being a halfwit). As a layman I chose to major in philosophy, for better or worse, which is a fast track to being witty, or being a halfwit, and other things besides.

Or I could start with a bombardment of links mostly pertaining to The Diagnostic Statistical Manual IV and V and increasingly technical accounts of co-morbidity and dual diagnoses involving bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder until we both drown in jargon I will not be able to understand, much less simplify. For DSM-IV diagnostic criteria regarding bipolar disorders types I and II, look at this if you want a full jargon drowning, or this instead if only for its simplicity and overall pleasant color scheme. For both DSM-IV and V's diagnostic criterion, (which considerably vary) this suffices, although it has a less pleasant color scheme.

(A caveat, before beginning. “Bad days” read here as days with most if not all of these behaviors manifesting violently enough to disrupt any sort of functioning and interrelating with others in a conventionally acceptable manner. “Stable days” read as functioning quite okay; it doesn’t read as “normal.” There is no “normal,” in the way “normal” people use it. Disorders do not have on/off switches: they are the very conditions of possibility for any and all sorts of functioning.)

If you would pardon my being a halfwit now, that very conundrum of a starting point itself is one of the overlapping criteria of both borderline and bipolar disorders: an unstable sense of self and the overall identity of things. If you want, you can check this to see a simplified and hopeful account for those suffering from the co-morbidity and overlapping manifestations of both, but I would recommend this more, because it has updates, has a more self-aware writing style, and a table. Tables rock, man.

Wow, I just managed to drown you in information not even five paragraphs into this entire thing, and all that without even declaring the point of this motherfucking word vomit of a thing. Which brings me, again in halfwit fashion, to a manifestation of a second commonality: ideation both of self and others. This ideation, broadly speaking, can occur in strictly polar opposites, but not always: either we (I will speak as a sample of those with diagnosed co-morbidity of both borderline and bipolar [II], and not, as appearances suggest, in the majestic plural, 'kay) treat ourselves and others in a very idealized way (grandiosely), or in a very garbage way (devaluatedly). (I am allowed to invent my own terms. Grandiosely.) That "either" there is also present in both disorders: the action of splitting, whereby things and values and the entirety of being itself makes, or when there are really bad days, should make, sense only in black or white. There is a need for definites, and if we don't find it in you, we create it in our heads. This is a function of an unstable sense of self: what we lack we overcompensate for by swinging the other way and demand from ourselves and/or others, rather ironically, an uncompromising immutability. On really bad days any statement can read as an ultimatum, either from you or from us. This split also manifests in the very intensity of feelings that we have, which we feel in extremes, either extremely invested or extremely apathetic (that’s why borderline personality disorder is also described as “emotional dysregulation disorder”).

I leave you to you if you care to wrangle with the rest of the abstract commonalities between both disorders and turn to what I do, specifically, without the majestic plural sample size perspective. A-ha, here it is, the declaration of my intent for this piece: I am writing to apologize for being this way.

You can, of course, problematize the very meaning and assumption set behind that intent: I (will) sound as though a disorder (or two) is a choice, and is therefore within the purview and paradigm of the language of apologies and accountability. If you're more of a cynical bent or have been/are with someone who has mental disorder/s, you might think that this apology is another in a plethora of ways by which we fuck with you, and that this belongs to our full-to-brimming arsenal of gaslight wars. Not for nothing, after all, are borderline and bipolar disorders (especially the former), called "the crazy-making disorder." It might look to you, you of relatively sound, normal functioning, as though we are manipulating you into accepting things no rational mind can, much less should, accept, much less forgive.

And the thing is, we can't tell. I can't tell. One of the fundamental things that having a personality disorder (or two) will do is to take away a semblance of stable causality. I am never sure which causes what. Do external stimuli trigger the onset of the manifestations of these disorders, or do I create the situations in which things become attributable to my disorders? Again, a function of having no sense of self. (Exitentialism would have something to say about that and individual agency, but I digress.)

