Read I Hate You—Don't Leave Me for Free Online

By then, her medical file resembled a well-worn passport, the pages stamped with the numerous psychiatric “territories” through which she had traveled.
    â€œFor years I was in and out of hospitals, but I never found a therapist who understood me and knew what I was going through.”
    Carrie’s parents were divorced when she was an infant, and she was raised by her alcoholic mother until she was nine. A boarding school took care of her for four years after that.
    When she was twenty-one, overwhelming depression forced her to seek therapy; she was diagnosed and treated for depression at that time. A few years later, her moods began to fluctuate wildly and she was treated for bipolar disorder (manic depression). Throughout this period she repeatedly overdosed on medications and cut her wrists many times.
    â€œI was cutting myself and overdosing on tranquilizers, antidepressants, or whatever drug I happened to be on,” she recalls. “It had become almost a way of life.”
    In her mid-twenties, she began to have auditory hallucinations and became severely paranoid. At this time she was hospitalized for the first time and diagnosed schizophrenic.
    And still later in life, Carrie was hospitalized in a cardiac-care unit numerous times for severe chest pains, subsequently recognized to be anxiety related. She went through periods of binge eating and starvation fasting; over a period of several weeks, her weight would vary by as much as seventy pounds.
    When she was thirty-two, she was brutally raped by a physician on the staff of the hospital in which she worked. Soon after, she returned to school and was drawn into a sexual relationship with one of her female professors. By the age of forty-two, her collection of medical files was filled with almost every diagnosis imaginable, including schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, hypochondriasis, anxiety, anorexia nervosa, sexual dysfunction, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
    Despite her mental and physical problems, Carrie was able to perform her work fairly well. Though she changed jobs frequently, she managed to complete a doctorate in social work. She was even able to teach for a while at a small women’s college.
    Her personal relationships, however, were severely limited. “The only relationships I’ve had with men were ones in which I was sexually abused. A few men have wanted to marry me, but I have a big problem with getting close or being touched. I can’t tolerate it. It makes me want to run. I was engaged a couple of times, but had to break them off. It’s unrealistic of me to think I could be anybody’s wife.”
    As for friends, she says, “I’m very self-absorbed. I say everything I think, feel, know, or don’t know. It’s so hard for me to get interested in other people.”
    After more than twenty years of treatment, Carrie’s symptoms were finally recognized and diagnosed as BPD. Her dysfunction evolved from ingrained, enduring personality traits, more indicative of a personality or “trait” disorder than her previously diagnosed, transient “state” illnesses.
    â€œThe most difficult part of being a borderline personality has been the emptiness, the loneliness, and the intensity of feelings,” she says today. “The extreme behaviors keep me so confused. At times I don’t know what I’m feeling or who I am.”
    A better understanding of Carrie’s illness has led to more consistent treatment. Medications have been useful for treating acute symptoms and providing the glue for maintaining a more coherent sense of self; at the same time, she has acknowledged the limitations of the medications.
    Her psychiatrist, working with her other physicians, has helped her to understand the connection between her physical complaints and her anxiety and to avoid unnecessary medical tests, drugs, and surgeries. Psychotherapy has been geared for the “long