Out With It

I can feel your heartache and your pain. It takes a lot of guts to lay your soul out on paper. I want to thank you for sharing your story with us. Every story reaches out and helps someone else, you might have saved someone's life tonight......I am sending my positive thoughts and prayers for you to continue on the path to wellness....((HUGS))

I thank God that not only did you survive, but that you are my colleague. The perspective you bring to the bedside is priceless.Welcome to the world of nursing: where you can transform your worst personal experience into an asset in human care!

Wow....I hope that you are on the road to healing....I hope that writing was cathartic for you and helpful for someone else. Stay strong!

It took a lot of courage for you to share your story. I admire your strength in working so hard to get well. I hope you continue on the path to wellness and you have a wonderful life and career.

This is one of the most triumphant personal-experience articles I've ever read. You truly have done a great service, not just by educating your colleagues about a terribly misunderstood condition, but by proving to the world that people with mental health issues are NOT "crazy" and can be successful no matter what their diagnosis. Well done!

I want to thank you so much for posting this article. I am still in nursing school and I also attempted suicide and ended up in the psych ward. It is a very shameful feeling and you encouraged me that I can still be a nurse, and hopefully a good one. That there is another side. Thank you. Maybe I'll share my story some day on here as well.

Quote from wish_me_luck...I received my nursing license a little over a week later.

Just a quick note to tell you how truly, sincerely glad I am you are here today.May you be a beacon in someone's darkest hour and grant them the understanding they need and deserve.~~CP~~Sent from the congealed cesspool of evil, AKA my smart phone. In other words, when it comes to spelling, all bets are off.

While I've never gone so far as to prepare and act on a plan to kill myself, the dark part of me said, "gee that would probably be an effective way to go if no one was there to stop it.". I'm relatively stable right now but just earlier today I had a fleeting thought of what would happen if I walked in the middle of the street to cross and no one stopped. This is a morbid disease we have. It seems that with most other diseases, the fear of dying is so great, but with mental illness, it can be seen as a relief or an end to that which will not end on it's own.That must have been so scary to go to the hospital and then be admitted on an involuntary hold. While it's not commendable that you signed yourself out, I am glad you were able to leave and hopefully complete school as you'd wished.Thank you for sharing your story. It's not easy, but the more we talk, the faster the walls and stigma around mental illnesses will come down!

thank you for your story and thanks for joining us.I was diagnosed with BPD at the age of 50. I was so happy to finally know why my life is the way it is. And since finding out I've been doing better because I understand what is going on with me. I live almost daily with thoughts of dying or purposely hurting myself. Just this evening I was enjoying a lovely bike ride and thought about crashing my bike on purpose. It was a fleeting thought and I paid it no attention. I can't drive on a highway because I have a huge fear that I'll purposely crash and kill myself.Learn about your disease, learn about yourself and seek treatment. But most of all....be patient and loving with yourself.

Yeah, this discussion about mental illness, especially Borderline Personality Disorder, is long overdue. I went through a shock factor stage of having the dreaded Borderline Personality Disorder in the beginning. I am over that now. I am in the advocacy and empowerment stage of recovery. I actually rather like having Borderline Personality Disorder--I think I may be the first to ever say that, but I do. I do have periods of extreme sadness (complete with loud sobbing), extreme irritability, etc.; however, no one mentions the extreme happiness that comes with it. At least I have experienced extreme happiness--almost to a point of ecstasy and bliss. People with Borderline Personality Disorder are just as creative as those with Bipolar and Schizophrenia. Having a highly stigmatized disorder has made it easier to find out who really has my back and is worth being around.Also, I wish people would ask me about Borderline Personality Disorder and also, how it affects me personally. People have a lot of assumptions about it and more than half of them are not true. I think what happened with Borderline Personality Disorder was that a few people had a bad run in with one and then, they spread the word to stay away from people with Borderline Personality Disorder (I was told to stay away from people with BPD in nursing school--apparently, people in medical school are told that, too). So, then, it just perpetuates, and when and if, a nurse or physician comes in contact with one they psych themselves out and for lack of better words, get what they ask for. Another trait I have as a person with Borderline Personality Disorder is that I tend to pick up on peoples' emotions fast and can read people decently well--if you come up to me defensive (not only in spoken language, but body language and attitude), I will get defensive. My therapist even admitted that she used to hate the idea of working with people with Borderline Personality Disorder. She has started to understand them better though. It doesn't help either that the typical Borderline example is Glenn Close's character "Alex" in Fatal Attraction. That is a very extreme example. My therapist even admitted that. I have read that a better example is Young Adult with Charlize Theron.

Quote from wish_me_luckYeah, this discussion about mental illness, especially Borderline Personality Disorder, is long overdue. I went through a shock factor stage of having the dreaded Borderline Personality Disorder in the beginning. I am over that now. I am in the advocacy and empowerment stage of recovery.I actually rather like having Borderline Personality Disorder--I think I may be the first to ever say that, but I do. I do have periods of extreme sadness (complete with loud sobbing), extreme irritability, etc.; however, no one mentions the extreme happiness that comes with it. At least I have experienced extreme happiness--almost to a point of ecstasy and bliss. People with Borderline Personality Disorder are just as creative as those with Bipolar and Schizophrenia. Having a highly stigmatized disorder has made it easier to find out who really has my back and is worth being around.Also, I wish people would ask me about Borderline Personality Disorder and also, how it affects me personally. People have a lot of assumptions about it and more than half of them are not true. I think what happened with Borderline Personality Disorder was that a few people had a bad run in with one and then, they spread the word to stay away from people with Borderline Personality Disorder (I was told to stay away from people with BPD in nursing school--apparently, people in medical school are told that, too). So, then, it just perpetuates, and when and if, a nurse or physician comes in contact with one they psych themselves out and for lack of better words, get what they ask for. Another trait I have as a person with Borderline Personality Disorder is that I tend to pick up on peoples' emotions fast and can read people decently well--if you come up to me defensive (not only in spoken language, but body language and attitude), I will get defensive.My therapist even admitted that she used to hate the idea of working with people with Borderline Personality Disorder. She has started to understand them better though.It doesn't help either that the typical Borderline example is Glenn Close's character "Alex" in Fatal Attraction. That is a very extreme example. My therapist even admitted that. I have read that a better example is Young Adult with Charlize Theron.