You see, the way both disorders manifest with me is by using the engine of radical self-loathing. And I mean "radical" in the very etymological root (ha!) of the word: the Latin radix, meaning "root." No praise in the world in whatever way, shape, or Scooby Snacks will convince me that I am worth your anything. In my head, it is real that it is either by sheer luck (in the universe's part) or by sheer apathy (in my part) or by sheer impressionability (in others' part) that I am where I am now, privy to all the privileges that I have while seeming like the largest ingrate ever to have existed. I, (or maybe I can revert to being sample population, momentarily) we, do not have a healthy gauge as to accountability and accomplishment, especially when it comes to ourselves, and it will spill to people close to us. I credit or forgive absolutely; or not at all, also absolutely. (I find a "compromise" position by remembering most things, which I might in the most improbable of times bring up.) It gets worse: that attribution of either fault or accomplishment depends on whether it was a good day or a bad day in our heads.

It gets worser: this self-loathing, however seemingly contradictorily, utilizes the very same engine for illusions of grandiosity: again, either I see myself as lucky garbage ultimately unworthy of anything, or - or - which is also real, as some hot shit that you should actually and continuously value since the invention of electricity or sliced bread. Because black or white, because unstable sense of self - all because in effect, we have no selves. We have no stability, much less solidity whatsoever, to speak of.

Which is a segue to two things, again manifestations of the co-morbidity of those disorders: one, how I, or maybe we, am (are) oversensitive to even the slightest shifts in language or behavior; and two, how we dissociate. Both these things in turn and again feed on the demand for stability which we don't have. This is the most substantial explanation for most irrational behaviors associated with both disorders: in very bad days, any show of inconsistency from those close to us will cause us, with no apparent regard for how their day is going, to berserk almost always out of proportion to the issue at hand. That is how I usually deal with disappointment. I berserk like Cloud Strife and magically make my one base sword into six and stab you front and center three times each. We will start a fight over the most inane things, and because we can hardly identify for ourselves (and identify our very selves), we cannot explain to you in a coherent fashion why. It's irrational. It's out of proportion. It will appear to be uncalled for.

After a very disproportionate reaction to an issue, the easiest way for damage control all around is dissociation: things aren't real anyway. I'm not worth anything anyway. This is going to fail anyway. You're not real anyway. You'll be tired of me and leave anyway. And I will deserve it in two ways: I will make it real in my head, or by actually making it so. And, like a motherfucking Ouroboroi so in love with its own ass it has to eat it, this dissociation is more practically manifested in either devaluation or ideation.

Meaning, on the one hand, devaluation of self (and others) is a way by which we find solace in our very brokenness when things do not go as we expect (and hence we are given to being self-sabotaging self-fulfilling prophecies and may or may not forgive others, absolutely); whereas grandiosity of self (and others) is a way by which we attain selves, momentarily, and self-respect, more momentarilylyly, (and hence are given to grant everything momentary reality) until all that was established in either action is inevitably gone, like most things in our lives and in our heads. Again, depending on the day.

Consistently using the first person point of view this time, this is how I am. Where do I even begin to apologize without bringing to bear all that shit I just said up there for a spat over one word perceived to be out of place. You could go on Quora and find very good accounts of how those with one or both of these disorders try their best not to damage everything too much, and are undergoing therapy quite successfully into a more stable baseline mood (if not perception, altogether), but most times I just work, or read, or wreak hell unto people.

I'm still sorry, at any rate. I'm just at a loss how to make that apology translate into something definite, long-standing, meant. Because even when I am contradictory, I mean things. Which doesn't make rational sense. But it does to me.

Depending on the day. This is where philosophy fucks me up and saves me in one stroke: I make the problem itself  be one of time and change and of the inherent fragmentation of identity. Not for nothing do I love Derrida. I don't care whether or not he's mentally unstable.

So I end this piece here, quite anticlimactically, I know - but of course, as with the problems of beginnings, so it is with the problems of endings. And of course, nothing but ultimatums and apologies in between.